M-Mount PIXII rangefinder with M mount: bold move ...

Leica M-Mount cameras and lenses
Do you know, if the widest horiz. angle of view of the viewfinder is 46° or 65°? I think 65, which would be the angle of an 28mm on ff, or an 16mm in this apsc-camera...
I am sorry but I do not know and a quick look at the docs did not help me. I will poke around some more and see if I can find it. I am sure I have seen it in some of their data.
 
For what it’s worth, my old iPhone 6s had a 64 bit processor in it. Pretty sure my current iPhone 13 does too. They also both have cameras. But if PIXII really wants to claim they’re the first, who am I to argue! More power to their marketing department!
 
Do you know, if the widest horiz. angle of view of the viewfinder is 46° or 65°? I think 65, which would be the angle of an 28mm on ff, or an 16mm in this apsc-camera...
I have not found the answer. The image you see in the viewfinder is the image the camera captures. WYSIWYG. OK?
 
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For what it’s worth, my old iPhone 6s had a 64 bit processor in it. Pretty sure my current iPhone 13 does too. They also both have cameras. But if PIXII really wants to claim they’re the first, who am I to argue! More power to their marketing department!
I think their claim is the first camera with 64 bit processing not the first 64 bit cellphone with a sensor. The line blurs and I understand there is a cellphone out there which can mount Leica lenses. I think I still prefer the Pixii.

I just checked, Pixii claims to be the first 64 bit camera. They do not claim to be anything else nor able to place and receive phone calls. I believe this to be true.

The new processor being able to address more memory can also provide a live view of what the camera is doing. A reading of their flak sheet lists a bunch of stuff it has been enabled to do like faster image processing and lower battery drain. Always good.
 
It's an ARM processor.
Is it open source?
Brian, I do not know. I am really just at the consumer end of this. You can swing by the Pixii page on FB and ask Mattias Burling who is the moderator and would possibly know. He has close contact with Pixii and its head, Barth. He and a couple others are using the new SoC A2572 Pixii and seem happy with it. There is a short but not too tech blurb on YT. As I look at it the camera truly is a lot like a cell phone with a lens mount and range finder. And this may well be the direction cameras will take, branching away from mechanical just as did typewriters fade to be replaced my desktop computers. While cameras like Leica are marvelous mechanical devices they are also kind of like mechanical watches. Really nice, beautiful, elegant but if you want accurate time Casio can do it for $10. Cameras are not that extreme in difference because of the lens and focus but the cell phone aspect of photography could be fielded pretty cheap. Yes, the M9 will always be a great camera and I really love my old DSC S70 for color but the camera market is in flux.

Sorry to take so long answering, I just saw your post. Cheers.
 
The Pixii is in Bensancon at Pixii France undergoing the metamorphasis to change from an A1571 to an A2572 with the 64 bit SoC processor. I glommed this off their page:

NEW
The most powerful processor ever in a camera.

63690c06d966971d80aa4dfc_64-bit-icon.png

New 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 architecture.
Dual-core OpenCL 2.0 GPU with 768 threads and up to 7GPixels/s.
Dedicated NPU and VPU cores.


I have no idea what it means other than faster and better.
 
The Pixii is in Bensancon at Pixii France undergoing the metamorphasis to change from an A1571 to an A2572 with the 64 bit SoC processor. I glommed this off their page:

NEW
The most powerful processor ever in a camera.

View attachment 370747
New 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 architecture.
Dual-core OpenCL 2.0 GPU with 768 threads and up to 7GPixels/s.
Dedicated NPU and VPU cores.


I have no idea what it means other than faster and better.
Most cameras use custom-designed and fabricated "application specific" processors for the bulk of the image processing. That is expensive to implement. Pixii is using a general purpose embedded processor, much easier and less expensive to implement. You write real code for it. BUT- it is far from the most powerful processor in a digital camera. The "Monochrome mode"- is still an interpolation of the scene as recorded through the red-green-blue dye of the mosaic filter. It's based on knowing the spectral response of the RGB components. It is not recording every point in the image in full visible range monochrome.
 
