climbing_vine
Well-known
I could see everyone involved keeping quiet about some clever hack to solve this problem off-sensor. But if it were solved on-sensor, Kodak would be banging down the doors to sell this to every camera maker on earth. Light fall-off may only be a huge, crippling deal for the M-system because of the short flange distance, but it is still a serious issue for every FF DSLR system, and others. It would be absolutely huge, and they would NOT be sitting on it when their balance sheet is probably already deep in the red (after you take into account "income" they will never see from debtor companies that have gone bankrupt). It would be immensely irresponsible.
ETA: I'd also very much like to see Kodak come through, if they do it by going back to innovation instead of trying to peddle bottom-of-the-barrel digicams. It'd be a shame to see them disappear for many reasons.
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jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
Well, it may be news to you, but the S2 is out and will start shipping within six weeks. The S2 was announced as an utter surprise in October last year, so by what magic have they been "promoting the tech literally for years"
Anyway, the Internet myth is that the register distance problem with the incidence angle is the sole reason for the 1.3 crop of the M8. It is not. It is one of the reasons in a whole complex that led to that design decision. The main reason is very simple: The M8, of necessity, had to be built out of discrete electronic parts. That means it has limited processing power and heat dissipation problems. The amount of data from a full format sensor with the attendant extra calculations would have taxed the processing to - or beyond- the limit making the camera exceedingly slow. For this very reason Leica had to drop the original plan to make it a full 16 bits camera, forcing them to devise a very intelligent compression algorithm.
A full format sensor would have driven the cost of the camera at least 1500 Euro higher too, which for obvious reasons would not have been a good idea.
Getting a microlens configuration that works is just a matter of improved engineering precision, which seems to have been achieved now.
The situation at the current time is completely different. By a brilliant stroke of Dr. Kaufmann in securing the cooperation of Fujitsy the Maestro chip has been created, solving the processing problems once and for all. The new M9 sensor is just a smaller S2 sensor, which gives total synergy in the R&D for both cameras. That, and the falling sensor price, has brought the camera to be feasable.
The only thing that I find amazing is that Leica seems to have found a way around the IR problem.
How is of cours total speculation, but there is of course nanotechnology, and who knows what else.
But in the end , we are still talking rumours, albeit very strong ones with strong corroberation. (Chasseur d'Images, the dealer network and now Phase One)
Florian1234
it's just hide and seek
This, by the way, is one of the results already told in the group interview with Kaufmann and others from Leica published in the LFI magazine sometime last fall. Introducing the key system components in the top class and basically downgrading to more consumer orientated cameras by switching off abilities or making components smaller.
gavinlg
Veteran
I'd be willing to bet that it will be a very very very good sensor...
Not only that it would make a great backup to the S2 user - the sensors bound to have very similar color and imaging characteristics.
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
If Leica announces an M9 in September, how long will it take for them to get it to market?
TJV
Well-known
Here's hoping it'll be out by Christmas. That's what I've heard from people in the know, at least.
I'm hopeless at maths - how many megapixels would a 35x24 sensor have if it was just a cut down version of the 37.5mp S2 sensor?
EDIT: I'm guessing around 23.5mp...
I'm hopeless at maths - how many megapixels would a 35x24 sensor have if it was just a cut down version of the 37.5mp S2 sensor?
EDIT: I'm guessing around 23.5mp...
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Unless someone has specific information about the M9, you all might as well be talking about moonpie.
What a bunch of nonsense.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
lol. Osacr, we thrive on rumor and nonsense here.
johannielscom
Snorting silver salts
Well Oscar,
seems JaapV is in on something, he has pre-ordered an M9, has visited Leica in Solms with the Leica forum and has some info that exceeds the 'Canon or Sony chip' nonsense in terms of being far more logical.
So, while it's not confirmed, there is definitely something going on and its beyond moonpie.
Although I most certainly will not be a buyer, these are exciting times.
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
TJV, I'm not sure you can just take a bandsaw to a DSLR sensor and make it work in a digital RF. Speculation aside, I would be surprised it was the same technology.
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
Well, that is exactly the way sensor chips are made: a large sheet is cut into pieces to make the chips by a metaphorical bandsaw. The pieces are tested individually and the pieces with less than a specified number of pixel faults are turned into sensor arrays. The larger the sensor, the larger the number of chips rejected. Interestingly enough one of the pieces of "rumour" that reached me from sources close to Leica is that the price of both S2 and M9 chips is lowered by selecting the S2 rejects and recutting them to be M9 sensors, with the offending bits cut off. The last part fwiiw....
