leica sl2 Jono Slack: Leica SL2 Review

[mmradman]

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On 11/8/2019 at 6:25 PM, BernardC said:

SD cards were slower 10 years ago, and buffers were smaller. The case for compressing DNGs was more compelling.

People used to juggle 4GB SD cards, because they were more reliable than higher-capacity cards.

It is always excuses and justifications for every new camera with something omitted or underdeveloped.  What a fortunate business Leica is to have voluntary marketeers, even the paid salesperson couldn’t made up such a lame excuse.

[jaapv]

On 11/8/2019 at 6:24 PM, Daedalus2000 said:

Yes but maybe the extra megapixels and the need for speed (20 frames per second etc) made it difficult. 

Anyway, my original post was really my effort to help people who do not like the size and want to compress their files when they are in Lightroom. I have compressed in this way all my DNGs and I saved a lot of space.

What  do you want to save space for? SSD multi-Terabyte drives are well under 100$.

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[Exodies]

14 minutes ago, jaapv said:

What  do you want to save space for? SSD multi-Terabyte drives are well under 100$.

Perhaps for cloud storage

[scott kirkpatrick]

11 minutes ago, jaapv said:

What  do you want to save space for? SSD multi-Terabyte drives are well under 100$.

Not quite yet, but close.  Both SATA (under the covers) and USB3.x 2 TB SSDs seem to be running a bit above $200 right now.

External hard drives that come in sizes of 4 to 5 TB are right about the $100 mark.  Neither is guaranteed to last forever, so I am slowly migrating my in house archive from hard disk to SSD as the prices keep coming down.  Don't like the easy solution (put it all in the Cloud) because of the uses that the cloud owners make of all of our images.

[otto.f]

25 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

uses that the cloud owners make of all of our images.

And I see you use flickr, is that more secure in that sense? Just a sincere question, come to think of that because I use zenfolio.

[scott kirkpatrick]

1 hour ago, otto.f said:

And I see you use flickr, is that more secure in that sense? Just a sincere question, come to think of that because I use zenfolio.

I only use Flickr for finished Jpegs that I wish to share around.  My DNG files (mildly pruned down) are compressed and in a local archive -- one copy at my office and one at home).  Flickr desperately wants to upload every picture file that it can find on my laptop, reminding me of this every time I process an OS upgrade or security mod...

[farnz]

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1 hour ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

Flickr desperately wants to upload every picture file that it can find on my laptop, reminding me of this every time I process an OS upgrade or security mod...

Time to tell it to FLICK OFF!, Scott? 😇

Pete.

[BernardC]

4 hours ago, mmradman said:

It is always excuses and justifications for every new camera with something omitted or underdeveloped.  What a fortunate business Leica is to have voluntary marketeers, even the paid salesperson couldn’t made up such a lame excuse.

Wow, that's a lot of anger.

Moving on: when the M9 came-out, SD cards were notoriously unreliable and slow (10 MB/s was a very decent speed). A lot of people used cards that were 4GB and smaller because they were thought to be more reliable (I never found this to be true).

This created two issues: you could only fit around 100 uncompressed DNGs on a 4GB card, and it took 3+ seconds to store each DNG, which meant that the (rather small) camera buffer filled very quickly. The case for compressing DNGs was obvious: you could store twice as many images on a card, and you could write them-out twice as fast.

Move forward to 2019. Cards are faster, capacities bigger. So now you have cards that are 17 times faster (170 MB/S is a common number for high-quality cards), with 16+ times the capacity (64 GB is considered small, and you can get 1TB cards). Camera buffers are also a lot bigger.

The one thing that hasn't changed significantly is file size! An uncompressed DNG from the SL2 is slightly more than twice the size of the M9's DNG (supposedly around 80MB vs. 37MB for the M9).

Am I a "lame voluntary marketeer" because I can do basic mathematics? There is no reason to compress RAWs in-camera in 2019. There are lots of reasons not to do it: one less chip on the system board, lower power consumption, less heat generated, less potential for data corruption.

The only reason to keep compressing RAWs is for customers using laptops with limited storage capacity, specifically the small portion of those customers who are reluctant to use external storage (cloud or LAN). Should Leica be concerned with this small subset? You can understand why Sony includes the extra hardware on their chips: most of their sales (by volume) are for entry-level cameras sold to consumers who can't be expected to have extra storage, or to make backups. It's cheaper for them to put that feature in all of their chips: today's high-end processor is tomorrow's entry-level. Leica? Not so much. Their customers buy name-brand memory cards, they can afford a NAS (plug-and-play these days) and cloud backups. Why compromise the product to cater to customers who don't buy Leica cameras?

