Leica RDigital Back

[Craig24]

Yes, nice treatise Dirk.

Much fuss has been made over the necessity for a so called “full sized†24x36mm chip. Yet Canon is perhaps the only manufacturer to have pulled it off well enough. But wow what a price tag! for a system that is good but far from perfect. Provided it works well, the $4500 Euro Leica Dig-Module price tag is not out of the ballpark compared with an EOS 1Ds body, even better if you already own an R8 or 9.

Personally, I think the hype over full 35mm frame chips is a bit of a furphy when it comes to ultimate image quality. The M style VF frame solution, mooted by Leica for their 1.3x chip sounds a brilliant compromise, and I can see great advantages to it. But then again I’m a dedicated M-er. I only use an SLR when I have to. This said, the prospect of an R9 (perhaps the best SLR made since the Flex IM very very HO) user platform for digital is an exciting prospect. I suspect Leica’s D-back problems will be in the area of dust control more that anything else.

I do agree with Simon Lamb on his point over the merits of a 20MP chip. However, I suspect this advance, due to marketing and technical issues, will not happen for a few years yet. What price will a Canon 20MP EOS cost, given the $16 000 Aust. for the 1Ds body. But Simon, I do accept your point that Leica cannot compete with the R&D mite of Canon in the areas electronic and digital. But I doubt the validity of direct comparisons been the respective philosophies and marketing strategies of these two great companies. It is, however, healthy for us all to have your point of view expressed on this forum.

Personally if I were serious about digital capture I would run a Blat or Rollei digital system, but my work at present doesn’t justify this level of commitment. We shall have to wait and see if the Leica digital solution is worth a look at when the time comes. Fortunately, I have the luxury of being able to wait.


Craig.

 

[Dannycorgan]

[I agree x3, meaning foveon ?,would be good especially as they already have 10mp x3 chips.

 

[martin]

Just a comment about how the Leica digital back might be positioned within the market place by Autumn 2004. There have been some suggestions in this thread that the like of Canon might have 20 Mp cameras on the market by then - who knows, maybe, but let's remember that the Kodak 14 Mp SLR was announced at Photokina 2002 (?) and has only been on the market now for a few months. First reports seem to suggest major problems with image quality that dwarf those that precipitated the Contax ND fiasco. The only camera currently on the market that exceeds 10 Mp is the Canon EOS 1DS at a cost that would cause even most Leica owners to blanche.

Last year when I bought my first consumer digicam the default sensor size was 4 Mp. This year it is 5 Mp with a great many still offering 4 Mp. Last year the default Digital SLR sensor size was 6 Mp, this year it is still 6 Mp. Olympus have just announced the E1 interchangeable lens digital SLR, on the market by September, with ..... 5 Mp.

I do not see an exponential technological growth at the moment - companies like Canon seem to be concentrating on refining the image quality of current products as well as getting them to work properly - if we are honest there is really only one truly price competitive Digital SLR that offers really good image quality on the market at the moment and that is the Canon 10D and that has issues with back and front autofocus (allegedly) and finding lenses that have been correctly assembled is a lottery (incidentally I have had a 10D on order from Jessops for the past 6 weeks and no sign of it yet!)

So, assuming Leica actually get their Digiback on the shelves by late Autumn 2004 (I think this is highly unlikely, given their past record), they might actually find themselves competing in a 10 Mp market rather than the mooted 20 Mp. I think their strategy makes sense and they might just pull it off.

Martin

 

[ruben_blaedel]

I think the "lens factor" of 1.37 will be the big problem for leica on this matter -- and that the full frame will on the other hand be what justify the high price og the Canon 1DS. It must be awfull that your 24 mm is now a 33 mm etc.I do think that the concept of being able to swich from digi to film is nice, and might be the thing that pulls leica thru. With 28000 R8 and R9 owners the potential market for the digi back is perhaps less then 8-10000 units and I guess that leica gets as much digi back they can get for the dollar, and that those who would walk over to Canon all ready did that years ago when they realised that the R8 and R9 would be non autofocus. Question is: is leica financial strong enough to be in this market af high end SLRs - perhaps but in the digital world were capacity doubles every 3 years a politic like leicas will leave them with a group few but loyal users, getting smaller every year. Before turning digi leica with their program of fine lenses was one of the best manual focus system in the world, now ading digi features smaller then the competition suddenly weakens leicas position - I wish them luck!
Ruben

 

[fastfashn]

As the Emperor would probably say, "Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational digital Leica R9!", or something like that...

"Before turning digi leica with their program of fine lenses was one of the best manual focus system in the world, now ading digi features smaller then the competition suddenly weakens leicas position - I wish them luck! Ruben"

 

[Craig24]

My gut felling is that Martin’s assessment is probably right, they might just pull it off.

In addition, there are certainly issues regarding the use of film lenses on the much-vaunted supposed utopia of a 24x36mm sized chip (particularly wide angle). I see Leica’s 1.37x sensor as a plus. My biggest bugbear with smaller chip sizes in SLR cameras is the reduced tunnel vision of the viewfinder. Solms have solved this problem in a very Leica way. That famous viewing pleasure will be maintained. And being able to see outside the image area would be a great advantage with digital image capture, IMHO.

Craig

 

[martin]

One of the real benefits of the digital revolution has been the scrutiny now widely placed by consumers on the quality of the lenses. You only have to surf the Canon forum on DPReview to reveal high levels of dissatisfaction with lens quality, even in their high-end L series, which seem to suffer as much s&le variation as the average Sigma. 6 Mp sensors are more than capable of revealing differences in lens quality (and in particular problems with centering and the resulting rapid fall-off in sharpness towards the edge of the frame). One of the reasons Leica lenses (and Zeiss to a degree) are so expensive is the consistency of construction and minimal s&le variation - this is a real asset in the digital age because we know that the limiting factor determining image quality with a Leica Digicam is unlikely to be the lens.

Martin

 

[photoman48230]

It's been a while since we last heard anything concerning this back. Any current news from the eastern front??

 

[barney]

I mainly enjoy shooting slides and viewing through my my Leica slide projector. And even though digital images can be transfered to slides (at a cost) I don't think anything less than about a 135mp or more on a digital back will start to come close to the quality I'm used to seeing on my 70 inch projection screen.

Film cameras are a very mature market with only slight improvments every so often that may or may not be noticed. Digital cameras on the other hand are still like what NTSC TV standards were like in the 1950s and still have a long way to go with almost every new product having much better picture than last year's model.

To me it's not worth spending that kind of money on something that will be outdated in a couple years when film cameras already have top notch quality for many years to come AND at a cost that is about the same or less than the best digital equipment.

 

[armando_amaya]

Do you guys know of any adapter So I could use leica lenses on my Canon D10?
This will be ideal.

Thanks

Armando