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

[Ruhayat]

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Yes, somewhat correct.

 

Which parts of an M type camera strike you in particular as obsolete? Sensor with Bayer color array? Tripod socket? Detachable lens? LCD on back? Precision range finder? High quality lens? Full format sensor with aspect ratio of 3:2? Metal body? Lugs for fastening strap?

 

Well, for the sake of argument, I would say firstly, the concept of a manual, mechanical camera like the Leica in today's world is obsolete. It's a bit like one preferring to drive a crankshaft car on the road these days - just because you like to drive it doesn't make it obsolete to you, but in general terms the car's technology is in fact obsolete. You can upgrade the engine with a modern one - as you can with the MG "B" Midget (which is not a crankshaft, but still an anachronistic sportster) - but the overall operation of the car would still contain obsolete concepts - the steering mechanism and the braking system, for example.

 

Secondly, there are indeed, as Mr Lloyd seems to allude, pieces of the M that are obsolete. For example: mechanical shutter dial on top of the camera. Obsolete. Can be replaced with software controlled settings on a multipurpose jogdial or rocker switch. Imagine if Apple were to reinvent the M - plenty of components would be changed to "improve" the camera. Optical viewfinder? Obsolete, now that we have higher resolution electronic ones. LCD screen on the back? As Mr Lloyd says, obsolete - you can find far higher resolutions on the back of entry level dSLRs.

 

Of course, if you go changing the M to make it at par with the rest of technology in the world today, you'd end up precisely where Mr Lloyd is, and the M will no longer be an M.

 

Anyway. All this just in good humour and a way to pass time for me, that's all. You can have my M only when it starts to snow in Kuala Lumpur.

[diogenis]

Then perhaps he should buy the S2, if he wants a camera from Leica with all those features he's asking for. Otherwise, I see no reason why he's still sticking with a rangefinder.

 

Oh, he is not owing one!

I think he uses an Canon EOS 5D mkII and some p&s for support.

 

But this carousel is just going on and on for like years: in the bottom of this, people just wont ever see mechanical complexity (and accompanied accuracy) which all Leica Ms have, as an advanced technological tool. Instead they admire electronic integration on silicon and plastics.

 

Obviously, this is a mistake, but you will never be able to persuade with logic arguments people that have little or no knowledge of what it means to make these products

[Ruhayat]

Oh, he is not owing one!

I think he uses an Canon EOS 5D mkII and some p&s for support.

 

But this carousel is just going on and on for like years: in the bottom of this, people just wont ever see mechanical complexity (and accompanied accuracy) which all Leica Ms have, as an advanced technological tool. Instead they admire electronic integration on silicon and plastics.

 

Obviously, this is a mistake, but you will never be able to persuade with logic arguments people that have little or no knowledge of what it means to make these products

 

Sadly, this is too often true nowadays. A friend of mine picked up my M6TTL, took it to his eye and promptly dismissed it as rubbish. Hmm. He prefers his dSLR - all power to him. I rely on my dSLR to feed me and acknowledge its strengths, but to me a rangefinder, as you say, is something that needs to be tried first for one to "get".

 

I agree with your last paragraph, too. Especially in politics, it seems, these days, everything is turning black and white. Either you are with us, or against us. Sad.

 

And as for technology and the march of progress - I love my Macs and Audi, but in general terms somebody needs to slam on the brakes to our technological progress and get the world to slow down again.

[pop]

... the concept of a manual, mechanical camera like the Leica in today's world is obsolete. It's a bit like ...

 

... mechanical shutter dial on top of the camera. Obsolete. Can be replaced with software controlled settings on a multipurpose jogdial or rocker switch. ... .

 

Of course, all of it depends a bit on how you are going to use the device. If - for example - you want operate your camera while you are looking through its finder, you appreciate individual controls you can reach, identify and operate without taking your eye from the finder. You also appreciate if the settings are changed only when you want them to change. That precludes some kinds of automatic adjustments as well as inadvertent ones caused by poorly placed controls requiring too little force for adjustments.

 

It's called the user interface. Apple are good at it (in comparison). So are Leica.

 

There are some crafts where very few technological changes can be considered improvements. Take a butcher, for instance. His main tools are still the knives. Of course, a butcher can dismember a carcass much faster using a hand grenade. The result would not be the same, quite.

[diogenis]

Sadly, this is too often true nowadays. A friend of mine picked up my M6TTL, took it to his eye and promptly dismissed it as rubbish. Hmm. He prefers his dSLR - all power to him. I rely on my dSLR to feed me and acknowledge its strengths, but to me a rangefinder, as you say, is something that needs to be tried first for one to "get".

 

So he just admitted that he:

1. Prefers looking through a several times inferior prismatic viewfinder with a lot less eye relief, that also gives you tunnel vision as well as dim vision because of the prism, as oposed to the excellent optical VF of a LEica M. He forgoes all these benefits for what?

