Would you buy an EVF only M camera? [MERGED]

[thrid]

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On 10/31/2023 at 1:07 PM, Smudgerer said:

Well, up to last year I was an Aaton owner, Xtera S16 kit plus a 35 Penelope kit that I sold the year before, so with those beautiful VF's I guess there's no wonder I find any EVF lacking......And the Penelope's orient-able / heated Extension zoom VF cost far more when I added it to the kit new than a M11+50 'Lux costs at today's €€$$.

There's nothing to beat a good EVF, Aaton, Arri, Pana, and so on, but times have changed and EVF's rule now.

Sure, I'm very familiar with the Arri finders I find them much better than the Red's, but for me any EVF lies to your eye, cinematography or stills, but luckily the DIT and post colour correction / timing is still there to save your arse.

The Penelope Delta looked like an extraordinary, but unfortunately still birthed camera. The multi-slit shutter that could act as an ND filter was something I really wanted to see.

OVF is never coming back to digital cine cameras. We got the Alexa Studio and that was it. But an EVF is a different kettle of fish on a cine camera than a still camera, since you are shooting moving footage and are primarily focusing on framing, not split second timing like with a still camera.

[thrid]

On 11/2/2023 at 1:10 PM, FlashGordonPhotography said:

I suspect that you are one of maybe a dozen people in the whole universe who would care about this. There are bigger reasons for some not to use an EVF. For some, current EVF technology actually makes them feel sick or gives them headaches. It's a small but real group. But I suspect larger than those who care that light travels slightly faster than electrons. Like you, those people will just use a regular M.

As the over riding success of mirrorless has shown, most people, including sports and action photographers don't care. Most people just adapt, like they do with the length of a shutter press on a new camera, which has FAR more variation than the EVF feed. Or the time the curtain takes to open for an exposure. Or the time it takes for a mirror to move out of the way....

Being your typical flawed human my main concern is that it impacts my shooting. And as someone who has been accused of being the artistic type, that goes double.

I suspect that if it impacted you personally you would feel the same way and probably quite strongly. People are funny that way. They are dismissive of the concerns of others, until it lands in their own front yard.

And then watch out!

 

On 11/2/2023 at 1:10 PM, FlashGordonPhotography said:

Actually, I'd have to look into that. Surely the time a mirror needs to move in an SLR is longer than the lag of a mirrorless EVF? Surely if you can shoot sports with that discrepancy, you can also adapt to an EVF. Actually, most people already have. It's not like people aren't shooting street with mirrorless cameras. Or action. Or sports. Or everything else. Not many sports shots on an M currently. Is there ANY field of photography where mirrorless photographers are regularly missing *the decisive moment* because of a feed delay?

And before anyone jumps in on the high speed shooting bandwagon, I'll remind you that sports shooters have been using motor drives for fifty years to get around system lag such as the mirrors or shutters in SLRs. Even M's had a motor drive available.

It'd also be an interesting comparison between the release delay in an older M3 shutter curtain versus what's happening in a mirrorless camera? Apart from the very obvious advantages of having much higher shutter speeds available for wide open shooting, is an M3 shutter curtain delay actually less than a SL2?

Gordon

You can't just dismiss the high speed shooting argument, because that is the current solution to the problem.

Basically the emphasis has shifted to concentrating on framing the action, with the high speed shooting taking care of capturing the decisive moment.

So, you track the action and as the decisive moment approaches you just machine gun away. Some cameras will now even pre-roll capture by a few seconds, so that you don't miss the shot, even if you did anticipate when to start firing away. Then you head back to your laptop, download a few gigabytes of data, sort through a few hundred captures and pick the lucky shot that caught the correct moment.

That's the new way of shooting.

We were not quite there in the motor drive film days, because you only had 24/36 frames on a roll. So hammering away at 3-13 fps was not standard practice. People did it, but it was not the norm. Shooters still relied on skill and practice in an attempt to capture the decisive moment. More often than not the motor drive mainly provided you with nearly instantaneous follow up shots. But unless you were packing a Canon SLR with a pellicle mirror firing away at 13fps and a 250 frame magazine back you were not really spraying and praying in the sense that we think of today.

So, the motor drive on a film camera is not really a good comparison to shooting at 20fps on a Z9, until your card is filled with hundreds or a thousands or more images.
 

