PDAF likely to replace DFD-CDAF on SL3

[tom.w.bn]

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vor 4 Stunden schrieb Stuart Richardson:

In any case, I welcome PDAF in L mount if only to stop the grumbling about AF performance, haha. But I am sure many will find a way to complain about AF even if it is comparable to Sony and Canikon. BTW, I don’t discount there is a difference, not at all. It is not relevant in my work, but it is clearly critical to others. I just hope they can implement it without introducing banding or striping. AFc is not important to me, but having super malleable files is. The SL2 is great for having low or no banding or color contamination on pushed shadows, though it can get grainy. 

Main criticism came from vloggers who hated the wobbly background. Other people who invested more time than a handful of hours with the camera found out settings for vloggers with AF-C/face recoginition but without the wobbly thing. Panasonic/Leica probably should have provided a standard vlogger setting in the menus to silence this group....

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[Simone_DF]

3 minutes ago, tom.w.bn said:

Main criticism came from vloggers who hated the wobbly background. Other people who invested more time than a handful of hours with the camera found out settings for vloggers with AF-C/face recoginition but without the wobbly thing. Panasonic/Leica probably should have provided a standard vlogger setting in the menus to silence this group....

All reviews bashed Panasonic autofocus. Every. Single. One. And for good reasons. While AF-S is really good, AF-C is rubbish. And a camera with subpar AF-C doesn't have enough market share to survive against other brands. It's adapt or die for the L mount.

[John Smith]

19 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

All reviews bashed Panasonic autofocus. Every. Single. One. And for good reasons. While AF-S is really good, AF-C is rubbish. And a camera with subpar AF-C doesn't have enough market share to survive against other brands. It's adapt or die for the L mount.

Adapt or die? Maybe so. But I, for one, am glad that Leica decided early on to do what it could to protect image quality. 

[Simone_DF]

23 minutes ago, John Smith said:

Adapt or die? Maybe so. But I, for one, am glad that Leica decided early on to do what it could to protect image quality. 

Leica did non decide anything. They just picked what Panasonic had to offer on the AF front, which was DFD and no PDAF. 

[John Smith]

5 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

Leica did non decide anything. They just picked what Panasonic had to offer on the AF front, which was DFD and no PDAF. 

Show me your source. 

[Simone_DF]

39 minutes ago, John Smith said:

Show me your source. 

Sure. You just need to check the Panasonic website. It's Panasonic that developed DFD AF and Leica is implementing it. There you go:

https://www.panasonic.com/nz/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-g-mirrorless-dslm-cameras-learn/article/advantages-of-the-lumix-g-af-system.html

Here's a link to the Panasonic's patent regarding using DFD for autofocus.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110181770A1/en

That's also the reason why we see AF improvements in Panasonic bodies first, and 6-9 months later in Leica's bodies.

[beewee]

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7 hours ago, sillbeers15 said:

Apple M2 & M1 are known to be fast but yet energy efficient comparing to Broadcom & Intel processors. Of course TSMC chips make up both M1 & M2. So faster equal more heat & energy consumption is not necessary true with 5nm in mass production & 3nm soon to be produced in new TSMC fab. Back to cameras, just look at the performance of Nikon Z9 against its specs of a high performance processor making it an industry leader in AF accuracy & speed.

You missed the point. See point (c).

Pretty sure Apple’s prototype chip volumes are bigger than Leica’s annual volumes. There’s no way Leica, Panasonic, or the combined can compete to be on the latest nodes.

Edited December 29, 2022 by beewee

[Stuart Richardson]

While Panasonic clearly has taken the lead in the autofocus system for the current SL2, I find kind of funny that Leica actually invented autofocus for their original SL2. So for people who think that Leica does not do anything on its own or is incapable of innovation, that really is not the case at all. I guess it is not enough to invent 35mm cameras and the first autofocus camera...it's all "what have you done for me lately?". The original SL was the second full frame mirrorless camera. The S2 was the first fully integrated, weather sealed medium format camera, and it came with a lot of innovations (user switchable focal plane shutter/central shutter etc). Leica does not seem as technologically forward looking since they tend to be more conservative in interface and features, and they often wind up using slightly older sensors, but they really do have a number of tricks up their sleeves. I also think that Leica is particularly good at extracting what they need out of sub-contractors so that they can focus on what they do best, which is camera and lens design and construction. Rather than try to build absolutely everything in house, they find partners like Panasonic and Sigma who can do what is required so that Leica can focus on their strengths. This is just good business practice for a small to medium sized company.

