Sans Mirror  

Leica's third 24mp SL camera, the SL3-S, comes with a number of additions, as well as a slightly higher price tag (now US$5300). Phase detect autofocus, 6K video, open gate video, a tilting rear LCD, Content Authenticity Initiative support, 30 fps still photography (12-bit), handheld 48/96mp multi-image capability, direct-to-SSD recording (video), and addition of a CFexpress Type B slot, are the big ticket updates to the camera. All coupled with the modern Q UI in the solid metal SL body design. 

Commentary: It feels like Leica has now made it up to at least 2020 in the full frame sensor hybrid camera market. They tout it as the "fastest Leica" ever, and it certainly has the best video capabilities Leica has done to date, but that feels more like "catching up" than it does "getting ahead." 

Some will see that as a snide comment from me, but it's actually a compliment. Generally Leica had not been keeping up with the Canikony trio, but they can now fully claim some reasonable level of doing so. At least for the 24mp full frame hybrid category. 

There's a reason why Leica is doing well at the moment (last year was their best year financially). The SL's keep them close to the ILC state of the art, the M's appeal to their traditional users, and the Q/Dlux compacts actually are the top of that smaller category. Instead of going retro, as have so many of the Japanese, Leica is going more modern, and that shows, too. Moreover, it's the right decision for the future. 

The SL3-S isn't a camera I'm likely to fully test, so I can't tell you exactly how it competes with the Canikony hybrids. But that modern UI does one thing: it simplifies the user's interaction with the camera, and up to a point I think that's valuable. I actually enjoy using my DLux-8 compact, and will have a review of it on the main bythom.com site soonish. 

About once a year I do a complete pass through my Web sites. That's many thousands of pages to edit, update, and sometimes fix. I've just started that again for sansmirror.com: every page (other than older news stories) front to back will get at least a brief checkup and some surgery has been done where necessary. 

As part of this work I've done some pruning, simplifying, and reorganization. The goal is for everything to be more accurate and clear. I also updated my recommended travel kits, made a full pass on all the articles on the site to make sure everything is as current and as accurate as I can make it. I even added a couple of small articles here and there to complete a thought. 

Note: The lens data pages are still a work in progress. Where you see "Lens Specifications" at the end of the title for the page, that page has been through the most recent edit process. Pages without those words in the title have not. This will be a slow process I'll continue to work on.

Meanwhile, other things are afoot. As I noted at my main site, bythom.com, sansmirror is now really in a state of torpor. I can't possibly catch up, let alone keep up, with reviewing all the new products in the mirrorless realm. My main emphasis has been on Nikon Z System mirrorless for the past year, and that will continue, so I invite you to follow that on the zsystemuser.com sister site rather than try to find that information here, where it gets buried in with all the other makers. The zsystemuser site also has information about the Nikon mirrorless cameras that isn’t here on sansmirror, partly because if I put it here everyone would ask for the same level of breadth and depth for all the other mounts.

I'll continue to write periodic News/Views articles here when it is warranted, plus the current camera and autofocus lens databases will be updated and maintained. I will from time to time review cameras and lenses. But the volume of material I was producing—hundreds of new articles and reviews a year—will decline as I focus my efforts elsewhere.

As always, you can support my work by clicking on the ad at the bottom of every page for this site's exclusive advertiser (B&H) should you be looking to buy any new camera or computer gear. Starting your purchase via a click from this site results in B&H continuing to pay me enough to afford all this site's ongoing costs.

Thanks for your support over the past decade+. I hope you've enjoyed the ride (and will continue to do so). 

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