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Most cameras use custom-designed and fabricated "application specific" processors for the bulk of the image processing. That is expensive to implement. Pixii is using a general purpose embedded processor, much easier and less expensive to implement. You write real code for it. BUT- it is far from the most powerful processor in a digital camera. The "Monochrome mode"- is still an interpolation of the scene as recorded through the red-green-blue dye of the mosaic filter. It's based on knowing the spectral response of the RGB components. It is not recording every point in the image in full visible range monochrome.
Hey, I am a history major. Do you want fries with that? ;o) I do not understand the tech end of how Barth has trained his camera to "see" B&W in native DNG. It must be a good trick as he is seeking a patent on it. But what I have read says it has a 16 bit range in B&W and loses something like only one f-stop with their legerdemain. Images gotten which I have seen are pretty good. And Jim Chung did a comparison of the Pixii A2572 against a Phase One (Pixii Camera – true monochrome performance with a Bayer layer?) where M. Pixii comported himself well. Did I already post this?

So while Pixii is an odd duck, i. e., new approach, it does really nice color, is sharp as hell for any camera of its form factor and pretty impressive for an APS-C 26MP sensor and will do native B&W and color in the same camera. That will save you lugging a second camera and the price of the second camera and lens. Despite all of this it still seems to get treated like the red-headed stepchild.

The model of a box with upgradeable guts is way cool. The camera started as 11MP, went to 26MP with upgrades offered at a price, and now up to a SoC 64 bit chip which is faster and supposed to be more energy frugal, again at a price, Euros 320. Wouldn't it be nice if Leica offered upgrades to the venerable M9, or at least support? I dislike the word "disrupters" but that is what these guys are. We used to say that they had built a better mouse trap.
 
He can apply for the Patent if he wants. It's who gets a patent first, not who first used the technique.
True, too true. And if a large corporation makes a legal challenge they will bankrupt you with legal motions. I know a fellow who was beaten out of his patent on phantom power this way. "Fame's a fickle slut and whory . . . and he's a fool who strives to swive her."
 
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Here is a folder of pics I took with the Pixii alongside the X2D. Problem is that the X2D was in JPG and the Pixii in DNG. I converted the PIxii DNG's but I think I will redo this test with both shooting JPG at EC -0.5 a low ISO and see what happens. In the meantime see how the two compare. The Pixii had a Canon 28mm LTM f/2.8, effectively 42mm FF, and the X2D had the XCD 55V, effectively very close to 42mm FF. Both were Aperture priority, same ISO and EC. The Pixii cannot match a sensor four times larger but it gets pretty close. And the XCD lens is crazy good. Let's see what the next test shows.

 
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OK, awakening from a long Pixii slumber. I had a real nosebleed of a time to get the latest developer release of the camera firmware, one which has AUTO ISO, just like the big guys and one less thing to keep track of. I have set the ISO on my camera to AUTO, set the highest ISO setting I want to go to and the slowest shutter speed and am good to go. I am running it in the Pixii B&W, in JPG. I know I have a greater bit depth in RAW (DNG) of up to 16 bit which is enticing. In B&W these subtleties make a difference so I guess I will have to run with B&W DNG and get used to it. I plan a trip to Nevada to shoot some high desert shots. I'll take the X2D, because I just love it for color, and the M9 + Bertele, because I just love it for color, and the Pixii for what it will do in B&W. I'll bring along the CZJ 5cm f/1.5 and the Amotal, too. The all work on both the M9 and the Pixii if I want to compare. For most of the Pixii B&W it will be the Canon 28mm f/2.8 LTM which is a sharp lens and does B&W very nicely on an M8 or M9 and so far pretty well on the Pixii/ "Tape at 11:00."

It is a real relief to have worked my way through the Byzantine menus of the Pixii phone app to get it to load the new firmware and software. I blame the awful "GoTo" code of the C family for this. Brian will understand. Anyway, Pixii is perky. I'll be out shooting DNG B&W tomorrow. I know the M9 and the X2D work. ;o)
 
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