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Leica M9 schedule for September 2009 ?

rondeb

New member
So, to get slightly back on topic of the upcoming M9...

To CCD or not to CCD. That is the question.

Riccis? :)
 

jaapv

Subscriber Member
He won't let you see it -- he's keeping it in a box guarded by Schrödinger's Cat!

They both exist in an indeterminate state until September 9. At that point, the vapor either condenses into a tangible Leica M9, or it doesn't. Either way, the cat is then out of the box AND out of the bag, if you take my meaning...
Different cats - the box one is an animal and the bag one is a whip - Oh- and the bag is red baize, so I don't get your meaning:lecture::ROTFL:
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
What's your purpose here? Is it to tell us that our preferences are wrong?
No, it's to reinforce that our preferences are exactly that, preferences.

There's a certain tendency in the Leica world to act as if individual preferences were more than that -- more like natural law, or scientific fact, or historical inevitability, or destiny.

But preferences -- I love those. If you want to tell me, "I prefer the look of my DMR images over Nikon D3x images because the colors and details look better to me," or "because my gallery owner finds them more salable," then I'm totally with you. If you want to say, "I prefer my M8 images to DSLR images because customers like them better," I'm on your team. If you want to say, "I don't know why, I just like them better," you have my applause.

In fact, I can't afford NOT to stick up for unadorned individual preference. I'd prefer to watch ballet rather than football, which puts me at odds with 99.99% of the male population; I drive a 1974 Saab that looks like a sunburned aardvark; and my favorite camera/lens combo is an Epson R-D 1 with an adapted Canon 50mm f/0.95!

In other words, my own preferences are so eccentric that I'm certainly not going to attack other people's... as long as we're clear that preferences are what we're talking about!
 

woodyspedden

New member
Problem is that Herr Kauffman is good at Brett Favre speak!

He also said at Photokina that the company would still support the R family and they announced that the R10 was for real.

Less than a year later look what has happened vis a vis R products.

Personally, although I am a leica fan, I wait for real news which means news of products that will be shipping within three months.


JMHO

Woody
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I'm with you Woody I like to hear real things. The rumors are fun but we deal with reality and frankly we need to look at real buy or not buy decisions and base our business or pleasure on facts.
 

beamon

New member
He also said at Photokina that the company would still support the R family and they announced that the R10 was for real.

Less than a year later look what has happened vis a vis R products.


Woody
Yeah, but you have to give them the luxury of changing their minds. Consider that at Photokina the world hadn't yet begun the headlong plunge into recession/depression.

I remain convinced that Leica should have pursued an R10 instead of the S2, but they didn't and that's that! In either case, whether an R10 or the S2, they face a limited market. Whether it be competition with N,C,S for an R10 or limited numbers in the pro market for the S2, Leica has been a niche player for many years. If they could learn to live with limited new products, but maintain their reputation to many as the best in what they do, it might have and may, yet work.

For what they're worth in the marketplace, my R lenses are worth hanging on to in the blind faith that there will, as promised, be "something coming along for them". But, that strategy involves another 'promise'!:deadhorse:
 

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Roger - How do you lose 180mm? Cropping a full-frame image to 1.33x puts you right back where you are with the M8's crop's, so I don't understand how'd you be losing anything compared to what we have with the M8. I totally agree with you regarding some degree of weather sealing. It's scary that a rain drop can roll off the case, under the power button and seep into the camera body.

Overall I like the M8 how it is. I don't want to see it get complicated with EVF's or electronic frame lines. If I want features, buttons and high levels of customization - then I'll buy / use a dSLR. What I like most about the M8 is its simplicity and directness. More MP, maybe full-frame, same sharpness, better ISO, 16-bit DNGs and maybe some other minor tweaks, and I'm happy. A nicely paced evolution into a full-frame M9 is about my pace.

The Micro 4/3's solution is probably a good platform for some of these other ideas - like EVF type framing. A well thought out 4/3's body that can accept M lenses directly could be a very nice addition to the M8/M9 as a second body / back up. I'm not sure if I'd like using a 90 APO cropped to 2X for an effective 180mm FOV, but then again, I might like that option. With sensor stabilization that could be a very intriguing option.

