Rare pair: Kodak DCS and Leica M9

Jarle Aasland

Jarle Aasland

Nikon SP/S2, Fuji X100
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Two very different cameras with one thing in common: They both have a Kodak sensor!

651432081_TzaKp-M.jpg


Kodak DCS was Kodak's first commercial digital camera, released in 1991. It featured a 1320x1035 pixel KAF-1300 (M3) imager. Leica M9 features a 18 megapixel (5212 x 3472) KAF-18500 Kodak sensor.

Jarle
 
Reminds me of Kodak's DCS14 which was also supposed to have very good low ISO image quality but suffered from high ISO noise.
 
nksyoon said:
Reminds me of Kodak's DCS14 which was also supposed to have very good low ISO image quality but suffered from high ISO noise.
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The DCS 14 sensor was not made by Kodak themselves, by the way.. I haven't had a chance to test it properly yet, but even at 1000 ISO, M9 image quality is less than impressive (way too much noise by current standards). Needless to say, the M9 is not a high ISO tool.

Jarle
 
Wow! I Love The Nikon!!!!

Wow! I Love The Nikon!!!!

Now why cant we have an F3 type body with a modern sensor in it? I hate the new JAPANESE designs in that the multi function (F&*Ksion) displays and buttons are way way overkill! I know there are some who like the gee wizz bells and whistles , but I cannot understand why Nikon or Canon do not have at least one model for pros who like a traditional layout like the old F3. It seems Leica is the only game in town for this. Maybe this is good for Leica in that their product is now unique!
 
eleskin said:
I know there are some who like the gee wizz bells and whistles , but I cannot understand why Nikon or Canon do not have at least one model for pros who like a traditional layout like the old F3.
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Probably because there isn't sufficient demand for it. Just a guess. I know you would like it, and I'm sure there are many others, but if Canon, Nikon, etc, determined that there were 'enough' to support it, they'd make it. If not, then no. Nobody is doing it to be mean to you.
 
dfoo said:
Yes, compelling evidence that 1250 is useless :rolleyes:
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Funny isn't it, when the Leica M is supposed to be thee low-light ramerac.

From a practical perspective, the M9 as good as I'm sure it is and whilst one can appreciate why it's so costly, is still a lot more expensive and still not necessarily as effective as a good film M and a roll of fast film.
 
M9 high ISO samples

M9 high ISO samples

dfoo said:
Yes, compelling evidence that 1250 is useless
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I never said ISO 1250 was useless. I was simply offering some first impressions on high ISO quality, compared to other - and better - high ISO cameras on the market (like the Nikon D700 and D3). There's no doubt that the M9 can't compete with those. That doesn't mean it's useless.

Regarding the wedding photos in your link, I think they're all great. But they're downsized to 1200 pixels, which will hide most, if not all noise. Not that it matters much - for most practical purposes, M9 quality is just fine up to 1000 or even 1600 ISO. But as always, what you and I consider acceptable quality may be completely useless for someone else.

I've taken some more high ISO shots tonight, and find quality to be better than I feared. Sometimes, first impressions can be wrong. For those interested, you'll find two high ISO sample photos here:

http://www.nikonweb.com/m9/M9_800_iso_L1000479.jpg

http://www.nikonweb.com/m9/M9_1600_iso_L1000463.jpg

M9 DNG file opened in Adobe Photoshop - default settings only - full frame downsized to 1000 pixels, insert is shown at 100%. Make sure to see the photos at 100% (some browsers will downsize photos to fit in browser window). Judge for yourself.

Jarle
 
eleskin said:
Now why cant we have an F3 type body with a modern sensor in it? I hate the new JAPANESE designs in that the multi function (F&*Ksion) displays and buttons are way way overkill! I know there are some who like the gee wizz bells and whistles , but I cannot understand why Nikon or Canon do not have at least one model for pros who like a traditional layout like the old F3. It seems Leica is the only game in town for this. Maybe this is good for Leica in that their product is now unique!
Click to expand...


