[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
You said...

You worked in the photography trade so i thought you would agree without any reservations. The guys you worked with wil not blame their cameras if the shots do not come right. They are the artists. the camera is just a tool.

Are you in the image quality camp or not ? ie image quality is so important that nothing else matters. Sharpness is seen as perfection. If that is the case then what value has bokeh got. why have background defocus at all. I once saw a comment where one said of a bokeh photo its bad because its so blurred (!) wow!

What i'm saying is you cannot divorce the camera from the device. There are people who went with m9 for bigger reasons. That the image quality difference did not change their mind. In fact i'm quite certain other factors influenced them over the camera which is important but not primary.

So what do these people do, image quality improves with firmware updates but for some reason does not quite match the iphones or samsungs. Some people will say its terrible and i know immediately they are exaggerating. because when i look at them there are differences but not in a way that will always matter.

how should an m9 owner live with it. My way would be to learn how to get better shots with it using a different way of thinking about it. Introducing composition or choice or subject, lighting what works and less of an emphasis on solely image quality to judge how good a shot is. That is the heart of photography isn't it. Just the beginning. Turns one perceived disadvantage into another advantage. If it wasn't for initial Z1 problems i would never have got into this subject. This is how those users dealt with it. It certainly was valuable for me.

When you allow samsung or apple to define what a shot should look like then everybody must be like that or something is wrong. That is the impression i get when people push the comparisons. its an easy point to make to an uninformed audience but its not the full story.

a firmware update then ? how many firmware updates did your m7 go through. Its still early days for m9 isn't it. All reviews on m9 will expire once the next firmware update that addresses image quality comes out. I imagine wb will be improved. and low light as well. There are issues with the video in 4k with exposure flickering so work is required with video. One thing i've noticed with other devices is focus hunting in low light. Happens with a few of them.

I wanted to push it to see what the reaction will be. You can lead people to the water and that's it.. just ignore the ones that go on about image quality who say whatever. They won't listen any way. paid so much it does not work something is wrong. fine, exchange it for something else.

I remember couple of years ago this guy on another forum just hated the m7. he put up two photos, one was outdoors with glare, it looked like he was shooting a little away from the sun and one in his room of his laptop. Lousy pics. Then he got a lumia 925 and did the same. To my eyes they also looked lousy just different but he was very happy with them. How to explain it ? you don't! whatever he likes.

The only place i find problems with auto is in the wb at times and the low light shots which have boosted ISO.

That is where user effort will be required until such time a fix comes. daylight differences is minor. i don't quite know what to say about HDR. There is little that can be done here other than to improve exposure, the quality remains as it is.

Purpose is to accept it and work with it until things improve. Jesse is the first example. You've seen it already. This is exactly what i'm talking about. Since you work in the industry you know it well.