Digital equivalent to a film Leica

[Keith]

This pic was taken the other night at a gallery opening ... the exif data says ISO 3200 and 1/6 sec at f2. Maybe I would have got this shot with am M9 and a very fast 35mm but I dont have $7500+ so the D700 is it for me. The scene has pushed past the dynamic range of the sensor obviously but I got a usable image in very diffcult circumstances and probably could have used 6400 at a pinch ... though in these conditions it does start to get noisy even with the D700's attributes. The need for high ISO capability is real and if 12800 ISO looks like this in another couple of years count me in because that would mean I could have used 1/30 sec and may have been able to capture more of what was on the screen and suffered less movement blur. Improve the dynamic range and I'll be even happier ... better still give me a full frame rangefinder with the Nikon's ISO capabilities at a sensible price and I'll be as happy as the proverbial pig in you know what! 😀

 

[former member]

Looking at the above image- the highlights are clipped because the sensor could not capture the dynamic range of the scene. Optically, using a low-contrast lens would have helped. World of difference in my Summarit vs my Nikkor in the histograms: the Summarit almost never blows the highlights. Modern lenses tend to have higher contrast than those available for the Leica.

Other ways of dealing with it: new sensor technology that can acquire more electrons without saturating a pixel. Needs bigger pixels, lowers the resolution. Use some sort of new material. I'm sure someone will do it, sometime, in the future. Spock had one.

Or- Construct a new sensor that stacks the light-sensitive layers under different ND filters- essentially a Foveon sensor that uses the multiple layers to increase dynamic range like HDR, but allows simultaneous capture.

 

[robert blu]

So, to answer the OP's original question, for me the Leica M9 is a good digital equivalent to a film Leica. It uses the same lenses, offers resolution at least as good as the films I use, and has better High-ISO performance.

This is an interesting statement, that even no high tech people, as I'm, can easily understand 🙂
Of course higher iso possibility is interesting but if it should come at the cost of bigger size or even higher price (compare to m9) it would become less interesting, at least for my needs.

robert, for the moment happy with x1 and m7 + scanner...

 

[former member]

Okay, I shoot pictures with the M9 at about the same rate as I do with my film cameras. I have never been hindered by the shooting rate waiting for a buffer to clear. I do not use Motor Drives on my film cameras. If I did, the rate at which the film cassette would be exhausted would be a few seconds. Then I would have to "flush the buffer" (rewind the film) and load more Write-Once memory (film) into the camera. I suspect that the shooting rate using 36 Write Once memory cassettes on my M3 for 200 shots is about the same as my M9 using an 8GByte SD card.

I've been shooting 35mm since 1969 and Digital since 1981.

Commercial off the shelf Digital cameras available to the consumer have caught up with film cameras. Lower end P&S cameras are better than the 110 equivalent, and the high-end digital cameras are as good as 35mm film cameras for all practical purposes. Except recording EMP events. I would still go with the Nikon F2 Titanium for doing that. Like I did in 1979.