One Month with the Pixii A2572+ Digital Rangefinder Camera Review

A little more than a month ago, I purchased a used Pixii A2572+ digital rangefinder camera from eBay.  At the time, I wanted a digital rangefinder camera but didn’t want to pay the price for a used Leica M10 or M11.  I’ve been somewhat following the story of the Pixii camera for the past 5 years when they launched their first camera with a 12MP sensor, smaller rangefinder and low powered chipset.  Fast forward almost 5 years and they just released a full frame version with a better rangefinder and faster chipset powering it.  In between sits the A2572+.  This version has the most up to date 64-bit SoC, more storage options and an extended rangefinder compared to the original.  This A2572+ is the version I found a great deal on shopping on eBay.  Offer sent.  Offer accepted.

Above you will see my Pixii rangefinder with a Laowa 11mm f/4.5 RL FF and a Voigtlander 15mm viewfinder.  Since this is an APS-C camera, that 11mm gives the angle of view of about 16.5mm.  So the viewfinder helps frame.  Besides the 11mm lens, I also use a Voigtlander 28mm f/1.5 Nokton, which behaves like a 42mm lens.  Both lenses can produce excellent images and are easy to use.  Before this camera, I’ve never really shot much a roughly 40mm lens, but it is growing on me.  As a general purpose one lens setup, it works very well.  Below are some images taken at a local carnival to benefit the volunteer fire department of the town.

I love everything about these images.  The colors are great, dynamic range is good and the files have a certain feel about them.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but to my eyes, I feel like M-mount lenses have a different look about them given the very short distance between the rear lens element and the sensor.  I could be making that up, but I just think something is there.  Walking around framing shots using the rangefinder was great.  I enjoy seeing the real world and not a mini-monitor.  Once you understand how to focus a rangefinder and train your mind and eyes on the perfect contrast in the focus patch, snapping images is pretty easy.  On certain shots, I’d set the aperture to f/5.6 or f/8, set the lens to be near a hyperfocal distance and just compose and shoot.  No messing with autofocus settings, boxes, subject detection, frame rates or anything.  You just worry about shutter speed, aperture and ISO.  The Pixii’s built in meter seems pretty reliable and can be set to Average (all of the frame), Center and Spot.  There are some issues I’ve encountered and I’ll bring those up in the Cons section below.

The Pixii has become my general walk around camera that if I’m going out on walks or things that aren’t photography centric, it comes with me.  The above shots are from a short hike in the middle of the day.  The sun was bright and the scenes were very high contrast, but the Pixii handled it very well and the DNG files were pretty malleable with editing.  The nice thing about carrying only the Pixii, Voigtlander 28mm and Laowa 11mm is that the whole package along with extra batteries and a set of 52mm magnetic filters can all be carried in the tiny Clever Supply Sidekick Pro camera bag.  More on that in another post.

One big point of contention when people see this camera is the complete lack of a display to view pictures.  There is no EVF and no LCD.  What does exist is a phone app that syncs with the camera and will display captured images within 3-4 seconds of you pressing the shutter button.  I use an Android phone and this phone app is one of the best camera company created apps to date.  When I shot Fujifilm cameras, that app never wanted to sync images without a lot of fuss.  My current Nikon Z camera app works ok, but requires fiddling with WiFi settings and other things.  The Leica app worked reasonably well, but still fell short of this Pixii app.  Once the camera and app were initially synced, as long as the phone and camera are on, photos get beamed over.  If I want to remote control the camera fromt the phone or pull over full size DNG files, I can turn on a WiFi hotspot from my phone and the camera connects to it.  No fussing around.  I have been making an effort to not chimp on the app after every single image is taken and it has made the experience enjoyable.

