Andrew Reid

At least the waiter doesn't send you a snarky email later in the evening pointing to Leica's terms and conditions on the fucking German website. "We don't guarantee functionality with anything that isn't 5 grand, sorry about that" L-mount alliance... what a mess... The only way it could be a less productive alliance would be if the USSR gets involved! It is a pity Sony closed their store at Potsdamer Platz, as I actually used to enjoy being insulted there 🙂 Once I took my Fuji X-T3 and told them how to make a decent viewfinder. Then went upstairs and meddled with their PS4 BTW these posh stores really should invest in some fucking chairs. The amount of standing up that is required to take their insults is ridiculous and the free coffee can't be enjoyed as there's not even a coffee table I said to the sales woman, how about you get some chairs (in more polite phrasing of course as I am a very calm and polite person) She said sternly with a snarl... There isn't enough room! And proceeded to walk off through the massive open floor space.

Yeah it was tough to finally come out of the daze of the Canon DSLR cripple hammer era into what you thought was a completely fresh start with amazing video capabilities, only to have Canon make it unusable for anything serious and with such a devious tactic as well. That said, they have recovered admirably and now that you don't have to part with $4500 for one, it makes a lot more sense. There are not any other 8K RAW full frame 4K 120fps cameras available for $2300 on the second hand market. The Nikon Z8 is too new and still $3500+, the Z9 is hovering around $4200 and the Sony a1 is still very much in demand around the same 4k mark... So the R5 having the advantage of being an old and common tool has depreciated very nicely. Now the R5 II is out the quantities of EOS R5 will flood onto the used market in even greater numbers and we could be seeing it going down to around $1500 in a years time. Agree with you about the IBIS, it's the one thing that lets it down but as the well respected EOS R5 C (C stands for non-cripple hammer edition) shows maybe it's possible to get by without it. The EOS R5 C drives the sensor at 8K 120fps by the way... The 4K/120p is oversampled! How Canon came up with this fast of a sensor when it isn't even a stacked design blows my mind.

2024 Leicaman is the man who doesn't realise he's using a Panasonic.

Missing the EVF, it would be such a lovely thing if it had one. There's an a7c for 999 euros behind the advent calendar in Foto Meyer... But not got the same charm, or has it??

It's like the very start of a director's career... A little bit of control over some minor productions, and then the skillset / toolset gets greater and greater, until you're painting a masterpiece. All about that UI The model will evolve naturally but the UI can be fucked up! I can see happening in the future a 3 or 4-way battle of AI software like the NLE wars between Adobe, Apple and Avid.

May have to sell the 5 gold rings at this rate.

Wonder if this is an issue unique to the Z6 III, as the view assist on the Zf seemed to be quite accurate for exposure. Yeah definitely would be nice to have LUTs in-camera. Panasonic S9 and S5 II leading the way on that, for the rest to catch up. Thanks for the data rate info. Canon RAW Lite in 6K on the EOS R3 is 700Mbit/s vbr That's a sweet spot for me, any higher and tend to want to delete the original RAW files or convert to ProRes LT, which is a bit of a shame. Did the AF still work in 4K 120fps for you? And estabiliser?

I opened the 10th door today and there was an arrogant Leica twat behind it. Hopefully 11th door has something chocolatey By the 24th might even have a Pentax. But it's looking most likely that it will be a Canon EOS R5, a camera I have never had a bad word about and love unconditionally. Turns out that Canon shitting themselves over bad PR has produced more firmware updates than Sony have done in 10 years! Halve the price and fast forward 4 years, oddly camera technology hasn't gone anywhere else since it came out. It's basically Z8 spec. I need to sell my EOS R7 so it'll make a nice upgrade to that. You also get a free one of these with every purchase...

