Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/09/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]It's odd, though, Jonathan, that Cosina managed to pull the whole thing off in next to no time. And it's also odd that people are in one breath telling us how no one expect to hang on to one of them silly digicams for more than about 15 minutes before having it labled obsolete, and in the next breath they're telling us that Leica has to charge six arms and four legs for a digital M because, after all, it wouldn't be a Leica without that build quality. But if the damn thing's going to be obsolete in 15 minutes, and doesn't have to be capabable of going off to boarding school with little Skipper, Jr's little Skipper III, then why does it have to have that Leica build and price tag? Confused minds really do want to know. :-) -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Borden Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 3:35 PM To: Leica Users Group Subject: Re: Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica Scott McLoughlin wrote: > Just because it might cost Leica $3K to make a digi > M body doesn't meant many buyers will be willing > to pay $5K for it - or whatever the numbers might > come out to. > > Right now, I don't think folks expect their digital > cameras to last them many, many decades. It's not > perceived as an "investment" in the same way. Build quality is one thing and if Leica were interested in 'getting something out the door' at a lower price point, they might subcontract the production to a japanese or even chinese firm -- this has been done before with Minolta etc. and witness the current crop of Leica digital P&S. For the digital M I suspect there are other technical issues -- namely the distance between the rear element and the sensor. With wide angle lenses designed for rangefinders i.e. the M series, the angle that which the light strikes the film at can be quite acute -- look at the SA 21 for a great example. This doesn't work great with run of the mill digital sensors and so I expect some real work with microlenses is being done -- but imagine trying to design a sensor that will work well with anything from an SA 21 to a 135 -- not an easy task. The reason this is so much easier for SLRs is that the lens already has to clear the mirror and consequently the wide angle lenses are designed differently. Perhaps Epson has solved this problem. Perhaps it is not really a problem. Perhaps the current R-D1 is a trial balloon for something later. Perhaps Epson is going to use all the $$$ it makes on ink to buy Leica and come out with a 20 mp R-D2. Who knows. We can speculate on lots of things, but it is reasonable to speculate that the reason we don't have a digital M *today* is that there are real engineering issues. Jonathan _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information