raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
Very pleasing images Godfrey. Enjoy the new camera!
Godfrey
somewhat colored
That's a good idea ... I'd be happier if I could just turn the wheel to change EV compensation in Auto mode and could adjust ISO in Manual mode without needing the menu. I'd still think that the menu start page should start with Lens on top, ISO below that ... Those are the two settings that a shooter will most likely change in the menu system. (I'd put WiFi third, since you want to save battery by turning it off when not needed for some operation.)
I'm flipping around between lenses a bit at the moment as I evaluate the camera so yeah, I'm probably over-using the frame lines settings at the moment. Perhaps the inverse order on those two would be more appropriate.
G
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Okay ... more evaluation, experimentation.
On yesterday's walk, I decided to take the Pixii fitted with the MS Optics Aporia 24mm f/2 lens.
In the course of yesterday's shooting, the Pixii displayed "Fault" a few times and required powering off, then on again, to clear it. I was rather capriciously flipping around between various menu settings as I walked and I might have also inadvertently knocked the main time wheel (on top) off the Auto setting or even between setting clicks. The A-Lock function might prove useful to prevent this for me for this kind of casual walking about situation.
The various in-viewfinder displays affect me the same way they do for most cameras .. I dislike them. I mostly like using the aperture priority automation, controlling exposure with the EV compensation, but I'd rather set my EV Compensation before making an exposure as I look at a scene and make a tweak one way or another. I'd prefer the exposure indicators to be a bit less fussy too.
I flipped back and forth between the Bayer and Monochrome modes a few times. I think that doing that is when I saw the Fault notice come up, primarily, and that's also when my exposure settings seemed to go off the rails most of the time. Certainly, more investigation and evaluation is needed.
I set the lens to f/4 for my walk and shot still life scenes, trees, and my usual oddities of found compositions. One thing I'm happy to report is that my Aporia 24mm focusing cam seems to be right on the money: Very good sharpness for every photo I made that I'd focused. It's the first time I've used this lens on an RF body and had heard various folks reporting some cam placement issues—happy to say it doesn't seem to be an issue with my lens.
However, looking at my exposures, it seems the Aporia 24/2 is not as good an optical match to the Pixii sensor as it is to the Leica CL sensor. At f/4, I expect a little corner and edge fall-off to occur, but on the Pixii sensor I see a good deal of color shifting as well as much more light fall-off than I see with the CL. The on-center sharpness is excellent, and likely would be at f/5.6-f/8 as well.
Here's a look at a simple snap of the clouds overhead, Bayer setting with standard color space, no processing on the image:
Clouds
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 160 @ f/4
Bayer setting
It's a mostly monochromatic image anyway, but you can see the magenta-cyan color shifting from center to edge easily. Slightly more successful, but the color shifting does intrude, is this photo of the pizza shop's table umbrella:
Pizza Umbrella
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 160 @ f/4
Bayer setting
Switching to Monochrome mode, I must have inadvertently also switched the ISO setting and/or knocked the time control dial to a manual setting... Both of these were about 1-2 stops over-exposed. I kinda like the rough, hyper-contrasty rendering I was able to eke out of them, but I need to experiment with the Monochrome mode a lot more before I can rely upon it.
Man Between Trees
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 100 @ f/4
Monochrome setting
COMPACT
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 100 @ f/4
Monochrome setting[/center]
All in all, I'd say the Aporia 24 is best suited to the CL or M4-2 at this point, and not a good choice on the Pixii.
Another camera behavior I need to get more used to is the feel of the shutter button. It's a very light, somewhat numb feel ... The camera makes a quick noise simulating a shutter release which I sometimes hear and sometimes not, it also seems to make a single 'tick' with speeds faster than 1/30 second and a double 'tick ... wait a tenth of a second ... tick' for anything slower. The real problem is that with such a silent eshutter, the question of when the exposure has been made is a bit tricky. The tick noise doesn't really help in moments of high ambient noise (it's too quiet) and without a display LCD the only way to be sure you've made an exposure is to look at the exposure count on the top LCD. I'm pretty sure this is just a matter of learning and accommodation.
Today I'll either take the camera out for a walk with my loaned-for-evaluation MATE or the Summilux 35. More when...
G
On yesterday's walk, I decided to take the Pixii fitted with the MS Optics Aporia 24mm f/2 lens.
In the course of yesterday's shooting, the Pixii displayed "Fault" a few times and required powering off, then on again, to clear it. I was rather capriciously flipping around between various menu settings as I walked and I might have also inadvertently knocked the main time wheel (on top) off the Auto setting or even between setting clicks. The A-Lock function might prove useful to prevent this for me for this kind of casual walking about situation.
