Digital M

This can be like the car mags trying to get the first photo of the 2008 $750,000 AMG Benz Somethingorother 5.0.
 
Yup, he saw something mounted on a tripod, and got some information from the guy who works in the gift shop. Now that's what I call an authoritative source!
 
But it sounds credible- a Mdig must be thicker- the distance from the lens flange to the working surface will be unaltered from film, then you need space for the sensor array and the LCD, they will have to find at least 8 mm. That can be in the form of a boxlike lensholder in the front or a fatter camera, nothing else. It must be larger, because it will need to accomodate the battery and the memorycard, besides the electronics. The viewfinder will be larger, because sensor-crop dictates a 1:1.1 viewfinder. So a fat M5 sounds about right.The only thing that seems to be camouflage to me is the black colour. I feel the final ones will be chrome...
 
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"I bought a couple of items in the shop and engaged the German-speaking guy ("leider, weniger Englisch") in conversation, bemoaning that all my Leica glass is idle with no digital body to work with. "Next Year" and "works will all lenses" were too significant phrases he used."

I'm still waiting to hear if "works will all lenses" means it will work with the Viso III.


Questions: The mechanical, parallax corrected, lens-linked rangefinder on the M's is the most complicated part of the M's. Would it be possible to use a mechanical rangefinder but generate the framelines electronically? Doing that would allow for the use of all current lenses without the current requirement of choosing one of the three available viewfinders to match a particular lense range. I don't remember when or where but someone pointed out to me that one older rangefinder (not a Leica) had a switchable, dual magnification viewfinder basically to do that same thing.

I've never used a lens wider than 35mm on an M. What framelines do the wider lenses pull up when mounted on an M? Do they just default to the widest frameline?
 
There are plenty of digital cameras smaller than a pack of playing cards. The Epson RD-1 is not the size of a "fat M5". I can't see any reason why the Digital M would need to be any larger than an M film camera, save perhaps for the LCD adding minimal thickness. That said, it could be as small as a postage stamp or as big as the Queen Mary, I'm sure I won't be able to afford it, and if it's not full-frame, I wouldn't if I could. If Canon can make a ff dSLR for $3000 I'd expect Leica, who will charge at least $6000 if not more (going by the cost of the DMR which doesn't include the camera at all) to put a ff sensor in it, by hook or by crook.
 
Ben Z said:
If Canon can make a ff dSLR for $3000 I'd expect Leica, who will charge at least $6000 if not more (going by the cost of the DMR which doesn't include the camera at all) to put a ff sensor in it, by hook or by crook.
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If Leica wasn't in its current financial situation I might agree. At this point it makes more sense for Leica to use the DMR CCD to save research costs.

Has anyone decided on a good name for the digital M (digital airware is not allowed)? I tried DgtM and I see Jaap is calling it an Mdig. There has to be something that slips off the tongue.
 
ya know, Leica could save some space on their digital M by not putting an LCD on the back of the camera. According to the Leica forum on "another" web site, anyone who uses a digital camera is nothing but a chimping idiot. Obviously, chimping is beneath the dignity of a Leica user, and eliminating the LCD would ensure that only those pure of heart would buy the camera. :D
 
i still don't get what the fuss about the 1.37x crop is. all you need is one more lens, which shouldn't be a problem if you can afford the body in the first place. might not even need to get another lens, too.

zeos, i think you're remembering one of my camera feature wishlists. electrically generated framelines using an lcd for the mask is used in the fuji ga645zi and ricoh gr cameras, i think. none have a switchable mag. viewfinder. it would be so easy, though.

damn, i don't think those two cameras use lcds to mask the framelines anymore. shoot.
 
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aizan said:
i still don't get what the fuss about the 1.37x crop is.
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Well, obviously you won't be able to replicate the combined field-of-view / max aperture characteristics of some lenses (50/1.0, 35/1.4, 28/2, 21/2.8), and for a given field-of-view you'll have to use a faster aperture than you'd use on full-frame to get the same depth-of-field. I'm sure you know that already - it might not be an issue for you but I can imagine it could be a major PITA for some people.
 
I know, but as you say, it's only for some people. They should just switch to medium format or get over the whole paper thin DOF thing. Not that they couldn't still get very shallow DOF. The Voigtlander 35/1.2, for instance, could replace the Noctilux. That's the most important lens as far as that's concerned.
 
>>Leica could save some space on their digital M by not putting an LCD on the back of the camera<<
I used a Kodak NC2000 early-model digital in the mid-1990s, and it didn't have an LCD. I didn't miss it. But it does seem that today's photographers expect an LCD as a standard feature.

One interesting approach would be to make the LCD removable to save space and weight.
 
>>you need an lcd to use the menus<<

What menus? My Canon G1 has menus because its controls can be so unintuitive. A well-executed digital camera built for a traditional user base ought to be fully functional without menus (though they could be optional with a removable LCD).

With the old Kodak NC2000, you just adjusted your ASA and took the pictures. In fact, I was so unfamiliar with the metering on the body in question (I think it was an N90) that I shot it in full manual mode and relied on my usual method of sunny 16/personal experience supplemented by a handheld meter.
 
aizan said:
you need an lcd to use the menus.
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Not necessarily- the information could be displayed in the viewfinder, adjacent to the RF area, or surrounding it. Many digital cameras use this sort of arrangement.
 
VinceC said:
>>Is there a way to display histograms without an LCD?<<
PhotoShop while processing your RAW files.
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If a highlight is clipped during exposure you can't salvage it in PS. The histogram is a very good way to ensure that highlight detail is there.

If Sean Reid doesn't mind me quoting him on how he meters for weddings with high contrast white gowns: "I often use manual exposure with the R-D1 and, as with all other digital cameras, I try to hold the highlights so that they're not quite touching the right edge of the histogram."

I think the histogram has become a necessary exposure tool for some photographers (That may or may not be true for Sean - he can speak for himself - and I may have misunderstood him).
 
One tricky thing with using a crop factor would be framelines. As they are, they approximate the view. With a 1.x crop factor, you now need to move the framelines inward. Some framelines would be very tiny -- the 135mm frame, for example. I guess you could compensate by magnifying the viewfinder by the identical 1.x factor so they would approximate what you now get with 35mm film. Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult after all.

I don't know what effect a 1.x crop factor would have on parallax correction. I guess it would be 1.x. Or might it depend on the distance to the subject.

Too much for my tiny brain to handle -- that's for sure.

For the record, when I pick up a 35mm lens, I really want a 35mm lens, not a 35 x 1.3 or whatever.
 
For me, the ideal new digital M (DM) camera would be a swappable back door for my current M bodies. A digital back for digital, current film back for film.
 
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