Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/07/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Claude, Digital technology is no where near the point of film quality. There are an estimated 360 megabytes of information in a Kodachrome 25 slide. Current technology lets you record somewhere between 1 and 12 megs of data on a 35mm digital camera. You can see how much you give up. I suspect there will never be any interest or need for a Leica digital camera. The Canon and Nikon versions sell well for catalog work and for some photojournalism needs where speed is everything and you can avoid processing. This allows pictures from news stories and Olympics to be sent within seconds of taking. But putting a digital back onto a Leica would be counterproductive. The size advantage of small Leicas would be lost and the superior lens advantage would be missed totally when it hit pixels instead of film grains. Digital cameras are all SLRs for a reason. No one wants to transform a small, light, beautifully-made Leica M into a huge digital beast. Actually, there are real advantages to making 2 1/4 cameras and 4x5 cameras digital standards. Quality is much better with that many more pixels available. Fred Ward