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Leica M full frame CCD sensor camera DIY prototype - with pictures!


yongfei

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<p>I have been interested in Leica M camera for serveral years and I want to see a full frame Leica M digital camera. Most people would say that it can't be done under the current CCD sensor technology. But I want to do my own experiment to find out the possibility of a full frame Leica M camera. Now I have acquired a 24x36MM digital back, so I used it as the back end. First, I tried to use the Leica 35mm/1.4 Summilux as the lens. But found the lens end protruding too much. So I switched to Industar 55mm screw mount lens as the lesn for the testing of my prototype camera. I am so excited that I have got crystal clear pictures tonight!<br>

So my assumption is: a full frame sensor on M camera is technically possible, but it requires the redesign of some of the Leica M lenses. Also, for wide angle, maybe SLR type design will be needed to avoid dark corner vignett. But I think some people would be happy to sacrifice a little quality on the wide angle side, in return for a full frame Leica M camera.<br>

I will post some pictures here soon.</p><div>00RmbG-97245584.jpg.0da6a2a28774cc60c97b10972b87441d.jpg</div>

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<p>This is amazing and ambitious. That you would even attempt to make it is impressive by itself. I would love to see some images. I'm no design expert, but It looks like you might be able to squeeze that into an M5 sized body and not an M6. That might be the holdup for Leica though likely not for the user. Where did you get all the required electronics to work with the CCD? Is that also from the same DSLR? Very impressive.</p>
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<p>Orville, thanks for your encouragement. My real intention is to use the internet to show Leica AG that it is technically possible to develop a full frame M camera. Yes, it would much look like a M5 or even bigger.<br>

My main components are readily available: Eyelike M11 digital back in Hasselblad V mount, Copal #1 shutter, and a lens plate made of three 3" floppy disks. The shutter has a 40mm thread. So I need to hold that 39mm SM lens tight to take pictures.<br>

Therefore if I can do it, I am sure Leica company will also be able to do it. But whether it is financially feasible is another matter. But I belive that a full frame CCD sensor M camera can be made under current CCD technology. And my mission is to prove it.</p><div>00Rmct-97257584.jpg.46c39e9ccece8cc80bf7980c1fee484c.jpg</div>

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<p>Here is another test shot this evening. I will take a few outdoor pictures tomorrow. If someone is wondering how a Noctilux 50/F0.95 will perform on the full frame, he can send the lens to me and I will test it for free:) <br>

To be practical, I will focus on tesing this screw mount lens first, then figure out a way to mount the M bayonet lens, for which the short flange distance is really a challenge for adaption...</p><div>00RmeB-97267584.jpg.fa99aa1cf773ca551e9d406b1a93deb8.jpg</div>

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<p>Like many of you, I have been wondering how the wonderful 35MM/1.4 Sumilux will work under full frame. Since I cann't mount it yet, I took the risk of scratching CCD surface or the lens end glass, and handhold them together to take a few test pictures. Because the lens is about an extra 5mm flange distance away from the CCD, it only alows me to take pictures at very close distance.</p><div>00RmeR-97269684.jpg.60876bcf66fbc0174e1224bdf1c6d373.jpg</div>
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<p>Definitely a nice job of optical breadboarding!</p>

<p>But as you say, wide-angles (which are the bread-and-butter of the Leica M rangefinder) are the fly in the ointment. A 50mm or longer is going to play better with a digital sensor than a 21 or 24 M lens. And so would redesigned retrofocus, SLR-like 21s and 24s (and that may be the direction Leica has to take, although not everyone will want to shell out $15,000 for a new set of Leica wides).</p>

<p>Leica has already redesigned their 21 and 24 as (biggish) f/1.4 lenses, and I'll bet the optical designs are more accomodating to the needs of digital sensors, as well as being fast, than the old designed-for-film f/2.8s.</p>

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<p>Yongfei Lin --<br>

I am greatly impressed by your ability to assemble an operating digital camera from a variety of components and make it work properly. It clearly required considerable technical knowledge, mechanical skill, and initiative to do this, and the result is admirable. What you have done is comparable, in certain ways, to Oskar Barnack's development of the prototype of the original Leica, the so-called Ur-Leica. The quality of the sample photo you took with the Industar is quite good, considering the lens and camera used to make it. <br>

