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One of the permanent features of the manufacture of cameras since the announcement of photography in 1839 is the great natural appeal of building the perfect, or the ideal, or the best, or just a better, camera. It has been practiced right along, and sometimes it seems that almost every male who has ever used a camera has gotten the bright idea that he would be just the man to build, or at least decree the specifications for, this elusive grail. This is a permanent state of affairs. The perfect camera has been proposed ten thousand times. In some few cases the better camera is actually made. Its perfections are then judged, its flaws inexorably emerge, and it is then employed as a basis for a tweaked or improved variant, or an imaginary improved variant, usually prefaced with the phrase "if only it had," as in, "it would be perfect if only it had...."
"If only it had" is the neverending plaint of every seeker of camera-perfection. Most people like and prefer basically whatever camera they learned on and got used to when they were young and the world was whole and life was good, but "only if it had...."
In most times and places, the temporary techniques of the moment are accepted as eternal and essential, and the fashions of the moment are taken for verities. Thus, when box cameras were common, the perfect camera was naturally imagined as a box camera. And so it was with stand cameras, field cameras with movements, folders, TLRs, and so on and so forth, down to present forms. Anybody (or almost anybody) could build a view camera. However, since electronics took over, this perfectionizing impulse has been largely stymied. Now that photography has become sensor-based it's almost extinct. Now instead of building perfect cameras we just ask for them to be built. The few better mousetraps that actually get built are rare exceptions.
The Pixii is one such—one of those perfect cameras. It is a hybrid, a digital camera that takes rangefinder camera lenses in Leica M mount. But it has an APS-C sensor—and of course "full" frame cameras, those with 24x36mm sensors, are considered de rigueur* presently, so: "if only it had a full-frame sensor."
And now it will. A perfect digital rangefinder hybrid is getting morer perfecter.
Bog of snark
Sorry! I'm tumbling down the slope into the swampy bog of snark. I've nothing against Pixii. My family were Francophiles. We had a Peugeot 604 (Moonstone, with leather seats) when it was one of the only ones in the USA. The Pixiis are beautiful cameras made in France with high idealism and great attention to detail. The cameras embody a vision for what a camera should be at this particular time, relative to Leica.
However, I like APS-C. I've always liked APS-C. I consider that smaller-than-24x36mm sensors are, or were, one of the basic inherent advantages of the whole digital development since the beginning, and I consider it bizarre that this obvious advantage is being stolen from us due to outside pressures, namely, at the moment, that "real" cameras have to do their best to distance themselves from phone-camera-sized sensors. I'm trying not to get doctrinaire about it, because I don't want to close my mind. It doesn't really matter what size sensor you use. FF sensors work just fine for taking pictures.
Anyway, for those of you for whom the Pixii would have been perfect if only it had a full-frame sensor, well, gather your shekels into a pile, because you are about to be indulged.
Here is a Pixii
Here is the Pixii Max.
Mike
*Rigueur is one of only a few words I cannot spell without help. The French sometimes salt their words with extraneous vowels and I have trouble remembering where they go. The French also complain when English and American words seem to obtrude into the patrimony of their language, overlooking that a whopping one-third of English words descended from French in the first place, thanks to William the Conqueror. English would not exist as it does without French! If you'd like to hear some odd back-formations purporting to be what English might be like without such borrowings, head to YouTube and investigate the term "Anglish." Quite an odd little world, but an interesting etymological game.
Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
Kenneth Tanaka: "I have no idea whether or not Pixii’s creators consider it to be 'perfect.' Nor have I ever used one of these French rangefinder cameras. But I do salute Pixii for thoughtfully moving forward with this line of cameras. They do seem very committed to the rangefinder camera experience and to refining that experience over time with their products. Whether or not the camera is an APS-C sensor may be a hurdle for some, particularly since the goal is to use gorgeous M mount lenses. (Do recall that the first digital rangefinder, the Epson R-D1, was APS-C.)
"But, to me, the main issue seems to be ergonomics. The camera looks cute but gives every indication it was born from a 3-D printer. It just doesn’t scream 'pick me up and take me out' to me. The other issue is price. For the neighborhood of the Pixii’s price one could buy a used digital M. But I wish Pixii well and hope it helps keeps the rangefinder genre in play a bit longer."
