Re: Leica M11-V to be announced (Now called Leica M EV1)
Sorry to be late posting my impressions after spending the afternoon shooting the EV-1 during a rainy day down in Bologna. But, my phone battery ran out and I couldn't post on the train ride home to Parma. In any case, here are my thoughts.
They had 3 cameras for sale and a loaner for testing at the Leica Store Bologna yesterday. They had invited a number of people who were good customers and a couple who had been waiting to by an M until they got to see this one. After the tests the only one I saw make a decision and buy chose a traditional M11 in Black Paint over the EV-1. From what I saw this seemed to sum up the group's reaction to the camera. No one was moved to swap this new camera out for their existing one or add the EV-1 to their kit. Surprisingly this included one gentleman who only shot his M11-P using the Visoflex, never the Range Finder. I would characterize the groups overall reaction as luke warm.
On to more detail:
The camera is an M11 body and all M11 accessories fit. There will be a specific grip but they didn't have one on site yet so no details about that.
The camera is much lighter than a regular black M11. 80 grams is what they said. 180 grams lighter than my silver M11. That makes a huge difference.
The EVF is basically exactly the same as the one on the Q3 as far as brightness, size, resolution, and experience. If you like the Q3 for manual focus you will like this one.. It is far superior in my view to what you get using the VisoFlex on an M11 in my opinion. Much, much smoother and I like the integrated position much better as well. I tested with matching 50mm Summilux lenses side by side with the SL3-S. The SL was a whole level up better in every respect. Brighter, easier to focus, more detail, smoother, and more stable when zooming in due to the SL3's excellent IBIS. If I am going to shoot my M lenses through an EVF, using focus peaking and magnification then I am definitely going to do it on my SL3 not an EV-1. The better experience is enough to overcome my form factor preference for an M body. Your preferences on this may vary so try it out.
The frame lines lever is of course no longer used for that. You are given three choices for functions using the lever. It can be set to toggle on/off focus peaking. Or, you can set to to magnify for focusing. Finally you can set it to tool like changing frame lines, but what it is actually showing you frame lines of crops overlayed on the full image. These crops will actually only be applied to in camera jpegs, not RAW files. Clearly not something most of use would ever find useful.
The only focus aids available are Focus Peaking and Zoom in to focus. Nothing we haven't had o other leicas for a long time now. In order to enable Auto Zoom on focus Leica has left the the focus coupler lever in the camera to detect focus changing. What I found is that Focus Peaking is not very good when shooting very wide apertures in low light. There is just not enough contrast in this situation for the peaking to be strong enough to help. So in this camera is unlikely to help improve hit rate in exactly the situations where people have the most problems using the Range Finder. Disappointing in my opinion. When using the rear screen for framing and focusing the experience and accuracy is exactly the same with either the standard M cameras or the new EV-1.
Interestingly enough the camera does have the authentication features of the M11-P but only 64gb of internal memory like a standard M11. Sort of half way between the M11 variants.
Besides what is mentioned above the camera seems to be the same as any M11.
To sum up, my reaction is luke warm like the majority of others that were there and what I am reading in various posts on the internet. Certainly, I am not excited enough to buy one. For me personally I find this camera to be only a standard mirrorless manual focusing camera, that is behind a bit on features from some other options, and very much on the expensive side when comparing. I do love shooting my Leica cameras, and always want to wish Leica the best success with its products. Hopefully, it will find a solid user base, and help Leica achieve financial success.
If anyone has any specific questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to provide straight forward answers.
Re: Leica M11-V to be announced (Now called Leica M EV1)
Sorry to be late posting my impressions after spending the afternoon shooting the EV-1 during a rainy day down in Bologna. But, my phone battery ran out and I couldn't post on the train ride home to Parma. In any case, here are my thoughts.
They had 3 cameras for sale and a loaner for testing at the Leica Store Bologna yesterday. They had invited a number of people who were good customers and a couple who had been waiting to by an M until they got to see this one. After the tests the only one I saw make a decision and buy chose a traditional M11 in Black Paint over the EV-1. From what I saw this seemed to sum up the group's reaction to the camera. No one was moved to swap this new camera out for their existing one or add the EV-1 to their kit. Surprisingly this included one gentleman who only shot his M11-P using the Visoflex, never the Range Finder. I would characterize the groups overall reaction as luke warm.
On to more detail:
The camera is an M11 body and all M11 accessories fit. There will be a specific grip but they didn't have one on site yet so no details about that.
The camera is much lighter than a regular black M11. 80 grams is what they said. 180 grams lighter than my silver M11. That makes a huge difference.
The EVF is basically exactly the same as the one on the Q3 as far as brightness, size, resolution, and experience. If you like the Q3 for manual focus you will like this one.. It is far superior in my view to what you get using the VisoFlex on an M11 in my opinion. Much, much smoother and I like the integrated position much better as well. I tested with matching 50mm Summilux lenses side by side with the SL3-S. The SL was a whole level up better in every respect. Brighter, easier to focus, more detail, smoother, and more stable when zooming in due to the SL3's excellent IBIS. If I am going to shoot my M lenses through an EVF, using focus peaking and magnification then I am definitely going to do it on my SL3 not an EV-1. The better experience is enould to overcome my form factor preference for an M body. Your preferences on this may vary so try it out.