So the SL2, very nice now it's much more affordable but turns out in my tests so far it's still fucking broken as it doesn't shoot 4K with the original battery and certain lenses... That is, Panasonic 50mm F1.4 S, Sigma MC-21 adapter, erm pretty much everything that isn't from Leica's own L-mount range. So it's quite a serious problem. I thought this was fixed with the new Q3 battery and new firmware updates, and the SL2-S was supposed to work from the outset. Now it seems the problem is more complicated than it appears when you are sold the camera. So I took the SL2 back for a test today at the Berlin store, only to be met with a lot of eye-rolling and a blame game: - Panasonic is to blame, apparently their lenses are faulty! - The customer is to blame, apparently I am an idiot who is using the wrong type of L-mount lenses - The Sigma MC-21 is to blame, and Canon too... For their EF lenses on the official Sigma L-mount adapter are so badly made that the Leica SL2 refuses to even do a burst shoot - And of course as a customer, I am not just to blame but also WRONG! Wrong knowledge, wrong approach, wrong skillset, blah blah blah. So I sent the feckers this link: https://www.eoshd.com/interview/interview-with-stephan-schulz-leica-camera-on-the-sl2-and-filmmaking/ And said, here's my interview with your boss in Wetzlar. Have a read of that... It's the battery's fault. And he said there would be a firmware update to mitigate it, and the battery grip would also be the solution to the fact that the SL2 battery is so shit it can't even power the autofocus motors at the same time as shooting 4K. Needless to say the Leica SL2 is now back at the store, and refunded after much finger pointing. Doesn't make me want to go back there any time soon. When it was run by Meister Camera, this store was a gem https://www.meister-camera.com Now it's run by Leica, what happened? A total change in attitude and staff knowledge. It's a pity they didn't just admit the problem still existed, was Leica's fault and not the customers, and then sold me their spare SL2-S which has better compatibility with the full L-mount ecosystem. I would have left a Leica customer, nevertheless the experience was so shit, even the thought of buying the EOS R5 appeals more than another SL2 now 😉 And that's a bloody flame thrower!

Now leaning towards EOS R5 having tried it next to a Z6 III. It’s more comfortable and premium feeling, and the spec is better, and the price is the same (used) Might be time to forgive the overheating little cretin camera. The IBIS is quite weak with adapted non-Canon lenses but things improve a lot when you enable DIS.

Sigma 35mm F2 E-mount on Nikon Z6 III would be a nice combo. The Sigma adds a bit of charm and build quality to the front of the camera for a start. Lenses on Canon RF are a bit of a disaster... Manual stuff doesn't work well with IBIS, and there's no Sigma and fewer interesting adapters.

In-camera LUTs Better menus Better EVF Colour science is different Erm, that's about it? 🙂

I would pick a7r V + Sigma 35mm f2 any day over the Q3. Especially as it is cheaper!

So the R5 is now $2.3k second hand and Z6 Mark III is $2.2k brand new (at least here in Berlin at the local shop). Now I am thinking the R5 is best for full frame 4K/120p but the Z6 Mark III might actually have some advantages of its own... The 6K RAW is 60p, whereas for 8K/60p you need the EOS R5 C and not the original R5. With Z-mount there is the Techart autofocus adapter for Leica M mount lenses and adapters, so that's a big plus for photography especially as I dislike the price, character and size of most modern native Zf lenses and Canon Rf lenses. Video autofocus and IBIS on the Z6 Mark III are improved vs the EOS R5. The Z8 is 3800 euros in comparison... Z6 III has big price advantage and also the small advantage (in my humble view) of a mechanical shutter + a slight edge in low light performance due to the lower resolution sensor. Moving parts lends an operational heft - although on Z8 you will never worry about a high shutter count tanking value or reliability of the camera. Call me old fashioned but in this solid state era I still like my mechanical mechanisms in cameras though. The 4K/120p is 1.5x DX crop but to be honest I am fine with that... This is an improvement on the already very capable Fuji X-H2 which crops a further 1.28x from 1.5x in 4K 120fps. It's also an improvement on the 2x crop G9 II and GH7 which are both very nice for slow-mo as well. Sure, they forgot to add a soul or retro appeal and it has put on some weight, the tubby little fucker. But I am starting to see the sense in it. Next camera coming up?

We can dream... Sony should go all in with a Minolta film camera style mirrorless. Of the two companies that should have bought the Olympus camera division, Panasonic and Sony, they could have been riding high on a full frame PEN by now had they some imagination.

I suppose it helps to have the GH2 mindset... It might be a bit cheap and look like a toy but it's capable of great things. And of course it is nowhere near as cheap or as plastic-fantastic as a GH2 but the bar has been moved on since then quite a bit in terms of build quality and ergonomics. If the Leica SL2 was still unobtainable price wise (just saw some for £1700 on eBay UK btw), take that out of the picture and I think you have the choice between Zf and EOS R5. The R5 we can probably forgive now it works properly and has had more firmware updates than a Talkie Toaster. The Zf needs forgiveness for not being a Leica. Maybe there needs to be a camera sin forgiveness ceremony this Christmas. Makes me wonder if Sony will get in on the retro camera game?