The various in-viewfinder displays affect me the same way they do for most cameras .. I dislike them. I mostly like using the aperture priority automation, controlling exposure with the EV compensation, but I'd rather set my EV Compensation before making an exposure as I look at a scene and make a tweak one way or another. I'd prefer the exposure indicators to be a bit less fussy too.
I flipped back and forth between the Bayer and Monochrome modes a few times. I think that doing that is when I saw the Fault notice come up, primarily, and that's also when my exposure settings seemed to go off the rails most of the time. Certainly, more investigation and evaluation is needed.
I set the lens to f/4 for my walk and shot still life scenes, trees, and my usual oddities of found compositions. One thing I'm happy to report is that my Aporia 24mm focusing cam seems to be right on the money: Very good sharpness for every photo I made that I'd focused. It's the first time I've used this lens on an RF body and had heard various folks reporting some cam placement issues—happy to say it doesn't seem to be an issue with my lens.
However, looking at my exposures, it seems the Aporia 24/2 is not as good an optical match to the Pixii sensor as it is to the Leica CL sensor. At f/4, I expect a little corner and edge fall-off to occur, but on the Pixii sensor I see a good deal of color shifting as well as much more light fall-off than I see with the CL. The on-center sharpness is excellent, and likely would be at f/5.6-f/8 as well.
Here's a look at a simple snap of the clouds overhead, Bayer setting with standard color space, no processing on the image:
Clouds
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 160 @ f/4
Bayer setting
It's a mostly monochromatic image anyway, but you can see the magenta-cyan color shifting from center to edge easily. Slightly more successful, but the color shifting does intrude, is this photo of the pizza shop's table umbrella:
Pizza Umbrella
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 160 @ f/4
Bayer setting
Switching to Monochrome mode, I must have inadvertently also switched the ISO setting and/or knocked the time control dial to a manual setting... Both of these were about 1-2 stops over-exposed. I kinda like the rough, hyper-contrasty rendering I was able to eke out of them, but I need to experiment with the Monochrome mode a lot more before I can rely upon it.
Man Between Trees
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 100 @ f/4
Monochrome setting
COMPACT
Pixii + Aporia 24mm f/2
ISO 100 @ f/4
Monochrome setting[/center]
All in all, I'd say the Aporia 24 is best suited to the CL or M4-2 at this point, and not a good choice on the Pixii.
Another camera behavior I need to get more used to is the feel of the shutter button. It's a very light, somewhat numb feel ... The camera makes a quick noise simulating a shutter release which I sometimes hear and sometimes not, it also seems to make a single 'tick' with speeds faster than 1/30 second and a double 'tick ... wait a tenth of a second ... tick' for anything slower. The real problem is that with such a silent eshutter, the question of when the exposure has been made is a bit tricky. The tick noise doesn't really help in moments of high ambient noise (it's too quiet) and without a display LCD the only way to be sure you've made an exposure is to look at the exposure count on the top LCD. I'm pretty sure this is just a matter of learning and accommodation.
Today I'll either take the camera out for a walk with my loaned-for-evaluation MATE or the Summilux 35. More when...
G
M.B
Member
This is exactly what I asked for and David sounded positive to letting us try in developer/beta.
Regarding the color shift/vignette, I had the same with my 21mm at certain apertures so I made a fix in Lightroom and saved it as a preset. Basically I found a lens profile that more or less removed it and did a final tweak with a graduated mask. Now it’s a one click fix.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I am really anxious about getting mine. I wrote David and he told me he had it on his desk and wanted to get it done and to the shipping office by 17:15 GMT +1. I have gotten no shipping info or further info from David so I am assuming it is still on his desk. Hmmph. They work on Saturdays but I wonder if that will make a difference. To use an old adage, "I want patience and I want it now!"
Godfrey
somewhat colored
More Pixii lens testing...
Based on some discussion on one of the forae and a mention, I became interested in the Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm f/4 ASPH, affectionately called the MATE (for "Medium Angle Tele-Elmar"). It's in interesting lens: unlike its sibling the 16-18-21mm version ("WATE"), which is a true zoom lens, the MATE is not a zoom ... It's a clever optical design that moves lens elements internally to provide three discrete focal lengths, in order on the focal length ring 35 > 50 > 28 mm.
The lens's bayonet mount has a little tab that works on a Leica M to shift the frame lines between the 35mm, 50mm, and 28mm frame sets ... Of course, on the Pixii, this is ignored since you set the frame lines (and focal length setting in the EXIF) manually via the menu.