[John Smith]

2 hours ago, Simone_DF said:

Sure. You just need to check the Panasonic website. It's Panasonic that developed DFD AF and Leica is implementing it. There you go:

https://www.panasonic.com/nz/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-g-mirrorless-dslm-cameras-learn/article/advantages-of-the-lumix-g-af-system.html

Here's a link to the Panasonic's patent regarding using DFD for autofocus.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110181770A1/en

That's also the reason why we see AF improvements in Panasonic bodies first, and 6-9 months later in Leica's bodies.

This doesn't prove your statement, "Leica did non decide anything. They just picked what Panasonic had to offer on the AF front, which was DFD and no PDAF."  Leica's decision to implement Panasonic's AF doesn't mean it didn't decide anything. 

Edited December 29, 2022 by John Smith

[John Smith]

1 hour ago, Stuart Richardson said:

While Panasonic clearly has taken the lead in the autofocus system for the current SL2, I find kind of funny that Leica actually invented autofocus for their original SL2. So for people who think that Leica does not do anything on its own or is incapable of innovation, that really is not the case at all. I guess it is not enough to invent 35mm cameras and the first autofocus camera...it's all "what have you done for me lately?". The original SL was the second full frame mirrorless camera. The S2 was the first fully integrated, weather sealed medium format camera, and it came with a lot of innovations (user switchable focal plane shutter/central shutter etc). Leica does not seem as technologically forward looking since they tend to be more conservative in interface and features, and they often wind up using slightly older sensors, but they really do have a number of tricks up their sleeves. I also think that Leica is particularly good at extracting what they need out of sub-contractors so that they can focus on what they do best, which is camera and lens design and construction. Rather than try to build absolutely everything in house, they find partners like Panasonic and Sigma who can do what is required so that Leica can focus on their strengths. This is just good business practice for a small to medium sized company.

I might be mistaken, but I believe Leica also introduced a new standard of mirrorless lens design. This is from Leica's website:

Specialists from the areas of optical and mechanical engineering and electronics worked together in an interdisciplinary team on the development of a unique lens concept based on double internal focusing. This system, comprising two particularly light focusing lenses, allows the construction of particularly small and compact drive systems. In addition to space limitations, the choice of the drive motors is also determined by the AF principle used for focusing.

I remember Peter Karbe saying that the SL Summicrons were built from the ground up. 

[BernardC]

4 hours ago, Simone_DF said:

All reviews bashed Panasonic autofocus. Every. Single. One.

Not the Kai and Lok reviews, but they are more into video and less into sports. 

Last time I checked Lok was using the S5 as his main camera. Tons of vloggers use DFD on the GH5 and GH6. 

[sillbeers15]

5 hours ago, beewee said:

You missed the point. See point (c).

Pretty sure Apple’s prototype chip volumes are bigger than Leica’s annual volumes. There’s no way Leica, Panasonic, or the combined can compete to be on the latest nodes.

Yes. Apple has higher volume, but if Nikon can succeed in Z9, what is stopping Leica? Besides Leica latches onto Panasonic S series cameras on sharing key hardware & software components. Besides the premium selling price of Leica gives it more room to offset it’s lower volume disadvantage.

Turn the logic around, if Leica continues to sell rubbish at premium price, can it be sustainable? This is how brand dilution happens.

[Chaemono]

The reviewers on YouTube will be gushing over the S5 AF video capabilities, I bet. 

[beewee]

2 hours ago, sillbeers15 said:

Yes. Apple has higher volume, but if Nikon can succeed in Z9, what is stopping Leica? Besides Leica latches onto Panasonic S series cameras on sharing key hardware & software components. Besides the premium selling price of Leica gives it more room to offset it’s lower volume disadvantage.

Turn the logic around, if Leica continues to sell rubbish at premium price, can it be sustainable? This is how brand dilution happens.

The z9 is a big heat dissipating brick with a giant battery attached as far as thermals and power goes. I don’t see how it furthers your point here about use of high efficiency silicon here. You can make an older node faster by upping voltage or die area at the cost of power consumption and increased thermal dissipation.

Even if the Z9 was a good example, foundries don’t care about how many chips you buy for a specific model. They care about how many wafers. You can put many different chips for different models on the same wafer, as long as you can use them. Nikon’s overall volumes are more than an order of magnitude higher than Leica.

Despite the Maestro processor branding, Leica has been buying chips from the likes of Fujitsu for years and Fujitsu isn’t big player in this area either but at least Fujitsu is willing to do business with Leica. There’s no way TSMC will do business with Leica and Leica doesn’t have enough IP or cash on hand to be a fabless semiconductor company either.

Bottom line, Leica is such a small fish in this industry, they have very few options available in terms of semi-custom or even pure of the shelf processors go. If they want to build an ASIC, they’re going to need to find a couple hundred million dollars to do this and sell a heck of a lot more cameras to fund it. The only way around this is to share the same processor with Panasonic through the L2 alliance. Only time will tell on this.

