[Leica] It ain't alright.... "Fix it in SW"

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

On 19/11/2006, at 2:46, Frank Filippone wrote:

> In response to BD's email about the M8 magenta cast....
>
> I think that in today's marketing and sales driven marketplace,  
> digital or not, shipping without bugs ( known or not) is uncommon.
> You must meet certain deadlines.  Bad as that is, it is reality.
>
> However, the fact that you must use a piece of glass in front of  
> your lens.... note the operative word here is MUST.... is
> unacceptable.  ( No, I am not starting problems, it is an  
> opinion).   If the sensor is slightly more magenta sensitive, the  
> glass
> protecting filter should have been coated to attenuate the magenta  
> rays.  ( that is what the applied filter will be doing).  It is a
> matter of a coating on the glass plate.  It does not require more  
> glass over the sensor, thicker glass, SW interventions, or other
> "extras".  It is a VERY thin layer of deposited vapor on the glass  
> cover plate.  It takes an optical engineer a few hours to
> compute, a manufacturing engineer a few hours to try it.  It is not  
> brain surgery.

but it does not seem to need it 90% of the time. The majority of my  
images are not cast in magenta. I don't think it warrants a permanent  
filter, or we would lose the IR sensitivity which some people might  
like and use. It may not be that easy.

>
> It should have been done, it needs to be done, it is unacceptable  
> that it was not offered as the "fix", with free retrofitting to
> early adopters.
>
> But Leica had to meet deadlines, and Leica does not want to be in  
> the business of sensor replacement.  So it was not offered.
>
> Kodak did not screw up, Leica did.  They should have tested the  
> sensor over the optical BW, found the error ( or they did find the
> error and decided that the market would not find it or that it  
> would be fixed in SW) and offered to fix the issue in production
> sensor glass cover plates.
>
> It is the only acceptable solution.....
>
> How many of the LUG have backgrounds in Technology and heard those  
> dreadful words... Fix it in ....SW?