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Leica X1 LCD screen only 230k pixel - dealbreaker for me


artspraken

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Ooooooops, sorry...

 

 

I agree with the screen comment - It seems pretty clear to me that this is a point and shoot - a really expensive one. Under the wrong conditions, doesn't matter how good the screen is. If the auto focus is not reliable, then that will be a problem.

 

 

 

ej

 

The "point and shoot" controversy has its own thread:

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-x1-forum/98845-x1-just-2-000-p-s.html

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OK, so we know there are higher resolution screens available today for manufacturers to use in their digital cameras. Obviously this would have been taken into consideration by the design team, not to mention other departments evaluating the final product's marketability. Leica ultimately chose the 230K screen for a reason. Perhaps they deemed it sufficient to do the intended job? Surely if they thought is was going to be a dealbreaker for many potential customers they would have opted for an improved screen. Someone earlier asked about power consumption. Could this have been a factor? Or was it simply an economic decision based on trying to keep the camera at a specific price point?

 

I have taken some great shots with compact digital cameras that had 230K screens. Yes, a 460K screen is nicer, but for me it's not a necessity.

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The point is that Leica with its price and its optical quality is aiming to reach the top in its class. Choosing a lower resolution screen is a saving money choice that is in contrast with the original aim and its actual competitors. Of corse anyone can adopt the external viewfinder but having an LCD screen of lower resolution after all the claim have been done presenting the Dlux 4 in comparison of D lux 3 sound untrustable.

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The DMR has a 230K pixel count LCD. It is the only digital camera that I use that when the image is magnified to maximum I can see the "pixel for pixel" image sharpness and know that what I have captured is sharp. The M8 has a 230K LCD, but due to the higher magnification available the image will not look sharp if it is over magnified. I also use a Nikon D300 with a 900+K LCD. This never looks as sharp as the DMR at any magnification. I wonder why? It could be the Nikon glass in front of the CMOS sensor! Just a guess. Both of these cameras have larger LCD's also.

 

It appears that the LCD pixel count race is now going the way of high ISO low noise as "must have features". Even with the availablility of the latest cameras with high pixel count LCD's, high mega pixel sensors with high ISO low noise and autofocus, I still purchased my second DMR earlier this year and last week added an R9 to compliment an existing R9 and two R8's. The fact is, the DMR / R system ticks all the boxes for me for 95% of my picture taking. The D300 the remaining 5%.

 

Mark

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It seems to me that while the quality of the LCD screen is worth a consideration, if as I would guess many want to use it for candid street type shooting, then how well the camera lends itself to zone focused shooting (particularly since the AF is reported to not be particularly fast) would be a more important consideration.

 

Sean Reid's preliminary review emphasized manual focus controls as one major problem area for the camera that Leica needed to address. If this is not addressed and corrected by Leica then the combo of slowish AF, problematic manual controls, and a borderline passable LCD screen might be a lethal one for some of us.

 

If manual focus controls work well, I'd dismiss the other two limitations as insignificant for me.

 

Mark

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... the combo of slowish AF, problematic manual controls, and a borderline passable LCD screen might be a lethal one for some of us.

 

 

I think that the more serious problem with street shooting is that the camera forgets its focus distance settings once it goes into sleep mode; and also that the camera can not be set so that it never goes into sleep mode. So if you forget to keep your camera alive by fiddling with some control constantly and suddenly see a good picture developing in front of your eyes then you will have to wake up the camera, set the focusing distance again and then make the picture; this is quite a lag. One can work around the other MF deficiencies but this sleep/forget problems is really concerning me.

 

Take care!

 

Furrukh

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Yes, that's one of the problems Sean identifies.

 

That "appears" to be something that could be addressed through firmware. If not it will be an important limitation for street shooting.

 

A key question seems to be whether Leica is responding to these concerns. We have no indication yet re firmware improvements.

 

Mark

 

I think that the more serious problem with street shooting is that the camera forgets its focus distance settings once it goes into sleep mode; and also that the camera can not be set so that it never goes into sleep mode. So if you forget to keep your camera alive by fiddling with some control constantly and suddenly see a good picture developing in front of your eyes then you will have to wake up the camera, set the focusing distance again and then make the picture; this is quite a lag. One can work around the other MF deficiencies but this sleep/forget problems is really concerning me.

 

Take care!

 

Furrukh

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Yes, that's one of the problems Sean identifies.

 

That "appears" to be something that could be addressed through firmware. If not it will be an important limitation for street shooting.

 

A key question seems to be whether Leica is responding to these concerns. We have no indication yet re firmware improvements.

 

Mark

 

This problem seems more difficult to overcome by firmware. There has to be available space left on some non-volatile memory in hardware that the focusing distance information could be saved to when the camera goes to shutdown/sleep mode and then read from when it wakes up. If they have used up every bit of available memory for other functions of the camera (which is entirely possible) then this feature can only be implemented at the cost of eliminating some other already implemented feature. So I would not hold my breath on a fix for this issue. Hope I am wrong :)

 

Take care!

 

Fururkh

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