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This is one of them. The Leica M9 digital.
Leica has long had the reputation of making cameras that are incredibly well-engineered and constructed. The classic Leica is a rangefinder - you're not looking through the lens, you're looking through a viewfinder that overlays two views of the same image and when they align, as you focus, then that part of the image will be in focus. SLR cameras require a lot of bulk in order to let you see through the lens.
The classic Leica didn't autofocus, it didn't set your aperture or shutter speed; it just was small, always worked, and featured a good selection of truly excellent lenses. You either carried a light meter or you got good at reading the light yourself and with the use of color negative film, you could get high-quality images.
How to bring these classic mechanical cameras whose job was to reliably focus and expose a segment of roll film into the digital age where the film is built into the camera in the form of a sensor was not obvious. What benefits of digital were important, and what benefits of a simpler machine should be preserved? From what I've read about the M9, they pretty much got it right.
To start with, they used a "full frame" sensor. This image shows the relative sizes of some of the popular sensors in current cameras:
Full frame is about the same as the 35mm film frame, the largest that this image shows. Nikon DSLRs that are "D" have a 1.5x crop factor (blue); Canon non-full-frame DSLRs use 1.6x (red); The Fujifilm F series use up to 1/1.6 (navy); the popular Canon Powershots use 1/2.3 (bruise). DPreview now reports "pixel density" - the latest Canon Powershot has 43 MP/cm^2; this Leica has 2.1MP/cm^2. Pretty profound. And it produces 18MP images.
An obvious benefit is that you can use lenses designed for 35mm cameras and the focal length doesn't change. When you use a sensor smaller than what the lens was designed for, you get "crop factor", like this:
In practical terms, a wide-angle lens becomes normal, a normal becomes telephoto, etc.
So the Leica can use all of the M lenses and wide-angle stays wide-angle. That's a HUGE system win. The M series was introduced in 1954, and I believe that all lenses produced since then are usable.
It also wins because there are three factors in how good the resolution of a camera is - how much the small details will be visible. One is the ability of the lens to sharply focus - for example - a very very fine line onto a flat plane (sensor or film.) The second is how far apart the sensors are - the further apart, the less accurate the focus has to be. The closer they are, the more accurate the focus has to be to have the fine line land on one row of sensors instead of the one next to it. The third is how big each individual sensor is, which allows it to record a single point of light with fewer photons. If electrical noise is constant, the more light hitting a sensor the more the light will be stronger than the noise.
All of this is why high MP sensors in tiny cameras are a bad idea, and why many manufacturers are starting to actually drop the MPs in their new models to reduce the MP density.
I cannot afford this camera and it's unlikely that I'll become a Leica system user; the body is retailing (not list, but actual price) at $7000. Even if I had the money I'm not sure that sensor technology supports buying a camera this expensive - with film, the film could improve and the camera machine didn't need to; when they're combined the sensor is the limiting factor.
But it's wonderful to see the forces that benefit _me_ start to come into view in the digital market. After this will be another post on the cameras I _can_ afford...
Leica has long had the reputation of making cameras that are incredibly well-engineered and constructed. The classic Leica is a rangefinder - you're not looking through the lens, you're looking through a viewfinder that overlays two views of the same image and when they align, as you focus, then that part of the image will be in focus. SLR cameras require a lot of bulk in order to let you see through the lens.
The classic Leica didn't autofocus, it didn't set your aperture or shutter speed; it just was small, always worked, and featured a good selection of truly excellent lenses. You either carried a light meter or you got good at reading the light yourself and with the use of color negative film, you could get high-quality images.
How to bring these classic mechanical cameras whose job was to reliably focus and expose a segment of roll film into the digital age where the film is built into the camera in the form of a sensor was not obvious. What benefits of digital were important, and what benefits of a simpler machine should be preserved? From what I've read about the M9, they pretty much got it right.
To start with, they used a "full frame" sensor. This image shows the relative sizes of some of the popular sensors in current cameras:
Full frame is about the same as the 35mm film frame, the largest that this image shows. Nikon DSLRs that are "D" have a 1.5x crop factor (blue); Canon non-full-frame DSLRs use 1.6x (red); The Fujifilm F series use up to 1/1.6 (navy); the popular Canon Powershots use 1/2.3 (bruise). DPreview now reports "pixel density" - the latest Canon Powershot has 43 MP/cm^2; this Leica has 2.1MP/cm^2. Pretty profound. And it produces 18MP images.
An obvious benefit is that you can use lenses designed for 35mm cameras and the focal length doesn't change. When you use a sensor smaller than what the lens was designed for, you get "crop factor", like this:
In practical terms, a wide-angle lens becomes normal, a normal becomes telephoto, etc.
So the Leica can use all of the M lenses and wide-angle stays wide-angle. That's a HUGE system win. The M series was introduced in 1954, and I believe that all lenses produced since then are usable.
It also wins because there are three factors in how good the resolution of a camera is - how much the small details will be visible. One is the ability of the lens to sharply focus - for example - a very very fine line onto a flat plane (sensor or film.) The second is how far apart the sensors are - the further apart, the less accurate the focus has to be. The closer they are, the more accurate the focus has to be to have the fine line land on one row of sensors instead of the one next to it. The third is how big each individual sensor is, which allows it to record a single point of light with fewer photons. If electrical noise is constant, the more light hitting a sensor the more the light will be stronger than the noise.
All of this is why high MP sensors in tiny cameras are a bad idea, and why many manufacturers are starting to actually drop the MPs in their new models to reduce the MP density.
I cannot afford this camera and it's unlikely that I'll become a Leica system user; the body is retailing (not list, but actual price) at $7000. Even if I had the money I'm not sure that sensor technology supports buying a camera this expensive - with film, the film could improve and the camera machine didn't need to; when they're combined the sensor is the limiting factor.
But it's wonderful to see the forces that benefit _me_ start to come into view in the digital market. After this will be another post on the cameras I _can_ afford...
