Enter the Pixii A2572+ Rangefinder

Since selling my Leica M10 last year, I have greatly missed using a rangefinder camera.  In my naivety, I thought that a Nikon Zf could replicate the old school analog feel of the M10 close enough.  This was the wrong thought.  While I love my Zf and use it frequently, it just does not handle like a Leica rangefinder.  The hunt for a replacement begun and I stumbled across a used Pixii A2572+ on eBay at a great price.  It wasn’t a Leica and ‘only’ had an APS-C sized sensor, but it had a real optical rangefinder, minimal controls and other intangibles that drew me too it.  After some communication with the seller, I put an offer in and soon enough, it arrived at my door.  Below are some first impressions and first images.

The camera is very similar in size to a Leica M10/M11, but slightly lighter.  The build quality feels impressive and solid.  The rangefinder is a .67x magnification verses the .72x magnification in the M10/M11.  The difference in size isn’t that great, but from my initial impressions, the actual rangefinder patch in the Leica is just slightly sharper and better defined than the Pixii.  This doesn’t mean the Pixii is bad at all, in fact nailing focus hasn’t been an issue at all in my first day with a true rangefinder again.  I am primarily using the Voigtlander 28mm f/1.5 lens and this behaves as a 42.5mm lens would on a ‘full frame’ camera.  Pixii has framelines for 28mm, 35mm, 40mm and 50mm lenses and these are set in the minimal menu.  What is quite helpful is that you don’t need to do the sensor size conversion in your head.  If you put a 28mm lens on your Pixii, just select the ’28mm’ option in the menu and you’re set.  Unlike the Leica M’s though, the framelines won’t automatically update based on the lens attached.  You need to manually set the focal length for each lens.  In some ways this is better though, as when set, the images EXIF data is updated properly. For the Leica, the only way to have the focal length in the metadata was to 6-bit code your lenses.

It’s only been half a day since I unpacked the Pixii, but it already feels familiar.  The controls are easy to learn, menu settings simple and the metering modes seem to mostly act rationally.  One thing I’m still not quite sure about is the default color profile.  This may be an issue partly caused by me for using darktable as my RAW file editor, but the colors by default seem off.  Shooting in daylight seems to produce some odd reddish hues and strange greens as well.  Adjusting the white balance isn’t correcting this for me, so I moved further back in the image processing pipeline to the ‘Input Color Profile’ module in darktable.  Instead of using the built-in profile from the DNG file, I started to experiment with using other standard profiles and this seems to solve some of my issues.  It’s still early, but I think I’ll be able to get a handle on it and build some presets.

The feature that most people seem to notice right away is the lack of a rear screen.  When you press the shutter button, you’ll hear a generated shutter sound, the framelines will flash and that is it.  There is no way to review what you just created on the camera and the only option for that is to pull your phone out and look on the Pixii app, assuming you installed it.  The app is pretty impressive and I have to say, it works much better than Fujifilm’s old app and it is even quicker than Leica’s app.  Once the Pixii was synced with my phone via Bluetooth, an image taken on the Pixii would transfer to my phone in about 3-5 seconds.  This is only a low quality jpeg, but more than enough to check basic focus and exposure.  There are options to transfer full size DNG’s and JPEG’s, but that doesn’t interest me. While out photowalking tonight, I made it a point to not use the app.  As a Software Engineer, I look at computer screens all day long and part of the reason I bought the Pixii was to get away from that.  With this, I’m back to a true optical rangefinder.  No small monitor as an EVF and no bigger monitor as a rear LCD screen.  Just some glass in front of my eye.  Back to basics.

The Pixii is a very interesting camera.  One that I think is going to be a joy to use and a way to experience photography in a unique way.  I’ll have to try and remember to write an update after a few weeks of use with more coherent and organized thoughts.  Until then, I’ll keep using this and hopefully loving it.