2. FOR the allmighty 100% what you see is what you get, or in other words an accurate VF. If Leica had also this accurate VF there wouldn't be any other reason... But is it really that important? It deserves all this attention? Saddly the world say yes to that, but I just don't get it.

[lct]

So he just admitted that he:

1. Prefers looking through a several times inferior prismatic viewfinder with a lot less eye relief, that also gives you tunnel vision as well as dim vision because of the prism, as oposed to the excellent optical VF of a LEica M. He forgoes all these benefits for what?...

Let me guess. To get anything else than a ridiculously small 0.68x viewfinder?

[nelly]

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Has anyone ever got frustrated when they are using an uncoded lens and switch back to a coded lens but forget to switch back to auto and as a result the lens profile settings are stuck on the last lens used.

 

IT would be a big improvement if Leica fixed this. Perhaps even a in a firmware update that made the software revert to Auto every time you changed a lens.

 

This way if you had a uncoded lens mounted that was set manually you would never have to worry about reseting to Auto when you switched back to your coded lenses.

[jaapv]

YES!

[Lindolfi]

Yes, so I decided to code all lenses I use with the M9 and keep the camera on Auto Lens Detection.

[charlesphoto99]

IT would be a big improvement if Leica fixed this. Perhaps even a in a firmware update that made the software revert to Auto every time you changed a lens.

 

This way if you had a uncoded lens mounted that was set manually you would never have to worry about reseting to Auto when you switched back to your coded lenses.

 

Not sure how they would do this as the lens mount is a fully mechanical operation. Turning camera on and off could do a reset.

 

Leica should have a function button in the middle of the wheel on the back that can be set to do various things. Scrolling through manually entered lenses could be one, much like the function button on a Nikon can be set for. Or make it an auto lens code set/reset button. Of course it would still be up to you to push it but better then diving into menus, esp if you only have one lens without coding. Just not sure how they would do it otherwise.

[pico]

Originally Posted by pico

I missed that part of the articles. Does it do swings, shifts and tilts?

 

Michael J. Hußmann: It can do all of that and much more. You can have one plane of sharpness in the foreground and another in the background (and blur everywhere else). [...]

 

Their admittedly dumb-downed examples on the web don't show how one can have forward and distant focus with blur between, but I understand it is possible.

 

Michael, I am struggling to understand how this technology can replicate perspective control possible with view camera movements. Of course we can mimic movements in most digital post processing programs but it is still not the same outcome of the real camera - especially when movements are used to produce something other than the perfectly sharp, deep or tall image. But as I wrote, I'm still struggling with all the details of the dissertation. With some luck I will be able to show some 8x10" film images that illustrate what I mean by 'other than the perfectly....'.

 

Very Best,

Pico

[Tom M]

However, for my tired eyes, rangefinder focus confirmation would be nice.

T.

[albireo_double]

I think the open letter is spot on. Of course I'd like an ISO nob and maybe an EV+/- nob on top as well.

 

An ISO nob and EV+- nob on top would be nice, plus a non-scratch glass (does not need to be sapphire...), better resolution display and something to prevent the shutter spraying the sensor with gunk. plus new firmware to fix the red edge with wide-angle lenses. And a 0.95x (M3 style) magnification rangefinder as an option (the Cron 90 Apo Asph is my most used lens, shot close to wide open, usually). happy with my M9, overall, despite its flaws, the proof is in the images.

[AlanG]

Their admittedly dumb-downed examples on the web don't show how one can have forward and distant focus with blur between, but I understand it is possible.

 

Michael, I am struggling to understand how this technology can replicate perspective control possible with view camera movements. Of course we can mimic movements in most digital post processing programs but it is still not the same outcome of the real camera - especially when movements are used to produce something other than the perfectly sharp, deep or tall image. But as I wrote, I'm still struggling with all the details of the dissertation. With some luck I will be able to show some 8x10" film images that illustrate what I mean by 'other than the perfectly....'.

 

Very Best,

Pico

 

I'm not Michael but I hope I can answer this for you. The Lytro captures the depth of the scene in focus sort of like a solid cone from the lens forward. It also captures this entire cone in varying degrees of out of focus. Thus whatever you want to have in focus or blurry to various degrees can be chosen within whatever limitations the software has for selecting planes, regions, or objects. The bottom line is that software theoretically could map out the light field "3D" image information any way you want show it in 2D.

 

A "normal" camera focuses primarily on a single perpendicular plane with a standard lens or on an angled plane with a tilted lens. And then you stop down to get a greater range of sharpness in front of and in back of this plane via depth of field.

 

There will be some limitations on how great this focus range will be. (Maximum DOF.) It looks like Ren Ng claims an equivalence to 4 stops of depth of field advantage wide open but I'm not sure if this can change. Maybe one foot to infinity on these low res cameras that use very short lenses.