1800 euros Nikon Zf 2300 euros Leica SL2 and Canon EOS R5 And therein lies the dilemma 🙂

Nice! N-LOG white balance has to be nailed in-camera, more or less. RAW definitely more flexible in that regard. How did you find the N-LOG view assist? Is it accurate in terms of exposing N-LOG correctly or does it mess with you and the histogram? Did you spot what the difference is between N-RAW quality NORMAL and HIGH? It would be nice to get those file sizes down in 24p at least. No 4K N-RAW mode?

Just some impressions... Second time out with an SL2, last time was in early 2020. Terrible things followed. Let's hope I haven't just cursed myself with the second coming 🙂 So it has had a lot of firmware updates, but some things remain the same... The 5K open gate mode has some mojo, like the camera it was based on (Panasonic S1R) Take a look at this footage early in the video of his family...if you didn't know you'd think that was actually a reel of film. I know he's done quite a bit to it in post but still... That is crazy filmic. Second thing which sold me on it was the price... I think 2300 euros is fair. In today's market we can get 8K and 4K/120p for this with the second hand EOS R5 bless his overheating heart. So this is 4K/60p full frame 10bit LOG H.265, 5K open gate, 1080p goes up to 180fps... And best of all it isn't a fucking Canon. The second hand market with these sorts of prices has to make you think twice about buying new stuff especially if it is $3-6k doesn't it? The UHD 4K is pixel binned in 24p and 60p, there is a very small 1.1x crop of sides, it does however look very clean and detailed, you'll only notice a difference to oversampled 4K from 6K on a test chart really. DCI 4K mode there is no crop, goes edge to edge of full sensor width. The in-camera LUT view assist works well, and has a few built in pre-sets as well from Leica like Classic and Natural. There are 3 slots for your own .cube files. You cannot bake a LUT into the recording, it's only for display. In stills mode autofocus is very very fast when it works, just not as reliable as phase-detect obviously, and in video mode it is neither fast or reliable 🙂 EVF is immense. Entering video mode is a single button tap. Like Samsung NX1. A great and minimal way to quickly toggle between photos and videos. It has USB charging, full size HDMI, dual card slots Now the not so great stuff... A tad on the heavy side, but not as chonky as S1H. No articulated screen... The main downside where video is concerned. No phase-detect. Could benefit from a few more function buttons. 5K Open gate is a Super 35mm crop L-mount lacks a few exotic adapters like the Techart Leica M Autofocus beasty which I have for Sony But biggest downside is the dilemma of choice at $2000... the market is ridiculous. So much going on now at this price region... There is the Nikon Z6 III which obviously has better specs where video is concerned, the only question is whether you need the higher numbers or not. The EOS R5 is also better specced for used price of $2000-25000... Fuji GFX 100S can be had also for around $2.7k now if you want 2019's $10k medium format camera in a smaller, more compact form. Absolute steal. And of course the Nikon Zf will do a lot of things right for a lot of folk. Panasonic S5 II / S9 as well. None of them have quite the same magic feel when shooting though as the SL2

If they do a Zf II here are some ideas for improvements... 1. Dump that HUGE sticker on the back, put the info on the base of the camera and much smaller. 2. Card door on side, not under. 3. Battery door alloy, not plastic 4. Replace "i" button with a joystick 5. Use more premium d-pad and button materials / design 6. Thinner bezel on the LCD 7. Option to replace plastic PU grip with real leather for $50 8. A deeper built in grip - not too big that it spoils the film camera-style design but at least something rather than nothing 9. Auto ISO is a mess... Have an auto setting on the ISO dial FFS 10. Shutter dials needs 1/50... Can't shoot 60p in PAL countries at 1/60 11. Screen should be a flip down design (X-T5) or similar to a7r V, as the vlogger style one debases it style-wise 12. Have a fucking aperture dial on the retro-styled Z lenses, and a higher grade of plastic housing, or even better use metal like your average 75 dollar chinese Amazon lens perhaps? 13. There is room for a mid-range and higher-range higher price version, that with the better Z6 III sensor tech and 4K/120fps 14. Eye cup isn't padded enough 15. Get rid of the + / - zoom buttons and Disp. The zoom can be a one button to punch in and half press to come out. The Disp should be an up-tap on the d-pad. Also get rid of the quick menu button and replace it with a focus point joystick, and have the quick menu accessed via middle button of d-pad. 16. Allow the B/W mode to be programmed to any LUT 17. Sack the guy who did the back of the camera

