Digital M/Digital Rebel was Re: [Leica] Lost Faith in Leica

[jonathan at openhealth.org (Jonathan Borden)]

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