A full-frame digital Leica M body would be of interest to many Leica photographers. The M8 is good, but the crop factor is one of the things (along with price, color-shift and reliability issues) that may be keeping it from wider acceptance.<br>

There are, however, some characteristics of the camera you have developed thus far that might possibly explain why Leica has not yet provided a full-frame Leica digital M, and has instead provided the M8 in its current crop-sensor design. This is not intended as a criticism of your excellent effort, which is truly groundbreaking, but rather as speculation about the possible reasons why Leica's engineers might have gone a different route in developing the M8. These include the following.<br>

• As you note, the setup you have developed will not allow the use of existing Leica wide-angle lenses in M-mount, without some sort of adjustment for the protrusion of the rear elements of these lenses into the camera body. (You got a 35mm to work with it after a fashion, but apparently not in the same way as the 50mm.) Since wide-angle lenses are quite popular with Leica users, one of Leica's design goals may have been accommodating existing wide-angle lenses on a digital M body without modification. Leica's designers apparently had difficulty designing an M8 digital sensor that would clear the back of wide-angle lenses but still sense the light from them well enough to avoid unacceptable light fall-off in the corners of the image.<br>

• The distance from the rear of the lens mount to the rear of the sensor body on your prototype appears to be deeper than the front to back depth of a traditional Leica M film camera body. One of Leica's design goals may have been to produce a digital M body with the same approximate physical dimensions, including front to back depth, as existing Leica M film camera bodies. Leica's designers may have had in mind the degree of customer resistance that the firm encountered in the 1970s when it tried modifying the size and shape of the traditional Leica M body to accommodate the exposure metering technology then available, resulting in the M5, a camera larger than an M4 that was not as successful as the firm had hoped. The M5 was enough of a flop in the marketplace that Leica almost abandoned the camera business before resuming production of the M4. This dimensional constraint may have been one of the reasons why Leica's designers had a hard time getting the M8's sensor to clear the rear components of wide-angle lenses.<br>

• It is not clear how expensive the full-frame CCD device would be, or how expensive re-engineering the Leica M8 body to accommodate it would be, in terms of manufacturing a marketable commercial product as opposed to a prototype. I do not know, one way or the other, whether it would be more expensive than the current M8. Leicas in general, and the Leica M8 in particular, are already expensive enough to be luxury items that not all photographers can afford. It is possible that Leica's engineers concluded that a full-frame digital Leica M was technically possible, but would be too expensive to sell at a price affordable to consumers.<br>

• For the time being, the Leica firm appears to have directed the focus and work efforts of its engineers into the development of the new S-system digital SLR, rather than into further development of the M8 as a digital Leica M rangefinder camera. As the majority of professional photographers now use digital SLRs, the S-system may be a make-or-break product for Leica, especially in today's difficult economic environment. If the firm can market the S-system successfully to professional photographers, though, that might make it easier to pursue further development of a full-frame digital M.<br>

My speculation about those issues does not detract in any way from my admiration for your accomplishment in assembling a working digital camera as an individual inventor, without the resources of a large industrial company behind you. That is quite an accomplishment. I hope that it encourages Leica to take a closer look at whether a full-frame digital Leica M body is not only technically feasible, but economically possible. You are providing an incentive for Leica to continue examining these issues in a way that few if any of the rest of us could. I encourage you to continue working on refining your prototype, and look forward to hearing more about your efforts.</p>

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<p>Today I am quite excited. Because I know if I ever successfully capture an full frame image under daylight condition, that would the the first strong prove to every Leica lovers that a full frame Leica is indeed possible. Ok, I did it with a $20 russian screw mount lens, but I will continue further if I have the resources to custom made a few adapters. Right now, all my components are non destructive and resuable in nature.<br>

So the first thing I do is pointing my camera to the street, and I get the following picture. Seems the lens distance is too far away from CCD, so the camera couldn't focus to infinity. But what a beautiful out of focus blur! It wouldn't win any photo contest. But for a test shot, it is decent enough to prove that I do have a functional full frame M39 mount camera! And as you can see, there are no visible darkness in the four corners. Also, the color from the MF digital back is very neutral. I only applied very little curve this image.</p><div>00Rn3b-97421684.jpg.b379dc5911bf7db5c4435401af7cce38.jpg</div>