Anyway, I was interested to see whether this "three in one" lens would prove convenient and perform well enough for me to consider it as a useful tool when I want to minimize the number of discrete pieces of gear I want to carry. The focal length choices on an APS-C sensor seem ideal for the Pixii, using three of the four frame line sets available. I was also interested to explore further the Pixii monochrome raw mode and see how well that worked and how manipulable the MONO-DNG files were. So I set Pixii to MONO, ISO to 200, aperture to f/5.6, and speed to AUTO. All frame by frame exposure tailoring for this set of photos was made with EV Compensation.
Here are the FOV choices that the lens provides in a triptych:
28-35-50 FoV Triptych MATE
And now some photos. I've marked the focal lengths in the image title for each:
28 - Roots & Leaves
28 - Pickets
50 - Bus Stop
50 - Ground Cover
35 - Fence
35 - Tree, Tree
28 - Patterns in Twigs
35 - Tree & Stucco Wall
35 - Security Camera In Use
35 - Ornamentation & Tree
Okay.
The MATE performs well, and if you find yourself always using these three focal lengths, AND can get along with an f/4 lens, it could well be the one and only lens you need. The downsides, for me, are that it's a bit bulky (like most "normal zoom" lenses), and a bit expensive.
Oh yes: its lens hood does get in the way of the rangefinder window. You *can* see around it to focus, but I found it too annoying and took the hood off. I guess I naturally don't frame my shots in such a way that light flares into the field of view very strongly because I didn't see any flare degradation in this set of photos.
The Pixii's monochrome mode, I have to say, proves quite nice. Whether it's as good as a dedicated monochrome sensor or not at providing higher resolution/higher ISO etc, ... eh? I cannot say from this test. But it proves to give very editable DNG files, a nice grayscale palette, and they're easy to render in Lightroom Classic.
Enjoy! G
Based on some discussion on one of the forae and a mention, I became interested in the Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm f/4 ASPH, affectionately called the MATE (for "Medium Angle Tele-Elmar"). It's in interesting lens: unlike its sibling the 16-18-21mm version ("WATE"), which is a true zoom lens, the MATE is not a zoom ... It's a clever optical design that moves lens elements internally to provide three discrete focal lengths, in order on the focal length ring 35 > 50 > 28 mm.
The lens's bayonet mount has a little tab that works on a Leica M to shift the frame lines between the 35mm, 50mm, and 28mm frame sets ... Of course, on the Pixii, this is ignored since you set the frame lines (and focal length setting in the EXIF) manually via the menu.
Anyway, I was interested to see whether this "three in one" lens would prove convenient and perform well enough for me to consider it as a useful tool when I want to minimize the number of discrete pieces of gear I want to carry. The focal length choices on an APS-C sensor seem ideal for the Pixii, using three of the four frame line sets available. I was also interested to explore further the Pixii monochrome raw mode and see how well that worked and how manipulable the MONO-DNG files were. So I set Pixii to MONO, ISO to 200, aperture to f/5.6, and speed to AUTO. All frame by frame exposure tailoring for this set of photos was made with EV Compensation.
Here are the FOV choices that the lens provides in a triptych:
28-35-50 FoV Triptych MATE
And now some photos. I've marked the focal lengths in the image title for each:
28 - Roots & Leaves
28 - Pickets
50 - Bus Stop
50 - Ground Cover
35 - Fence
35 - Tree, Tree
28 - Patterns in Twigs
35 - Tree & Stucco Wall
35 - Security Camera In Use
35 - Ornamentation & Tree
Okay.
The MATE performs well, and if you find yourself always using these three focal lengths, AND can get along with an f/4 lens, it could well be the one and only lens you need. The downsides, for me, are that it's a bit bulky (like most "normal zoom" lenses), and a bit expensive.
Oh yes: its lens hood does get in the way of the rangefinder window. You *can* see around it to focus, but I found it too annoying and took the hood off. I guess I naturally don't frame my shots in such a way that light flares into the field of view very strongly because I didn't see any flare degradation in this set of photos.
The Pixii's monochrome mode, I have to say, proves quite nice. Whether it's as good as a dedicated monochrome sensor or not at providing higher resolution/higher ISO etc, ... eh? I cannot say from this test. But it proves to give very editable DNG files, a nice grayscale palette, and they're easy to render in Lightroom Classic.
Enjoy! G
M.B
Member
Nice! Now I want that lens. Afraid to check current prices.
