Jul 19, 2011, 18:41
(EDIT: have just uploaded the handful of test shots I did with the Leica X1. They are on this section, entitled "X1 shots", if anyone wishes to have a look)
Now hold on.
Before you go into working out how to be polite whilst seething with jealousy, let me get 2 facts straight:
1. Yes, I did indeed buy a Leica yesterday...an X1 in fact;
2.And today returned it to the shop for a full refund of my money. End of story.
So why did I buy such a camera, only to return it today?
Not a trick question, as I certainly won't be spending my hard-saved on a Leica again. Well, dear reader, here is the tale, along with my thoughts on this model...
I was in the town of Bath for a day out. In a camera shop I saw a very tempting deal:
The Leica X1 is expensive. Here in the UK it peaks at £1400 (GBP), so imagine how my eyes lit up when I saw this one: an excellent secondhand deal in just about pristine condition for £899...well over £100 less than a new Fuji X-100. It had 2 tiny scuff marks on the body, otherwise perfect.
I momentarily wrestled with my dilemma: here was the perfect solution to my "35mm gap", miles cheaper than new, for just £80 more than a Zeiss Distagon 35/2.
Forcing myself to Get Real, I listened to the salesperson as she itemised what was, and what was not, included:
The X1 was without its box, a USB lead and its battery charger; there was no brochure, nor was there a warranty card: the latter did not alarm me, as over here any secondhand goods are under warranty by the place that sells them. There was no marque CD but a "hand copied" one provided by the shop. Furthermore, as obviously included in an X1's sale price IS a battery charger and USB/HD lead, the shop provided a brand new universal charger and the leads I needed. To cap the deal was also the case that had been included in the sale by the previous owner...and this was one splendid hard leather case, with a whisper-soft magnetic click as it embraced the impeccably engineered camera.
And, do you know, the blessings weren't over yet: I had, in fact, only walked into the camera shop 10 minutes earlier to get a 58mm clear front "filter" that I could fit on my Canon 50mm f1.4. I very cheekily asked if there was any reduction in the filter's price, seeing as I had just bought the Leica X1...and BING!!...I was given a discount of £15 (is that about $25 US?) for the filter.
So, a very happy and excited Zig left that shop:a Leica X1 gained for what I called a realistic price as opposed to the hyper-inflated silly retail price of a new one, a cut-price Hoya filter AND a disgustngly poncy uber-case also with "Leica" chiselled into the Executive Cow-hide.
And of course when I got it home there was a small hitch: I had to guess via trial and error how to charge the Leica battery(and hey..do you realise these tiny batteries are listed at £79 here!). Good: done and dusted in an hour, then the 200 minute wait whilst the battery charged...
And in the wait, I did my online research and found my memory jogged regarding the fact that as Your Very Own Zig is now a Leica owner, I could thus go to the Leica site and download all sorts of goodies. Ohyes!
But of course I had the included CD, yes?
Er..no: no matter which of my PC's 2 CD players I tried, I found that the CD was blank! As I had no idea what was on the CD(instruction manual? "E-warranty" of some sort? Surely the RAW conversion software I needed?) I did the online version of hunching up my collar and tramped across the self-obsessed carpetry of various Leica forums, finding that included in the price of the X1 is Adobe Lightroom, so as to get me cracking with my raw conversions from DNG.
And here it started to go quite a bit wrong....
I phoned the camera shop to tell them the CD was blank. They told me that Lightroom was available online and that all there was on the CD was the instruction manual...and so:
I thought I'd successfully registered the X1 on the Leica site and proceeded to rub my hands with glee as I anticipated being able to get really on top of the RAWs from this beauty. Gulp...they asked me for a serial number. Er...?.. I guessed this was the one on the lens barrel: BING! Yessss!
But now they were asking me for a TAN number..which was on the warranty card...and I did not have the darned warranty card.
For 3 hours I tried to find out what to do here, so I decided that, as I both needed Lightroom AND because it was my right to Lightroom as part of the price of the camera.
I phoned the shop again: ohhhh, don't worry, you can just dowload it, you don't need a warranty...
Nope, I told them....and I recounted to them the result of my researches, which apparently goes like this:
Lightroom, despite being part of the World of Leica of which I was now a jolly initiate, needs an activation key.
