[Leica] Are we there yet?

[drodgers at casefarms.com (David Rodgers)]

Doug,


>>This all depends on what you consider bells & whistles vs. dramatic
improvements. The market has spoken loud and clear.<<

I suppose you're right. There are many different types of photography
and what's important to one segment may be a non-issue to another. 

I was looking at digital technology in relation to AF. I recall back to
the days when Nikon rolled out a new AF camera body about every 2 years,
or so. The newer bodies had big enough improvement over the old that you
were amazed. As much as you really couldn't afford yet another camera
body, you pretty much had to have one! 

The early cameras were inexpensively built. Almost like they knew they
were short term solutions. But as AF evolved even the pro-sumer cameras
were better built (i.e. N90 vs N2020). Finally things got to the point
where gains were more "ho hum" than "wow", at least for 95 percent of
users!.  

I wonder if we're nearing that point in digital capture race. There
seems to be inherent limitations. For instance, if you want more pixels
they need to be smaller, which means they can't gather light quite as
well. It's physically impossible to put more and larger diodes on the
same surface area. So now you're trading pixels for light sensitivity,
and the only way you can overcome that physical barrier is to go to a
larger sensor. We've reached the limit. You can have more A or more B,
but not more both.  

Maybe some software wizard can think of ways to better massage data.
Maybe someone will think of ways to eliminate Moire with software, thus
reducing the need for an AI filter. I'm not saying cameras are perfect,
or that subtle improvements aren't important. I just hadn't really
looked closely at new cameras in a while. When I did recently I came to
the realization that some are pretty amazing, which caused me to wonder
how much better they can get. 

Seems to me we're at the X or decimal stage, where instead of coming up
with an entirely new camera, companies are adding an X or decimal to an
exiting name to reflect "marginally" rather than "dramatically" new and
improved. I guess in Canon's case, instead of X or decimal it's a
"Mark". :-) 

DaveR