OzRay
Mu-43 Hall of Famer
One of the things that has always impressed me about Olympus cameras, apart from the image quality, is their overall build quality, reliability and aftersales support, and it seems to me that this has clearly flowed on to the m4/3s system. I'm not familiar with Panasonic, so I can't make any judgements in this regard, but I was fairly happy with my LX3. The E-P1 and E-P2 have been hauled around everywhere and I treat them pretty much as I do my E3 kit. The E-PL1 is primarily my wife's camera and has travelled to Bali and back and many other places, usually in her handbag when not being used. None of them appear to have suffered at all so far. For relatively inexpensive gear, they seem to hold up very, very well. I can't say too much about the lenses, as the only Olympus m4/3s lenses that I have are the 14-42mm zoom and the 17mm prime, but neither have shown problems.
This brings me to the topic at hand; which is, that I've been researching the Leica M9 for quite a while, out of an interest in possiby getting one. However, I've been thoroughly disappointed in the number of problems reported by users and a lot of this applies to brand new cameras. It's not just one issue, but a wide variety of problems: cracked sensors, sensors with surface issues, shutter issues, image issues, card reading problems, card writing problems, battery issues, lens mount issues, control dial issues, and lots of other 'niggly' things; things that should not be happening with any of today's cameras, let alone one so expensive and supposedly built under the best QC in the world. For a camera that costs 12X more than an E-PL1, as much as a 1DsIII and nearly as much as a D3x, it's astounding that Leica hasn't been able to maintain better overall quality. The image quality is wonderful (when it works) and I don't care that high ISO is not up to that of Canon/Nikon full frame, Kodak sensors never were, but the colour is great; however, why aren't the basics up to a higher standard?
It appears that all of these problems are taken in their stride by Leica owners and Leica almost seems to have been forgiven for such basic failures, even if their after sales support is woeful. And many are accepting a repair of a brand new camera, rather than a replacement with another new one. Were even the lesser issues evident with any other brand, even a $600 camera, people would be baying for blood. I guess the bottom line here is that while I was seriously pondering an M9 (I still don't quite know why), I just couldn't reconcile owning one and encountering one or more of the issues that appear so common. This quote from the Rangefinder Forum kind of sums it up: 'I so want to love this model [M9] and the company but there are too many stories like yours that make me stick to my 43 year old M4 and use other manufacturers for digital.' Some even report the M8.2 to be a better camera - go figure!
I guess for the moment, I'll just have to wait and see what Olympus offers in their next iteration. And I'll hold onto my 4/3s gear just in case.
Cheers
Ray
This brings me to the topic at hand; which is, that I've been researching the Leica M9 for quite a while, out of an interest in possiby getting one. However, I've been thoroughly disappointed in the number of problems reported by users and a lot of this applies to brand new cameras. It's not just one issue, but a wide variety of problems: cracked sensors, sensors with surface issues, shutter issues, image issues, card reading problems, card writing problems, battery issues, lens mount issues, control dial issues, and lots of other 'niggly' things; things that should not be happening with any of today's cameras, let alone one so expensive and supposedly built under the best QC in the world. For a camera that costs 12X more than an E-PL1, as much as a 1DsIII and nearly as much as a D3x, it's astounding that Leica hasn't been able to maintain better overall quality. The image quality is wonderful (when it works) and I don't care that high ISO is not up to that of Canon/Nikon full frame, Kodak sensors never were, but the colour is great; however, why aren't the basics up to a higher standard?
It appears that all of these problems are taken in their stride by Leica owners and Leica almost seems to have been forgiven for such basic failures, even if their after sales support is woeful. And many are accepting a repair of a brand new camera, rather than a replacement with another new one. Were even the lesser issues evident with any other brand, even a $600 camera, people would be baying for blood. I guess the bottom line here is that while I was seriously pondering an M9 (I still don't quite know why), I just couldn't reconcile owning one and encountering one or more of the issues that appear so common. This quote from the Rangefinder Forum kind of sums it up: 'I so want to love this model [M9] and the company but there are too many stories like yours that make me stick to my 43 year old M4 and use other manufacturers for digital.' Some even report the M8.2 to be a better camera - go figure!
I guess for the moment, I'll just have to wait and see what Olympus offers in their next iteration. And I'll hold onto my 4/3s gear just in case.
Cheers
Ray