The frame lines lever is of course no longer used for that. You are given three choices for functions using the lever. It can be set to toggle on/off focus peaking. Or, you can set to to magnify for focusing. Finally you can set it to tool like changing frame lines, but what it is actually showing you frame lines of crops overlayed on the full image. These crops will actually only be applied to in camera jpegs, not RAW files. Clearly not something most of use would ever find useful.
The only focus aids available are Focus Peaking and Zoom in to focus. Nothing we haven't had o other leicas for a long time now. In order to enable Auto Zoom on focus Leica has left the the focus coupler lever in the camera to detect focus changing. What I found is that Focus Peaking is not very good when shooting very wide apertures in low light. There is just not enough contrast in this situation for the peaking to be strong enough to help. So in this camera is unlikely to help improve hit rate in exactly the situations where people have the most problems using the Range Finder. Disappointing in my opinion. When using the rear screen for framing and focusing the experience and accuracy is exactly the same with either the standard M cameras or the new EV-1.
Interestingly enough the camera does have the authentication features of the M11-P but only 64gb of internal memory like a standard M11. Sort of half way between the M11 variants.
Besides what is mentioned above the camera seems to be the same as any M11.
To sum up, my reaction is luke warm like the majority of others that were there and what I am reading in various posts on the internet. Certainly, I am not excited enough to buy one. For me personally I find this camera to be only a standard mirrorless manual focusing camera, that is behind a bit on features from some other options, and very much on the expensive side when comparing. I do love shooting my Leica cameras, and always want to wish Leica the best success with its products. Hopefully, it will find a solid user base, and help Leica achieve financial success.
If anyone has any specific questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to provide straight forward answers.
Re: Leica M11-V to be announced (Now called Leica M EV1)
Sorry to be late posting my impressions after spending the afternoon shooting the EV-1 during a rainy day down in Bologna. But, my phone battery ran out and I couldn't post on the train ride home to Parma. In any case, here are my thoughts.
They had 3 cameras for sale and a loaner for testing at the Leica Store Bologna yesterday. They had invited a number of people who were good customers and a couple who had been waiting to by an M until they got to see this one. After the tests the only one I saw make a decision and buy chose a traditional M11 in Black Paint over the EV-1. From what I saw this seemed to sum up the group's reaction to the camera. No one was moved to swap this new camera out for an EV-1. Surprisingly this included one gentleman who only shot his M11-P using the Visoflex, never the Range Finder. I would characterize the groups overall reaction as luke warm.
On to more detail:
The camera is an M11 body and all M11 accessories fit. There will be a specific grip but they didn't have one on site yet so no details about that.
The camera is much lighter than a regular black M11. 80 grams is what they said. 180 grams lighter than my silver M11. That makes a huge difference.
The EVF is basically exactly the same as the one on the Q3 as far as brightness, size, resolution, and experience. If you like the Q3 for manual focus you will like this one.. It is far superior in my view to what you get using the VisoFlex on an M11 in my opinion. Much, much smoother and I like the integrated position much better as well. I tested with matching 50mm Summilux lenses side by side with the SL3-S. The SL was a whole level up better in every respect. Brighter, easier to focus, more detail, smoother, and more stable when zooming in due to the SL3's excellent IBIS. If I am going to shoot my M lenses through an EVF, using focus peaking and magnification then I am definitely going to do it on my SL3 not an EV-1. The better experience is enould to overcome my form factor preference for an M body. Your preferences on this may vary so try it out.
The frame lines lever is of course no longer used for that. You are given three choices for functions using the lever. It can be set to toggle on/off focus peaking. Or, you can set to to magnify for focusing. Finally you can set it to tool like changing frame lines, but what it is actually showing you frame lines of crops overlayed on the full image. These crops will actually only be applied to in camera jpegs, not RAW files. Clearly not something most of use would ever find useful.
The only focus aids available are Focus Peaking and Zoom in to focus. Nothing we haven't had o other leicas for a long time now. In order to enable Auto Zoom on focus Leica has left the the focus coupler lever in the camera to detect focus changing. What I found is that Focus Peaking is not very good when shooting very wide apertures in low light. There is just not enough contrast in this situation for the peaking to be strong enough to help. So in this camera is unlikely to help improve hit rate in exactly the situations where people have the most problems using the Range Finder. Disappointing in my opinion. When using the rear screen for framing and focusing the experience and accuracy is exactly the same with either the standard M cameras or the new EV-1.
Interestingly enough the camera does have the authentication features of the M11-P but only 64gb of internal memory like a standard M11. Sort of half way between the M11 variants.
Besides what is mentioned above the camera seems to be the same as any M11.
To sum up, my reaction is luke warm like the majority of others that were there and what I am reading in various posts on the internet. Certainly, I am not excited enough to buy one. For me personally I find this camera to be only a standard mirrorless manual focusing camera, that is behind a bit on features from some other options, and very much on the expensive side when comparing. I do love shooting my Leica cameras, and always want to wish Leica the best success with its products. Hopefully, it will find a solid user base, and help Leica achieve financial success.
If anyone has any specific questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to provide straight forward answers.
Oct 24, 2025 at 02:48 AM
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