Regarding the monochrome mode, in my quick tests it doesn’t give better resolution like a traditional Monochrom camera. But it does render a slightly brighter image using the exact same settings as a color image with a little less noise as a result. I can push it brighter before banding sets in.
Regarding the monochrome mode, in my quick tests it doesn’t give better resolution like a traditional Monochrom camera. But it does render a slightly brighter image using the exact same settings as a color image with a little less noise as a result. I can push it brighter before banding sets in.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
Godfrey, "Tree and Stucco Wall" A+.
Godfrey
somewhat colored
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I hope to catch up with you guys next week on "in use" tech talk. Mine will not be so technical or detailed. I will just be out there trying to see what some lenses will do on this camera.
David said "my camera" was on his desk and he would try to get it shipped by this past Friday 17:15 GMT+1. I think it still rests on David's desk instead of mine. Hopefully that will soon change. I am excited to have it here and working.
jos58
Member
Very interesting reading material. The MATE is a bit expensive but to have 3 lenses in one is nice. I would like to know the most ideal lens combination with the pixii, with regard to quality of the picture.
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Thank you for the compliment!
I don't know how to account for "most ideal with regard to quality of the picture". In quick testing, nearly all my lenses—other than the Aporia 24 which shows too much fall-off and color shifting for my preference—are performing well on the Pixii sensor. Given lenses that I've spent some time to do a reasonable about of shooting with (only two so far), the MATE presents a very nice performing "three in one" option, and the Pentax 43/1.9 produces exquisite sharpness and bokeh (as it always does, it seems, on every camera I've fitted it to...). I've yet to have time to test all my others in depth, but I suspect most will perform as they do on the CL body.
What is more key to my use is the way the lenses work: size, weight, quality of controls, etc, mean more to me since the lenses I have I've chosen over years of use because I like what they produce in image quality, and I rarely value ultimate resolution, evenness of field, flat-field attributes, etc, over rendering qualities. I like smaller, lighter lenses with excellent imaging qualities, evaluated typically somewhere around f/5.6 for APS-C format because that's where I tend to be setting lens opening most of the time. Some of my lenses are much faster than that, and I use the speed when needed or desired for focus zone control of course. The MATE is on the outer edge of what I like to have on the camera: I consider it a bit bulky and heavy. Most of the time, I'd be happier with my Color-Skopar 28/3.5, 'Lux 35/1.4 pre-asph, Color-Skopar 50/2.5 despite the inconvenience of having to swap lenses to change focal length ...
What is 'most ideal' is a very personal, workflow oriented decision point.
G
jos58
Member
That is true.What is 'most ideal' is a very personal, workflow oriented decision point.
G
I have to find out myself I guess. At the moment I have a choice of 21, 28 and 50. But first the camera has to be completed and in my hands.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I should be more grown-up by now but I am not. I just got an email from David Barth at Pixii and my camera is waiting for UPS Express to pick it up. I am so grateful I have four more weekdays to await its arrival. Snapping by this weekend.
All that is left is to decide what to start shooting with. Will it be the Canon 35mm LTM f/2.0 or the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II MC? Both. I'll bring the M8.2 to see how they compare.
Happy Dance. Happy Dance.
All that is left is to decide what to start shooting with. Will it be the Canon 35mm LTM f/2.0 or the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II MC? Both. I'll bring the M8.2 to see how they compare.
Happy Dance. Happy Dance.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
Thursday NLT 7PM. Woohoo!!
Godfrey
somewhat colored
I'm sure you'll have fun during the next two days of anticipation, but the real fun will begin when it arrives. Good Luck!
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I'm sure you'll have fun during the next two days of anticipation, but the real fun will begin when it arrives. Good Luck!
Godfrey, thanks. I was talking to a normy friend this evening and explaining about the camera. It occurred to me and I told her that I know of no one who has returned their camera. For all the carping on this and other boards it is interesting that for a new camera from an upstart company there are no returns and that speaks well for their work at Pixii. So far, again so far, all the kvetchers have been wrong. I hope to extend that losing streak.
Thursday.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
It has cleared customs and is in Louisville (Luh-u-vul). I hope it does not get eaten up on Godfrey's Black Hole of UPS while there. I ain't leaving this house tomorrow until that 1 Kg box shows up.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
28 April between 1:45 and 4:45 PST. Rocking and rolling after that package gets here, and I pay the customs duties.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
It seems the same UPS Louisville Lizard which ate Godfrey's Pixii is nibbling at mine. Delivery is now 29 April between 1:45 and 4:45. Hopefully this will be the final postponement. I'll just put on a pot of soup for dinner in this chilly weather here.