Hans Muus: "In this exceptional case, something else is the matter. Remember that the APS-C Pixii uses ‘full frame’ Leica-mount lenses, in conjunction with its optical viewfinder; 28mm is the shortest focal length for which trustworthy framelines are shown in the OVF, which comes down to (or adds up to, if you will), a full frame equivalent of 42 mm. You cannot reasonably go any wider than that. The new Pixii Max camera has the exact same outside dimensions, OVF reach etc.—only the sensor is now of full frame size, and therefore the image of the full frame lens is used in its totality. The 28mm lens is now exactly that, a 28mm lens. Naturally, this goes for the other (35mm, 50mm, 75mm) focal lengths as well, resulting in a much more practical choice of focal lengths."
John Wilson: "J'ai grandi à Montréal. Le français était obligatoire à l'école primaire et secondaire. Je ne comprends pas à qui est destiné cet appareil photo. Peut-être que je ne suis pas assez français pour percer de tels mystères. Je suppose que je vais devoir m'en tenir à mes Fuji."
hugh crawford: "Sniff, real Francophiles drive Citroëns. (A joke. All French cars are wonderful.) My wife worked for a woman who had a Peugeot 604. It was lipstick red. She had worked on the Peugeot AV account (multiple screen slide projections for press events and video walls for auto shows). When Peugeot left the USA, she ended up with the car that had been imported for the Auto Show. It was all legal spec since Peugeot had been planning on staying in the US market, but it was essentially a one of a kind, hand-built version with maybe a dozen press cars imported before they pulled the plug. You can imagine what it was like to get something serviced that officially never existed. It was a really nice car but if you ever said something nice about it it you would immediately regret it."
Mike replies: Our 604 had a similar fate. My brother somehow managed—while sober, and in broad daylight—to run into the back of another car stopped a stoplight, and the repair parts were to all appearances sent from France in a rowboat. And those at the oars were none too diligent about their project, either. It was in the shops for something like seven months. I don't remember exactly, but I think my mother got rid of it thereafter as being impractical. It certainly was that. However, the 604 had two great strengths: wonderful steering, and a ride like a magic carpet. I can still conjure up the sensation of both.
Nicholas Hartmann: "Don't go slagging on French. The vowels are not 'extraneous'; once you know the (admittedly complex) rules, the letters in the word tell you how to pronounce it. The rules have a few exceptions, and although there are silent letters and some tongue-twisting vowel combinations, what you see is largely what you get. Save your contempt for written English, in which the most common pronunciation rule seems to be 'it depends' (think 'though,' 'bough,' 'through,' 'tough,' or 'warden' vs 'garden,' among many others). Irish/Gaelic is even worse. If you want logic and clarity and one-to-one correspondence between written and spoken, learn Czech."
Mike replies: Nick is a former President of the American Translators Association, and should know!
I've been watching videos about language recently, and really enjoying learning a little about the manifest oddities of English, which I've long been aware of but never really understood. One presenter I enjoy is called RobWords. The video "Is English just badly pronounced French?" is a recent example. I think I recommended "The weirdest things about English" a few weeks back.
I hope this guy is reliable, by the way. Once one is outside of his or her area of expertise, it's tough to be certain. For example, a linguist called Dr. Geoff Lindsey recently pretty thoroughly debunked an idea that spread from a questionable Wikipedia article into many YouTube videos, including one by another of my favorites, diction coach Erik Singer. I buy Dr. Lindsey's arguments, but that won't cure the misinformation.
'Most people like and prefer basically whatever camera they learned on and got used to when they were young and the world was whole and life was good, but "only if it had...."'
[See bottom for challenge.]
Boy, I am glad I'm not "Most People"!!
Most of my photographic odyssey has been "Wow, it'll do . . . , gotta have it!"!
Especially since the advent of digital, life has been a wonderful series of increases in what I'm able to do, photographically. Some is obviously different, even spectacular.
Other results may look ordinary at first glance, but be something impossible before quite recently.
(Click on image for larger version.)
Let's see:
Even focus across more than 6" of depth at close focus.
Smooth background bokeh.
Lots of fine detail, without any edgy sharpness.
How?
A stack of 54 focal distance slices @ f1.2 ( from a total of 81)
Focus merged in Helicon Focus. Yes, post processing software has been part of the magic!
Challenge! What's the title of this photo? It's a literary reference.
Posted by: Moose | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 06:33 PM
But if the body dimensions are the same (check) and the lenses used the same size (check), then the only differences in using APS-C sensors are the decrease in price and IQ... no?