The activation key is mailed to me only when I've supplied the TAN number. Which I don't have: it's on the sodding warranty card, and I don't have that either. Worse than this, even though I've just paid for the software, the "owner" is only allowed by our Teutonic brethren to have a maximum of 2 activations.
And, of course, the X1 is secondhand: which means Lightroom may already be registered to and activated by, its previous owner...:mad:
So , I mailed Leica: their auto-responder calmly informs me I may receive a reply in around 5 days; the retentives at a Leica forum do the equivalent of sucking their teeth, deeming that it all looks rather bleak. Hmmm...for you, Herr Zig, ze war is over...
With head in hands, I reflect upon the following:
My X1 had no warranty card; I'm unable to get the software I've paid for; it has no box, no original battery charger or USB lead. It did not have its leather strap...though the leather poncey case has its own leather strap and I could cannibalise that.
I was emailed the instruction manual by the shop: I reload the now-charged battery and wade through all the menu settings, finally getting myself a sensible User Profile...until I notice the firmare is still V1, so I update it to Version 2.
No matter perhaps...I could always get away with using Adobe Camera Raw, couldn't I?
It is with a vague sinking feeling that I realise that my CS2 only supprts ACR as far as V3.7...but surrely this camera is going to be so amazing that I can put up with a bit of inconvenience?
I set to work finding my way around the X1.
The X1 is the strangest of beats, seemingly sired by a combination of several strands of DNA: It has facets of character that are by turn blindingly brilliant, impeccably designed and intimate a true "thinking photographer's" tool. Maddeningly, cheek by jowl with these, are some ridiculous non sequiturs of design or thought, shoddily poor design and ergonomics.
For instance: the menus, the ability to set incredibly detailed user profiles(either for different people or for differing photographic situations), are to my mind an absolute dream of precision and usefulness. The flash options in terms of when the flash is fired and how much control the photographer wished to have, are beautifully considerd and practical. The dials on the top plate are a joy and simplicity combined,: as though a masterclass of Listening to Photographers has been followed for 30 years and the results made the basis for the camera's design.
However, the things that are NOT right, are so Not Right as to be almost a shock, whether they be omitted or included. Considering there are so many features that greatly assist the photographer, enabling him/her to be so poised and prepared in their shooting, it is really lamentable that there are so many that completely work against that same ideal: Here are a few......
The battery/card compartment is not just fiddly, it is supremely annoying: the card is a few mm too deep to be easily accessible, and if you wish to turn the camera any other way to assist proceedings, the battery will fall out. The compartment itself is flimsy and with a pitiful catch that looks easily broken, and then you are stuffed.
The cost of accessories is prohibitive and ridiculous. In fact, the price of the X1 is ridiculous, given the most glaring of its faults:would you really be prepared to shell out over £250 on a brightline viewfinder..or almost that amount on a handgrip? If you'd like a 'finder, something like the Voigtlander will cost less than half the Leica one.
And the "grip": there is hardly anywhere you can hold the camera without nudging a button or greasing the screen..and why on earth make the off button so easily nudgeable?
Batteries: yeahright, £79; mercifully non-Leica ones are about £14. And a good job too, as you will be very blessed indeed if you can get more than 220-250 shots.
The lens: 36mm is a great "angle", really, though it's 24mm of course.
And while we're about it, be aware that its only similarity with a "real" Elmarit is that it's a f2.8, as it ain't "stellar" or whatever other hackneyed clichés are bandied about. It's a "good lens, pleasingly free of distortion, though it's soft and not pleasingly so at f2.8. In fact it's pretty crap at f2.8, and it goes downhill fast after f8. Mind you, it is crisp and eager by f3.5; stonking from there to f5.6. And they're very clever, those Leica people: the sensor seems to have been "grown" in the same vat of cleverness as the lens, and if you're at least on nodding terms with a thoughtful approach to the "drawing" of your images, you'll see that if you set your image's output to lowish saturation, contrast and in-camera sharpening(if you do jpegs(...and you do HAVE to do jpegs whether you do RAW or not), the combined result of sensor plus lens plus in-camera processing really does a fine "virtual" approximation of the Leica/Zeiss look. Not in terms of sharpness perhaps but in terms of rendering.
The colours are really nice, I have to say; none of that plasticky clipping of yellows/reds that happens when Canon sharpens its lenses on its sensors; I'd suggest a low-contrast superfine jpeg from camera, and you get a lovely gradation of tones in the shadows. Oddly enough I find that highlights blow out quite easily.