Now, do you really want to shoot in that manner with an M camera? I don't and for more than reasons of datamanagrement.

I also raises a bigger question of the devaluation of skill and talent in a modern high-tech society, but that's a much bigger conversation for another thread.

Edited November 4, 2023 by thrid

[IkarusJohn]

Looks like a strawman argument to me.  You say that an EVF doesn’t work for you, then you say “spraying and praying” is the new way to shooting, then you say that doesn’t work with an M camera.

The simple answer, of course, is that you adjust.  

[costa43]

Leica seems hot at the mo. It may be a good time to take advantage of the positive social media and release a full frame evf rangefinder at a lower cost to help bring in a new generation, whilst appeasing many existing users who find the SL too big and heavy for everyday use.  A larger CL or Q style body as opposed to an M could work at keeping the price down without cannibalising sales of the current M and negatively impacting the very important used market, that in my opinion, keeps everything ticking over.

Edited November 4, 2023 by costa43

[lct]

8 minutes ago, costa43 said:

A larger CL or Q style body as opposed to an M could work at keeping the price down without cannibalising sales of the current M [...]

A lower cost EVF-M would kill the rangefinder line i'm afraid. It is the main problem of the EVF-M IMHO. Less expensive it would cannibalize RF sales. As expensive, it would be hard to sell. But i may be wrong as often...

[Smudgerer]

10 hours ago, thrid said:

The Penelope Delta looked like an extraordinary, but unfortunately still birthed camera. The multi-slit shutter that could act as an ND filter was something I really wanted to see.

OVF is never coming back to digital cine cameras. We got the Alexa Studio and that was it. But an EVF is a different kettle of fish on a cine camera than a still camera, since you are shooting moving footage and are primarily focusing on framing, not split second timing like with a still camera.

Not meaning to hijack this still camera thread and turn it toward cinematography, but I've a lot of experience in both and the issues to my mind are similar in regards to EVF's. With a M's optical viewfinder the lens frame-lines are such that you can see outside of the frame, see what's entering frame and see what you may not want to entirely crop out, it's the same with an optical ( reflex ),VF in a movie camera and this was one thing I missed a lot when the industry went 95% for digital capture. In an optical cine camera viewfinder you have the aspect ratio frame lines plus view of what's outside them, this is invaluable in being able to anticipate what will enter the frame and how to make your moves smoothly to accommodate it, with a digital EVF that's not entirely possible, you see all the frame and almost nothing more outside depending on the system and chosen aspect ratio. There's also the fact that with movie film cameras although they have a video tap that allows a director or others in "Video Village' to see what the cameraperson is actually shooting the images were almost like seances, pretty VHS like bad quality......With a digital film camera the images sent to Video Village and others on set are crystal clear, but that brings it's own set of problems because then everyone viewing them has an opinion, back seat drivers, a PITA for the cameraperson.

I liked the Arri Alexa Studio a lot, but it is/was a lump of metal. The Penelope was an incredible camera, the best 35 format cine camera I have ever used, but when JP went the route of trying to digitise that camera with the Delta, ( a 7K camera in 2013 ! ), sensor supply issues and the run-away costs of that venture killed Aaton and it folded in soon afterwards. I used one of the couple or so prototype Delta's and it was an amazing camera. JP also wanted to produce a digital A-Minima, now that would have been truly something, he was a cine genius, sorely missed, RIP JP.

Here if anyone is interested:

Back to the wacky world of stills and the eternal EVF debate, sure if Leica wants to and does produce a EVF M I am certain that there will be customers for such a thing. I will not be one in line but I've a Q2-M and for what it is it's just fine, ( in fact wouldn't an EVF-M be just a Q with a M mount? ), however once a company sticks it's toe into the electronic world it's a real slippery slope because no matter what you come up with as the latest and greatest iteration of any camera out of the gate it's "outdated" and there will be clamoring for "improvements" and more and more stupid features until the "P version" comes up, then the next model number in line after that.........Oh wait, I think we are there already.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Smudgerer
grammar/addition

[pgk]

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28 minutes ago, Smudgerer said:

Back to the wacky world of stills and the eternal EVF debate, sure if Leica wants to and does produce a EVF M I am certain that there will be customers for such a thing.

