M11 Ev1: why not a rangefinder EVF?

[Steveraw]

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I’m a little disappointed that Leica implemented a typical EVF experience found on all mirrorless cameras that shows the user what the lens sees.

To me, one of the main strengths of the rangefinder experience is the viewfinder showing a wider FOV than the lens and providing frame lines for composition.

This allows the user to see what’s outside the frame.

  My suggestion for future models would be to recreate this experience digitally.

I think a small sensor and wide-angle lens added into the camera body to provide the wider view, while the center section within the frame lines would show through the lens.

Your iPhone pro already does this: showing the wider lens view at the periphery while the main framing comes from the chosen lens.

This would provide the best of both worlds and a more faithful rangefinder experience with an EVF.
 

Steve

 

[maxpower]

It sounds simple, but it's not. Don't forget the iPhone has a fixed set of lenses (plus a company worth trillions behind it) whereas the M ecosystem has a huge variety of different lenses. Aligning that so it looks nice (and not distracting because of quality difference etc.) is probably too complicated, like imagine a lens that's vignetting seeing that through the lens in the EVF but then outside of that live video feed seeing a different video feed that is slightly wider? that would look terrible in my opinion. Just matching exposure and colours on two different sensors is difficult enough, Apple managed to do it for the most part but other phone manufacturers struggle/struggled for a long time to get that right when switching between cameras. 

They've clearly gone the "easy" route with the final product, but in interviews it sounds like they did experiment with alternative options (even the hybrid EVF and optical Rangefinder) but none of it worked well enough, or fitted inside the body constraints. If the EV1 is a success I hope they would innovate more on focussing techniques for the successor.

Edited 15 hours ago by maxpower

[jankap]

3 hours ago, Steveraw said:

I’m a little disappointed that Leica implemented a typical EVF experience found on all mirrorless cameras that shows the user what the lens sees.

To me, one of the main strengths of the rangefinder experience is the viewfinder showing a wider FOV than the lens and providing frame lines for composition.

This allows the user to see what’s outside the frame.

Steve

 

Do you want to crop the sensor? The sensor is designed for 24 x 36 mm, the lenses for a circle of 43 mm. The lenses offer somewhat more than 43mm, but there the quality can be less (lower than the published lens data). A larger sensor would be the solution, so ask Sony.

One could of course only use the dimensions of for instance  M8 (APS-?). The LCD and the EVF could give the total sensor picture of 24 x 36 mm, but the picture taken and stored as JPG or DNG would be smaller. But then the reviewers would not be very friendly.

The solution for you would be to take a wider lens and crop in post. 🤩

[jaapv]

Leica did patent a rangefinder type EVF years ago but decided it was not possible to make it work to their standards. Of course technology has advanced since then, but it appears they dropped the idea. It worked with a rotating mini camera IIRC. 

[evikne]

They made a cautious and safe first attempt with the M EV1. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they can achieve something like this in the future, but it certainly won't be easy. 

[mikeamosau]

Leica has repeatedly said it’s not possible to build something they are happy with. When I was at Wetzlar seven years ago they said this and Stefan Daniel just this week in an interview said:

A hybrid viewfinder was a pre-development concept, but it rapidly became clear that it would not be a good user experience owing to the low magnification and low field of view. It was a solution based on compromise. 

Remember, in addition to the optical and electronic view there is the third light pathway for rangefinding — we just could not make it work effectively, so we gave up.

and:

It just did not make sense, and we will not touch that again. 

[evikne]

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7 minutes ago, mikeamosau said:

Leica has repeatedly said it’s not possible to build something they are happy with. When I was at Wetzlar seven years ago they said this and Stefan Daniel just this week in an interview said:

A hybrid viewfinder was a pre-development concept, but it rapidly became clear that it would not be a good user experience owing to the low magnification and low field of view. It was a solution based on compromise. 

Remember, in addition to the optical and electronic view there is the third light pathway for rangefinding — we just could not make it work effectively, so we gave up.

and:

It just did not make sense, and we will not touch that again. 

If you read the opening post more carefully, you will see that they do not want a hybrid, but a fully digital solution that mimics the RF experience.

[mikeamosau]

13 minutes ago, evikne said:

If you read the opening post more carefully, you will see that they do not want a hybrid, but a fully digital solution that mimics the RF experience.

Ah! Reading is hard! You are right!! 
haha! 
 

Stick it in crop mode then and pretend Leica did it? 