Another pain: ypu cannot just shoot raw(DNG)
And another, pointless, one: for some reason the X1 says it has Image Stabilisation. Tommy-rot. No it doesn't: it does a sort of half-assed bracket thing then mashes the 2 shots together in camera.
The final word? Well, the final word is the nail in the coffin really. Autofocus is a little labyrinthine in terms of moving the AF area about
.But really, simply..... AF is simply too erratic for a camera that is supposed to exemplify the high-end of the field. Focusing precision, reliability and speed are so very bad, that this area is not even on a par with cameras costing a third of the price of a X1
I found that AF would jitter nervously like an old lady wanting to cross the road but who was frightened of traffic: out of every 10 shots, one or maybe two would exhibit nervy and anxious AF. AF is so creaking and interminably slow that just that one poor area will do more than ruin a shot; it will prevent you from taking them. If you're wanting to capture the Decisive Moment, then by the time you've locked on, the moments has already made its decsion, with r without you. Sadly, I'd almost say, if you had no alternative than to take a picture of a moving person, then I'd suggest setting the AF to continuous...but honestly, I found that taking photos of anything at all took about 3 seconds: I wasn't quite sure if the X1 was focusing, then having another go, or whether it was by then buffering up and writing to card with an ink quill.
I do have a few basic examples but nothing interesting; I'll get round to posting them in a day or so, but to be honest it won't be worth waiting for.
I'm trying to work out THE definitive reason why I took the X1 back to the shop: I tell myself that it's because of the proscriptive nature of how Lightroom is(not) delivered, despite paying for it as part of the purchase...or something to do with the low resale value of having remaining so few actual Leica bits left. I mean, £899...I can't work out whether this is a Cracking Deal or merely something approaching a reasonable price once the branding has been pared away. If I'm being really honest to myself though, I have to say it's beause the nature of the photographic experience has been rendered so terribly slow as to be a very distancing one rather than enabling me to become part of the action. I found it a blessed relief to get back to the dSLR afterwards.
The X1 truly could be a great camera were it not for the above, and I will miss what it could be The lens is far from "real" quality, but when a considered approach to tones and depth is taken, and one works with the wonderful sensor, the results have a very desirable "signature" look about them. It's just too slow to allow me to move freely in the photographic experience though.
Now hold on.
Before you go into working out how to be polite whilst seething with jealousy, let me get 2 facts straight:
1. Yes, I did indeed buy a Leica yesterday...an X1 in fact;
2.And today returned it to the shop for a full refund of my money. End of story.
So why did I buy such a camera, only to return it today?
Not a trick question, as I certainly won't be spending my hard-saved on a Leica again. Well, dear reader, here is the tale, along with my thoughts on this model...
I was in the town of Bath for a day out. In a camera shop I saw a very tempting deal:
The Leica X1 is expensive. Here in the UK it peaks at £1400 (GBP), so imagine how my eyes lit up when I saw this one: an excellent secondhand deal in just about pristine condition for £899...well over £100 less than a new Fuji X-100. It had 2 tiny scuff marks on the body, otherwise perfect.
I momentarily wrestled with my dilemma: here was the perfect solution to my "35mm gap", miles cheaper than new, for just £80 more than a Zeiss Distagon 35/2.
Forcing myself to Get Real, I listened to the salesperson as she itemised what was, and what was not, included:
The X1 was without its box, a USB lead and its battery charger; there was no brochure, nor was there a warranty card: the latter did not alarm me, as over here any secondhand goods are under warranty by the place that sells them. There was no marque CD but a "hand copied" one provided by the shop. Furthermore, as obviously included in an X1's sale price IS a battery charger and USB/HD lead, the shop provided a brand new universal charger and the leads I needed. To cap the deal was also the case that had been included in the sale by the previous owner...and this was one splendid hard leather case, with a whisper-soft magnetic click as it embraced the impeccably engineered camera.
And, do you know, the blessings weren't over yet: I had, in fact, only walked into the camera shop 10 minutes earlier to get a 58mm clear front "filter" that I could fit on my Canon 50mm f1.4. I very cheekily asked if there was any reduction in the filter's price, seeing as I had just bought the Leica X1...and BING!!...I was given a discount of £15 (is that about $25 US?) for the filter.
