GFX100S vs SL2/X1D

[aksclix]

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24 minutes ago, LD_50 said:

I’m the same, making money isn’t something I shoot for. 
 

That said, keeping up with tech isn’t the Leica way.

My point stands though. If you want to keep up to date with tech, the longer Leica takes to release an SL3, the farther behind you are. The sooner they release an SL3, the closer you can be to keeping up with it. 

 

Leica is keeping up with the market in their own terms.. otherwise there wouldn’t be an SL2 and a subsequent SL2-S.. and the updated M line of course... it won’t be in a timeline as the others but it certainly catches up.. everything must evolve 

yea I said I prefer keeping up to date with tech but it isn’t always possible.. and, I don’t believe in upgrading every year.. I need at least 3 years mileage out of a camera.. and I don’t need an upgrade unless it’s an upgrade I really want

I have a lot of camera systems and I can’t keep up to date with each one of them right away.. it’s a gradual process.. since I just got the Leica about 5 months ago, I wouldn’t want it to be replaced by an even superior one too soon.. 

I hear what you’re saying but my choices and decisions are based on what my heart wants and what kinda funds I have at that point in time 😀

Edited February 12, 2021 by aksclix

[aksclix]

Example: Sony a9 to a1 upgrade.. I don’t see why it’s necessary for me.. I will not need the 50MP in a1 because I will have the gfx 100s for my landscape, architecture, portraiture and other jobs that need a lot of detail! And I have the SL2 with 24-90 and 90-280.. my Sony is only for BIF and I have a used a7sII for video and I did not need the a7sIII upgrade.. I had the SL for a few days but then I got the taste of SL2.. it has IBIS, 47MP, a better grip.. incredible screen and EVF.. that’s an update I was willing to make.. although I liked the grip holder better in SL.. it was flush with the body and in SL2 it protrudes.. it’s sharp! I got a canon R6 (didn’t want an R5) because I really just wanted the 28-70 f2.. once my GFX 100s arrives, I reevaluate my gear and see which one needs to go 

[analog-digital]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb Jeff S:

So does the SL2, which is the Leica being compared here.

Jeff

Yes you are right. But:

• 100MP versus 47MP
• Tilt Screen versus NO (I'm not sure by the SL2)
• 4 year Warranty (switzerland) versus 2 year
• SL2 is a little bit more expensive

Means, you can^t compare really

[Jeff S]

7 hours ago, analog-digital said:

Means, you can^t compare really

I wasn’t trying; simply correcting your IBIS comparison.

Jeff

[BernardC]

12 hours ago, aksclix said:

I prefer keeping up to date with tech..

In that case, spend your money on lenses. Cameras haven't advanced that much since the 5DmII came-out a dozen years ago. Now they offer 4K instead of 2K (aka FHD), and you get twice the pixels if that's something you will notice, and max ISO has pushed forward by a couple of stops. Those are incremental changes, spread-out over many years.

Lenses however have improved tremendously. Back in 2008 there were only a handful of zooms that could handle 20MP, and those were expensive and discontinued Zeiss-Contax and Leica items. Most primes even had a tough time, so again you had to rely on searching for older R and C/Y manual focus lenses.

Those old manual focus lenses are still great, and have a unique look, but you can now buy brand-new AF lenses that are good enough for 50MP! Never mind Leica's L-mount lenses which are future-proofed for another doubling in sensor resolution, at least.

Other things that are future-proof: studio equipment (lights, stands, backdrops), tripods, sound equipment.

[LD_50]

16 minutes ago, BernardC said:

In that case, spend your money on lenses. Cameras haven't advanced that much since the 5DmII came-out a dozen years ago.

The proliferation of IBIS, the increase in sensor resolution at lower price points, focus stacking, multi-shot, massively improved EVFs, on sensor PDAF, video features, etc demonstrate a pretty substantial advancement in cameras. 
 

If increased video quality and features is not considered advancement in cameras, I can’t see how better quality optics is any more than iterative advancement in lenses. The lenses only advance because they have to in order to keep up with sensor technology. You could argue the size and weight of lenses increasing substantially to allow the optical improvement demonstrates a lack of technological advancement. 