I'm also wondering if we'll see the Visoflex make a return as the R lens solution. That's probably not as slick of a solution as some people would like, but I get a kick out of the Visoflex III. It's a bit frankenstein in its execution, but it amuses me.
You are of course correct..I hadn t thought about the extra MP would allow a lot more cropping. Hard though to give up the IQ in FF....nothing beats a larger sensor overall. OK Now I want FF right after the ISO.
 

John Black

Active member
Roger - which 135mm are you using? I've been think about the 2nd version elmarit w/ goggles (55mm Canadian), but have held off because I thought focusing would be hit or miss.
 

robmac

Well-known member
Well said sir.

BTW - the "...sunburned ardvark" line? A classic.

No, it's to reinforce that our preferences are exactly that, preferences.

There's a certain tendency in the Leica world to act as if individual preferences were more than that -- more like natural law, or scientific fact, or historical inevitability, or destiny.

But preferences -- I love those. If you want to tell me, "I prefer the look of my DMR images over Nikon D3x images because the colors and details look better to me," or "because my gallery owner finds them more salable," then I'm totally with you. If you want to say, "I prefer my M8 images to DSLR images because customers like them better," I'm on your team. If you want to say, "I don't know why, I just like them better," you have my applause.

In fact, I can't afford NOT to stick up for unadorned individual preference. I'd prefer to watch ballet rather than football, which puts me at odds with 99.99% of the male population; I drive a 1974 Saab that looks like a sunburned aardvark; and my favorite camera/lens combo is an Epson R-D 1 with an adapted Canon 50mm f/0.95!

In other words, my own preferences are so eccentric that I'm certainly not going to attack other people's... as long as we're clear that preferences are what we're talking about!
 

KurtKamka

Subscriber Member
John, the 135mm 3.4 apo telyt is a very good lens. A little more expensive at around $1500 used, but still a very nice lens.
 

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Roger - which 135mm are you using? I've been think about the 2nd version elmarit w/ goggles (55mm Canadian), but have held off because I thought focusing would be hit or miss.
John I use the newest version the 135/3.4 APO....you can see a number of images on my website under Street shooting/san francisco 09. (This is a work in progress because it helps to see them in context of the website).

First you need to have sorted out the whole diopter magnifier question. The 1.4X is a big improvement but the 1.25x works. The proper diopter is critical because even a slight focus error results in a total blur. I stack the 1.4 and 1.25 when testing for calibration. But once its calibrated the 1.25x works fine.

The second issue is the calibration....its easy to find a 135apo that focuses close accurately but as you move toward infinity it can go out quick. Tough one to crack because its on at 10ft ,front by 2 ft at 20ft and pure blur at infinity. My street in FL has mail boxes every say 100ft for a quarter mile . Great test location. Took DAG 3 tries and he needed my M8 even though he couldn t find anything different from his test M8 ...he just used my M8 as the standard and adjusted the lens to my camera.

The reason I worked so long on this ...was that photography around water needs some reach . A 180FOV is often needed just to frame the scene . having a 135 allows me to work just with my M8s otherwise its a DSLR. The apo is a superb lens and I like the rendering as well as any of the M lenses.
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
Why does it need reinforcing? Something about preaching and choirs comes to mind. Are you our messiah? :D
Obviously you haven't read farther up the thread! Some of the loudest voices in the choir have been contending that hardware antialiasing is Original Sin, and to that crowd I'm a heretic, not a messiah!
 

nostatic

New member
Obviously you haven't read farther up the thread! Some of the loudest voices in the choir have been contending that hardware antialiasing is Original Sin, and to that crowd I'm a heretic, not a messiah!
Of course the ultimate irony is that heretics and messiahs usually end up with the same fate...

I prefer something along the Cardinal line. Never know when a good Inquisition might spring up.
 

