Leica M11-D: The camera without a display enters the next round

[Mahesh]

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Is it such a massive task to update a "workflow" once? I believe it must be a design issue causing the tint as it has been suggested here earlier. Why wouldn't a company correct something which seems easy enough.

[jonoslack]

10 hours ago, hdmesa said:

 

Given how aware and often responsive Leica is to strong user feedback, I think they would have fixed the magenta tint bias if they could have. I have a feeling that the issue is the thinner cover glass on the M11. I don’t know if that has caused some near-IR bleed over in some lighting situations or not, but the tint bias sometimes reminds me of the Canon EOS Ra for astro. If not that, it’s got to be something similar at fault — something that gives magenta tint in some bright daylight situations but not in other light. 

But honestly, just letting us have a menu that allows us to dial in a white balance bias would be superb. Fujifilm has a great interface for this that lets you move around the bias as an image overlay.

 

 

Hi There

I think you are right about choice - after many discussions  I'm quite certain this can be changed - the danger is that just changing it will irritate people (like me) who have a developed workflow and like the colour . . . . and of course giving a choice means interface changes and the development team have been involved in fixing the freezing. Let's see what happens. All the best

 

[Smudgerer]

11 hours ago, hdmesa said:

Because you likely don’t accidentally overexpose due to feedback from images in playback or if shooting in live view on the LCD. Any highlight overexposed on a mono sensor is lost forever. Overexposure on a color sensor might still have one color channel with data from which some of the highlights can be recovered.

Hello, I rarely check / review images on the LCD and do not use Live View or an EVF, so I guess that the decades of "muscle memory" of being able to look at what I wish to photograph comes into play when assessing whether there's likely to be a highlight problem or not, also with my personal work I have found that the technical aspects of an image are never the prime consideration, just whether it "works" for me or not.

[jonoslack]

4 hours ago, Mahesh said:

Is it such a massive task to update a "workflow" once? I believe it must be a design issue causing the tint as it has been suggested here earlier. Why wouldn't a company correct something which seems easy enough.

It isn't a design issue - it's been much discussed during testing and Leica have already changed it in camera for some people - However all the professionals I know (and have asked) love it because the skin tones are so good, so making a unilateral change would probably irritate more people than are currently irritated by the magenta. @elmars has it, the correct solution to this is to have two or three options that you can pick from - hopefully that will happen in a firmware upgrade.

best

Jono

[Mahesh]

18 minutes ago, Giacomo Busoni said:

 

Good afternoon, 

I just walked into a Leica store to try the M11-D. It froze on the third shot and I had to remove the battery. 

Have a nice day everyone. 

Afternoon.. what did you notice when it froze? On M11 / M11-P you would have seen that on the screen.

[davidnvh]

56 minutes ago, Giacomo Busoni said:

 

Good afternoon, 

I just walked into a Leica store to try the M11-D. It froze on the third shot and I had to remove the battery. 

Have a nice day everyone. 

You are scaring me man, I already sold 3 M11s because of that, now I've been enjoying my M11D for the past 6 days without freezing, hope it won't start freezing now 🥲

[PhotoEd]

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Hello all you early birds. How does the M11-D behave on start-up? Is it faster than the other M11 models? I handled a M11-M when it was introduced and was really shocked how long it took to be ready after switched on. In the past I've had a M9, M-D, M-M and now M10-M. With every new model it looks like the start-up time was increased. This is really a bad development, because the classic Leica rangefinder was always targeted as a reportage camera. In the old analoge days, I still remember Leica praising the extremely short time it took (in miliseconds...) before the shutter actually fired on a M body. It was supposed to be one of the fastest, or maybe THE fastest camera in that respect. In those days they obviously valued a quick action camera. Of course, you can leave the camera on, but when you walk around for hours, the battery will die at some point I suppose. And what about changing the lens while forgetting to switch off the camera first? Will the shutter then stay open? I really would like to go for this camera, but it looks a bit too much as a luxury tool instead of a workers tool. Any experiences?

[davidnvh]

34 minutes ago, PhotoEd said:

... And what about changing the lens while forgetting to switch off the camera first? Will the shutter then stay open? I really would like to go for this camera, but it looks a bit too much as a luxury tool instead of a workers tool. Any experiences?

1. It's as slow as other M11s, so pretty slow.

2. With the M11 line, I actually never had a battery die on me during the day when fully charged. So maybe just set standby to 10 minutes and carry 1 extra battery?

