Re: [Leica] Further digital exploration

[Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>]

Henning and Jim, you've both hit the nail on the head.

Technology has given us some miraculous machines that can do almost 
anything photographically and cook breakfast besides.  But as we've all 
said, the choice seems to be between cute little digicams with picture 
quality issues and response speed issues, and hulking behemoths with big 
honking bazookas (gee, this is getting downright Freudian!).

The digicams are good enough for the average snapshooter and have plenty of 
bells and whistles for the gadget freaks.  So they make sense for much the 
market.  Pros will put up with size and weight to get the digital speed and 
quality they need, and the current 10D and D100 are a lot more portable 
than the D1 and its brethren.

I suspect that as the technology matures, quality will rise and size could 
potentially shrink.  The Olympus E-1 is a step in that direction, though 
perhaps not enough.  I wonder if we'll ever have the digital equivalent of 
a Leica M or an Olympus OM.  Are people like us a significant enough market 
segment to eventually make such a camera?  I hope so. Maybe at some point 
someone will be inspired anew by the ethos of Barnack and Maitani.

But at the moment, what is driving the market is counting features, 
megapixels, and zoom range.  And the assumption that the camera must be 
able to do all the thinking for you.  All of which inspires digital cameras 
very different from what an M or OM kind of photographer wants.

I guess that what saddens me about the Digilux 1 and LC5 is that they are 
so near and yet so far.  In some ways they are the closest thing to a 
digital M there is right now.  They handle and operate about the best of 
any digicam I've ever tried.  But for that I trade image quality and gain 
noise. If I go up to the pro SLRs, I gain the quality but also gain bulk 
and weight.  It's become a question not of what I want, but what is the 
least objectionable alternative.

I feel no such compromises when I shoot with my Leica Ms.  So for now, I 
guess I'm still relying on silver molecules for my important stuff.

As for my digital sojourn, I guess that at this point, I can just enjoy my 
little Coolpix 990 for what it is, continue to mostly shoot film and wait 
for what I really want to come into being.  I can scrounge up a used D30 
and a couple of primes, shoulder the weight and go for it now.  Or I can, 
perhaps irrationally, pick up an LC5 at current fire-sale prices. Since I 
like the way it handles, I might end up doing decently with it despite its 
limitations, and there's always Neat Image for the noise problem.

Oh well.  There are plenty of people who wish they had our problems.  :-)

- --Peter Klein
Seattle

* Henning Wulff wrote:
>Yes, yes, yes... I know a number of reasons why we have hulking
>monsters like the Canon 1D, but a lack of commitment to compactness
>has overtaken the industry since Pentax with the MX and Olympus with
>the OM system stopped being major players.
>
>Where is Maitani now that we really need him??

* Jim Laurel wrote:
>The market is polarized between behemoths that can deliver great
>quality and P&S digicams that are a waste of time.
>
>Gee, I always thought that electronics were supposed to make things lighter
>and more compact.  I don't know about you, but I simply cannot travel with
>SLRs as large and heavy as those we now have.  More specifically, I guess,
>it's the lenses.  As I look in my Canon kit, it's the 70-200 f2.8 IS USM
>that really adds alot of weight.  The thing weighs some 2kg!  Maybe it just
>seems like the gear has gotten heavier because we expect so much more than
>we did in the OM era.


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