Leica M11 pre-production sample gallery (DPReview TV)

@V Ahrlenz:

> In short order, my team wins.

Would that be the team that scraped USD $12,000 from your wallet for granting you the privilege of taking mediocre BW photos?

Deffo a win for Leica's cashflow.

Are Leica people so insecure that they need the constant red dot validation?

Slow down even more and shoot film.

Slow down even more and start painting.

Slow down even more and start chiseling.

Slow down more and outsource. 😎

Shot on a Nikon, FWIW.

This is the only gallery the girls face is so magenta. She is a known quantity.

I would want to see the same photo from another known quantity like Canon shot at the same time to compare which is why I didnt mention too much about those shots. Need to be objective.

But my first reaction was her face is not close to that in reality and jarring is the correct term as you said.

If Leica wants to be real funky with the colours thats fine. Its magical alright, unnaturally magical.

Brian, Yes we always need the same shot from at least 2 different cameras to know these things for sure.

But there does seem to be a trend of highly magenta skin here.

Like the older Sony models have that awful yellow/green sneaking into skin.

Those were not bounces from grass or other greenish/yellow objects.

Yes, I work in film and we spend a lot of effort removing or blocking coloured objects from the scene.

That light can bounce from a long ways off. In that photo, surely there will be a cast from the floor.

But there is a trend also. A very magenta and orange skin trend.

Perhaps those hues are highly pumped in camera. When the sensor sees those colours it jacks them up and it shows as harsh transitions.

I couldn't agree with you more. I noticed the magenta cast on the skin tones and couldn't believe people are still raving about how good the colours are! I used to work as a professional photographic printer many years ago and one of our clients was a high end wedding and portrait photographer who used Leica on his jobs. Trying to get a good natural colour from his shoots was near impossible. The camera may have a good sharp lens to its benefit but the colours let it down if you have to spend half a day editing them.

HowaboutRAW, Are you back already from making a Nikon photo look like a Canon? :-)

My point that you should buy the camera with the colours you prefer is because it is an awful, hair pulling, losing battle in JPG and RAW software.

If you manipulate all your photos anyways, or dont care enough about colour that you just use your favourite RAW converter profile, then it doesnt matter.

I test all brands of cameras, I prefer Canon for natural portraits. Especially yellow type skin. Most accurate but highly pleasing as well.

Nikon may be pleasing but wildly inaccurate. Flash and white skin very good. Nothing off white though. In camera WB bad.

Fuji pleasing but that magenta always creeping around.

Oly great, but I havnt tested one for many years.

Recent Sony FF similar colours to Canon but side by side no magic of Canons levels/tones.

I admit I am not good enough in RAW to make a Canon photo look better than their profile for skin.

@SteveAnderson - nice to see that you've tested various cameras against each other and have opinions.

I did a similar test - and made it as rigorous as I could & posted about it here in the forums to get people to vote.

The Fuji X-Pro1 won hands down for both studio & natural light. Canon was second, heavily biased towards Studio photos, and Fuji X-Pro2 right behind. The X-Pro1 is my current go-to.

I do like Nikon for natural light but not for studio.

The best way to describe it is - Nikon has less variety in the skin tones (more of a narrow range of tones) which is the current editing trend that look very warm and healthy.

Canon has a wider range of tones (the yellows & pinks more more distinctively yellow and pink) but overall still very pleasing.

Leica - the difference is wildly exaggerated and the pinkish hues are "twisted" towards magenta. I haven't tested Leica, just my observation.

You can read up on my test here:

http://sodium.nyc/blog/2020/05/camera-jpg-portrait

Hi saltydogstudios,

Thank you for setting that up.

You used the best Nikon for skin, D700. So there will be more hits than if you used a newer Nikon.

I would love to see the same test, you dont need to take any more photos:

1. Put up just the Standard profile. 1 Photo from each camera. It is overwhelming and confusing to our little brains to see that many options.

2. Make each photo a little larger. It is quite difficult to see the tone curves/levels.

3. Put a different camera to different letter for each test. We are lazy, choose C in the first column and we just pick C the rest of the time haha. Its an evolutionary trick our brains do to conserve energy.

My guess is you will see many more hits on the 5Dm2. Even though the 5Dm2 is quite magenta, the curves are very nice. 7Dm2/5Dm3 would win if we knew the models. Most accurate for most of those tones, except too orange for the darkest tones.

Fuji of course is excellent, but I think we would see the 5Dm2 catch up quite a bit.

I like them but I feel that my Z7II would do just as well.

“Nothing is good or bad”, says Shakespeare in Hamlet, “it’s our thinking that makes it so.”

In this case, your thinking.

Are you a better photographer than the guy who took those pictures? There is the answer, not on the gear.

@Foskito @ Sezano: Thank you. You have saved me close to $10K.

the Gras is always greener on the other piece of gear.

I have an Apple Watch, the 50 Fathoms models have gone up at about 50x the rate of inflation in the last 5 years... but would be very nice at the old prices...
Too much paying for the, largely unknown, brand at the new prices... IMHO... Oh and the recent additions are just money-grabbing crap BTW... The good ones had the rectangular hands...
https://www.ablogtowatch.com/blancpain-fifty-fathoms-bathyscaphe-flyback-chronograph-watch-hands-on/2/

dmanthree:

Because Leica's optically best M lenses (there are only about 5 and they start at $8500 apiece) utterly destroy any Fuji lens.

And all of the just excellent Leica M lenses (which start around 4500usd apiece) also best Fuji's lenses.

Specifically, the Fuji GFXS 100 isn't a well handling body. The Leica competition for that Fuji, and again these Leica lenses best all Fuji lenses, is the $19,000 S3.

Some positives about the GFX 100S: It has good AF, it will shoot 16 bit raws -- as will the S3, a couple of the GF lenses are optically excellent, and it's a decent higher ISO MF body, but the S3 is likely better by at least 1 stop.

I guess I'm too pragmatic and would choose the camera that produces the best results (that's in my price range). I loved the comment (in the review) about Leica's older lenses not being able to satisfy this new sensor. Ouch...

FWIW, I've never seen any real-life tests or examples that prove those claims about Leica's lenses. And it's not just the glass, it's the combination of glass and body. Got a link? And really, over $17K for a body and a single lens?

To some, sometimes, money is just a made up construct. Whereas, a thing to have and love, is just that.

I own a GFX100s and overall like it, if not love it, but those are very different cameras.

The Leica lenses are lookers while the Fuji lenses are extremely sharp.