Lloyd wrote a letter to Leica AG...

[malcD]

you know what your getting before you spend your money --- why do you want to change it --- wait for M10-M11-M12 --- or shoot plate or M format --- I'll never be able to afford
a M9 but if I could I would use it not talk about it

 

[varjag]

Executive summary: an obsessive dude on the Internet wants M9 to be like X100.

 

[jsrockit]

I just can't understand why someone wants to take the only camera of its kind and change it into something more mainstream.

Sure, I admit it, I'd love a camera that is a cross between the M9 and the X100, but feel truly lucky to have both of those cameras that meet my needs 99.9% of the time.

I'd like higher ISO and a faster processor in my M9, but I'm cool with it as is. You can't have everything.

 

[zerobuttons]

I just can't understand why someone wants to take the only camera of its kind and change it into something more mainstream.
.....
You can't have everything.

I believe you hit the nerve here.
Probably many of the discussions in M9, X100 et al. fora occur because none of these cameras quite live up to the wishes of many users. Any given user´s dream-camera is not the same as the next user´s.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

You could make it as big as a Nikon D3 and come out with a series of lenses with CPU's in them to meet Lloyd's requirements.

Leica: DISREGARD Lloyd's open letter.

Lloyd: start a review of the X100.

Start here:
http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=107090

 

[ferider]

A camera is a tool, and that’s what my commentary is about.

Leica has squandered its R&D efforts by straying into highly competitive medium format territory, rather than making “M” the best it could be. A grave strategic error in my view.

😕

Leica paid dividends for 2011: http://www.corporate.leica-camera.de/investor_relations/financial_reports/2011/index.html.

Enough said.

 

[dcsang]

I noted Lloyd Chambers wrote this letter to Leica AG:

"Open Letter to Leica — 10 Ways To Improve the M9 Rangefinder"

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2011/20110610_2-LeicaM9-Letter.html

Would you agree?

Bob

Yes, I agree that Lloyd wrote an open letter to Leica.

🙂

Cheers,
Dave

 

[jarski]

Leica isn't perfect, and this current luxury bubble won't last.

the "bubble" has lasted quite some time now, Leica's been expensive since day one.

but keep on waiting 🙄

 

[porktaco]

Hi, first post, so be gentle...

Having some experience with Industrial Cameras, and having also been down the road of developing our own camera for a special application there is nothing straightforward about anticipating the roadmap of the sensor developers.

The sensor itself is only part of the question, there are also all the supporting electronics providing the clock and reading out the taps from the sensor.

The FPGA (a programmable chip, the brain of the camera) is usually the limiting factor in a sensors actual performance.

If you want to make one picture every five minutes, you can use an older FPGA with just about any sensor you like, so long as it can be reprogrammed to deal with the data.

Increasing the size of the sensor, the data of course increases as well, and the FPGA will eventually hit a wall in terms of bandwidth.

Most sensors out there are already putting their processors against the wall, and it is always a compromise between what has to be done (de-bayering for example) and the output rate required.

In the end, we chose to drop our "in house" camera design and partner with a couple of suppliers.

In Industrial cameras, standards are becoming the name of the game, once we implement the standard, from a software point of view changing out the sensor tech becomes easier.

But all of this would increase the bulk of the design, if you have to have physical interfaces to make certain components upgradable you need to include space for connectors and accessibility to do it... you would end up with a much larger camera, that certainly wouldn't look like an M.

Hope this was somehow informative,

A

super helpful. there's always a lot of baying about sensors and microlenses, but it's good to be reminded of some other stuff that's really important - connectors and circuit boards and physical interfaces. the fpga point was also very interesting.

i should also chime in with support for harry lime's later points about the leica weltenschauung. as i don't own an m9, it's hard for me to say what works and what doesn't but harry's points sound very reasonable. i will say that the one thing that i do miss about my panasonic g1 is that i could really tell when stuff was actually in focus. i enjoy the RF process a lot, but having a de-selectable live view might be a very good thing for an m10.

 

[semordnilap]

Note: I didn't read the article, but I get the idea–I don't think it's anything we haven't heard before.

Frankly, I can't afford an M9 now, but I'm still really happy with my M8! I would love it if Leica would make an aps-c camera with better sensor, etc., as that would be the right upgrade path for me now. I don't know if it makes any business sense, but I do hope that when the next iteration of full frame Leica DRF comes out, they offer a crop camera for less money. They could even make it out of aluminum, have the thing half built in Japan for all I care, and differentiate in that way as well...

But I think we're just waiting for advances in the off-the-shelf technology, like the dsps and sensors that Leica is using, for advances in the speed, battery life, and high iso of the M...

 

[kbg32]

Most people are lazy. If you want you really want is $50 P & S, don't buy a Leica M9. But who am I though? I don't have a blog. In my experience, the results from the M8 and M9 are superb.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

While there are a few valid points, the whole "letter" reads to me like a guy that just bought a Harley Davidson and is complaining that it just doesn't feel like a Hummer, because, by golly, having only two wheels is a huge stability design flaw:

I like to shoot wide open as I show for example in Landscape Photography at Wide Apertures, but the inability to check accurate focus even after shooting is a fundamental design flaw.

 

[Paul Luscher]

1. Funny, I never seem to have the kind of complaints about the M9 that people like LLoyd do. It's not perfect (the framelines can be iffy in low light), but what is? I accept the camera for what it,0 is, and I seem to get good images out of it--even at ISO 1600, which Lloyd seems to be unable to do.

