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M9 full specs and pictures are out. Let's discuss.


nugat

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And you would not post it here ?

Samir, see the notice at the top of the forum page. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, posting the PDF/link is not allowed here (LUF).

Hopefully you will find one that works soon.

Edited by stevelap
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Samir, see the notice at the top of the forum page. For legal reasons posting the PDF/link is not allowed here (LUF). Hopefully you will find on that works soon.

Andreas' message says:

"Dear all,

"today screenshots were published here in the forum of a Leica microsite that wasn't published until now. We had to moderate these postings as this material is strictly confidential and its publishing here in the forum would harm our good relationship to Leica and might eventually cause legal trouble.

"Thanks for your cooperation!

"Andreas"

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Egibaud,

 

it is time that you clear up your mind what you really want. In my point of view you wasted money with your two 5d's. I do expect that the M9 plus Leica glass will outreach your 5ds and Canon glass in image quality by far not considering sports and macro which is the field of SLRs.

 

I also do not see the actual requirement for Iso's above 2500.

 

Regards

Steve

 

I think the M9 confirms my thoughts. It is ideal for amateurs who do not need to justify the investment and have incomes other than from photography. It is also ok for photographer whose prices are quite high.

 

Where I am based the prices we practice cannot justify the investment. I use 2 M8 bodies and one of them I bought when I was an amateur so I never really looked at cost then. Now replacing them with 2 M9 for let's says 3 year of intensive use would mean doing 6 wedding coverages to pay for them + batteries, larger SD cards... so probably 7 Weddings. Non sense when I've bought two Canon 5D MKII Cameras for less than the income of 3 wedding coverage. And this is considering I had Leica lenses, If I hadn't the investment would be close to 10 or 12 wedding coverages when the necessary Canon kit would be close to 4.5 wedding coverages.

 

Looking at specs. I do not doubt that the quality is very high, although I wished to have the option to decide wether noisy 3200 ISO or 6400 ISO suites me and not limit to 2500 ISO.

 

Sorry the specs have not convinced me not to let my M8 bodies go and keep moving onto Canon.

 

Many people tell me I will regret it, and honestly I have been shooting with both M8 and 5D MKII and I ended up keeping the Canon in my hands and the M8 in the bag.

I feel the M8/M9 are the perfect cameras for jobs where you have time to frame, shoot, expose, focus etc... my assigments do not respond to theses specs.

 

What I can say for Leica, is that having a M body in my hands is the greatest feeling I had, a Canikon feels more like a toy.

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No, you may have noticed a big banner message across the top of the web page. If you haven't done so already read it. Once read you can close it by clicking on the 'X' on the right hand side of the message.

 

Ok...found it. Since I have a very slow connection, it took a while to download it.

 

And saw the banner too...which I find ludicrous.

 

That being said, the M9 looks like the one! I sold my M8 back in February...but not sure there is a Leica Dealer in DRC :(

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And you would not post it here ?

 

It's not difficult, it should be well within the first 10 hits on a Google search, as a website describing the leak and a link to the PDF. (Edit: ok, so you found it ;) ). Personally, the leak makes me even more exited to hear what Leica has to say on the 9th.

 

A little disappointed with the 0.68x VF, and lack of Chrome (I can't imagine they wouldn't offer one before long), but otherwise, the nice clean utilitarian design looks fantastic.

Edited by anupmc
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those are the values in the iso-menu:

 

auto iso

pull 80

160

[...]

.

.

2500

At least they are honest about it, that's quite refreshing.

 

Nikon on the other hand started implementing 2 pushed steps with the D3 (12800 & 25600). Canon topped it off with giving the 5D2 no less than 3 pushed steps, the sensor's max setting is 3200. And 6400 isn't even marked as "pushed" anywhere, it's part of the normal settings and not a "High" mode. The intermediate steps are emulated too.

 

And when you read the forums, it's clear that most people don't even know about this and some consider getting a higher end model "for the additional sensitivity".

 

The M9 really has about the same ISO range as most current DSLRs, the company just doesn't use those silly marketing tricks.

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Steve,

 

My mind is clear. Leica glass is far better, no doubt about this. But what I gain with glass I lose with body so unless going back to film M I think other bodies are doing better than M8 and I do not speak about sports.

As far as M9 is concerned althought quality may be outstanding, the end market rules. If my clients do not understand why my prices should be higher the only part who is making extra money is Leica as I have to invest in M9 bodies and my clients will not support the cost difference.

Regarding ISO 2500 95% of my jobs are done at night, wedding celebration, low light, concert in small places with low light etc, I garanty that the M8 640 ISO is far enought if the subject do not move and I can shoot at 1/8th or 1/15th otherwise.... what can I do? buy faster lenses? I already use a Noctilux!

 

I do not say the M9 or M8 are bad cameras, they are brilliant cameras but not for the jobs I do. Here in spain most weddings are at night, when I have day time weddings no doubt the Leica gives better results.

 

Anyway, many people have opinion about slr or rangefinder and have ever used only one of them, and sometimes both but at different period of their lives. I use both system right now, so I think my real life testing speak for themselves in MY conditions. And saddly if the results gave M8 winner... I cannot justify M9 investment.