[evikne]

35 minutes ago, mikeamosau said:

Ah! Reading is hard! You are right!! 
haha! 
 

Stick it in crop mode then and pretend Leica did it? 

I'm not sure how they envision it. 😉 Personally, I'm most interested in a digital RF patch in the viewfinder. That would be a great addition to the current focus aids. 

[FrozenInTime]

4 minutes ago, evikne said:

I'm not sure how they envision it. 😉 Personally, I'm most interested in a digital RF patch in the viewfinder. That would be a great addition to the current focus aids. 

I'm sure an all electronic solution is possible using a cell phone sized sensor at an offset. The processing of the data would likely need to move away from the Maestro 3/4, which I believe is a Fujitsu ASIC, to something with additional data paths. A Qualcomm Snapdragon offering, like Apple phone processors, multiple cores and GPUs, may be up to the task of scaling and merging the sensor inputs. 

Pixii mention "64-bit quad-core ARM SoC" in their specifications.https://pixii.fr/specifications-pixii-max-model-a3410

For the M12 rangefinder upgrade, I think Pixii may be influencing Leica to add similar overlayed data into the OVF.

 

[FrozenInTime]

1 hour ago, mikeamosau said:

Leica has repeatedly said it’s not possible to build something they are happy with. When I was at Wetzlar seven years ago they said this and Stefan Daniel just this week in an interview said:

A hybrid viewfinder was a pre-development concept, but it rapidly became clear that it would not be a good user experience owing to the low magnification and low field of view. It was a solution based on compromise. 

Remember, in addition to the optical and electronic view there is the third light pathway for rangefinding — we just could not make it work effectively, so we gave up.

and:

It just did not make sense, and we will not touch that again. 

Somewhat of a short term statement - never say never, as technology changes; was not a full frame M8 once considered impossible.

Stacked sensors will eventually allow removal of the mechanical shutter; opening up space for IBIS; a change in the inner-body space could also allow longer optical paths for the EVF optics. Higher resolution and larger OLED panels are a certainty. Research is ongoing in the field of light field projected eye pieces.

However, I think Leica sees all electronics and software as unfortunately necessary evils, and would rather concentrate on optical and mechanical excellence.

 

[mikeamosau]

24 minutes ago, FrozenInTime said:

Somewhat of a short term statement - never say never, as technology changes; was not a full frame M8 once considered impossible.

Stacked sensors will eventually allow removal of the mechanical shutter; opening up space for IBIS; a change in the inner-body space could also allow longer optical paths for the EVF optics. Higher resolution and larger OLED panels are a certainty. Research is ongoing in the field of light field projected eye pieces.

However, I think Leica sees all electronics and software as unfortunately necessary evils, and would rather concentrate on optical and mechanical excellence.

 

yeah, I agree. I think this was a toe in the water to see how much dev / cost should be spent on a camera like this. But I am sure as technology evolves it will be something looked at again. 

[Stephen.s1]

As I recall my X100V had such a viewfinder.  It worked just fine for me.

[Lightwrangler]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb Stephen.s1:

As I recall my X100V had such a viewfinder.  It worked just fine for me.

To further cite Mr Daniel: „People often tend to think of another company that offers hybrid viewfinders, but it is important to bear in mind that their cameras possess optical viewfinders and NOT rangefinders with their opto-mechanical complexity. It just did not make sense, and we will not touch that again.“

Please read for yourself: https://chatsphotog.com/musings/f/stefan-daniel-on-the-leica-m-ev1

Edited 5 hours ago by Lightwrangler

[FrozenInTime]

5 minutes ago, Lightwrangler said:

To further cite Mr Daniel: „People often tend to think of another company that offers hybrid viewfinders, but it is important to bear in mind that their cameras possess optical viewfinders and NOT rangefinders with their opto-mechanical complexity. It just did not make sense, and we will not touch that again.“

Please read for yourself: https://chatsphotog.com/musings/f/stefan-daniel-on-the-leica-m-ev1

The other hybrid approach, different from the X100, would be something like below - replacing the OVF with an EVF, and projecting a purely optical rangefinder path.

The downside is that in EVF + optical RF mode, the main sensor output needs to scale down to the area  equivalent to that of the classic M frame for that lens. To make this work, the OLED panel resolution must be high, and the  optic, including the beam splitter,  between the OLED and eye-piece can fit inside the M body.