Posted by: Stan B. | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 06:47 PM
Isn't the whole issue with it being APS-C the lens availability? Refer to Thom Hogan and his 'buzz buzz' comments for Nikon refusing to make suitable small primes for their APS-C DSLRs for the entire existence of the system. The Leica lens set is great for 35mm film/full frame digital and has a lot of 35mm and 50mm options in range of speeds and prices. Now if the sensor gets smaller as in the original Pixii, you don't want 35/50 as much, you want 24/35, and where is the range of 24mm options? You have to go to Voigtlander. And are wider options like 16-18mm available too?
The Pixii wasn't as good a companion to your film leica, because you needed to buy or carry additional/different lenses. Nothing wrong with APS-C at all, as long as the lenses that you want to use exist!
Posted by: Nick | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 07:09 PM
I’m going to do what I expected to do when I bought my Pixii a few years ago: send my current Pixii to the manufacturer to have it upgraded to the Pixii Max. Instead of being obsolete after a few years the Pixii can be upgraded and be ‘relevant’ for another bunch of years.
It promises to be a nice continuation of my One Camera One Lens One year adventure, but instead of choosing a new lens I’ll get a new sensor!
Posted by: Sam Pieter | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 07:42 PM
On a personal level, I certainly don't mind the APS-C sized sensor, buuut...There is a noticeable lack of M-mount 18mm glass that would serve as a 28-ish mm in full-frame (Leica's 18mm f3.8 is not cheap, and almost a stop slower).
And the internal frame lines wouldn't have supported that focal length anyway.
So what it boils down to (for me) is that the main issue with the APS-C format is a lack of serious primes. Ironically, if people don't buy into the format, those primes will never get produced.
At least Voigtlander made an 18mm for X-mount, although that is not a true rangefinder format.
For now I am glad that Leica has a serious rival!
Posted by: Roman B. | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 08:40 PM
Great post, Mike. And I was one of your early converts to the "perfection" of the APS-C sensor size. Hope you had a nice Fourth.
Posted by: Mike Potter | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 08:43 PM
And oh, the Pixii is actually a Leica M-mount camera, not an M39/LTM camera, isn't it? The B&H product page lists it as an M-mount camera...
Posted by: Mike Potter | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 09:03 PM
Same syndrome with software. Except, in IT departments, it's called "maintenance."
My old life, before retirement.
Posted by: MikeR | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 09:23 PM
APS-C cameras are wonderful with APS-C lenses and to make telephoto even more tele, but it's a hard sell to the folks wanting a way to use M mount glass to make their 50 and 75.
I jumped to Fuji as their lenses were proportionally sized, even the 16 1.4 was a small lens, considering. The Nikkor 17-55 2.8 was wonderful in everyday, but too darn big. Leica glass in full frame is still generally small, so a smallish full frame body does make a great deal of sense to me - 'if only:':)
Posted by: rob l | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 10:57 PM
They have also learned the art of pricing from Leica, proving that they are good, attentive students of the great game of marketing! :-)
Posted by: Jayanand Govindaraj | Monday, 08 July 2024 at 11:24 PM
Think it is rather different when you have many very expensive lenses with fields of view you like, then someone makes a nice camera for all these lenses ... which will give them smaller fields of view, which may be you do not like. I would guess market for this is at least partly those people.
Posted by: Zyni | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 02:54 AM
Yes, I agree with Zyni here. Much easier to make it more fully like Leica, than design a whole new lens system and make it more like Fuji (or just have people put up with looking for a 18mm rangefinder lens if they want to shoot a 28mm field of view).
I do suspect many people will look at this, and then look at a used M240, and opt for the M. Less of a gamble. Like this one: https://www.keh.com/leica-24-megapixel-mirrorless-camera-body-only-silver.html
Posted by: John Krumm | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 09:34 AM
What Zyni said -- and it applies to lenses that are "not very expensive" too.
Posted by: Dave | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 09:41 AM
When I bought a Leica M8, having used an M3 for about a decade, I would have preferred that it was "full frame". Alas, my budget was not :-( But the 1.33x sensor size was somehow still very suited for someone used to (and owning) a handful of primes:
21>28
28>35
35>50
50>short portrait tele
BTW, my "other" digital camera is an Olympus M43.
Posted by: Søren Engelbrecht | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 09:49 AM
Don't go slagging on French. The vowels are not "extraneous"; once you know the (admittedly complex) rules, the letters in the word tell you how to pronounce it. The rules have a few exceptions, and although there are silent letters and some tongue-twisting vowel combinations, what you see is largely what you get. Save your contempt for written English, in which the most common pronunciation rule seems to be "it depends" (think "though," "bough," "through," "tough," or "warden" vs "garden," among many others). Irish/Gaelic is even worse. If you want logic and clarity and one-to-one correspondence between written and spoken, learn Czech.