So, a very happy and excited Zig left that shop:a Leica X1 gained for what I called a realistic price as opposed to the hyper-inflated silly retail price of a new one, a cut-price Hoya filter AND a disgustngly poncy uber-case also with "Leica" chiselled into the Executive Cow-hide.
And of course when I got it home there was a small hitch: I had to guess via trial and error how to charge the Leica battery(and hey..do you realise these tiny batteries are listed at £79 here!). Good: done and dusted in an hour, then the 200 minute wait whilst the battery charged...
And in the wait, I did my online research and found my memory jogged regarding the fact that as Your Very Own Zig is now a Leica owner, I could thus go to the Leica site and download all sorts of goodies. Ohyes!
But of course I had the included CD, yes?
Er..no: no matter which of my PC's 2 CD players I tried, I found that the CD was blank! As I had no idea what was on the CD(instruction manual? "E-warranty" of some sort? Surely the RAW conversion software I needed?) I did the online version of hunching up my collar and tramped across the self-obsessed carpetry of various Leica forums, finding that included in the price of the X1 is Adobe Lightroom, so as to get me cracking with my raw conversions from DNG.
And here it started to go quite a bit wrong....
I phoned the camera shop to tell them the CD was blank. They told me that Lightroom was available online and that all there was on the CD was the instruction manual...and so:
I thought I'd successfully registered the X1 on the Leica site and proceeded to rub my hands with glee as I anticipated being able to get really on top of the RAWs from this beauty. Gulp...they asked me for a serial number. Er...?.. I guessed this was the one on the lens barrel: BING! Yessss!
But now they were asking me for a TAN number..which was on the warranty card...and I did not have the darned warranty card.
For 3 hours I tried to find out what to do here, so I decided that, as I both needed Lightroom AND because it was my right to Lightroom as part of the price of the camera.
I phoned the shop again: ohhhh, don't worry, you can just dowload it, you don't need a warranty...
Nope, I told them....and I recounted to them the result of my researches, which apparently goes like this:
Lightroom, despite being part of the World of Leica of which I was now a jolly initiate, needs an activation key.
The activation key is mailed to me only when I've supplied the TAN number. Which I don't have: it's on the sodding warranty card, and I don't have that either. Worse than this, even though I've just paid for the software, the "owner" is only allowed by our Teutonic brethren to have a maximum of 2 activations.
And, of course, the X1 is secondhand: which means Lightroom may already be registered to and activated by, its previous owner...:mad:
So , I mailed Leica: their auto-responder calmly informs me I may receive a reply in around 5 days; the retentives at a Leica forum do the equivalent of sucking their teeth, deeming that it all looks rather bleak. Hmmm...for you, Herr Zig, ze war is over...
With head in hands, I reflect upon the following:
My X1 had no warranty card; I'm unable to get the software I've paid for; it has no box, no original battery charger or USB lead. It did not have its leather strap...though the leather poncey case has its own leather strap and I could cannibalise that.
I was emailed the instruction manual by the shop: I reload the now-charged battery and wade through all the menu settings, finally getting myself a sensible User Profile...until I notice the firmare is still V1, so I update it to Version 2.
No matter perhaps...I could always get away with using Adobe Camera Raw, couldn't I?
It is with a vague sinking feeling that I realise that my CS2 only supprts ACR as far as V3.7...but surrely this camera is going to be so amazing that I can put up with a bit of inconvenience?
I set to work finding my way around the X1.
The X1 is the strangest of beats, seemingly sired by a combination of several strands of DNA: It has facets of character that are by turn blindingly brilliant, impeccably designed and intimate a true "thinking photographer's" tool. Maddeningly, cheek by jowl with these, are some ridiculous non sequiturs of design or thought, shoddily poor design and ergonomics.
For instance: the menus, the ability to set incredibly detailed user profiles(either for different people or for differing photographic situations), are to my mind an absolute dream of precision and usefulness. The flash options in terms of when the flash is fired and how much control the photographer wished to have, are beautifully considerd and practical. The dials on the top plate are a joy and simplicity combined,: as though a masterclass of Listening to Photographers has been followed for 30 years and the results made the basis for the camera's design.
However, the things that are NOT right, are so Not Right as to be almost a shock, whether they be omitted or included. Considering there are so many features that greatly assist the photographer, enabling him/her to be so poised and prepared in their shooting, it is really lamentable that there are so many that completely work against that same ideal: Here are a few......