I felt this way for the first week or so of owning a D700. I will admit, it is a huge pain going through every single menu option and making a decision on how you want it to operate. I quickly realized, however, that all of this aggravation does serve a good purpose: once you take several days to set everything up to your liking, you never have to do it again, and the camera operates exactly how you want it to. You can even choose which way the dials spin, so if you want, for instance, EV compensation to increase when you turn the wheel to the left, you can set it that way. If you want it to increase when you turn the wheel to the right, you can do it that way as well. You can use as many or as few of the buttons as you like in an average day's shooting. The cost for greater control is greater complexity.

As to the Leica M9 being sub-par at higher (quickly becoming mid-range) ISOs, I am not particularly surprised. It would be very unlike Leica to come out with a truly state of the art piece of equipment.

ETA: Another reason for the large number of buttons is that if you have more buttons, you have to do less digging through menus. On an average day of shooting, the only time I ever enter a menu is if I want to disable my ISO auto control function (set to 800 max, increasing when the shutter speed drops below 1/250), or if I want to switch the JPG color profile from vivid to normal. Everything else I need to do on an average day can be accomplished faster and more easily with buttons.
 
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Jarle, show them the Digital Storage Unit that makes the DCS100 work...

It's Bigger than an Osborne I.

My DCS200ir is sweet and demure by Comparison.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
Well, that is pretty noisy. Interesting.
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They also underexposed. the perfect manner to create noise.:rolleyes: These sensors should no be exposed for the specular highlights. It is is not needed too, the transitions in the highlights are quite smooth. The way to handle high ISO shots for AA filterless CCD sensors is to develop them with the default sharpening set to zero and just alimited amount of chroma noisereduction in the RAW developer, preferably C1. If you just run them through ACR at default you are well below the level of quality they can deliver.
 
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The DCS760M would get my vote for Best Kodak Ever! 6Mpixel KAF6300 series sensor, improved Blue response. No Mosaic Filter means twice as much light hitting the array, no AA filter required, and 12-bits per pixel. No need to interpolate color values between pixels.

Of course, the DCS460cir would be nice too.
 
Merkin said:
I felt this way for the first week or so of owning a D700. I will admit, it is a huge pain going through every single menu option and making a decision on how you want it to operate. I quickly realized, however, that all of this aggravation does serve a good purpose: once you take several days to set everything up to your liking, you never have to do it again, and the camera operates exactly how you want it to.
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Completely agree on this. The only way it could be better in my opinion is if there existed a way to completely deactivate some of the buttons, if one could choose different ways of displaying things (say a needle-like indication in the finder instead of numbers for example) and if some easy to implement low tech things were there (for example if a split focusing screen was standard and if one did not have to give up spot metering because of that) but they are really minimal things, I was much more afraid of the future a few years ago... In fact many things which seemed completely impossible just a few years ago (like having Zeiss glasses in Nikon or Canon mount or Leitz glasses in "Olympus" mount or, of course, a FF rangefinder from Leica) are now in production. I am just waiting that digital backs for view cameras get decently cheap and hope not too many emulsions will disappear but otherwise things look great again!

GLF
 
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Fillfactory was bought out by Cypress Semiconductor. Cypruss is known for the SPARC processor.

http://www.machinevisiononline.org/public/articles/archivedetails.cfm?id=2084

The new sensor is made by Kodak. The Fillfactor sensor was CMOS, the new Kodak sensor is a CCD.

The DCS14 carries the Kodak name, but the body was built by Nikon and the Sensor by Fillfactor. Not much in the way of Kodak in it. I was always disappointed by that. Kodak invented Digital cameras. I've long given up on a D-Retina Reflex IV or D-Retina IIIS.
 
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Fillfactory is the foundry Kodak uses. They have the building blocks and Kodak designs their chips around/with them to make the unique aspects that set them apart.

SPARC is a heck of a chip for a server.

B2 (;->
 
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