[mmradman]

I would gladly buy 1Tb SSD for USD100 and multiples pro rata.  As of today in Uk external 1Tb in SSD is round £150+ and 2Tb £290-315 (Amazon uk prices).  Grateful for advise on more reasonably priced SSD local storage.

Argument how memory is cheap and RAW compression is irrelevant is not fit for 2019, why buy more memory if software algorithm can half the file size.  Making more storage drives means bigger carbon (or silicon) footprint, extinction rebellion anyone?

[jonoslack]

6 hours ago, Exodies said:

Perhaps for cloud storage

Thank you - Exactly

2 hours ago, BernardC said:

 

The only reason to keep compressing RAWs is for customers using laptops with limited storage capacity, specifically the small portion of those customers who are reluctant to use external storage (cloud or LAN). Should Leica be concerned with this small subset? You can understand why Sony includes the extra hardware on their chips: most of their sales (by volume) are for entry-level cameras sold to consumers who can't be expected to have extra storage, or to make backups. It's cheaper for them to put that feature in all of their chips: today's high-end processor is tomorrow's entry-level. Leica? Not so much. Their customers buy name-brand memory cards, they can afford a NAS (plug-and-play these days) and cloud backups. Why compromise the product to cater to customers who don't buy Leica cameras?

Of course, you're quite right Bernard

But my problem is about cloud storage, but more to the point internet connection speeds. 

I've absolutely no problem with 80mb DNG from Leica, but my 1.5mbs upload speed internet connect does! 

But I guess this is my issue, and it's been a hidden blessing in that I'm now much Much MUCH more careful about what images I choose to keep, so, I'm still shooting the 5000 images a month I shot 5 years ago, but then I was keeping 3,000 of them and now (unless it's a wedding etc.) I'm keeping 300 . . . . . which is a joy, because instead of 300 good pictures and 2700 mediocre ones I now just have the good ones!

 

[SrMi]

Many owners of 24Mp cameras see the smaller file size as an advantage. I guess file size still matters.

[mmradman]

1 hour ago, SrMi said:

Many owners of 24Mp cameras see the smaller file size as an advantage. I guess file size still matters.

Indeed.  Not only 24Mp but also cameras with higher Mp count.

[scott kirkpatrick]

When I got my S1R, i bought it an (expensive) XQD card.  That card is so fast, both writing files to it and downloading to my laptop, that I have had no problems with big files, just handling them once they reach my computer.  But I'm glad the SL2 didn't go that route, with its extra reader and cables.  The new UHS II cards are just fine.  Like Jono, I also save less stuff (as a fraction) every year.

[snooper]

Sorry to ask.. Is the SL2 battery same as SL / Q2 ?

[SrMi]

18 minutes ago, snooper said:

Sorry to ask.. Is the SL2 battery same as SL / Q2 ?

Yes.

[RoySmith]

18 minutes ago, snooper said:

Sorry to ask.. Is the SL2 battery same as SL / Q2 ?

Yes - same battery BP-SCL  4

[Daedalus2000]

10 hours ago, jaapv said:

What  do you want to save space for? SSD multi-Terabyte drives are well under 100$.

Why use more than the minimum necessary? 

[jonoslack]

5 hours ago, BernardC said:

 

Am I a "lame voluntary marketeer" because I can do basic mathematics? There is no reason to compress RAWs in-camera in 2019. There are lots of reasons not to do it: one less chip on the system board, lower power consumption, less heat generated, less potential for data corruption.

 

Quite right, but a second point . . . 

If you have just shot a wedding - you've been up shooting for  15 hours, and before you go to bed you need to get 100 shots on a gallery on facebook . . . before everyone gets bored and buggers off. Then you need pretty streamlined processing storage is irrelevant (and so are file sizes) but Lightroom (and Capture one etc. etc). is really slow with big files - sure, if you're at home with your Mac Pro and gazillions of RAM . . but you aren't, you're 100, 500, 5000 miles from home with a MacBook Pro (or an iPad Pro), you're tired and you don't want to wait whilst LR messes about redrawing your adjustments. . . . . 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Bandwidth restrictions sound like a call for good Jpegs.

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Hallo,

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[jonoslack]

2 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

Bandwidth restrictions sound like a call for good Jpegs.

Sadly they don't cut it, and a mixed workflow (DNG and jpg) is impossibly complicated to get right. But working on events the bandwidth might be brilliant (or awful) you just don't know. What is certain is that 48mp files take longer to process on an MBP in Lr than 24mp files!