Leica Digital Camera Announcement

-- Steve Rosenblum (stevierose@yahoo.com), November 07, 2001

Answers

a href="http://www.dpreview.com/news/0111/01110701lumixdmclc 5samples.asp">Click here to see some samples.

-- Richard Le (rvle@yahoo.com), November 07, 2001.

Oops. Let's try again. Click here to see some samples.

-- Richard Le (rvle@yahoo.com), November 07, 2001.

Okay. Not funny. Click here

-- Richard Le (rvle@yahoo.com), November 07, 2001.

1. Pretty decent results - a little color aliasing near the edges, but pretty wild resolution.

2. I keep whispering to myself the phrase "VARIO-SUMMICRON, VARIO- SUMMICRON, VARIO-SUMMICRON". Has a nice ring, doesn't it? Maybe a 35-75 in M-mount?

"VARIO-SUMMICRON, Vario-Summicron, vario-summicron, v....s....., vs"

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), November 07, 2001.

[growl] Its not a Leica.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), November 08, 2001.

Surprisingly I like the design of the Panasonic with Leica lens better than the strictly Leica rectangular design... I dunno why :)

Alfie

-- Albert Wang (albert.wang@ibx.com), November 08, 2001.

Yawn...

-- Dan Brown (brpatent@swbell.net), November 08, 2001.

"It's not a Leica". Hmmm.... I agree that it would be great to have a digital camera body that would accept all of our lovely (and very expensive) Leica M lenses. It seems unlikely that very many of these would be sold given how few people in this world presently buy Leica M cameras. Therefore, the cameras would have to be very expensive to recover development costs and turn a profit. In addition, many Leica M users seem to be "purists" (not said unkindly) who may be the last to actually embrace the "heathen" digital technology, so that would mean even fewer sales. Lastly, as one who has used digital cameras (as well as my M6) I can attest that as an evolving technology the product cycle has been exceedingly short. A few months ago 3 megapixel cameras were state of the art, and now 4 megapixel cameras are pretty much standard with a number of 5 megapixel cameras just out. Therefore, if Leica brought out a digital M body now with 4 megapixels they might expect to be able to sell them for perhaps 6 months if they were lucky, and then would have to develop the next version. Compare this with, say, the useful life of the Leica M3. So the bottom line at the moment is this.... It ain't gonna happen. At least it isn't going to happen until digital chips have evolved for a few more years to the point that they are excellent and provide the resolution of 35mm film over the same image area.

On the other hand, Leica LENSES are state of the art right now. So the mating of a top notch Leica lens with a digital body at a reasonable price with good controls is quite appealing to me. Not as a replacement for my M6, but as another very appealing photograhic tool.

-- Steve Rosenblum (stevierose@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.

Where's the red dot?

-- Bert Keuken (bkkn@wanadoo.nl), November 08, 2001.