[Leica] My Experience with the X Pro-1 and Leica Lenses

[r.s.taylor at comcast.net (Richard Taylor)]

Hello again.  It's been quite a while since I posted, but I've been 
following the recent discussion about the X Pro-1 and XE-1 with great 
interest and thought you might be interested in my experience with my 28 
Summicron on the camera.  I use the Fuji adapter.  

I've had an X Pro-1 since it first came out.  I am delighted with it and 
with the Fuji 35mm and 18mm lenses I usually use on it. 

As the recent postings have said, using Leica lenses on the camera is only a 
bit more hassle than using them on an M.  In the OVF with the camera set to 
manual focus a quick press of the thumb wheel brings up a magnified EVF 
image in the finder, focus, half press the shutter to bring the OVF back, 
and shoot.  Great, and pretty quick. 

Unfortunately, in bright light--read that an anywhere outdoors on a sunny 
day--the OFV frame lines are so dim as to be invisible.  Why this is so is 
beyond me since the frame lines are perfectly visible in bright light with 
the Fuji lenses mounted.*  This looks like a bug to me and maybe a firmware 
update will fix it. 

The EVF is fine outdoors, fortunately, but you have to lock the EVF on since 
there is enough of a light leak around your head when the light is bright to 
keep the sensor on the back of the camera from triggering the automatic 
switch to the EVF and to prevent the manual switch from working.  

The shooting process is the same as with the OVF and just a quick.  I find I 
need to shoot with both eyes open, though, since the EVF is pretty dim in 
bright light.  It serves primarily as a focusing and framing device.  The 
XE-1 may be better in this regard.  My one look through one of those 
viewfinders made me think I was looking though a piece of glass.  

On file size, I was initially getting very large (55MB) image files after 
import into Lightroom 4 even though I wasn't embedding the RAF files.  You 
can bring the file sizes down to normal--about 25MB RAF; 19MB DNG--by 
selecting Compatibility "ACR 7.1 and Later" in the preferences dialog box 
for imports into LR4.  I got this fix from a Fuji X forum.  This usually 
limits you to using CS6 and LR 4.1 and higher but that's not a problem for 
me, anyway.  

Image quality with the 28 Summicron looks pretty good but I haven't really 
looked at it in detail yet.  This lens will be my 40mm equivalent lens at 
least until Fuji finally releases its 35mm equivalent.  

The X Pro-1 is my current Leica substitute.  It's great camera, use it with 
joy!  

Dick

*There is one exception to this.  I situations where there is bright light 
and the light is highly polarized, such as light off the water, the frame 
lines will be invisible with the camera held horizontally.  Rotate it to 
vertical and the frame lines reappear.   

If you're wearing polarizing sunglasses the frame lines will be invisible in 
all situations and the EVF will be black and unusable.