For me there has to be a good reason for it being styled the way it is, otherwise main factor of it comes across as a gimmick if the design is a surface level only thing, I may as well spend a bit more and get the Z6 III or an EOS R6 II. Love the way it looks, just not so much the cheap plastic feel. For the price you don't expect Leica, but then you kind of do now due to the used prices of stuff. You can also get the original SL if stills are the main thing and video not too much... That is down somewhere in region of 1300 now. So those are the cameras the Zf have to compete with if it wants to be a Leica-clone. If it were more ergonomic or nicer to hold than the SL2 with a reassuring feel of quality to it I definitely would have got it instead as the new IBIS seemed really a step above everything I've tried so far, and the autofocus / same processor as Z8 has a definite appeal as well.

It's scary good

I have a Sony for autofocus. Leica for manual focus and GFX 100. I can live without pretty much any modern mirrorless camera lens, as I feel they have lost the plot... both on price and size. The rendering isn't exactly great either on the modern stuff... too perfect.

After finally selling some stuff (Nikon D850) was all set to buy a Zf today but chickened out and got a Leica SL2 instead. A bit of a u-turn that! First up, the Z6 III. It's a tubby and ugly looking body, it makes the original Z6 feel a lot more premium and slimmer. The screen is worse, build and ergonomics. The spec however is really good and the 6K RAW internal recording is un-cropped at 60fps, with 4K/120p available too in DX crop mode. So the spec is a winner and it has everything but they forgot to add a soul. Which is a pity. 2200 euros brand new with current special offers is good, and 6K RAW internal 60p would have been a dream spec back in 2019. In 2024, it is becoming normal to see 6K in some form, and RAW is not really the form I want it in. The file sizes are too big and it's overkill for me. Next up, the Nikon Zf. 4K oversampled 10bit N-LOG with the best IBIS and autofocus for under 2k... This is a full frame Fuji X-T5, and was selling at 1800 euros new which is decent price to be honest. But it is clear Nikon's intention was to capture the Fuji X crowd with a cheap camera and iffy build quality, rather than make something special and that's where the Leica SL2 comes in because this is a former $6800 camera that's now worth just 2300 euros in good condition second hand, so why settle for the Zf when for just 500 smackers more you can get a proper Leica? There are aspects of the Zf design that completely spoil it. The massive ugly sticker on the back, which you can't remove, ruins the retro appearance of it, and in the hand, the buttons wouldn't be out of place on a Casio calculator for £2, the battery and card slot door is appalling - plastic and full of scratches even on the display model which has never left the shop, and the general grade of plastic parts wouldn't be out of place in Poundland or on a coke bottle. The plastic mount and general build of the 40mm F2 SE is borderline insulting. A real shame, because the Zf is a very capable machine with a superb image. It needs an L-bracket with a grip, it needs a better 40mm, it needs premium materials and not the strange mix of brass and plastic. The front and top of the camera look and feel great, but the bottom and back are shockingly awful and out of place. Now the thing is... I would have bought it anyway, it's great for video, really good 10bit N-LOG, stabilisation is superb and the EVF is large and clear. But the price difference is now just so small, and look at what you get... 47 megapixels, 5K open gate, 4K/60 full frame, even better EVF, and build quality / ergonomics in a different league. There's also the firmware updates since release, and a new battery which I'll come to in a moment. The firmware updates have added in-camera LUT support, so you can load a .Cube file and monitor with it through the EVF and screen, very nice. L-LOG is much improved from the first SL. The SL2-S was also an option, at just 2200 used from the Leica store in Berlin. This however, does not do full frame 60p, no 5K open gate, less resolution for cropping and photography, though you do get slightly crisper 4K from the oversampled sensor with no pixel binning. The new battery which came along with the Q3 is much needed on the SL2 to avoid the original issues with it locking you out of high-powered video modes like 4K/60p 10bit when the battery drops below 50% charge - the old battery is just very unstable, and it really put me my first SL2 back in 2020. So with the firmware updates and new battery, allegedly Leica have finally fixed the biggest issue with the SL2. I think it's a really underrated cine camera, and a pleasure to shoot with. So there you have it... If you want soul, retro, feel, premium materials... Leica SL2 over Nikon Zf any day... for just 500 euros more.

Yes it will, you load the file onto the camera via Nikon's utility on the web