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<p>So I made the lens plate a little thinner then took a few more pictures. I was really nervous because shutter retainer ring is so close to the CCD, it could scratch it.<br>

Now I got almost perfect focus in infinite. On the lower right side, there is a visible dark corner, but I think that is due to some extra duct tape.<br>

I am happy with the testing result under daylight condition. I would like some comments to see if you agree this is a good full frame camera.</p><div>00Rn4N-97429784.jpg.8f4ec9754f6359dbab874b74bb0982d1.jpg</div>

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<p>Hi Peter, thanks for your compliment. You've raised a lot of valid points. I agree with most of your comments. In deed, building a prototype is one thing, but commercial success is a totally differnt game, especially for Leica M which has such a religious following.<br>

My experimental objective is purely on the technical side: to capature photos using Leica M lenses (or equivalent) on a CCD ful frame sensor, with ability to focus into infinity.<br>

As for the 35MM/1.4, I still haven't managed to get a picture to evaluate the real world photo quality under full frame. I use a Copal leaf shutter which will cause the lens end to hit the shutter blade. Because a Leica M style body has a shutter near the camera back, this lens will not hit Leica M's shutter at all.<br>

So if I can mount the shutter on its lens shade, and adjust the thickness of the lens plate, I should be able to get some decent images for evaluation purpose - with a real Leica lens!<br>

I will start to work this evening towards this objective. As I know people will be less interested if photos were not taken by a leica lens:) Hopefully I will be able to modify my prototype, and post some pictures taken by 35mm/1.4 tomorrow.<br>

To John: Yes, a beat up M body will be a good idea. Or even a M mount Voigtlander. But there is a problem: if the CCD mouting to the camera is not precise or firm, any tiny movement will easily scratch my CCD filter. My current approach is less destructive, and provides equivalent result for evaluation purpose. After all, camera is just a black box, although Leica's box is legendary, it is still just a box. What Leica can do, is to minimize that digital back, then build a mounting interface like Horseman's Digiflex camera which accepts Nikon lens.</p>

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<p>Those photos show reasonable results for any camera of moderate cost, and most impressive results for a home-built prototype, especially given the lens that you are currently using with it. The images uniform and reasonably sharp right out to the edges. You've made it quite clear that this camera works, and works fairly well. <br>

It's fascinating to be able to watch online as you make adjustments on the fly, such as making the lens plate thinner to allow the lens to reach focus at infinity, doing some quick test photos and posting the results. It's a bit like standing in Steve Jobs's driveway and watching while he tests the prototype of the first Apple computer in his garage. It's evident that you have a talent for this.<br>

I didn't see a viewfinder, rangefinder or viewing screen in your photos of your prototype, but you ought to be able to rig up some sort of external accessory viewfinder to improve ease of use. It wouldn't have to be precise, just close enough to give you a reasonable approximation of the angle of view of the lens. A quick and dirty approach might be to buy a disposable or inexpensive point and shoot camera at a local discount drugstore, hacksaw the viewfinder off it, and attach it to your prototype with duct tape or superglue. A more elegant, but slower and more expensive approach, might be to buy a Voightlander accessory viewfinder from Camera Quest and make the equivalent of a flash shoe to attach it to the camera body.<br>

While that wouldn't offer precise focusing, using zone focus and taking advantage of depth of field at smaller apertures ought to provide fairly good results for daylight shooting, as shown by your test shots.<br>

If you are looking for a further demonstration of what your prototype can do, you might try using it to take a variety of photos -- a portrait of a family member or friend, a landscape in the park or a nearby scenic area, a street photo from a busy part of downtown, maybe a photo of a sports car that fills most of the image frame. They wouldn't have to be anything exotic, just a range of different things to show that your prototype has the same degree of photographic flexibility as a basic point-and-shoot film or digital camera with a fixed focal length lens.<br>

Good luck with all this -- you've come up with the most interesting project I've seen on Photo.Net in years.</p>

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<p>Hello everyone, thanks for all your kind words.<br>

This evening, I have started to test the 35mm/1.4 Summilux. There is a critical flaw in my test process, but I still would like to share with everyone about my thought process.<br>

I decided to increase the thickness of my lens plate, and move the shutter to the front. Here is how I did it:</p><div>00RnEE-97481584.jpg.19463bfc4194f9d30c9a37103e95db1e.jpg</div>

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