[aksclix]

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31 minutes ago, BernardC said:

In that case, spend your money on lenses. Cameras haven't advanced that much since the 5DmII came-out a dozen years ago.

You must be kidding!! Camera tech has gone above and beyond in the last decade.. DSLRs are near obsolete today.. 

[BernardC]

19 minutes ago, aksclix said:

Camera tech has gone above and beyond in the last decade

No doubt it's improved, but not all that much. A fine print done with a 2008 high-end camera still looks fine today. From my point of view, the huge improvement has been in lenses.

What Leica has done is especially notable. You can now shoot in harsh backlight that would have overwhelmed almost any lens in 2008. And get full sharpness edge-to-edge, even wide-open. As a photographer, that matters more to me than the step from ISO 3200 to 6400. A friend told me "sure, I can shoot in the dark now, but the lighting sucks, and colours are all wrong."

I will grant you that better AF and stabilization have allowed more people to enjoy the hobby, and to keep enjoying the hobby in spite of age-related limitations. However, the thing that has improved my output the most (from a technical perspective) is incredible new-gen lenses.

[aksclix]

33 minutes ago, BernardC said:

No doubt it's improved, but not all that much. A fine print done with a 2008 high-end camera still looks fine today. From my point of view, the huge improvement has been in lenses.

What Leica has done is especially notable. You can now shoot in harsh backlight that would have overwhelmed almost any lens in 2008. And get full sharpness edge-to-edge, even wide-open. As a photographer, that matters more to me than the step from ISO 3200 to 6400. A friend told me "sure, I can shoot in the dark now, but the lighting sucks, and colours are all wrong."

I will grant you that better AF and stabilization have allowed more people to enjoy the hobby, and to keep enjoying the hobby in spite of age-related limitations. However, the thing that has improved my output the most (from a technical perspective) is incredible new-gen lenses.

I am sure there are enough articles written by experts about the increasingly amazing tech in cameras over the last few years.. I am not going to attempt to list all of that here now.. but, to mention a few, apart from IBIS and faster AF, the number of AF points to work with, the higher burst rate and the insane a9 and now the a1 burst speed.. professional movie quality video capability at extremely low ISO (irrelevant for stills) much lighter equipment, focus peaking, focus magnification, face/body detection, EVF, the revolution in the medium format systems.. the list goes on... 

if these aren’t improvements, then you probably don’t need any of those for what you do.. which is fine.. as far as producing quality images go, I am sure even a Nikon D700 or even D200 can still produce great images given the right conditions. But that’s not the point though.. if you don’t see it then you probably don’t need it.. 

 

[BernardC]

54 minutes ago, aksclix said:

if you don’t see it then you probably don’t need it.

I didn't say that I don't see it, quite the opposite. My main point is that the improvement in lenses has been much greater, and more impactful.

Still camera lens development had been stalled between the late 1970s and 2010 or so. Perhaps that's why so many people love "Mandler-era" Leica lenses, they were the very best you could get for 30 years. Sure, we saw lots of zooms released in the interim, but only a tiny number of these could be compared to fixed-focal-length lenses of the day. To me everything changed around the time that Leica's S lens lineup came-out (Otus and other high-end lenses also came-out around the same time). Suddenly you could do things with lenses that had been unthinkable until then, like shoot straight into the Sun without worries, or shoot wide-open with amazing sharpness and no flare. I'll take that over focus magnification (which the 5DmII had, by the way) any day, because it allows me to create images that I couldn't before. Face-detect is a nice feature, but I don't think it's expanded the range of what can be expressed photographically.

[P1505]

And here’s me ordering a bloom filter to reduce the sharpness

[LD_50]

5 minutes ago, BernardC said:

I didn't say that I don't see it, quite the opposite. My main point is that the improvement in lenses has been much greater, and more impactful.

Still camera lens development had been stalled between the late 1970s and 2010 or so. Perhaps that's why so many people love "Mandler-era" Leica lenses, they were the very best you could get for 30 years. Sure, we saw lots of zooms released in the interim, but only a tiny number of these could be compared to fixed-focal-length lenses of the day. To me everything changed around the time that Leica's S lens lineup came-out (Otus and other high-end lenses also came-out around the same time). Suddenly you could do things with lenses that had been unthinkable until then, like shoot straight into the Sun without worries, or shoot wide-open with amazing sharpness and no flare. I'll take that over focus magnification (which the 5DmII had, by the way) any day, because it allows me to create images that I couldn't before. Face-detect is a nice feature, but I don't think it's expanded the range of what can be expressed photographically.