The battery/card compartment is not just fiddly, it is supremely annoying: the card is a few mm too deep to be easily accessible, and if you wish to turn the camera any other way to assist proceedings, the battery will fall out. The compartment itself is flimsy and with a pitiful catch that looks easily broken, and then you are stuffed.
The cost of accessories is prohibitive and ridiculous. In fact, the price of the X1 is ridiculous, given the most glaring of its faults:would you really be prepared to shell out over £250 on a brightline viewfinder..or almost that amount on a handgrip? If you'd like a 'finder, something like the Voigtlander will cost less than half the Leica one.
And the "grip": there is hardly anywhere you can hold the camera without nudging a button or greasing the screen..and why on earth make the off button so easily nudgeable?
Batteries: yeahright, £79; mercifully non-Leica ones are about £14. And a good job too, as you will be very blessed indeed if you can get more than 220-250 shots.
The lens: 36mm is a great "angle", really, though it's 24mm of course.
And while we're about it, be aware that its only similarity with a "real" Elmarit is that it's a f2.8, as it ain't "stellar" or whatever other hackneyed clichés are bandied about. It's a "good lens, pleasingly free of distortion, though it's soft and not pleasingly so at f2.8. In fact it's pretty crap at f2.8, and it goes downhill fast after f8. Mind you, it is crisp and eager by f3.5; stonking from there to f5.6. And they're very clever, those Leica people: the sensor seems to have been "grown" in the same vat of cleverness as the lens, and if you're at least on nodding terms with a thoughtful approach to the "drawing" of your images, you'll see that if you set your image's output to lowish saturation, contrast and in-camera sharpening(if you do jpegs(...and you do HAVE to do jpegs whether you do RAW or not), the combined result of sensor plus lens plus in-camera processing really does a fine "virtual" approximation of the Leica/Zeiss look. Not in terms of sharpness perhaps but in terms of rendering.
The colours are really nice, I have to say; none of that plasticky clipping of yellows/reds that happens when Canon sharpens its lenses on its sensors; I'd suggest a low-contrast superfine jpeg from camera, and you get a lovely gradation of tones in the shadows. Oddly enough I find that highlights blow out quite easily.
Another pain: ypu cannot just shoot raw(DNG)
And another, pointless, one: for some reason the X1 says it has Image Stabilisation. Tommy-rot. No it doesn't: it does a sort of half-assed bracket thing then mashes the 2 shots together in camera.
The final word? Well, the final word is the nail in the coffin really. Autofocus is a little labyrinthine in terms of moving the AF area about
.But really, simply..... AF is simply too erratic for a camera that is supposed to exemplify the high-end of the field. Focusing precision, reliability and speed are so very bad, that this area is not even on a par with cameras costing a third of the price of a X1
I found that AF would jitter nervously like an old lady wanting to cross the road but who was frightened of traffic: out of every 10 shots, one or maybe two would exhibit nervy and anxious AF. AF is so creaking and interminably slow that just that one poor area will do more than ruin a shot; it will prevent you from taking them. If you're wanting to capture the Decisive Moment, then by the time you've locked on, the moments has already made its decsion, with r without you. Sadly, I'd almost say, if you had no alternative than to take a picture of a moving person, then I'd suggest setting the AF to continuous...but honestly, I found that taking photos of anything at all took about 3 seconds: I wasn't quite sure if the X1 was focusing, then having another go, or whether it was by then buffering up and writing to card with an ink quill.
I do have a few basic examples but nothing interesting; I'll get round to posting them in a day or so, but to be honest it won't be worth waiting for.
I'm trying to work out THE definitive reason why I took the X1 back to the shop: I tell myself that it's because of the proscriptive nature of how Lightroom is(not) delivered, despite paying for it as part of the purchase...or something to do with the low resale value of having remaining so few actual Leica bits left. I mean, £899...I can't work out whether this is a Cracking Deal or merely something approaching a reasonable price once the branding has been pared away. If I'm being really honest to myself though, I have to say it's beause the nature of the photographic experience has been rendered so terribly slow as to be a very distancing one rather than enabling me to become part of the action. I found it a blessed relief to get back to the dSLR afterwards.
The X1 truly could be a great camera were it not for the above, and I will miss what it could be The lens is far from "real" quality, but when a considered approach to tones and depth is taken, and one works with the wonderful sensor, the results have a very desirable "signature" look about them. It's just too slow to allow me to move freely in the photographic experience though.
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