 

Price wise. If Leica is so famous for their lenses.... why stab us with the body price. With these specs it should be price no higher than a Nikon D3... the M8.2 is US1000 more expensive than the D3.... not to mention a D700 or a Canon 5D MKII.

 

I accept Leica price policy for lenses but not for bodies.

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....

Regarding ISO 2500 95% of my jobs are done at night, wedding celebration, low light, concert in small places with low light etc, I garanty that the M8 640 ISO is far enought if the subject do not move and I can shoot at 1/8th or 1/15th otherwise.... what can I do? buy faster lenses? I already use a Noctilux!

 

I do not say the M9 or M8 are bad cameras, they are brilliant cameras but not for the jobs I do. Here in spain most weddings are at night, when I have day time weddings no doubt the Leica gives better results.

...

 

Your point will be interesting when the M9 is out. I hope you'll get a chance to compare the results of ISO 2500 with a M9 and more than that with your Canon and show it here so we can make up our minds about the limits of the new Leica.

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And saw the banner too...which I find ludicrous.

 

You may not agree with Adreas but he's very sensibly taking the view that it doesn't pay to bite the hand that feeds you. This is a Leica friendly site so there's some legitimacy in taking the moral high ground on this for the moment, regardless of whatever the rest of the internet might do.

 

On 9/9 this will all be moot.

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Then again you're not the one who would be jeopardising your relationship with Leica, and at worst being open to prosecution.

 

If an information is publicly available it is odd this forum would censor it, and even more unlikely there would be any prosecution. If anything, someone from within Leica or its partners should be sanctioned, not the administrator of a discussion forum.

 

Anyway, we all saw the PDF, we all know we saw it, and now I can better understand the discussion in this thread :)

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Egibaud, I still don't get it. Let us assume that the M9 equally performs compared to your Canon 5D MkII at ISO 2500. With Leica you are able to shoot wide open but with Canon you can't.

Thus under the above unproven assumption the M9 would be the better tool to work with under low light especially with your set of lenses.

 

Nevertheless, there are still some days to wait and see to discuss on a more profound basis.

 

Regards

Steve

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I think the case was perhaps over-stated, since even Canon has a few good lenses, but even with their very best lenses (35L, 85L, and somewhat the 135L), there is noticeable chromatic abberation, and with the 35L, also softness. The modern Leica lenses are in those two aspects significantly better. These L lenses aren't bad though, so it depends on your standards, and how much you are willing to correct in software before considering the results good.

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The article does say that D3 (hence D700) almost warrants the 13 bit , so you may see the difference. The question is how M9 gets the 16 bits off the sensor and via A/D converter into the DNG uncompressed file.

 

There are bits and there are bits. Having a 14 or even a 16 bit converter does nor mean in the real world that you will get 14 or 16 bit dynamic range.

There is hardly a 14 bit A/D converter designed for camera's having more than 73 dB of DR instead of the 84dB that would be possible for an ideal 14 bit converter,

With 16 bit, the DR would be 96 dB in theory, but getting more than 76 dB DR will be hard. This is hardly restricting the system, since the sensor has a limited DR of roughly 12 stops, equivalent to 12 bits or 72 dB, and that only at the lowest ISO range.

 

To put 16 bits in an incompressed DNG on the other hand is quite easy for the M9, you wil get a 36M Pixel file instead of a compressed 18 Mpixel file.

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Egibaud, I still don't get it. Let us assume that the M9 equally performs compared to your Canon 5D MkII at ISO 2500. With Leica you are able to shoot wide open but with Canon you can't.

Thus under the above unproven assumption the M9 would be the better tool to work with under low light especially with your set of lenses.

 

Nevertheless, there are still some days to wait and see to discuss on a more profound basis.

 

Regards

Steve

 

What's about depth of field if I shoot wide open? what about speed? and what about price difference?

Of course we need to see some results, but even if the M9 was the best camera ever, the price tag cannot be justified unless I could rise my prices and have my clients pay for the investment. I am not sure if you are aware but there is some kind of financial crisis, here in the Canary Islands unployment is around 23%.... I am really not sure it is time to rise prices even if I can offer the best quality ever.

 

By the way if you saw American Photo Magazine top 10 wedding photographers... How many were using Leica?.... How come they acheive such results using these so bad cameras called Nikon or Canon.

 

Cameras are tools, Leica as the best lenses but surely not the best bodies at present time. This is why we see Canon bodies with Leica R glass quite often.

 

But I accept to receive donations so I can buy an M9 and tell you what I think about it :D

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There are bits and there are bits. Having a 14 or even a 16 bit converter does nor mean in the real world that you will get 14 or 16 bit dynamic range.

 

Hello out there.....16 bit!!! Even if it's not full 16 by the time it hits the SD card (more like 15?) it still means that this camera is basically functioning like a MFDB (CCD, no AA filter, 16 Bit). This puts the Leica in an entirely different league of potential quality than virtually every other 35mm camera on the market.

 

While the real difference between 16bit and 12 or 14 is most visible only with fairly aggressive post-processing, the difference is very real. For maximum quality that means shooting at 160 and giving the chip as much light as it will take short of clipping ('expose to the right'), but that is pretty easy with a summilux ;)

 

Coupled with the micro-contrast rendering abilities of Leica glass, the results could be phenomenal! Leica should be trumpetting this from the roof-tops!

 

- N.

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