New kid on the block: YI M1 review

Yes, at this price I would. I take my Nikon V1 in my dry bag and have not had issues. I'm not paddling whitewater so tipping is not a worry. I'm fortunate to have numerous calm waterways close to where I live.

But what about the OIS, does the OIS of "Third-Party-Lenses" from e.g. Olympus work correctly?

I like the LF1. It never leaves my pocket when I head out.

for 699€ (amazon GER price for the 12-40 lens set) you get an LX100 which seems to be way better due to sensor size, AF, controls, Flash mount etc. etc. I dont see the point for the LF1 except for the interchangeable lenses.
At a price guess i would rate it 399,-- and a street price of 280,-- with the 12-40. This fits IMO better for a no-name brand that produces a camera with so many slight to significant drawbacks beside the few highlights.

@azeg ... "... I dont see the point for the LF1 except for the interchangeable lenses. ".
Obviously you are confusing the LF1 for something else. Check out the LF1 here on DPR, in the Panasonic section.
It doesn't take interchangeable lenses.
It's a 4 years old camera. It was the best thing to happen next to sliced bread at that time.
It was the only shirt-pocket camera with a viewfinder.
It was the only shirt pocket camera with a fixed Leica lens ranging from 28mm to 200mm. Yes, 200mm, not a typo!
It's a TRUE shirt-pocket camera, and I still love it.

this is Amazon trying to screw the early birds....

early adopters are routinely screwed by all corporations both producers and retailers ...... just sayin

excellent .... glad you wernt screwed by amazon

As of this morning (11/30) current price IS $349 (for the single lens kit at Amazon in the US) with 10 listed in stock by Yi Technology "fulfilled by Amazon" with Prime. And yes, I'm one of the guys that snagged one on Cyber Monday for $177.80 (still hasn't shipped yet... so much for Prime).

Not sure if I quite agree with the comments about camera launch prices. Companies are trying to get the best margins off their products. I don't have an issue with this. If people are willing to pay the launch price (I never am), then the product was priced appropriate. When the products don't move off the shelf, the market will demand they lower the price. That said, I do feel the launch price of this camera at $499 (in the US) was a bit optimistic. I would not have purchased it without the discounts. In fact, now that I think about it, every camera I've purchased in the past decade was at least 40% under its launch price. I guess am not a customer most companies would target. :-)

@fuego... you are right .... but i can at least try

Barry, short memory? ¹ or just exaggerating to get attention?

YI is easily one of the top technology companies worldwide while their domestic market is almost 20% of the human population .. well, you do the math how much they care about camera-nerds from elsewhere.

¹ just a song by the 'Oils that i remembered when looking at you profile..

i hope this post gets a star .... well said

@sh10453
They dropped NX because it also was an insignificant part of their operation and so was like like chucking deck furniture overboard. Many of the existing companies have to hang on and wallow in the water as they need to lose a big chunk of the ship to stay afloat. Nikon dream about bringing the 3 best 1" cameras ever seen in the world all in one go to ease the pain of reality and the looming deep.

Well put taktak91.
Probably a large part of the problem was the reviews. Reviewers would nit-pick every minor flaw in the Samsungs whereas they would overlook the fact that some Canon or Nikon took inferior images. Although the lack of reviews might have been Samsung's own fault for not pushing their kit to the reviewers.
I have an NX30 that I absolutely love, but I was waiting for better lenses. I'll keep using it because it takes such wonderful photos. It's colour fidelity is the best I've seen and that is the most important point to me as I take photos of plants for a cactus club. I'm waiting for the other manufacturers to catch up in their colour fidelity before I make a move.
Yi looks like they might get round to making some good cameras in the future, some of the photos from the M1 look very nice from the colour fidelity point, except the ones in vivid mode or modified by the reviewer that is.

for such price is good choice

well, canikon do have cheap cameras. and eos-m is better than this camera in most aspects

Do you know how much more EOS M5 does cost?

I have a f/1.2 and 1.4 lens. And almost always shoot ISO 200. Trust me when I say even 16MP ISO 200 raw files on the GX85 is still very noisy because its too many megapixels on a tiny sensor. A full frame sensor has 1/4 the surface area. So even a 16MP sensor is like the noise from the a 64MP fullframe sensor. It's already too high.

I used to think more megapixels was overkill as well till I saw the Phase One 100megapixel photo. Even when resized to print size (8mp) they are far clearer than any other camera. Oversampling really helps.

and the iphones sensor as a guide... if a full frame had as many pixels

about 45, 19 sqmm sensors could fit on a full frame 864 sq mm

so at 16 mp on an apple sensor it would be like trying to pack 720 mp on a full frame sensor ....

which is as insane as putting 16 mp on a 19 sqmm sensor ....lol

ive always thought a 1 , 1'7 sensor was as small as you can go and get a decent image of say 12 mp

@Michael MA, so why have you bought the GX85 at all, it's beyond me.
You talk tiny sensor, why haven't you bought the A7S or 1Dx or D5 or Hasselblad etc. if base ISO noise is important you should stay away from APS-C and smaller sensors anyway!

@digifan I bought it because I like videography and photography. My prerequisites for a camera that I buy are good photos and good video with a tiltable/flip-out screen. Thus, I own a Canon 80D which provides noise free ISO 100 raw files, even in the shadows and deep blacks.

My point was that the MFT sensor, even the very latest ones are still pushing the limits too far with the 16MP sensor. So when someone says Panasonic should start using a 20MP sensor and that it's silly that they don't, I must object. I would love it when mft catches up with light gathering performance so that they can one day provide noise free images at the lowest ISO. Hopefully by then, they won't bump up the sensor count to something ridiculous so all that gain is lost.

Hmmm... Assuming noise increases in a reasonably linear manner, as you add more pixels, surely the difference isn't going to be visible when looking at prints of the same size. As it stands... If the noise difference between a Panasonic 16MP sensor and a Sony 20MP sensor is merely marginal, isn't that Advantage Sony? And those of you who think 16MP is too much forget the old Panasonic 12MP sensor, pushed on us for too many years, too easily.

"If the noise difference between a Panasonic 16MP sensor and a Sony 20MP sensor is merely marginal, isn't that Advantage Sony?"

No, because there was no increase in detail. You got a slightly larger image, at the expense of there being slightly more noise and noise patterns that looked worse than those from the Panasonic sensors. I don't know why their sensors have high ISO/long exposure banding issues, but remember they do still have a large CMOS R&D department, so the use of a Sony sensor seems like a stop-gap while they devote their time and money to that organic CMOS sensor development with Fujifilm.

true........

@0MitchAG
Sure, no one is perfect, can you point to a camera maker that didn't have some issues? I had a rear dial problem with my e-m1, Olympus sent courier to pick up camera, got it back fixed only after 3 days with free sensor cleaning and overall check-up. This probably what OP meant, company based in China can be complicated to deal with for warranty issues.

@GRUBERND
Yes, but this YI camera has the benefit of looking at the past mistakes/solutions of the first generation Olympasonics. Clearly, they didn't read their history and thus, were doomed to repeat it.

this does not represent leica compitition , also ,thinking this has anything to do with the price structure or the reasons for leicas
list prices seems one of the most thoughtless and wrongheaded posts ive read in a while .......jenny

this is extremely cheap,,,,, leica is costly.... they actually have nothing whatsoever to do with one another ,...except being at the extreme ends of a graph showing camera prices.......if im reaching

@a voice of reason - so, what I said basically.

yes jadot, but i felt a further mention of the general absurdity rated a post ,