3. The shutter stays open, I really hope Leica will add an option for closing the shutter during lens changes.

4. It works like every other M11 for me so far, and it’s much more reliable in the sense that it hasn’t frozen on me (yet).

Maybe Leica can give us a full settings menu like the regular M11 through Fotos? Perhaps an advanced menu and a simple menu?

[scott kirkpatrick]

The Mxx-Ds take some careful setup and the 11 is trickier than the 10 was.  So I don't think freezing one in the store, where you don't know what previous counter handlers have done, is a crushing verdict.  I have one now, and will report in the next few  days.  Nobody has touched it but me.

[elmars]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb PhotoEd:

Hello all you early birds. How does the M11-D behave on start-up? Is it faster than the other M11 models?

Yes, same startup. And you're right, the start time is (too) long. But unlike with earlier M cameras, this is not so bad because the battery life is so good that you can set standby to 30 or 60 minutes. Earlier M cameras didn't even have such long standby times as an option.

[PhotoEd]

Thank you David and Elmars for your replies. How fast does the camera wake-up from standby? Is this the same as a full start-up, or is it faster? Anyway, I think it's best to see for myself at the Leica store. 

[elmars]

Wakeup time is the same as startup time. 

[kiwidad]

On 9/17/2024 at 3:15 PM, hdmesa said:

Because you likely don’t accidentally overexpose due to feedback from images in playback or if shooting in live view on the LCD. Any highlight overexposed on a mono sensor is lost forever. Overexposure on a color sensor might still have one color channel with data from which some of the highlights can be recovered.

I would love to hear exactly how you think "feedback from images in playback or shooting in live view" has an impact on an exposure system which reads solely from a sensor and lets you see what it comes up with! There is no control loop from your monitoring choice and since playback isn't occurring in any sense during image capturing (since you make it distinct from live view I will also) This isn't an old school SLR where light leaks from the eyepiece can impact the exposure! There is only one actual gain ( I will leave personal pref for reviewing and live view out of this) I can see from the M111D and that is power consumption which if you never turn the display on should be about the same. 

As far as highlight and color channels go your probably correct but not something I would count on!

[kiwidad]

20 hours ago, davidnvh said:

1. It's as slow as other M11s, so pretty slow.

2. With the M11 line, I actually never had a battery die on me during the day when fully charged. So maybe just set standby to 10 minutes and carry 1 extra battery?

3. The shutter stays open, I really hope Leica will add an option for closing the shutter during lens changes.

4. It works like every other M11 for me so far, and it’s much more reliable in the sense that it hasn’t frozen on me (yet).

Maybe Leica can give us a full settings menu like the regular M11 through Fotos? Perhaps an advanced menu and a simple menu?

point 3. On an M11 if lens detection is on it closes when you remove a lens and also there  is a setting to make this happen regardless of lens detection in the camera setting - name dust protection. Take a lens off and shutter closes...

My question then is does the M11-D have lens detection? how is it managed? thru the Fotos app? same thing with the dust protection setting I guess. How do you setup the "D" variant with no display?

 

[davidnvh]

2 hours ago, kiwidad said:

point 3. On an M11 if lens detection is on it closes when you remove a lens and also there  is a setting to make this happen regardless of lens detection in the camera setting - name dust protection. Take a lens off and shutter closes...

My question then is does the M11-D have lens detection? how is it managed? thru the Fotos app? same thing with the dust protection setting I guess. How do you setup the "D" variant with no display?

 

1. It does not have that option at all, hope it will be added to Fotos in the future. 
2. Camera does not need to be set up, if you look at it as an analog camera, then just turn it on, choose iso, choose shutter speed, focus then shoot.
 

I bought into this camera not because it can be customisable, but because it can replace my MP and I don’t have to put film into it, all the other “extra” stuffs are bonuses. 

[hdmesa]

5 hours ago, kiwidad said:

I would love to hear exactly how you think "feedback from images in playback or shooting in live view" has an impact on an exposure system which reads solely from a sensor and lets you see what it comes up with! There is no control loop from your monitoring choice and since playback isn't occurring in any sense during image capturing (since you make it distinct from live view I will also) This isn't an old school SLR where light leaks from the eyepiece can impact the exposure! There is only one actual gain ( I will leave personal pref for reviewing and live view out of this) I can see from the M111D and that is power consumption which if you never turn the display on should be about the same. 