John Black

Active member
Roger, I'll hold off on a 135mm lens until we know whether or not the M9 is real. If the M9 is real, then a 135mm lens is the least of my worries :) BTW - I tried to look at your site, but the URL doesn't seem to be correct (in your signature).
 

doug

Well-known member
Obviously you haven't read farther up the thread! Some of the loudest voices in the choir have been contending that hardware antialiasing is Original Sin, and to that crowd I'm a heretic, not a messiah!
Obviously you've suffered the malady you're seeing in others. Did you not read the post where I pointed out the advantages (IMHO) of AA filters?
 

isaac

New member
Hello!
Okay, I admit I'm straying off-topic a bit, but I have a question about this.

Given that we accept the proposition that anti-aliasing (AA) filters are bad for color, tonal range, detail, etc., and that consequently less AA filtering is better, and no AA filtering is best of all... then why do Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic, etc., etc., insist on including them in so many of their camera designs?

Is it because:
No (to all three expectations)...
Or is it possibly that AA filters have their place? I know, I shouldn't have said it, but I hang around in the gutters and dark alleys of the photography world, where twisted souls who have turned their back on the Gospel of Solms whisper perverted heresies of this sort... I was going to enumerate a few, but was afraid of shocking the kiddies...
The mystery behind haveing no AA-filter is simply, that this is only possible (and sensefull) with a full-frame CCD, where the active pixels (pixelareas) are almost contiguous.
Which means there are only very small gaps between the active pixelareas.
On the other side, interline CCD and CMOS (and also LiveMOS) sensors have active pixelareas less than the theoretical area from calculation from the 'pixelpitch'. So the otherwise lost image information from these gaps has to be added to the neighbouring active pixels, which is best (?) done by an AA-filter.
There are some common (???) accepted rules for AA-filtering:
1) without AA-filter one can achieve the highest possible image quality (resolution, noise, colorsaturation and so on)
2) without AA-filter, only full-frame CCDs could be used, therefore LiveView or even video are out of scope.
3) the result from (2) is also, that a compareable (to CMOS) high ISO sensitivity could only be reached with hardware/sensor pixel pinning (to a lower resolution with adequate lowest noise).

Moireé is another chapter of this story. An AA-filter can - in the best condition - only minimize it to a certain degree, but never remove it completely. In case of no AA-filter, moireé can be easily minimized and even removed in a high degree by software algorithm.
 

georgl

New member
@isaac

The differences you mentioned regarding CMOS/CCD/Full-Frame-CCD and pixel-pitch are very important and true.

But these "gaps" are handled by microlenses, which focus the light on the light-sensitive-area and not by the AA-filter. CMOS are hardly usable without microlenses while some full-frame CCDs don't have microlenses (like most MFDBs) and still loose abut 1 stop effective sensitivity (like P30+/H3DII-31 vs. P45+/H3DII-39) but making them less problematic with movements/oblique light rays (real WA-lenses).

As far as I know, the AA-filter doesn't affect noise or colors, it's not much more than a piece of glass which slightly blurs the image like satin glass.

This has nothing to do with CMOS vs. CCD, CMOS-sensors are easy to manufacture (in existing fabs) and can implement certain post-processing (less additional components). CCDs are more expensive to manufacture and they're just converters from light->electricity (photodiodes), they have the highest fill-rate but don't offer any kind of internal processing, even the amplification and AD-conversion is done be separate ICs.
The low-noise of todays CMOS-sensors is reached with noise-filtering which may affect certain other IQ-aspects (like microcontrast and color) - never compare noise of CCD and CMOS directly in RAW "without any noise reduction", because the CMOS-RAW already incorporates heavy post-processing. Test them with fine details (denoise uniform areas is simple) and process both RAWs with noise-tools.
 

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Roger, I'll hold off on a 135mm lens until we know whether or not the M9 is real. If the M9 is real, then a 135mm lens is the least of my worries :) BTW - I tried to look at your site, but the URL doesn't seem to be correct (in your signature).
John corrected the URL on my signiture....it does not include www. .. problems just Google my name.
 
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