Lenses improve dramatically because the cameras have improved. The transition from film to digital and the ever increasing quality of sensors is primarily what drives lens optical improvement. The improvement in camera AF systems drives AF lens design (small moving focusing elements, stepper motors, etc). 
 

The argument that 2008 photos look comparable printed against today’s cameras is valid at low resolution where the camera and lens advancements don’t show up. Print at high enough resolution or at large enough size (or crop the photos) to take advantage of the sensor and lens advancements and the difference is pretty clear. I can see a massive improvement between my D200 photos from 2007 and my D4s photos from a few years ago. High ISO, resolution, AF capturing many more photos in sharp focus, color improvements, etc make the difference obvious. 

[setuporg]

7 hours ago, BernardC said:

Other things that are future-proof: studio equipment (lights, stands, backdrops), tripods, sound equipment.

And most importantly, your artistic mind!

[budjames]

I considered the original Fuji GFX50 before buying the SL2. I shot Fuji X for about five years before buying my-first Leica, the M10.The Fujis are great but the GFX feels cheap and flimsy by comparison. It was also slow. I'm happy with my choice but I"m certain that theFuji image-quality of the GFX100S will be awesome.

Regards,

Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

[Jon Warwick]

11 hours ago, budjames said:

I considered the original Fuji GFX50 before buying the SL2. I shot Fuji X for about five years before buying my-first Leica, the M10.The Fujis are great but the GFX feels cheap and flimsy by comparison. It was also slow. I'm happy with my choice but I"m certain that theFuji image-quality of the GFX100S will be awesome.

Regards,

Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

I had an SL2, but it’s now sold towards a GFX100S. When I compare the image quality of the SL2 to the 50mp Fuji’s , there wasn’t a massive difference IMHO, but, in contrast, my test prints from the GFX100 sensor feel like a large and very noticeable jump from the SL2, particularly for someone like me that prints very large (at times up to 60”). The SL2 has the multi-shot mode, but that felt to me more like a cleaner version of the same 47mp sensor than a higher resolution image per se. Pride of ownership and tactile use of the SL2 was high, however, but in this instance I’m moving to the GFX100S for the larger and higher resolution sensor that (for me) makes a very big difference.

[frame-it]

2 minutes ago, Jon Warwick said:

but that felt to me more like a cleaner version of the same 47mp sensor than a higher resolution image per se.

finally..i was waiting for a real user to make this statement 😇

[budjames]

2 hours ago, Jon Warwick said:

I had an SL2, but it’s now sold towards a GFX100S. When I compare the image quality of the SL2 to the 50mp Fuji’s , there wasn’t a massive difference IMHO, but, in contrast, my test prints from the GFX100 sensor feel like a large and very noticeable jump from the SL2, particularly for someone like me that prints very large (at times up to 60”). The SL2 has the multi-shot mode, but that felt to me more like a cleaner version of the same 47mp sensor than a higher resolution image per se. Pride of ownership and tactile use of the SL2 was high, however, but in this instance I’m moving to the GFX100S for the larger and higher resolution sensor that (for me) makes a very big difference.

Jon,

Completely understandable. For your purpose, this is no substitute for more pixels in the original capture. 

As I stated in my original post, I shot Fuji X for over four years. The Fuji APS-C sensor create beautifully detailed images and the Fuji XF lenses are some of the best primes and zooms that I have ever used until I started shooting Leica. Fuji makes great gear. It's what I recommend to friends and family looking to upgrade their camera system. With 10s of thousands of images shot, I never had and reliability issues or other problems with my Fuji gear. Their great!

The largest prints that I make are 16"x20" because my Epson P900 is only 17" wide. Prints from images created with my M10-R or SL2 have subtly more detail when printed to that size than images created with my M10-P.

As a test, I have used Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI to up rez cropped M10-P images for 16" x 20" prints with excellent results. The software is amazing. I use Capture One Pro 21 for my image processing and Topaz works like a plug in, kind of. Topaz DeNoise is also an amazing piece of software. This set up works for the occasional image.