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

[mujk]

I think what @FrozenInTime proposes can be much more difficult to implement than what it first seems. You need to remember that the rangefinder in optical rangefinder/OVF cameras requires that the magnification of the rangefinder and the OVF is exactly the same. This is of course fairly easy to achieve with a fixed-magnification OVF. However, the magnification of the image in an EVF varies depending on the lens used and it also changes slightly when focusing. These changes would need to be mirrored exactly by some sort of variable magnification (possibly digital) rangefinder - otherwise rangefinder patch matching would not work.

In addition, rangefinder movement will happen along the axis between the rangefinder window and the finder. In an OVF rangefinder this means a horizontal or vertical movement, depending on camera orientation. In an EVF rangefinder the default rangefinder window position would be more or less diagonally orientated related to the position of the lens, from which the other part of the patch image would originate. This means that the rangefinder patch double image would move diagonally when focusing, something a bit different from the movement we are used to. Also the rangefinder base, i.e. the distance between the rangefinder window and the lens axis, would be smaller than that of a current rangefinder M camera, meaning reduced rangefinder accuracy.

However, what could work is a rangefinder with two dedicated rangefinder windows, like in Barnack Leicas. The output from this (probably electronic) rangefinder would then be digitally inserted into the center of the EVF image, although not necessarily matching the variable magnification of this exactly. The focusing experience would of course not be exactly the same as with an optical rangefinder+OVF, but might still be useful. 

[FrozenInTime]

19 minutes ago, mujk said:

I think what @FrozenInTime proposes can be much more difficult to implement than what it first seems. You need to remember that the rangefinder in optical rangefinder/OVF cameras requires that the magnification of the rangefinder and the OVF is exactly the same. This is of course fairly easy to achieve with a fixed-magnification OVF. However, the magnification of the image in an EVF varies depending on the lens used and it also changes slightly when focusing. These changes would need to be mirrored exactly by some sort of variable magnification (possibly digital) rangefinder - otherwise rangefinder patch matching would not work.

In addition, rangefinder movement will happen along the axis between the rangefinder window and the finder. In an OVF rangefinder this means a horizontal or vertical movement, depending on camera orientation. In an EVF rangefinder the default rangefinder window position would be more or less diagonally orientated related to the position of the lens, from which the other part of the patch image would originate. This means that the rangefinder patch double image would move diagonally when focusing, something a bit different from the movement we are used to. Also the rangefinder base, i.e. the distance between the rangefinder window and the lens axis, would be smaller than that of a current rangefinder M camera, meaning reduced rangefinder accuracy.

However, what could work is a rangefinder with two dedicated rangefinder windows, like in Barnack Leicas. The output from this (probably electronic) rangefinder would then be digitally inserted into the center of the EVF image, although not necessarily matching the variable magnification of this exactly. The focusing experience would of course not be exactly the same as with an optical rangefinder+OVF, but might still be useful. 

Good points:

Beyond exact focal length entry, focus breathing would need compensation, some lenses more than others, so the RF cam position would need to the resolved. Certainly adds cost, calibration and LUTs.

Parallax compensation would again require RF cam data to set the diagonal offset shift to set where the main frame floats in the EVF, with the optical window remaining fixed in position.

The RF base length reduced by ~ 0.7x. Would the visual effect of OOF blur becoming sharp provide perceptual compensation. The pure EVF would easily be better <28mm and >75mm.

Linhof made a dual window OE rangefinder module to update their classic 4x5 rangefinder Master Technika  - the EMS, which tried to correlate data on 1D linear CCDs to provide an absolute distance measurement. It further measured optically the lens extension, and the user would close the loop by manual focus. All very complex, requiring service centre created calibration tables for each lens and camera combination.  With the technology of the ‘2000s, not surprising it was an expensive failure. Today with data from two 2D sensors and modern processor subject recognition a far better job could be done.

[Dazzajl]

13 hours ago, maxpower said:

If the EV1 is a success I hope they would innovate more on focussing techniques for the successor.

If the EV1 is a success, they won’t need to. 

[maidenfan84]

I’m personally happy with the switch that means no more sending the camera body out to do adjustments for the viewfinder. It means that there’s more lenses that can be accurately used, and it also means that you can use very shallow aperture lenses much more easily instead of trying to guess because the view finder window itself wasn’t in perfect alignment. Plus one of the best things in my opinion is there’s no more focus shift what you see is what you get not one picture you think you get that you see inside your view finder but then when you take the picture, it’s actually a different angle that shifted on you. 

i’m all for more time shooting less time sending equipment out to be adjusted or repaired or fixed

Edited 1 hour ago by maidenfan84

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