No doubt that there will be, but, as I have explained more times than I wanted to, it will be a flawed EVF because it is limited by the 6-bit read only data supplied by the lenses (well, coded ones anyway). So it would be inferior to its direct competition (the myriad of more technically sophisticated EVF cameras available from other makers), and so no matter how much people want it, as such would be a retrograde step for Leica. Building such an uncompetitive camera is not really the position that a 'quality' company to want to place itself in, and yes I know that the M lenses are 'little jewels' but they remain problematic in terms of data transfer and their size is an Achilles heel due to short back focus wide-angle design. Around we go in this circle again because those who want an EVF M will always say that its constraints can be overcome. Personally I am happy to use my M lenses on Sony cameras where they are imperfect but often acceptable.

[lct]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

[...] as I have explained more times than I wanted to, it will be a flawed EVF because it is limited by the 6-bit read only data supplied by the lenses (well, coded ones anyway). So it would be inferior to its direct competition (the myriad of more technically sophisticated EVF cameras available from other makers) [...]

Not sure what M-mount camera would compete with the EVF-M, aside from the M11 with Visoflex 2. Would you call the latter a flawed EVF too?

[pgk]

6 minutes ago, lct said:

Not sure what M-mount camera would compete with the EVF-M, aside from the M11 with Visoflex 2. Would you call the latter a flawed EVF too?

Any EVF with a shorter flange to image plane less than an M would be competition. With native lenses many EVFs would probably be better. The history of bolt on compromises such as the visoflex has shown them to be ineffective sales wise - they are an afterthought rather than anything else. We've discussed this before. You could try reading through this entire thread ..... 😆.

[LBJ2]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

No doubt that there will be, but, as I have explained more times than I wanted to, it will be a flawed EVF because it is limited by the 6-bit read only data supplied by the lenses (well, coded ones anyway). So it would be inferior to its direct competition (the myriad of more technically sophisticated EVF cameras available from other makers), and so no matter how much people want it, as such would be a retrograde step for Leica. Building such an uncompetitive camera is not really the position that a 'quality' company to want to place itself in, and yes I know that the M lenses are 'little jewels' but they remain problematic in terms of data transfer and their size is an Achilles heel due to short back focus wide-angle design. Around we go in this circle again because those who want an EVF M will always say that its constraints can be overcome. Personally I am happy to use my M lenses on Sony cameras where they are imperfect but often acceptable.

Reality is many have been adapting M lenses to various mount EVF cameras for years even with some well known limitations. Even Leica's own L-mount presents a very good M lens adapted to EVF camera experience and IQ result. 

Personally, I enjoy and am very comfortable using the rangefinder for my Leica M lenses, even the Noctilux, but I also experience how well M lenses can be adapted to EVF cameras, even with those well known limitations.

The Visoflex 2 mechanism inside of an M-mount camera instead of an external accessory doesn't seem like much of an engineering stretch and again, seems more than a few willing to accept the compromises. Not sure if the same enthusiast on the forums would be equally enthusiastic to pay the Leica price for such a single use compromise, but that's a different topic.

[lct]

1 minute ago, pgk said:

With native lenses many EVFs would probably be better [...]

Why so? Been using my M lenses with several mirrorless cameras in a dozen years. Leica digital CL, Fuji X-E2, Ricoh GXR, Sony A7s mod, Sony A7r2 mod. None of them gave me the feeling that the Visoflex 2 is flawed in any way. 

[IkarusJohn]

There’s a reasonably long list of lenses which perform better on the SL than the M of the same era.  The Noctiluxes & the 90 Summilux perform better with an EVF, along with the 28 Summilux and the short focus APO Summicrons and the new 50 Summilux.

While I use the Visoflex on my M10-D, a higher MP, better refresh rate, built in EVF would make life simpler for such a camera.  Why not use my SL?  I do.  But what appeals is just an M camera, fully manual, but with an EVF.  No L mount compatibilty, no AF, no video.  Just a simple M camera, electronic first curtain shutter, the best EVF, faster processor and bigger battery (if possible).  

Edited November 4, 2023 by IkarusJohn

[pgk]

4 hours ago, lct said:

Why so?