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
There is a reason for that; it is called patent law. Afaik the shifted-microlens technology is developed by Kodak and Leica jointly, so the patents will be jointly held. Neither partner can sell to third parties without consent of the other in that case.
climbing_vine
Well-known
Heh. I'm familiar with patent law. You hadn't said anything about Leica developing the sensor jointly until now. You seem to have more info than I do (which wouldn't be hard, since I have none
). So we'll just see what happens. I still find this deeply unconvincing. Where did Leica's camera division get the expertise to assist in developing a sensor like this? They've certainly never done anything remotely like it before. Did they hire people away from their electron microscope controller division or something?
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
ACM (the holding company owned by Mr.Kaufmann and his family) is involved in many a hi-tech company, so there are links and connections... Also Jenoptik acted in an advisory function to Leica when the M8 was developed. I'd like to remind you that Leica's first digital camera, the S1, dates back to 1991, and the DMR predates the M8 a few years too so they were not new-born babes. Microscopes as such are not Leica Camera, but Leica Microsystems, a wholly independent company.
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jarski
Veteran
remembering the quarrels before and after M8 came out, I started wonder how long this can go on civilized.. didnt take long.
jarski
Veteran
actually I had to google to know what is it...
as you might expect, it wasnt just that, but general attitude. anyway, enough OT least from my part.
climbing_vine
Well-known
If it isn't shipping yet, it isn't "out" in any normal person's definition of the word. No, this isn't news to me.
I'm talking about the sensor, not the S2. The elements of the S2 sensor that are new and interesting are not unique to the S2, but are part of Kodak's "truesense" CCD platform, which they officially announced well over a year ago (months before the S2) and have been discussing since at least late 2007.
This is all a double-speak way of saying: "Due to poor planning, we spent all our time trying to come up with some magic to solve light fall-off. When it didn't materialize, we still had to get SOMETHING out the door or we were going to collapse, so we threw together stock electronics instead of having a properly integrated board--which is very much a solved problem that we should have planned on from the start, but see part 1 of this paragraph."
None of those other issues are insurmountable, or even difficult. They had already been solved in a multitude of shipping cameras (the exception being the issue of heat dissipation for a FF sensor and processing in a body that size, but in more general industrial terms this is not an unsolved problem either). Let me ask a question... what advances are there in the M8, aside from Kodak's incremental sensor improvements?
That is, what did Leica spend all those years and millions of dollars of M8 R&D on? I don't have a good answer to that either. Nobody does, as far as I can tell. The base problem seems to be that Leica's camera division had been reduced to a tiny, faltering thing with limited R&D resources, and they used all those resources chasing a unicorn before getting the bones set. They admitted as much in various statements through the last four years of CEO-cycling. I'd argue that the M8's out-of-date internal design and electronics are a consequence of the same broken process that led to the lack of FF in the M8, not a cause of that lack.
Heh. Maybe, maybe not, but in the coding field we have a phrase for this. "A simple matter of programming", as in--"All the hardware is there for our man-eating self-driving snowplowbot that can make friends and enemies and only devour the enemies. All that's left is the socialization algorithm, which is a simple matter of programming."
An infinite number of things are "just a matter of improved engineering precision", some will happen tomorrow and some won't happen for a thousand years. The one thing that they have in common is that unless they come from an integrated solutions company, which Kodak is not, the world generally hears about them well in advance of release. Not trade secret details, obviously, but the generalities that will drive purchase and investment.
No processing problem is ever solved "once and for all". We also don't know that the Maestro chip is going to be appropriate for use in a smaller body. It may be, but we don't know. This is another case where, if this tech (not the Maestro chip as a discrete entity, but the underlying tech) were appropriate for use in smaller cameras, I can't imagine Fujitsu wouldn't be out there saying that--or using it in their own line of cameras.
The M9 and S2 sensor might well have their light-sensitive layers cut from the same sheets, but that is a far different matter from being "the same sensor" and having "total R&D synergy". That's press release talk.
climbing_vine
Well-known
Yes, I know. Which is why I used the
, it was a joke.The S1 dates to 1998, and as a tethered scanning back has very little to do with a digicam in the sense we're talking about here. There is also the small matter of that R&D being ten years previous to the M8 R&D cycle, which were ten very bad, brain-draining years for Leica.
We already know that Leica is getting assistance from other firms. That's not really the point. Was this joint sensor development really a partnership between Kodak and Jenoptik, and Leica paid Jenoptik millions of dollars for their rights in it? Or did JO (or whoever) transfer the rights out of the goodness of their hearts? I'm not clear on what you're proposing.
ferider
Veteran
You don't seriously believe that, Jaap ?
climbing_vine
Well-known
Sounds bogus to me as well. This would rely on a line that tests and custom-cuts individual chips at the micron level. It would be *far* slower and more expensive than just cutting everything from fresh sheets.