Pixii has announced a new 26MP rangefinder camera with 64-bit processing and an upgradable sensor block.
The camera, slated for release in 2023, is the third camera to be produced by the French company. The devices features a 26MP APS-C sized BSI CMOS sensor, which has already scored 90% on the DXO Mark website. However, the headline feature for the camera is its 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 architecture, featuring a dual-core OpenCL 2.0 GPU with 768 threads and up to 7GPixels/s and dedicated NPU and VPU cores.
The company claims that this processing allows the camera to produce not only full colour images, but also true monochrome raw ones as well. But, how can the camera do this when it uses a traditional Bayer configuration, using colour filters in front of the sensor? The company states on its website: "Since the influence of the Bayer filter is well defined, we can infer the quantity of light that hit a defined pixel. This allows us to recreate the response of the underlying monochrome sensor. The result is a true monochrome image with a single plane of raw values and up to 16 bits of resolution."
While the company admits there are some performance gains to be had by using a true monochrome setup like the Leica M10 Monochrome, Pixii has decided that the gains are minimised by taking a computational approach to things.
The sensor on the camera has a native ISO of 160, with a maximum of 12800. As we mentioned, the sensor block is entirely upgradable, but it doesn't end there. The viewfinder and even the processor can be upgraded as and when technology moves on. Of course, we've heard this before from other manufacturers and such things often get kicked into the long grass, so we shall see how any upgrade path pans out.
Battery life also seems to have improved over the original camera, with a claimed 2572 images per charge being possible, compared to 1571 on the first model. It goes without saying that a rangefinder camera is a little different to your usual mirrorless system. There's no autofocus to be found here. Focus is achieved by adjusting the focus ring manually and aligning a ghost image over the top of your composition. It's simplicity itself, although you will unlikely to be taking images of sports with it!
Pre-orders for the Pixii rangefinder camera are now open. Cost is €2699 with 16GB of internal storage (128GB is €3150), and while the January allocation is all sold out mid-Feb ship dates are still available at time of writing.