Eat that bran muffin yourself, Darren. Olympus and Panasonic started the "mirrorless" camera world with a quarter-sized sensor and sold it on compactness. Note that the professional offerings from Panasonic and Olympus (GHx series from Panasonic, OM-D E-1 from Olympus) and the pro grade lenses are not tiny despite the quarter-sized sensor..
Fuji took the half-size format and built a good system around it. Note that the X series higher-end cameras (those not sold on the "compact" marketing theme) are not particularly tiny … They are reasonably compact given the half-size sensor, but the quality lenses are still getting pretty big. Just like Pentax lenses for APS-C format. Sony saw a market there and stuffed, no, shoehorned a FF sensor into too small a body to be useful. I know: I worked with a Sony A7 for a year and a half. The body is too small for the sensor, which causes all kinds of problems with the mount, with lens design, with balance and handling. The good lenses are pretty big because they have to be to cover the format correctly, and when you use the Sony with any of the pro grade lenses, its balance as a camera to use just plain sucks. But it sells on the "compact and full frame" marketing bullshit. It's not a compact system compared to the Olympus/Panasonic because it can't be: the majority of the bulk in the system is in the lenses, not the body. Leica isn't interested in building "compact for compact" sake toys like that. They're interested in building a professional quality system with a body of sufficient size to manage the lenses needed to do the job best, and to handle like you expect a high quality camera to handle. High quality lenses for FF format tend to be large, and heavy if they are build of durable materials. That bespeaks a body with sufficient size and weight to balance them in use properly. On that basis, the SL body is simply a modern rendering of the Leica R series reflex cameras but with an electronic viewfinder system. It's only marginally larger than the Leica M series RF cameras, (often ballyhooed for compactness but actually a fairly large and moderately heavy camera) and it works beautifully with lenses of professional build and quality. It's not a "mirrorless" camera in the sense that you seem to assume a mirrorless camera *must be* … that is, something tiny and pocketable. That assumption is ridiculous. The advantages of using an EVF instead of a reflex mirror viewfinder system have nothing at all to do with the marketing oeuvre of building small and compact. G > On Feb 19, 2016, at 5:37 AM, Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Somebody needs a bran muffin. To recap: > > Godfrey said: "Many in the Leica community are up in arms about the SL > being too big and too heavy" > > P.J. said: "the Leica SL is huge **for a mirrorless camera**, even a > FF mirrorless like the Sony A7II. It's all relative really." > > P.J.'s statement is the opposite of ridiculous, it is a statement of > fact and one that even (apparently) a lot of Leica people would agree > with. > > I'm not saying that P.J. isn't capable of ridiculous comments - just > that this isn't one of theme. > :) > > On Feb 19, 2016, at 2:48 AM, Jaume Lahuerta <[email protected]> wrote: > > I don't think that it is ridiculous at all. > On of the main selling point of mirrorless is to get the same image quality > with less size/weight. That's why their users are (in general) more sensitive > to these factors. > > Of course YMMV, and you probably value factors other than size/weigh, but I > am with PJ in that mirrorless are supposed to be smaller/lighter, and Sony > has marked a high standard with their A7 family. > > Regards, > Jaume > > On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 12:13 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: >> Why? Because you believe that "mirrorless cameras can only be dinky little >> things"?? >> That's ridiculous, PJ. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