As far as highlight and color channels go your probably correct but not something I would count on!

I meant that using a camera with an LCD and/or EVF makes it easier to not overexpose compared to the M11-D because you can see the histogram and the exposure preview. I was making the comment in regard to a proposed monochrome version of the M11-D, and I was trying to make the point that the monochrome sensors could be more tricky to use in a D camera. 

[pgk]

17 hours ago, kiwidad said:

I would love to hear exactly how you think "feedback from images in playback or shooting in live view" has an impact on an exposure system which reads solely from a sensor and lets you see what it comes up with!

How do you know whether the camera's 'suggested' settings are correct for the contrast of the scene it is metering? Meters are for guidance. One of the real advantages of digital is the immediate feedback and adjustments which can be made from viewing the image and histogram. In ths past we had to rely on things like Polaroids which were viable if not as precise as digital. I am sure that these 'D' cameras make money for Leica because they are quirky and marketed as mimicking  film cameras (I would disagree), but they sacrifice functionality and are not as effective photographic tools as they could be as a result.

[Smudgerer]

16 minutes ago, pgk said:

How do you know whether the camera's 'suggested' settings are correct for the contrast of the scene it is metering? Meters are for guidance. One of the real advantages of digital is the immediate feedback and adjustments which can be made from viewing the image and histogram. In ths past we had to rely on things like Polaroids which were viable if not as precise as digital. I am sure that these 'D' cameras make money for Leica because they are quirky and marketed as mimicking  film cameras (I would disagree), but they sacrifice functionality and are not as effective photographic tools as they could be as a result.

I don't disagree with you in saying that a digital camera, "D" or otherwise, can mimic a film cameras use is really to fool yourself, it's quite a different kettle of fish. For me when I had the M10-D it was more of a comfortable familiar camera handling experience that I appreciated, but yes that came with having to be aware that you are shooting on a different medium with quite different tolerances in regards to how the image is captured, film and digital are different and will probably always be so........But to have the choice is good.

Sure too, when we could in the past we did rely to some extent on Polaroids, we did that on film sets too, but again I would never have relied on what a Polaroid showed me to make a final judgement regarding exposure, colour balance or clipping, we who were bought up in long term film use really relied more on what our eyes, experience and perhaps a spot meter, told us.

With a "D" Leica you sort of return to that era of calculated, learned experience guesswork, you learn to trust your "eye" and adjust the camera accordingly. Of course you mess up now and again but with digital you can bracket and / or take multiple exposures of a critical scene and you've a massive "roll of film" that allows that option with no cost except for editing time sorting out the duds.

And yes you are right, if you want or need a "more effective tool" with more accountability and less guesswork, don't use a "D", use a digital Leica M with a LCD.

[pippy]

2 hours ago, pgk said:

...they sacrifice functionality and are not as effective photographic tools as they could be as a result...

I very rarely see things in a different manner to yourself, Paul, but I have to say I disagree with you on this point (and rather strongly at that!...😸...).

What makes any camera a 'functional and effective photographic tool' for one person doesn't neccessarily work the same way for another. 'Horses for Courses' and all that jazz.

I don't know whether you have ever been out for a day's photography shooting with a 'D' camera but One Day was all it took to show me that, for the way I go about my snapping, the MD262 was actually a more effective - and much more successfully productive - tool than the M9-P I was using alongside the D on that same outing; and I really loved the M9-P.

I certainly won't convince you to change your opinion (nor would I be so arrogant as to presume to do so!) but having used screened and unscreened alongside each other(*) I know which camera is more effective and productive in my hands. Whether it would work for you is another matter entirely which only you can discover for yourself.

🙂

Philip.

* ...and I still do...

Edited September 20, 2024 by pippy

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[kiwidad]

16 hours ago, hdmesa said:

I meant that using a camera with an LCD and/or EVF makes it easier to not overexpose compared to the M11-D because you can see the histogram and the exposure preview. I was making the comment in regard to a proposed monochrome version of the M11-D, and I was trying to make the point that the monochrome sensors could be more tricky to use in a D camera. 

My apologies, I read it as a physical feedback in the camera affecting the image not a users interaction base on what they see, I completely agree. We process the info wee see on the display and make adjustments. 

When I first stated shooting film back in 1978 I had a friend with a darkroom and we  shot black and white extensively and a knowledge was formed with regards to the camera meter and results and tweaks needed. I suspect the same will be true for the M11D