I have the 21SEM on an M and the Somny 20/1.8 on an A7 Series camera. I can also adapt the 21SEM to the Sony. But the 20/1.8 is quite simply easier to use on an A7 series, is faster, has AF and also delivers superb results (its also cheaper). I can see no significant advantage using the 21SEM on an EVF M ..... which would no doubt be more expensive than an A7/A9 Series body.

[lct]

5 minutes ago, pgk said:

I have the 21SEM on an M and the Somny 20/1.8 on an A7 Series camera. I can also adapt the 21SEM to the Sony. But the 20/1.8 is quite simply easier to use on an A7 series, is faster, has AF and also delivers superb results (its also cheaper). I can see no significant advantage using the 21SEM on an EVF M ..... which would no doubt be more expensive than an A7/A9 Series body.

I own two Sony lenses. Very good performers with little character. I have nothing against them but i prefer my M lenses by far. They work generally fine on my Kolari mod Sony's but as far as they are concerned, nothing can compete with the M11. I would keep the latter anyway but i would want the same with an EVF in place of the RF. A mirrorless camera made for M lenses. As simple as that. Not sure if Leica will make one but it is a brilliant idea i will defend against all odds and no less brilliant opponents

[algrove]

11 hours ago, lct said:

A lower cost EVF-M would kill the rangefinder line i'm afraid. It is the main problem of the EVF-M IMHO. Less expensive it would cannibalize RF sales. As expensive, it would be hard to sell. But i may be wrong as often...

An M sized EVF Leica Camera should be priced high so as not to tarnish the high end pricing always associated with Leica products from batteries on up.

 

That said even priced low it, even at USD4-5k, might not attract those who use a Nikon Zf or Fuji cameras. which are all priced give or take USD2k. 

It seems Leica knows how many of any item needs to sell over a certain production run to make it viable. Many current M users (60% from a recent survey) would also buy an M with built-in EVF. So if Leica sells 12K M11 per year that might translate into 7k EVF sold in the first year. That would make it a go I bet.

[IkarusJohn]

I’m not sure why it should be priced any differently from any other M camera.  The only “cheap” ones are the film cameras … 😋

[ynp]

I use my cameras on the Cambo Actus, very often with the wide symmetrical lenses. I was surprised that with my M10r, used as a digital back on my Actus setup, I have much better files that almost never need the LCC ( lens correction) routine in PP. Much less color casts , most probably because of the micro lenses design of the M sensor. It behaves better than my Sony, Canon RP and Sigma Fpl cameras on my setup. 
 

Maybe once the EVF only M is available, I will try it as a digital back if it allow tethering and strobe use in pixel shift mode. Although I doubt that I would ever enjoy shooting am M without the rangefinder. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by ynp

[FlashGordonPhotography]

I don't think it would be cheaper, or a replacement. The Q is Leica's biggest selling product but the M remains the halo product and still sells well because there's nothing like it. Leica is the brand of the month right now for the hipsters. Hopefully Leica realise that they're fickle and will move on to something else and have plans for that. Leica is also a prestige brand. They don't do *cheaper*. Look what happened to the M Summarits.

It would probably be SL2 priced. It's basically the same tech for manual focus lenses. Maybe Leica will see it like a Monochrom and you might be at a premium to get it. I doubt it will be M shaped. They'll want the M to be the M. I've said before I wouldn't even call it an M. There's also the small possibility it could be an L mount camera with the EVF in the M position. Maybe a slightly bigger Q. The SL has a smaller flange difference so you can fit IBIS.

I don't see any danger for the M. Leica are smart enough to know they need to have the M being the M.

Gordon

[setuporg]

An EVF-only camera will not be an M.

It will be a mirrorless, M-mount compatible camera.  Something even weirder and more suspect than a Panasonic rebadge made in Portugal.  Also made there.

It will be relegated to the darkest, most undistinguished recesses of this forum, next to Sony, and we’ll speak in hushed tones about those who stooped so low as to go there.

Edited November 5, 2023 by setuporg

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[williamj]

I love optical viewfinders and so far fingers crossed there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. So if Leica made an EVF only M camera, it’s a contradiction I know, I would fit an optical viewfinder to the hot shoe.

Now, if the screen at the back was as good as even an iPhone 6 I would use that a lot because it is so useful seeing what you’re going to get. I would vote for a higher quality screen on the back rather than an EVF. 

I’ve only added my comment in case Leica decides to mine this thread for ideas