June 2022 Pixii News

Dear Subscriber First Name,

In spite of the blistering heat that has been sweeping over France, the team has not been resting and we have much news to share with you :)

I hope this finds you well and that you enjoy this content. Please let us know what you think, and what you’d like to read about in the future.

What’s New?

We have been hiring and training engineers to ramp up our production capacity. With the founding team being in charge of design, new features, assembly, testing, and calibrating, we hit multiple bottlenecks. The new members of our team are working quickly to make this a thing of the past. David & Melric are still very much part of the fabrication and quality processes but should have a bit more time for the Research part of the R&D!

On the communications front, we are happy to share that Pascal Jappy (founder of DearSusan) has started working with us. A professional marketing expert, Pascal communicated about this collaboration in his usual tongue-in-cheek tone here. He will soon be joined by another Youtube professional we had reached out to. There are so many talents in our small community! We hope to create even more interesting content for you with the help of our new dream team.

Meanwhile, we continue to streamline our operations. We have improved the yield rate for certain elements and we have adjusted our processes. We are now running on a weekly cadence for the fabrication of small batches of cameras. This makes production leaner and faster. Already, delivery times have dropped from 8 horribly long weeks to 6-7, and we hope to bring this down to 4-5 within a few weeks.

Paradoxically, it also means we are going through our components bin faster than before. We continue to fight against semiconductor shortages and hope we can hold with our stock of critical parts. Unfortunately, some components won’t be available again until early 2023! So… hint hint, act now before it is too late :)

Software Update

A software release happened in early June. You will find all the details in this 5.5.18 Update blog post. But here are some highlights :

• Quick access to your favorite menu settings.

• WiFi and backup interface improvements.

• Faster camera boot, and improved battery management.

• Cable tethering for remote control and superfast download of images.

• And more :)
  

Recent mentions and reviews

As you may already know, DxO tested the 26Mp version of the Pixii and gave it the highest rating ever achieved by any APS-C camera tested to date, and almost on par with today’s finest full-frame models.

This obviously sparked quite a few discussions online. You can follow those here:

• on the Rangefinder Forum,

• on the Leica User Forum,

• on Summilux (in French),

• on Fred Miranda,

• and on Cameraderie as well.

A few weeks ago, Mike, at The Online Photographer, also published an article called Pixii Rangefinder. In that post, he reminds readers of the sad fate met by most rangefinder cameras in recent years. We agree with some of his analysis but think Pixii’s value proposition goes beyond simply being an M-mount rangefinder. As new features progressively reveal our vision, I hope this will become more and more apparent to all.

And if you haven’t seen them already we also recommend the excellent videos from James Williams and Mattias Burling published on YouTube.

Sneak preview of the future

Mirroring our recruiting efforts, you will be seeing news on both the product and communications front very soon.

Starting with the latter, a 3-part insider peek into the backstory of the company and the design of the camera.

Of course, new reviews and discussions will continue to be passed on to you. It’s not yet easy to test a Pixii camera and they are a good way of deciding whether you want to take a camera home (with our new 30-day return policy).

And a few other surprises are in the works. For example, we have received many questions about the Monochrome mode. But we couldn’t go into more details to explain why it gives results so close to a dedicated monochrome sensor. We have since filed for a patent and the new comms team will be working on getting the word out and revealing more about that magic feat!

That’s if for now. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks :)

Have a great day,
Isabelle & the Pixii team.