Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/09/20

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Subject: Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica
From: bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)
Date: Mon Sep 20 12:58:16 2004

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
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Replies: Reply from s.jessurun95 at chello.nl (animal) (Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica)
Reply from telyt at earthlink.net (Doug Herr) (Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica)
Reply from feli at creocollective.com (Feli di Giorgio) (Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica)
Reply from scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin) (Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica)
In reply to: Message from jonathan at openhealth.org (Jonathan Borden) (Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica)