Digital M- will it be full frame?

Dollars to doughnuts Cosina will provide something in the 24 f/2 range sooner or later.

 

For now, you can get a fill frame 24 f/2.8 RF lens from Leica or Zeiss.

Andrew, I would have thought the same thing when the R-D1 was introduced, especially in light of the fact that their existing 35 mm lens is not Rf coupled. At the time of the release of the R-D1, they announced an 18 m lens to fill the gap of a 28-equivalent, scheduled for release spring, 2005. It never happened.

 

You say "sooner or later." My guess is later. I think that they're swamped with production of the 2 new cameras & the new lens they've introduced within the past year & with taking on the Zeiss Ikon & the 5 lenses in its lens line that they manufacure.

 

The R-D1 hasn't sold all that well anyway, so I doubt that it creates much of an incentive for new lens production to fit its needs - especially one like a 24/2, which will be very difficult to design.

 

Bill

All the 35mm lenses in the Cosina Voigtlander program are coupled.

 

The 25 is not coupled, but the 21 is. The 25 is a budget lens aimed at getting a cheap

wide into users hands.

 

And the 18 was a rumor, never confirmed by Cosina.

 

The R-D1 was never intended to be a mass market competitor anyway, but Epson has said

they are pursuing another DRF for release in the future. They OWN the DRF market at this

time, and all Leica has shown are Photoshop mock-ups and a reluctance to commit to the

Digital M until the R-D1 was on the scene. It was hilarious to me - they claimed it "Would

never ever happen" and "Couldn't be done", and then the R-D1 was shown, and within a

week or so Leica changed their tune and claimed that new technology has enabled them to

begin development of the Digital M. They never told us that that new technology was the

R-D1, but the timing was just a bit too convenient.

 

And I have a stunning 24 f/1.9 on my Fuji Natura. The lens and camera together only cost

$350.

"On the other hand, color rendition and exposure latitude aren't that great. You have to switch film for different lighting and blown out highlights are common with slide film."

 

Volker - what's wrong with the color rendition of slow slide film? The exposure latitude of digital is not much different than most slide films - in fact for 24 bit cameras it is worse in my experience.

 

Back to the question, I too assume Leica is working on a ff sensor, as I do feel that rationally or irrationally the M users will expect it. It is however quite possible that as Bob Atkins says they will go with the sensor from the DMR which would not be catastrophic as a 1.33 factor, despite the chart given above, seems workable to me. There is nothing really sacred about the 24 x 36 format after all - it was a choice made in 1913 that's all.

I think he's referring to the notorious problem with Kodachrome and purple.

 

It just doesn't do certain shades of purple.

Robin, you wouldn't choose Velvia for it's natural skin colors, would you?

When I scan well exposed Fuji Reala at 4800dpi the grain is not well defined. This give a image around 4000x6000 pixels, a rough 24MP. Thus IMO 24MP is OK for estmating the resolution of fine-grained 135 film. On the other hand most minilabs print at 150dpi with excellent results. You can enlarge a 24x36 image to 26x40 inches at 150dpi. There's no doubt you can enlarge a 6MP image to 20x30 but you're at 100dpi... This begin to be non-optimal...

There are a lot of people who have had very different experiences than you, regarding

scanned film.

 

But pixels are not the whole story with scanned film. Film has lower acutence than a digital

sensor, and so even though there may be more pixels in a scanned film image than in a

digital capture, the digital capture may well contain more detail.

Yes, all of the CV 35's are coupled. I was, of course, referring to the 25. Sorry, Andrew, it was a typo. I hit the 3 when I meant to hit the 2. Thanks for catching my error.

 

Bill

Regarding the proposed CV 18, Andrew, it was more than a rumor. The information was posted on the internet by Stephen Gandy, Cosina's West Coast distributor in the USA. That's not a formal announcement by Cosina, but it's about as close as you can get. It does seem that they have shelved the project.

 

Bill

Oh well.

 

The 21 is and 15 are close enough for me.

Strange that it seems noone has touched on the technical reason why a cropped sensor is what Leica seems to be chosing for the Digital M.

 

The biggest challenge is the sensor's limitation to rays striking it at low angles. The distance from the rear of the last elements in (wide) M lenses to the film plane is very short (it can be as there is no mirror). Causing the light making up the outer areas of the image circle to strike the film at low angles. Film isn't really sensitive to this, but an image sensor needs the light hitting it close to 90 degrees.

 

 

Some of this will be fixed with micro lenses, but according to Leica it can't be done for a full frame sensor. Hence the need to reduce the diameter of the image circle that is in use by the sensor. The same design that made the M great is here a real limitating factor and up until quite recently the digital M was a 'No' as the sensor technology wasn't there. It is now, but not for a full frame. A curved sensor would be great, but can't be considered due to the flattnes of field that Leica glass is so famous for.

 

Design is compromise, especially design that has to be backward compatible. A digital M that couldn't use old (or at least current) M glass would be a dead duck.

 

BTW the PS mock-up of the DigiM that have been published were done by the staff at LFI and didn't come from Leica.

 

- Carl

>"And I have a stunning 24 f/1.9 on my Fuji Natura."

 

Andrew, dollars to doughnuts that Fuji lens is a retrofocus design just like similar fast 24's for SLRs. Designing such a fast symmetrical lens for a rangefinder camera is another matter. And if they simply design a retrofocus lens for M-mount, the whole system loses a lot of its raison d'etre.

 

Bill

Toss out your Leicas, mates. Look like this lack of full-frame stuff pre-dates digital!. Slate has a new feature on Magnum photography which they launched with Cartier-Bresson's famous Saint-Lazare shot:

 

http://todayspictures.slate.com/20051201

 

Here's their quote from the master:

Place de l'Europe, Gare Saint Lazare, 1932. Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson writes, "There was a plank fence around some repairs behind the Gare Saint Lazare train station. I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped. The space between the planks was not entirely wide enough for my lens, which is the reason why the picture is cut off on the left."

If 24mp is needed to equal 35mm film then there are not going to be many hard core Leica M users queing up to buy a 10mp Digital M are there - full or cropped frame. If your current M gear can outperform the best digital backs that are available for medium format which are only 22mp - how are you going to be happy with less than 1/2 that much resolution. You had better all lobby Leica for at least 32mp to make the leap to digital worthwhile - good luck!

Let me ask this. Standard or non-standard, what practical difference would that make in real

world shooting?

Chiswick, as noted many people consider 6 MP the equal of 35mm.

 

And Bill, retrofocus or not, if it performs well it's good enough for me.

 

Retrofocus lenses have been shown to perform with less vignetting on the R-D1, so it would

be quite attractive to me.

>And if they simply design a retrofocus lens for M-mount, the whole system loses a lot of its raison d'etre.

 

I wonder how much of that raison Leica has left after introducing the ASPH 35mm lenses. ;-)

Eric - "The D2x has 37 ms shutter lag...Most Canon DSLR's are up around 50. But wuld anyone notice? doubt it."

 

The human eye to hand delay for voluntary motions is about 200ms. So add that to your camera's shutter lag and that's the delay you have to learn to deal with. 237ms (Brain+Nikon) isn't different enough from 220mS (Brain+Leica) to make a noticible difference. It's all part of the mind game...

As a part time musician, I can feel and hear anything more than a 10 ms delay.