 

I am speculating a bit here and am not certain. (Perhaps I have to re-read his paper.) It seems that the sensor works best when the microlenses are optimized for a particular aperture of a lens - no stopping down. So this might restrict lens choices in an interchangeable lens camera. Higher res cameras with fast longer lenses may have a more limited distance range (still 4 stops of equivalent DOF) unless the system makes up for this by having many more microlenses over a larger sensor. But I don't see how that would work and still use the larger sensor for higher resolution. He also talks about the possibility of having microlenses that move forward and back a bit - but this seems tricky. (This is my read on it. - Maybe Michael knows more about all that I'm guessing at in this paragraph.)

[UliWer]

Has anyone ever got frustrated when they are using an uncoded lens and switch back to a coded lens but forget to switch back to auto and as a result the lens profile settings are stuck on the last lens used.

 

IT would be a big improvement if Leica fixed this. Perhaps even a in a firmware update that made the software revert to Auto every time you changed a lens.

 

This way if you had a uncoded lens mounted that was set manually you would never have to worry about reseting to Auto when you switched back to your coded lenses.

 

Yes, I support your proposal.

 

Perhaps the "override" option where a coded lens automatically changes the detection to "auto" is more difficult to realize, for the sensor for the 6-bit-code couldn't just be switched off, as it seems to be now, but should always be able to recognize a coded lens.

 

If you look at Sean Reid's test for the M9, he describes that he pleaded for Leica not applying a system where a coded lens overrides a manual setting, for he thought the manual settings could be used for improvements of picture quality even for coded lenses. I do not think that this theory has stood the test in reality and since the improvements for lens corrections with the last firmware there should be even less reasons for upholding it.

 

So we could hope that everybody got more relaxed about the importance of coding if the main disadvantage of manual lens detection settings, which is forgetting to change it, was abolished.

[jaapv]

He also talks about the possibility of having microlenses that move forward and back a bit - but this seems tricky. (This is my read on it. - Maybe Michael knows more about all that I'm guessing at in this paragraph.)

That is the easy part - a piezo layer on the sensor that will be able to move controlled by a current has been developed recently

[mjh]

Michael, I am struggling to understand how this technology can replicate perspective control possible with view camera movements.

Okay, so you have captured a light field, i.e. the path of all the light rays between the lens and the sensor plus their brightness and colour, at a resolution dependent on the sensor resolution. As I had described above you can re-focus in retrospect by calculating where those ray would have hit a virtual sensor either in front of or behind the actual sensor. In just the same way you could calculate where they would intersect with a tilted sensor, and the resulting image would have a tilted plane of sharpness. Compared to a view camera there is one limit, though: If some part of the scene isn’t captured by the sensor, even the additional data captured in the light field cannot help recreating an image of that missing parts. This means that while you can tilt in retrospect, you cannot shift – shifting can bring a subject into view that would otherwise be beyond the image frame whereas no software could make a guess about something that wasn’t captured in the first place. Having said that, you can of course correct the perspective in software, even without using a light field camera.

[yanidel]

Well, for the sake of argument, I would say firstly, the concept of a manual, mechanical camera like the Leica in today's world is obsolete. It's a bit like one preferring to drive a crankshaft car on the road these days - just because you like to drive it doesn't make it obsolete to you, but in general terms the car's technology is in fact obsolete. You can upgrade the engine with a modern one - as you can with the MG "B" Midget (which is not a crankshaft, but still an anachronistic sportster) - but the overall operation of the car would still contain obsolete concepts - the steering mechanism and the braking system, for example.

 

Secondly, there are indeed, as Mr Lloyd seems to allude, pieces of the M that are obsolete. For example: mechanical shutter dial on top of the camera. Obsolete. Can be replaced with software controlled settings on a multipurpose jogdial or rocker switch. Imagine if Apple were to reinvent the M - plenty of components would be changed to "improve" the camera. Optical viewfinder? Obsolete, now that we have higher resolution electronic ones. LCD screen on the back? As Mr Lloyd says, obsolete - you can find far higher resolutions on the back of entry level dSLRs.

 

Of course, if you go changing the M to make it at par with the rest of technology in the world today, you'd end up precisely where Mr Lloyd is, and the M will no longer be an M.

 

Anyway. All this just in good humour and a way to pass time for me, that's all. You can have my M only when it starts to snow in Kuala Lumpur.

Obsolete ???

Name one camera that is faster to operate then a M in street photography ?

[andybarton]

I have never bought into that argument at all.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[pico]

Originally Posted by Ruhayat:

 

Well, for the sake of argument, I would say firstly, the concept of a manual, mechanical camera like the Leica in today's world is obsolete.

 

Well, for the sake of argument, I would say firstly, the concept of a manual, mechanical camera like the Leica in today's world is obsolete. It's a bit like one preferring to drive a crankshaft car on the road these days

 

Obsolete for the people who live in left of the Bell Curve, but not for a professional who has mastered the camera. How long have you used a Leica M. Show us some outcomes.

 

What non-crankshaft car, other than some electric hub vehicles, exist for automobiles? I have a 4WD Kubota tractor that is 100% hydraulic driven, but I've never seen the same on an automobile on the road.

 

Are you just BS-ing us?