My most popular print size is 11" x 14" printed on 13" x 19" paper. I only use Epson papers. Any of my Leicas can easily print to this size without any software acrobatics.

I wish you the best with your ew GFX100s. Let us know if you have a web site so that we can check out your images.

Regards,
Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto

[SJH]

Reading through all the various posts again in this thread there is a common theme really. Many long term Leica users are very happy with their SL2’s having perhaps bought into the SL line via the M, Q or CL lines. Quite often they’re using a mix of M and SL glass without any particularly demanding AF requirements. If this is the case I can quite understand why people push back on the need for updates to enhance x & y because for them ‘why’?

However, as someone with 4 Leica camera’s and an assortment of SL and M lenses, I’m concerned that Leica have been somewhat caught out with the SL2 by the competition which could lead it to being a dead end and needing an SL3 replacement fairly soon. Back in late 2019 many systems were a compromise and it depended on what features mattered least to you as a photographer. For example an A9 was superb for AF but suffered from poor menu’s, an EVF of dubious quality and suspect weather sealing. The Fuji MF camera’s where either twice the price of the SL2 or still had 50mb with AF that was poor in comparison.

So the SL2 launches (I bought one in December 2019) with all the superb Leica attributes from colour science - to build - to a market leading EVF. I purchased some SL glass and could use my M lenses, I appreciated it didn’t have market leading AF but hey I really didn’t need extreme action performance. Spring forward to today and the market has changed dramatically as now Sony, Canon, Fuji MF and Nikon have all introduced camera’s only one year on that have around 50mb+, have market leading to superb EVF’s, far better menus than their systems in 2020 and the build has improved significantly as well. They’re all roughly priced at the same point as the SL2 now as well. It rather reminds me of the Fuji XH1 which went from being an £1,800 top of the line APSC camera at launch to something like £800 within 18 months as the competition (and the XT3 shot past it), timing is all as for example the Canon 5D MkIII (I loved that camera) launched at the right time and really didn’t have too much competition for sometime.

So of course today the SL2 has had an update and is just as good as it was at launch in 2019 but the competition have now have the £5k hybrid all rounders than have drastically closed the gap on Leica’s traditional strengths. You can see it has SL2 advocates thinking ‘maybe maybe’ a GFXs gives me far more resolution for the money/my large print landscape work and decent build/AF or the R5 comes close ergonomically now but has vastly better AF and RF lenses that seem to be gaining a very good reputation. The M and now Q2 have been very successful for Leica and it’s not for me to tell them how to run their business but they must surely have some question marks now as to how they can keep the SL2 competitive at this price point to sell enough or have to bring forward the SL3 (same body perhaps) with Panasonic’s new S2R or S2 components.

The Q2 probably completely outsells the SL range but it’s unique and is very well positioned, the SL2 though has to swim with the sharks and the water is very crowded. Panasonic must be struggling to sell may S1’s and S1R’s at the moment but I hope the S5 does well, they to must be thinking what is the likely ROI on going with an S2 and S2R that is competitive with the new breed, this will have significant ramifications for Leica and us all over the coming years and our significant investment in the SL line.

Edited February 16, 2021 by SJH

[hamey]

On 2/13/2021 at 3:10 AM, aksclix said:

You must be kidding!! .. DSLRs are near obsolete today.

Really. DSLRs are near obsolete,I would have to agree with you especially the Leica S system.

But to what I was informed some time ago DSLR ARE STILL OUT SELLING THE MIRRORLESS CAMERAS.

I love my Fuji X system, but during the day and bright sunlight I still prefer the DSLR.

over the last fifty years I have owned a lot of cameras, but nothing comes close to my 2 magnificent NIkon F6s.

If there is a camera that I really regret in not buying, it would be the Nikon DF.

Cheers.

 

 

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[frame-it]

On 2/13/2021 at 1:10 AM, aksclix said:

You must be kidding!! Camera tech has gone above and beyond in the last decade.. DSLRs are near obsolete today.. 

come over for the Tokyo Olympics...you will see a lot of DLSR's , and probably some sony A1/A9's