I meant nothing nefarious , by my cliché (which was half heartedly tongue in cheek) "free country". Value is a highly subjective proposition and fortunately we are presented enough choices to hopefully meet our needs. I am considering an X....and I have seen them , not too many, fs for close to 1K. that seems like a reasonable deal even comparing with some of the newer Japanese offerings, too numerous to count. I can't keep up with it.
-
Cameraderie, a friendly photography forum, join now for free!
asiafish
All-Pro
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Name
- Andrew
Shooting JPEG only really is wasting the capabilities of these cameras. The MM or any digital M has never had a good JPEG engine, but Adobe Lightroom does. The X series always had good JPEGS, not sure about the Q, but DNG is where all of their capabilities lie.
D
dalethorn
Guest
What I already said. The X is a great value, and the ZS100 is a ripoff. It probably isn't easy for a lot of people to judge value unless they use a lot of different cameras. So my judgement is based on owning quite a few Leicas, and many other brands that have complementary features. Of course, the ZS100 is a Panasonic, but I've had quite a few similar Panasonic-Leicas.
BTW, the "Leica" lens in the $700 ZS100 is awful.
D
dalethorn
Guest
I found that out with the Q and the Monochrom, at some expense. Now while I would certainly agree that some of these cameras aren't well-suited to JPEGs, I disagree that JPEG-only is wasting anything at all, and in fact saving valuable time, on the cameras that have decent JPEGs.
asiafish
All-Pro
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Name
- Andrew
If good OOC JPEGs are your goal, you will probably be happier with Fuji, which has an excellent JPEG engine.
D
dalethorn
Guest
I know Fuji from my friends at the Medina OH photo club, and others in California, Tennessee, and S. Carolina. I'm much happier with the Leica X. But I understand the Fuji thing, since the users I know personally get great results with them.
asiafish
All-Pro
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Name
- Andrew
X has e
xcellent JOEGs, but DNGs are even better.
D
dalethorn
Guest
I know - I did RAW processing back in 2007. The reason I do JPEGs now is best illustrated by an analogy, if you'll permit:
In 1980, the editor of one of HP's journals on the Series 80 computers was discussing the design of their 64-bit processor then (in 1980) and its rather sluggish speed. He said that "Perhaps by 1999 all the code ever written by that time would run in almost no time due to much faster processor speeds and greater memory."
My analogy is that my Leica X JPEGs are better than the RAWs I worked with in 2007. So a RAW may indeed be better than a JPEG at the same point in time, but everything gets better anyway, and the only way I have to justify the extra work is by selling the stuff, which I'm not interested in.
asiafish
All-Pro
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Name
- Andrew
I see it more like buying a Corvette, but only ever driving at the speed limit. At the speed limit the Corvette will go from A to B just fine, but you are missing out on the vast majority of its capabilities.
I shoot my Canon 6D in RAW+JPEG and often use the JPEGs because they are very well handled. The JPEGs from my Leicas are horrible compared to the Canon JPEGs, but the DNGs outstanding even without any processing beyond straight Lightroom export.
D
dalethorn
Guest
I would love to have a Corvette just to drive the speed limit. But I digress... I agree with getting some defaults set up - maybe different defaults for different scenarios - and then just flopping the RAWs to JPEG on one of those set of defaults. But for some reason, while I did NOT like the JPEGs out of the MM or Q, the X's JPEGs almost always look good to me. I've mentioned to my wife who uses the Canon G3x that she could get better results just converting from RAW automatically in various software, but she knows instinctively that it will be a drain on her time, however minor that drain might seem at the outset.
asiafish
All-Pro
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Name
- Andrew
I have a standard default for M Monochrom DNGs in lightroom. I simply pull the black point -10 and have a JPEG that is better than the JPEG from the X113. Some images want more, some less, but since it is a raw file if the initial import isn't to my liking I have plenty of room to adjust
The M Monochrom (CCD) and M-E have crappy JPEG engines, but their raw files are gorgeous and Lightroom 6 makes it very easy.
David H Dennis
Rookie
- Location
- West Palm Beach, Florida
- Name
- David H Dennis
I wasn't really interested in Leica until I checked out the SL and X-U. The SL seems to give Nikon's D5 a good run for its money, with a smaller and lighter camera which is attractive to me. I wound up buying the D5 because it would have been staggeringly expensive to buy the SL with its 24-70 and 70-200 equivalents, but I definitely found the SL very appealing.
But right now the X-U intrigues me because I want to get underwater shots, and didn't appreciate the relatively poor (leak-prone) build quality of the Nikon AW1. It seems to me that if you want a really high-quality rugged camera, the X-U might be the only one. The main thing that's holding me back is the staggeringly high price (albeit comparable to the cost of underwater housings alone) and the fact that I see so few underwater pictures taken with one. It seems that if I buy one, I might be one of the first people outside the direct Leica family (Leica stores, etc) to shoot underwater! That seems a little fun but at the same time a little scary, especially with such a costly product.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that Leica seems to be on a roll. It's creating compelling new products that are of superlatively high quality but at the same time more innovative than the Canon/Nikon duolopy. It's true that the X-U seems like it might have been a bit of a miss in the market, but the Q and SL definitely look like great cameras that deserve to be hits, even at very high prices.
If you can sell all the Qs you can make for $4,200 each, it doesn't take that many to make a large increase in sales ... so Leica's recent success is not at all surprising to me. And I am totally new to Leica, so if I can be inspired by the brand it's likely that other new buyers will be too. After all, Nikon/Canon have definitely not innovated in the way Leica has. And that, too, strikes me as new - and pretty exciting, too.
But right now the X-U intrigues me because I want to get underwater shots, and didn't appreciate the relatively poor (leak-prone) build quality of the Nikon AW1. It seems to me that if you want a really high-quality rugged camera, the X-U might be the only one. The main thing that's holding me back is the staggeringly high price (albeit comparable to the cost of underwater housings alone) and the fact that I see so few underwater pictures taken with one. It seems that if I buy one, I might be one of the first people outside the direct Leica family (Leica stores, etc) to shoot underwater! That seems a little fun but at the same time a little scary, especially with such a costly product.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that Leica seems to be on a roll. It's creating compelling new products that are of superlatively high quality but at the same time more innovative than the Canon/Nikon duolopy. It's true that the X-U seems like it might have been a bit of a miss in the market, but the Q and SL definitely look like great cameras that deserve to be hits, even at very high prices.
If you can sell all the Qs you can make for $4,200 each, it doesn't take that many to make a large increase in sales ... so Leica's recent success is not at all surprising to me. And I am totally new to Leica, so if I can be inspired by the brand it's likely that other new buyers will be too. After all, Nikon/Canon have definitely not innovated in the way Leica has. And that, too, strikes me as new - and pretty exciting, too.