Edited December 30, 2022 by beewee

[sillbeers15]

14 minutes ago, beewee said:

The z9 is a big heat dissipating brick with a giant battery attached as far as thermals and power goes. I don’t see how it furthers your point here about use of high efficiency silicon here. You can make an older node faster by upping voltage or die area at the cost of power consumption and increased thermal dissipation.

Even if the Z9 was a good example, foundries don’t care about how many chips you buy for a specific model. They care about how many wafers. You can put many different chips for different models on the same wafer, as long as you can use them. Nikon’s overall volumes are more than an order of magnitude higher than Leica.

Despite the Maestro processor branding, Leica has been buying chips from the likes of Fujitsu for years and Fujitsu isn’t big player in this area either but at least Fujitsu is willing to do business with Leica. There’s no way TSMC will do business with Leica and Leica doesn’t have enough IP or cash on hand to be a fabless semiconductor company either.

Bottom line, Leica is such a small fish in this industry, they have very few options available in terms of semi-custom or even pure of the shelf processors go. If they want to build an ASIC, they’re going to need to find a couple hundred million dollars to do this and sell a heck of a lot more cameras to fund it. The only way around this is to share the same processor with Panasonic through the L2 alliance. Only time will tell on this.

By your logic, Leica SL series is destined to be doomed in a matter of time.

I have been in APAC manufacturing operations for S&P500 multinational for 30years. Rebranding & sharing of parts are common logic when cost & time to market matters. I can clearly see Panasonic involvement since the introduction of the first SL even though Panasonic does not offer a full frame camera back then. There is ample similarities with the GH5 down to the connector pin below the camera. The SL2 is even more similar to the S1R and the SL2S with the S5. Even back in the days of the R series film camera, Minolta’s shadow was present. The only true blue Leica is the M series. 
This is why I watch Panasonic’s development where it concerns Leica adoption for it’s new camera trend.

[frame-it]

8 hours ago, beewee said:

There’s no way Leica, Panasonic, or the combined can compete to be on the latest nodes.

unless they get the chips from sony?

[beewee]

1 hour ago, sillbeers15 said:

By your logic, Leica SL series is destined to be doomed in a matter of time.

I have been in APAC manufacturing operations for S&P500 multinational for 30years. Rebranding & sharing of parts are common logic when cost & time to market matters. I can clearly see Panasonic involvement since the introduction of the first SL even though Panasonic does not offer a full frame camera back then. There is ample similarities with the GH5 down to the connector pin below the camera. The SL2 is even more similar to the S1R and the SL2S with the S5. Even back in the days of the R series film camera, Minolta’s shadow was present. The only true blue Leica is the M series. 
This is why I watch Panasonic’s development where it concerns Leica adoption for it’s new camera trend.

This has nothing to do with being anything being SL specific.

You seem to think that Leica needs to be on the latest and greatest technology in order to survive. Leica has never had their own ASIC. They probably never will. No current camera manufacture are on the latest TSMC N5P node but cameras still keep coming out. You don’t need the latest nodes to be in the game.

The M cameras are just as dependent on silicon advances as the SL series, if not more so because of thermal limitations for the small body. Yes, SL cameras need to support video and AF but you don’t need a beefy processor for that. There are plenty of commercial off the shelf parts and licensable IP that can do it on dedicated silicon logic within a bigger chip that performs other functions. Video encoding/decoding is such a fundamental element of parts these days, you don’t need anything particularly special to support core video.

As for AF functionality, it largely depends on how many fancy modes you want. Yeah, if you want to have AI everything, you’ll need a dedicated processor but if you just want solid tracking PDAF continuous AF plus contrast detect AF for accurate fine corrections, it doesn’t take that much processing power to do this. Frankly, the fact that Sony has a giant list of AI-based subject detection that requires you to select the subject type and buries this selection in sub-menus makes the feature almost unusable. They may as well not include the feature because no one will go in to switch between shooting a bird, insect, dog, human, … ad nauseum. So at the end, was it really worth it to implement all this fancy silicon for fancy AF on a Sony body? Maybe nice to have on a marketing sheet and get it featured on dpreviewTV but will anyone use it? Probably not.

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by beewee

[beewee]

10 minutes ago, frame-it said:

unless they get the chips from sony?

They’d probably need a L2S alliance. Pretty sure there are strategic reasons for Sony to not do so. Note that the division that makes Sony imaging sensors is a different company than the division that makes Sony cameras. They cooperate, but they are technically not the same company.

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[frame-it]

January 4th

https://www.youtube.com/live/WjvZgZSpRWU

[Chaemono]

If it said  a legend reinvented it would have me worried.