Posted by: Nicholas Hartmann | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 10:30 AM
"If only it had".....
(my comment applies to the Sigma fpL also)
.....its hot shoe centered over the lens so external optical viewfinders could be used...
Posted by: Davey Carlson | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 11:53 AM
My dad bought one of the last Peugeot 604s (A Turbo Diesel model) imported into the U.S. in 1984 and drove it until 1988 when he passed it on to me to take to college. It really was a great car. I still have the brochure in a bin somewhere. Here is a scan of a snap I took in 1992 while driving around the Gettysburg Battlefield near my school:
https://tomnoto.smugmug.com/Public/i-Ppq8SNb/A
Tom
Posted by: Tom Noto | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 03:22 PM
My first car was a 1971 Peugeot 204 sedan, 4 on the tree, which I bought in 1976. Nice car to ride in but rust got to it.
Pixii should develop a manual focus K-mount B&W version. I miss film-era focussing screens as much as the next guy, but focus-confirmation on LCDs or optional EVF works just fine and can show you the image in B&W.
Posted by: Robert Roaldi | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 03:28 PM
Kudos to Pixii. But, about $4,000 U.S., I’d buy a used Leica instead. In fact, I did so a while ago (M240). But at least there is a large selection of Voigtlander primes in M-mount that would keep the overall outlay down to semi-sane levels.
Meanwhile, Mike, if you really want APS-C, I suggest following my lead and picking up a gently used Fuji XE-3. I just found one at KEH and it’s a ton of fun.
You can minimize that capital outlay as well. There are a number of inexpensive and compact autofocus primes from TTartisan and Samyang for X-mount. And even Fuji offers the inexpensive (but very good) XC 15-45 f/3.5-5.6 PZ zoom and the XC 35mm f/2.0 prime.
Posted by: Steve Biro | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 03:51 PM
Meanwhile, in the world of slightly smaller (and nondigital) sensors and much smaller wallets, Ricoh was so unprepared for the demand for the Pentax 17 that it halted orders and is considering increasing production to try to catch up:
https://petapixel.com/2024/07/05/ricoh-is-considering-increasing-pentax-17-production-to-catch-up-to-demand/
And, sort of continuing the small wallet theme, I appreciated the recent series on freelancing. Always a special treat when TOP and its circle of experts chew on a photography-related issue over multiple posts.
Posted by: robert e | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 05:15 PM
The available range of Leica-mount lenses is oriented towards full-frame "sensors", though, so a camera taking the rather extreme path of supporting Leica lenses has a better excuse for being full-frame than many.
I never liked APS-C. It's too close to full frame, but not close enough. So camera lines that started as compatible with their film predecessors weren't compatible enough. And you don't get smaller/lighter/faster lenses in APS-C much.
(I do have a friend who really needs full-frame; product photography, including 4x6 foot prints for trade show displays where people walk right up to them. He probably really needs digital medium format, but being a professional photographer, he can't afford it. Well, plus the tilt lenses for product work aren't very available there.)
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Tuesday, 09 July 2024 at 05:27 PM
I presently own a Peugeot 407 coupe, with a 2.7 litre V6 twin-turbo diesel engine. It's a bit sluuggish until the turbos kick in around 1900rpm, but from there, wow. I love the looks and really enjoy driving it.
It's also right hand drive and coming from France, a LHD country, they didn't bother to convert everything for us. The bonnet release is on the passenger side, for example.
I've had a couple of big bills, but generally it's been good. My health is declining, though, and getting in and out is becoming too hard. Time to move it on, I think.
Posted by: Peter Croft | Wednesday, 10 July 2024 at 10:29 AM
Every photographer I know has switched systems several times through their career. From commenters here, sometimes ever couple of years even! I think "prefer ... whatever camera they learned on" is complete and total nonsense.
Even if we skip over without comment my Pixie 127 and the old 116 box camera (and I did some film development and contact printing of 127 film), what I started with in 35mm and serious work (first paid work and such) was a Bolsey 35. Then I went to a Miranda, then to a Leica M3 and a Pentax, then to a Nikon, then to Olympus, then back to Nikon AF, then to Nikon digital, then to Micro Four Thirds. Not, in any way, the camera I learned on! (Also at least 2 film and 4 digital "toy cameras" on the side.)
[Present company is always excepted. --Mike]
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Wednesday, 10 July 2024 at 03:28 PM