2. Lloyd seems to be another one of these people who want to "improve" the M9, to the point it becomes just another DSLR. So maybe he should just get a Nikon instead.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Leica has a long tradition of producing excellent cameras. And as top-of-the-line rangefinder lines were dropped by Canon, Nikon and Zeiss, the Leicas were unique cameras. That uniqueness was a selling point. Unfortunately, it led to the Leica becoming a conspicuous consumption item - limited runs, special editions, e.t.c. and a user base that had a high proportion of collectors and folks who truly enjoyed the camera that took the pictures as much, or more, than the pictures themselves. It made sales sense not to change a unique product.

Slowly, professionals and artists who had no loyalty to the camera, only the pictures that they could produce with it, found other cameras that could do the job better. There are still folks in these groups using Leicas, but they are a much, much smaller number than in the past.

Leitz entrance into digital wasn’t stellar. It’s difficult to disagree with Lloyd unless you are in some kind of denial. My Leicas are probably the only cameras I had an emotional attachment to. I really liked my Leicas. I wore them around my neck with pride. I fell just short of giving each one its own name. When I was a kid, I wrote 4 chapters in the 1973 Leica Manual. Working backwards, that means I probably began using Leicas in the early Sixties, much of that as a journalist. News photography has to be delivered quickly. That now means digital. But my experience with the digital M’s was not good, regardless of how much I wanted it to be. I sold my digital M’s and, since most of my work is digital, my film Leicas have gone to my son or sit mostly unused in my closet. It doesn’t make me happy to agree with Lloyd, but I do.

 

[ChrisC]

...... It doesn’t make me happy to agree with Lloyd, but I do.

As do I. Thank you for your reasonable post amongst so much reactionary noise both here, and at LUF..

.......... Chris

 

[braver]

As do I. Thank you for your reasonable post amongst so much reactionary noise both here, and at LUF..

.......... Chris

Sure, part of Lloyd's letter makes sense, the M9 could be better in a number of ways, there is always room for improvement. However, I find it ridiculous to criticize a rangefinder camera for having a rangefinder, which is basically what halve his rant comes down to. His letter being typical internet ranting, I think it quite reasonable for it to receive some typical internet backlash 🙂

All of this is nonsense though. He who makes a (sustainable) profit is right, is what it comes down to in the end. Leica makes a profit selling camera's, and Lloyd makes a few bucks writing articles about them. Win-win situation isn't it?

 

[jsrockit]

the Leicas were unique cameras. That uniqueness was a selling point. Unfortunately, it led to the Leica becoming a conspicuous consumption item - limited runs, special editions, e.t.c. and a user base that had a high proportion of collectors and folks who truly enjoyed the camera that took the pictures as much, or more, than the pictures themselves. It made sales sense not to change a unique product.

Bill, do you think that it doesn't make sense for Leica to be unique anymore?

To me it seems that what digilloyd wants is to make the unique Leica M into something a lot less unique (not that all of his ideas are bad because they aren't). I don't think Leica can compete without uniqueness.

 

[willie_901]

Given their resources and core competencies, I can't see how Leica could have done any better.

What you see is what you get.

If it's worth the $$$ to you... buy it and use it. If it's not cost effective for any reason (sensor performance, weather sealing, etc.), then don't.

I didn't.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

As an engineer- I understand most of the techical trade-offs that went into the M9. Use of a CCD rather than CMOS, lower-power processor, minimal signal processing.

CCD's preclude Liveview from being implemented in the camera. The readout rate is too slow. CMOS detectors lose more off-axis light and require more intense processing to acheive uniformity over the image and to reduce noise.

Some issues can be solved with technology, such as compensating for focus shift with aperture. Just build a CPU into each lens to detect the F-Stop and provide an electronic compensation signal to the RF mechanism. Even do it mechanically with a two-cam system, one driven by the aperture ring to provide the correction to an indexed RF cam. The CPU solution will be cheaper. This requires an electronic M-Mount. The compensation for focus shift cannot be applied to legacy lenses.

I don't want that. Easier to test how the lens behaves and use your brain.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Bill, do you think that it doesn't make sense for Leica to be unique anymore?

To me it seems that what digilloyd wants is to make the unique Leica M into something a lot less unique (not that all of his ideas are bad because they aren't). I don't think Leica can compete without uniqueness.

Watch me get flamed for this one, but I think the weakness of the rangefinder camera is the rangefinder. I’m dating myself, but the first thing we used to do upon getting a new Leica was to send it to Norm Goldberg (Don’s dad) to have it nul-nulled, that is, to have the plus or minus tolerances within the rangefinder mechanism eliminated as much as possible with the measuring instruments available. New lenses had the rangefinder cams reground if necessary. It was considered an absolute necessity for work with high aperture lenses.

Focus at large apertures was a bitch. You used rangefinders for wide and normal, groundglass (Viso or SLR) for long lenses. And you prayed a lot. But autofocus evolved and, now, while prayer is still useful, autofocus is the way to go, especially if you use a camera that allows you to match individual lenses to the camera’s focusing method. An autofocus Leica or one that used an electronic viewfinder display to indicate focus wouldn’t be a rangefinder, but it would be a Leica.

I do think there are other important areas for improvement that certainly wouldn’t stop the camera from being a Leica. I guess the real problem is that we would have to rename the forum. Instead of the Rangefinder Forum, it would have to be the Rangefinder and Really Good Autofocus Forum.