Sean Reid s Review of the M9

[jonoslack]

Jono, i live in Holland, in Almere to be precise. Possibility to meet? You can stay in my place if it suits you.
Gives me a chance to fel this M9 ;-)

Jan R.

HI Jan
It'd be great to meet you, and that's a wonderful offer. . . but I think I'm at the wrong end of Holland (Bergen op Zoom), and I will, unfortunately, be working. I'm sure I could squeeze in a drink (I can always squeeze in a drink :ROTFL, but with your lovely Dutch roads it might be quite a long drive!

 

[JanRSmit]

HI Jan
It'd be great to meet you, and that's a wonderful offer. . . but I think I'm at the wrong end of Holland (Bergen op Zoom), and I will, unfortunately, be working. I'm sure I could squeeze in a drink (I can always squeeze in a drink :ROTFL, but with your lovely Dutch roads it might be quite a long drive!

Jono,

Just send you a email to suggest a time and place

Jan R.

 

[gogopix]

JLM
congrats on the "KILO-Posts!!:thumbup:

Victor

 

[dseelig]

It is funny I read Reid reviews for a while then do not re up bottom line, I could not stand voigtlander lenses that he liked. I bought the 50 nokton and the 15 got purple fringing more flare and a lack of snap. I have different tastes then him and that is not a knock of Sean just I have a different sense of what I want in a lens. I feel for Sean in that I believe he got blindsided by the ir problems of the m8 that he did, says something else to me. If you look at me website and see my new orleans shots you will see what I want out of the m8 and now I got a m9 . I go to New Orleans this weekend. PS When a internet writer gets makes a mistake they tend to go nuts trying to get there integrity rep back . sometimes aat the expense of a product . I am thinking of Galbraith and his punishing Canon mk 111 on its autofocus performance it is now a great camera and yet Galbraith keeps saying it sucks.
www.davidseelig.com

 

[jlm]

yahoo, one grand!

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Congrats John. All 1003 great posts too. LOL

 

[tashley]

Without wanting to bring dead horses to life... but I am not sure that this one is quite dead...

I want to add my 2 cents. I found my way with the original M8 and lenses mainly because of Reid Reviews, to which I still subscribe and the content of which I greatly value. I was more than a little surprised, therefore, to see the implication higher up this thread that Sean Reid had somehow been a patsy for Leica when the facts are so clearly different: my clear memory, and this is confirmed by checking the site, is that Sean just did not notice the IR issue first off, at all. Partly because no-one those days thought to check for it, partly because he mostly works in B&W and partly because no-one can remember the colour of the jackets of the thousand strangers who crossed his viewfinder that day. As soon as it came to his notice he covered it, its effects, causes and remedies, exhaustively.

I hope that no real harm was meant by the implication that Sean behaved improperly but I do think that people need to consider carefully the value of someone like Sean's reputation and integrity. He is clearly a gifted working photographer and a thorough reviewer. One might (though I would not) want to criticise him for not being thorough enough in not testing specifically for IR contamination but then there was absolutely no precedent to suggest that he should. But to suggest that he alters his reviews to suit a manufacturer is to imply to people who are not familiar with his work that it is compromised. This affects both his reputation and the economic viability of his review work and I think that is deeply unfair.

It's in the nature of the review world that if a manufacturer lets you get hold of something first, it reinforces your reputation as a reviewer. We all want to get informed opinion on new gear as quickly as possible. So for Sean, Michael R and others, being taken to Germany to get first dibs at the M9 helps bolster their reputations and their revenues streams (to which they are perfectly well entitled if their work is good). But to allow oneself to interpret that as a sign of lack of independence is to misunderstand the grown up realities of the world of reviewing: in fact one of the main things I pay for with Sean is quite specifically his independence, in which I have 100% faith.

It's easy in a world of disappointing behaviour by public figures to allow one's cynicism to overcome one's intelligence and to over-ride one's analytical abilities. But it's not fair to do so.

Tim

 

[ddk]

It's easy in a world of disappointing behaviour by public figures to allow one's cynicism to overcome one's intelligence and to over-ride one's analytical abilities. But it's not fair to do so.

Tim

I guess this is aimed squarely at me, which is fine. Think whatever you want of my cynicism; FACT remains that it didn't take the average user 24hrs to discover the IR issue. Both Reichman and Askey caught the problem early on and were told by Leica to hush up. Reid & Reichmann have either a friendship or professional relation of sorts and I find it hard to believe that they never discussed such a big issue. Neither do I believe that Askey and Reichman were the only ones asked by Leica not the mention the problem before the launch of the camera. Difference is that both these gentlemen came clean, which I respect.

You believe that he didn't catch a problem that took many others less than a day to see, fine, then he wasn't diligent with his review and missed such a major and unserviceable problem, either way he let his subscribers down...

PS. I fully agree with what you say about public figures Tim, but I've also been around the block a few times both as a manufacturer and a distributor of products, I have an insight as to how things work in the real world too.

 

[Jack]

Folks, continuing this discussion is pointless as no new *constructive* data is being shared, so time to close it down.