SL3 Rumors

[Stuart Richardson]

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On 1/19/2024 at 3:44 AM, Printmaker said:

Subscription… hush, don’t give Leica any ideas.

 

If I ever am asked to pay a subscription to use a Leica or enable any important feature on it, I will be highly unlikely ever to buy a Leica ever again. I will certainly say as much to the people I have met at Leica as well, though of course if it is profitable enough I am sure no one will care. But there are just too many good cameras out there already (including Leica's own). I keep thinking of my Mamiya 7II which I still happily use after buying in 2002 or my 4x5 I bought in 2005. If I had had to pay a subscription for those....it is bad enough that we have to do so with Adobe and seemingly everything else. If someone wants a subscription for a Leica they should just take out a loan and leave the rest of us alone.

Edited January 20, 2024 by Stuart Richardson

[hansvons]

9 minutes ago, Stuart Richardson said:

If I ever am asked to pay a subscription to use a Leica or enable any important feature on it, I will be highly unlikely ever to buy a Leica ever again.

Arri and Sony have that with their top-tier cine cameras, albeit these are lifelong subscriptions to unique features that one can enable or not. It won't happen in the stills world anytime soon, or will it? I could see manufacturers doing that. In the Leica community, video capabilities are often seen as a nuisance that should be removed (for purity?). Why not create different software packages at different price points? Tesla is doing that already with their pretty useless "full-featured autopilot". Their mid-tier autopilot makes more sense in Europe and costs 3k less than the top-tier AP. I like the idea of not paying for stuff I don't need.

People often dismiss subscription models as extortion as they feel a massive delta between the payments and the value. That can be true, of course. But it's invalid if the value is high enough to warrant the cost. I happily pay for software subscriptions if they are indispensable for my work and pay off themselves. If I feel profiteered, I reconsider the value and may quit the subscription. The same can be said about purchases in general. Many people won't buy a Leica because they see the value as too low.

As a side note, I will say that ownership of everything will go the way of the Dodo. My kids, today's students I meet, and other young folks don't see ownership as an essential path of security (the "what I own cannot be taken" paradigm isn't theirs). They believe in progress and obsolescence. Subscription makes it easy to part with or update stuff, often automatically. For older folks, the concept of obsolescence and progress goes diametral to their lifelong quest for prosperity and wealth. That particular generational divide of progress vs consolidation is new in the Western world and gives me hope that the fight against climate warming, etc., can be won eventually.

[Simone_DF]

9 minutes ago, hansvons said:

In the Leica community, video capabilities are often seen as a nuisance that should be removed (for purity?). Why not create different software packages at different price points?

Yes, but it should be the other way around. Make these people pay a subscription to remove video capabilities. 

[Stuart Richardson]

I think it is quite the opposite. Transfer all assets and power to the moneyed class and force people to become wage slaves. Putting more money in the hands of companies and owners rather than in the hands of regular people. People like the model because things have been priced such that normal people can no longer afford them. The reason it started in cinema is that the costs were so much higher. Now that is just going down the chain bit by bit. But anyway, sorry I brought it up. 

Edited January 20, 2024 by Stuart Richardson

[hansvons]

49 minutes ago, Stuart Richardson said:

Transfer all assets and power to the moneyed class and force people to become wage slaves.

We’re already there, and it’s utterly wrong. The only dissent we might have is that I don’t think that subscription is the root of that.
It came with larger software houses like SAP or ADSK when competition was so fierce and developments so quick that customers refused to pay for R&D by postponing updates until the cows come home. That almost killed at ADSK their creative content portfolio and would have made Adobe the world’s Dear Leader. 
I think we need choices. And subscription is one. But ownership should stay if there’s a market. C1 has now a policy in place that makes you the owner of the software’s last iteration if you were for three years a subscriber.

Regarding photography I’m set anyway and don’t plan to upgrade or buy new other stuff. BTW, ownership also means buying used, and that’s what I do mostly, including my never-leaving 501s and other clothes. At some point, we all will be suffocated by stuff. Actually, we overtook nature in creating stuff in 2022. Scary.

[PavelS]

9 hours ago, Simone_DF said:

Give Panasonic some time. It's still early days for Panasonic's PDAF, the software is as important as the hardware

Yes, that is what I am (still) hoping for and why I keep using the S5IIx for now. But it is frustrating I am not gonna lie.

[PavelS]

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20 hours ago, helged said:

Which lenses did you use? See eg

 

All kinds available. Leica SL 24-70/2.8, Summicron-SL 90 APO, Sigma DN DG 85/1.4, Sigma DN DG 50/1.4 and three Lumix S lenses 18/1.8, 50/1.8 and 85/1.8.

Vario-Elmarit SL 24-70/2.8 is the fastest and best focusing of them all. Sigma DG DN 50/1.4 is second best in low light (the 85/1.4 is slow on the other hand), the three Lumix S lenses I mentioned above are OK with good light/contrast but worse in low light (feels like they make the camera "think" longer about the shot) and Summicron-SL 90 is slowest of the bunch.

My understanding is that the final perceived speed is not only about the AF motors but rather about the whole AF "decision making chain" which for some reason behaves differently with different lenses. I can not compare with previous Lumix cameras as S5IIx is my first Panasonic camera which I chose to complement and later to replace Leica SL2-S as that was at the time easies solution enabling me to keep the L-mount lenses instead of changing the whole system.

 

[hdmesa]

14 minutes ago, PavelS said:

All kinds available. Leica SL 24-70/2.8, Summicron-SL 90 APO, Sigma DN DG 85/1.4, Sigma DN DG 50/1.4 and three Lumix S lenses 18/1.8, 50/1.8 and 85/1.8.

