Godfrey
somewhat colored
I have both an M9 and GXR with A12 Camera Mount.
I like the GXR quite a lot, but I think it would be something of a mistake to update the camera unit to a larger format without first addressing some of the issues with the body. For me, the body needs more responsiveness: it is both slow and a bit inconsistent on the shutter lag. The write speed is modest, and it doesn't buffer writes to media so it blocks for a third to half a second. I'd like to see updates on both those fronts as well as a newer, higher resolution EVF before I went to the expense of a FF sensor camera unit.
I expect it would be difficult for Ricoh to produce a FF sensor camera unit with M-bayonet customizations, that performs as well or better than the current A12 Camera Mount, that costs much under $2000 MSRP. I would expect a price in that ballpark at least. They'll need a new shutter and I have to wonder what sensor they'd use. Optimizing a FF sensor for RF lenses is a non-trivial effort—look what Leica is doing with CMOSIS, what they did with Kodak in the past. It's a much more difficult sensor optimization than optimization for APS-C or SLR lenses due to the short mount register and the size of the format relative to the lens mount and distance to primary nodal point with a large number of lens designs.
I think Ricoh would be better off updating the A12 Camera Unit to the latest 16Mpixel Sony APS-C sensor, and optimizing that. They've already got a good shutter for that, the micro-lens optimization would be much easier, and the net gain of 1.5-2.5 stops of sensitivity would be welcome. That could potentially keep the costs down in the same ballpark as the current A12 Camera Mount (which, frankly, continues to work very well compared with even the latest cameras out ... getting better than that is essential if any update at all will be profitably marketable).
G
I like the GXR quite a lot, but I think it would be something of a mistake to update the camera unit to a larger format without first addressing some of the issues with the body. For me, the body needs more responsiveness: it is both slow and a bit inconsistent on the shutter lag. The write speed is modest, and it doesn't buffer writes to media so it blocks for a third to half a second. I'd like to see updates on both those fronts as well as a newer, higher resolution EVF before I went to the expense of a FF sensor camera unit.
I expect it would be difficult for Ricoh to produce a FF sensor camera unit with M-bayonet customizations, that performs as well or better than the current A12 Camera Mount, that costs much under $2000 MSRP. I would expect a price in that ballpark at least. They'll need a new shutter and I have to wonder what sensor they'd use. Optimizing a FF sensor for RF lenses is a non-trivial effort—look what Leica is doing with CMOSIS, what they did with Kodak in the past. It's a much more difficult sensor optimization than optimization for APS-C or SLR lenses due to the short mount register and the size of the format relative to the lens mount and distance to primary nodal point with a large number of lens designs.
I think Ricoh would be better off updating the A12 Camera Unit to the latest 16Mpixel Sony APS-C sensor, and optimizing that. They've already got a good shutter for that, the micro-lens optimization would be much easier, and the net gain of 1.5-2.5 stops of sensitivity would be welcome. That could potentially keep the costs down in the same ballpark as the current A12 Camera Mount (which, frankly, continues to work very well compared with even the latest cameras out ... getting better than that is essential if any update at all will be profitably marketable).
G