My Take on the Leica MEV-1 Electronic Viewfinder — A Letdown?

[SrMi]

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2 hours ago, CDodkin said:

OP clearly stated that the images look fine on the LCD  'On the rear LCD, however, none of this is an issue — gradients are smooth, colors look rich, blacks are deep, and overall the images look very pleasing' - so from that, my take away is that the recorded images are fine, with no recorded banding. It' just replay through the EVF where he has an issue. I would assume that rules out electronic shutter as the problem.

Recently, OP said, 'the banding is still noticeable, especially when reviewing photos after they’ve been taken.' See the quote included in my post #15. I agree that his reporting is a bit confusing.

[un-342]

15 hours ago, Luke_Miller said:

While I do not have an M EV1 I am very familiar with banding in my SL bodies.  This occurs only with the electronic shutter in artificial light when using shutter speeds that are not a multiple of the frequency of the lighting. Very rarely I see this with the mechanical shutter, but the electronic shutter does it consistantly.  Since some posters mention that banding is visible when reviewing images, I wonder if some of the banding issues are the result of electronic shutter use.

 

I agree with Miller on that point — the electronic (hybrid) shutter clearly makes the EVF artifacts worse, especially under LED lighting. Switching to the mechanical shutter improves things noticeably.

However, to be clear, this does not solve the issue completely. The remaining banding and high-ISO noise are visible only in the EVF, not in the image files and not even on the rear LCD. That strongly suggests the problem sits in the EVF pipeline (sensor readout → processing → 60 Hz display) rather than exposure or image quality itself.

So the electronic shutter is a trigger, not the root cause. It exposes an underlying limitation that firmware can only partially mask.

 

6 hours ago, matt736 said:

I feel the Leica M EV1 is a good concept but is lacking better internals that the Q3 and SL3 variants have with the Maestro IV processor, while the M EV1 only has a Maestro III processor. It can only deliver what it has to work with which is a slower refresh rate evf compared to the Q3 and SL3 variants.

What’s puzzling is that Leica already has a much better solution in the Q3’s 120 Hz EVF, yet chose not to use it here. For some users, that alone may be a dealbreaker.

That said, the M-EV1 still gets a lot right. In use, it feels like a smaller, no-autofocus Q2 with interchangeable lenses, which makes it a genuinely strong EDC / travel camera — just held back by an EVF that doesn’t match the rest of the camera.

[CDodkin]

6 hours ago, un-342 said:

 

I agree with Miller on that point — the electronic (hybrid) shutter clearly makes the EVF artifacts worse, especially under LED lighting. Switching to the mechanical shutter improves things noticeably.

However, to be clear, this does not solve the issue completely. The remaining banding and high-ISO noise are visible only in the EVF, not in the image files and not even on the rear LCD. That strongly suggests the problem sits in the EVF pipeline (sensor readout → processing → 60 Hz display) rather than exposure or image quality itself.

So the electronic shutter is a trigger, not the root cause. It exposes an underlying limitation that firmware can only partially mask.

 

What’s puzzling is that Leica already has a much better solution in the Q3’s 120 Hz EVF, yet chose not to use it here. For some users, that alone may be a dealbreaker.

That said, the M-EV1 still gets a lot right. In use, it feels like a smaller, no-autofocus Q2 with interchangeable lenses, which makes it a genuinely strong EDC / travel camera — just held back by an EVF that doesn’t match the rest of the camera.

You have a faulty M EV1 - Having taken over a thousand frames with the M EV1 now, mechanical shutter, electronic shutter, ISO64-6400, daytime, nighttime, I see zero banding from any of them on review in the EVF. No 'high-ISO noise' either. The idea that it's 'an underlying limitation that firmware can only partially mask' is just BS.