Vario-Elmarit SL 24-70/2.8 is the fastest and best focusing of them all. Sigma DG DN 50/1.4 is second best in low light (the 85/1.4 is slow on the other hand), the three Lumix S lenses I mentioned above are OK with good light/contrast but worse in low light (feels like they make the camera "think" longer about the shot) and Summicron-SL 90 is slowest of the bunch.

My understanding is that the final perceived speed is not only about the AF motors but rather about the whole AF "decision making chain" which for some reason behaves differently with different lenses. I can not compare with previous Lumix cameras as S5IIx is my first Panasonic camera which I chose to complement and later to replace Leica SL2-S as that was at the time easies solution enabling me to keep the L-mount lenses instead of changing the whole system.

 

Does Sigma have any other lenses besides the 60-600 that are using their new ultra-fast focusing motors? It's screaming fast on my S5IIX, as fast as the RF 100-500 on the R5.

That said, the S5IIX is going to lag Canon and Sony until Panasonic has time to refine the subject recognition and tracking firmware. S5IIX does not yet have eye-AF for animals for example, so that lets you know they're just getting started.

So it's really both IMO, focusing speed of most L-mount lenses combined with subject tracking that isn't yet taking full advantage of PDAF. But I can tell you that compared to the Nikon Zf I tried, the S5IIX is much better at eye-AF for nailing focus on the iris of the eye when shooting wide open. That puts them closer to Canon and Sony to me with Nikon still lagging behind trying to focus on eyelashes and eyebrows instead of the iris.

[PavelS]

49 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

the S5IIX is much better at eye-AF for nailing focus on the iris of the eye when shooting wide open. That puts them closer to Canon and Sony to me with Nikon still lagging behind trying to focus on eyelashes and eyebrows instead of the iris.

Yes, it is not all bad with S5IIX, actually I really do like the camera except the AF-C tracking ability. With regard to the Eye AF it works fine as long as you have single person in the frame. But as soon as more than one persons enter the frame the camera does not stick to that eye/person you have originally selected and keep jumping around (same as with Leica SL2-S). I know you can re-select the person manually but the algorithm will override and switch to another person right after you did your correction. So with multiple people in the scene I switch off the Eye-AF and rely on the plain AF-C tracking.

Edited January 20, 2024 by PavelS

[Richardgb]

9 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

If I ever am asked to pay a subscription to use a Leica or enable any important feature on it, I will be highly unlikely ever to buy a Leica ever again. I will certainly say as much to the people I have met at Leica as well, though of course if it is profitable enough I am sure no one will care. But there are just too many good cameras out there already (including Leica's own). I keep thinking of my Mamiya 7II which I still happily use after buying in 2002 or my 4x5 I bought in 2005. If I had had to pay a subscription for those....it is bad enough that we have to do so with Adobe and seemingly everything else. If someone wants a subscription for a Leica they should just take out a loan and leave the rest of us alone.

Apples and oranges - you're comparing digital- with film cameras. The digital will likely be obsolescent long before those using film, although bear in mind that every time you buy a roll- or box of film you are sustaining Kodak, Fuji, Harman, Orwo just a little bit longer, in effect much like paying sub, except that you choose when to pay it.

[hdmesa]

3 hours ago, PavelS said:

Yes, it is not all bad with S5IIX, actually I really do like the camera except the AF-C tracking ability. With regard to the Eye AF it works fine as long as you have single person in the frame. But as soon as more than one persons enter the frame the camera does not stick to that eye/person you have originally selected and keep jumping around (same as with Leica SL2-S). I know you can re-select the person manually but the algorithm will override and switch to another person right after you did your correction. So with multiple people in the scene I switch off the Eye-AF and rely on the plain AF-C tracking.

Yeah, that sounds like simply catching up in firmware, which is a better proposition than being limited by the hardware. Panasonic could improve the tracking in firmware tomorrow for all we know — hopefully they are fast-tracking such improvements. 

[jaapv]

https://www.photografix-magazin.de/wochenrueckblick-kw-03-2024/

Translated - 21 or 22 March, 8000 Euro. no radical changes, just further development as speculated on, according to this rumour. Time for the pre-order stampede to start? 🤣

[Simone_DF]

Seems like a repost from the same rumor above

[MediaFotografie]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb Simone_DF:

Seems like a repost from the same rumor above

yes, this site mostly summarises other sites

[jaapv]

Well, time for the moderators to prepare for the handwringing, agonizing and teethgnashing thread by the lost souls with a desperate need to be the first on the block to have one. We’ll call it the purgatory thread. 

[Simone_DF]

I don’t know. At 8k it will be a hard sell compared to a SL2-S or a Panasonic

[jaapv]

Maybe. The Q3 is doing well enough against the Q2. I am waiting for the SL3S to kill off the used price of the SL2S. 

[Filip Baraka]

As a total newcomer to the Sl2 and Leica, I think I will further invest in glass and pass on SL3, at least for now…

[LocalHero1953]

I have been thinking of what single improvement would make me want to buy the SL3. I concluded that it would be either a global electronic shutter or a sensor with a very much faster readout. Shooting indoors with the SL2-S as I do, I find the banding with artificial lighting a major limitation, and the cause of a lot jettisoned images, or extra processing (e.g. Lightroom masking of the background and reduce Clarity and Texture - which gets rid of it but gives a rather foggy texture).

I would welcome this above better AF - nice though that would be - and above increased resolution. 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[andybarton]

19 minutes ago, Filip Baraka said:

As a total newcomer to the Sl2 and Leica, I think I will further invest in glass and pass on SL3, at least for now…

Just so that you know, you DON'T have to buy every new camera that is released. It's not mandatory. No one will think any the less of you and your photographs with your new camera will be just as good next year and the year after.