My Pixii A2572+ has had some issues though.  One day, the one strap lug just fell out of the camera.  Luckily I had a grip on it and didn’t drop it.  The camera time gets reset after a few hours of being turned off, which means I have to sync the camera to the phone app to get correct time in the metadata.  This is easy and doesn’t require anything besides making sure my phone is turned on around the camera.  There seems to be a red tint to the DNG files the camera produces.  This is very apparent when shooting in daylight.  This can be corrected in post, but some images are more affected than others.  I have never shot a JPEG image using this camera, so I have no idea how good those are.  The Auto-ISO and Auto Shutter Speed can be very flaky at times.  Often, in bright sunlight, the camera will selected ISO 320 (base is 160 with 100 and 80 available as options) and a shutter speed but the built in meter will still show either under or over exposed.  It can take a few images for the Pixii to ‘warm up’ and then the meter gets more in sync with the settings.  In relation to that, sometimes the Auto-ISO inexplicably sets the ISO to 12000 in bright sunlight conditions while the over exposure indicator is blinking at me.  This behavior again seems to go away after either a reboot or just shooting a few images.  I’ve reached out to David, the CEO of Pixii with some of these issues and his very small team is aware of them and hopefully working to correct them.  David has been great to communicate with and is very open.  He told me to send in the Pixii and the strap lug would be fixed under warranty with their updated design and they would check everything else.  The only issue with the communication has been it generally takes a week or two to receive a response.  It is a very small company though, so that is easily forgiven.  All of the above issues are annoying, but haven’t been true showstoppers to me.  Yes, there have been times when I wanted to just chuck this camera in the river and go back to my Nikon Z system, but then I’ll get home, load the images onto my computer and see the files.  And mostly they are awesome.  I then take the camera back out and remember why I love shooting a rangefinder.

A decision I am trying to figure out though is whether to spend the money to have this camera upgraded to a full frame Max sensor.  Part of me wants too because full frame, but part of me is still slightly unsure about the long term use of this camera and whether I should just save up, sell this and go back to a Leica M rangefinder.  Part of what drew me to this company was the ability to do just that though.  I like the ethos of upgradeabliity and repairability in a camera.  When I had a Leica M10, finding batteries was a nightmare and even when you did, each one would cost $200 or up.  If you had to send in a camera for repair to Leica, it was mostly at least a 6 month wait.  So trying out a rangefinder from a newer company that didn’t have those issues was appealing.  Time will tell if this decision was wise

So after much rambling, lets break this down into a simpler Pro/Con list.

Pros:

• Easy controls and easy menu system in the camera
• Wonderful image quality in the DNG files, once you figure out the best way to process them.
• Camera and lenses are generally small and easy to carry.
• The rangefinder works great and is easily calibrated should you need to.
• Shooting without a screen or EVF between you and the world is a very good experience.
• Batteries are very common NP-FW50 and are easily found cheaply on Amazon or other stores starting at $15 each.
• The feeling of nailing a shot knowing that it was you and not the camera making every decision and focus for you.
• I love the mission of the company and the upgradeable nature of the camera (APS-C to full frame sensor, extended rangefinder upgrade, memory upgrade, etc)

Cons:

• There are some bugs in the camera with settings getting reset when turned off, Auto ISO and exposure issues and the Auto White Balance can be dreadful in daylight.
• Processing in darktable, I need to change the Input Color Profile and tweak how I edit the DNGs to fit better with the files produced by the Pixii.
• Battery life is short, around 100 shots per battery.
• Not the easiest camera to trust given the above issues and no screen to check shots immediately.
• General rangefinder focusing difficulty when photographing anything fast moving.

So what is my overall rating of the Pixii A2572+ camera?  This is a tough one.  On one hand, I love to take it out and just capture life with it.  Most of the time it works very well and gets out of my way.  If you are familiar with rangefinder operation, this can be a fantastic option for you, as long as you are aware of the slight bugs with the camera.  Tinkering with things is not a problem for me on something like this, so I can put up with the bugs and issues for now.  I’m learning how to work around them without much fuss.  If you are looking for a straight up digital Leica M replacement, I’d have to say this isn’t it.  Yet.  Once the issues are worked out, this could very well be a great alternative to a Leica M for most people.  As of now, I think you have to be prepared to put some work in to get the most out of this camera.  My plan is to keep using it and decide on if I’m going to send it back to Pixii to fix the strap lugs only or also have the full frame Max sensor upgrade done at the same time.