[Leica] Re: digital M

[Jim Brick <jim_brick@agilent.com>]

At 06:23 PM 7/20/01 -0400, you wrote:
>on 7/20/01 5:55 PM, Jay Burleson at jayburleson@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> > 2002, however, will see an M Digital. All they are waiting for is a full
> > frame 35mm chip to use.

Full frame 35mm and larger CCD sensors have been available for going on 
four years now. I've had one since 1998. In 1998 we cut a hole in the back 
of a Canon EOS 1n and stuffed it in. Then mounted all of the electronics on 
boards outside the camera. What a giant kludge. And the digital pictures 
from this 6 megapixel sensor had aliasing and other artifacts because of 
the sharp Canon optics and the Nyquist limit.

Film cameras and digital cameras are two completely different beasts. They 
are not intermixable. But, you say, what about the Canon, Nikon, etc, SLR 
digital cameras. The illusion is only skin deep. Crack one open and it is 
stuffed to the gunwales with billions of transistors, resistors, 
capacitors, circuit boards (yes, several) connected to each other with 
ribbon cable and flex circuits. Not for the faint at heart.  Ah, but how 
about the Hasselblad backs hooked on to a conventional film camera. Well... 
nice for $15,000 and up, plus lugging a computer around and an umbilical. 
Besides, Hasselblads and the like are modular where the digital part can be 
built into an attachment. The back. Open up a digital back and discover how 
much electronics you get for $15,000. It looks like $50,000 worth. And the 
really good backs are $50,000.

An M camera is probably the worst camera to attempt to digitize. They could 
make a digital M camera. But it wouldn't be anything like the M camera you 
know now. They would probably call it a D camera. And the wonderful high 
resolution Leica lenses that you love would be looking through a defocusing 
filter (built into the camera over the sensor) because a 2500 Hz sensor 
pixel frequency cannot collect data of ten times that frequency. Again, the 
Nyquist limit.

If you really want a digital M, buy a Silicon Film cartridge 
(www.imagek.com) and have someone modify an M camera so it will fit. Then 
use it for awhile. Then instead of throwing it away as a useless waste of 
time and money, loan it to someone else who hasn't stopped to think it through.

Want to buy a good, sharp, easy to use, digital camera? Get a Nikon CP995. 
Or something like that. A digital M would be a marketing disaster as well 
as a disaster to use.

Jim