GEAR TALK - Leica M11 First Impressions

BUILD QUALITY

In terms of the feel, the materials, the fit and the assembly - the Leica M11 looks every bit as nice as my Leica M10-R and M10-M. My M11 is silver, so same silver finish as my M10-R. And both have the brass top-plate. I purchased the Leica M11 Handgrip, which is only available in the new black finish. That coating has a gritty, almost sandy feel. Very happy that I chose silver a silver M11 instead of the black; though, the weight reduction with the black model was very tempting.

SHUTTER

With the Leica M11, whether or not the EVF or rear screen LV are is active, live view is always on. The consequence of this Leica having to change how the shutter works. When taking a picture, first the shutter closes, then the shutter primes itself for the shot, the shutter cycles (the open & close to take the picture), and finally the shutter re-opens and the camera returns to its always-on live view state. One capture translates into two shutter cycles.

We first saw this Live View capture sequence with the Leica M Typ 240 cameras. The M10 took that same process and sped it up, so EVF / LV picture taking improved, but still felt laggy. The difference with the Leica M Typ 240 and Leica M10 vs the Leica M11, that specific shutter sequence only applied to live view. Whereas with the Leica M11, this is how all captures work except when when using the electronic shutter option.

When shooting the Leica M11 with its the EVF or rear screen, this is Leica best implementation of LV / EVF in a Leica M to date. No doubt about that. Unfortunately, in normal RF shooting, this double shutter sequence mucks with what I would consider a normal shutter cadence (with the Leica M10 cameras). With the shutter now effectively opening and closing two full cycles, there is some lag introduced.

Where is the lag? That is hard to pinpoint because of the close-open-close-open flow of the shutter. The first sound we hear is NOT the capture, that is the closing of the shutter. Some reviews do point out this change and they say "you will get use to it". Yeah... but what is our choice?

CONTROLS AND LAYOUT

All the initial reviews talk about the new stuff and how great it is. I am going be the bad-guy and list some things that are not so great -

• USB-C Port -  Handy for charging the camera, but if wanting to move images from the internal memory or the SDHC card, one would think that plugging in a USB-C cable and connecting to the computer would do that. Nope. Need to remove the SDHC card from the camera and use a memory card reader.
• Internal Memory -  Good idea, but its current execution is less-than-brilliant. To get images out of the camera, I have to copy them to an inserted SDHC card. Where is the betterment? Or, use Leica Fotos, shuttle images to an IOS device and then somehow to my Mac - that is alot of extra work.
• Left Side Buttons -  Leica changed the order of the Play-FN-Menu buttons to the left of the rear display. I still have M10's; their button order is LV-Play-Menu. Now I am always pressing the wrong buttons...
• Center Button -  The center button is supposed to pull up the camera info window according to the user menu. Pressing it does nothing. As of firmware 1.3, still nothing.
• Menu Layout -  Pressing Menu brings up the camera info. Press again goes to Favorites. And finally, the third press brings up the actual menu. The M10 is more efficient. Center button pulls up camera info, and it only takes 2 presses of the Menu button to get the Menu (press #1 = favorites, press #2 = menu).
• File Naming -  Gone is the option to set the first 4 characters of the file name. Now we can only change the first letter. If trying to run multiple M and keep their numbering discrete, it is very difficult.

FILE QUALITY

It is too early make sweeping proclamations; however, compared to the Leica M10-R DNGs, the differences thus far -

• Color Gamut -  The edited DNGs seem to have a broader color gamut and feel more contrasty / saturated when edited in Capture One and Photoshop.
• Color Palette -  With the Leica M10-R, it felt as if all the color was somehow all in the yellow portion of the color wheel. Whereas with the Leica M11, the colors do not seem as biased towards the yellows.
• Noise / ISO -  Initially I felt the ISO performance was not much different than the M10-R. However, the shot of the building at night with the neon lights is ISO 1000. Pretty blown away by the quality - and it was a quick handheld shot from the car window on the way home.

WRAP UP

I do enjoy the camera and its images. Obviously there are some changes and quirks that I am not so thrilled about. Much of what changed with the Leica M11 feels like change for the sake of change. Had Leica continued with the traditional shutter set-up when shooting rangefinder mode (with the OVF), I would be smitten with the Leica M11.

But is the design misstep with the shutter a big enough issue for me to dismiss the Leica M11? No. I will probably bitch and moan about it for quite some time because to me it feels like the Leica M lost some of its "M'ness". But I gained other benefits like electronic shutter with the M10-R and M10-M do not have.