photokina - Your Questions To Leica

[sarav]

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-2

 

Bye.

 

-2 minus zwei two due

 

Regards

[menos I M6]

Will there ever be a possibility of a digital M with AF?

 

-3

[Arthur Winner]

My request is for focus recognition and some way of calibrating focus. I suffer from back focus and believe Leica should address this issue

Arthur

[giordano]

Having been rude about laser rangefinders earlier in this thread I thought I'd better investigate further.

 

The Bosch GLM250VF is a laser rangefinder for builders and surveyors. Maximum range is 250m, which is enough for all M-photography except for critical use with long lenses at long distances and wide apertures. E.g. if you're trying to get the maximum resolution from an M9 with a 135mm lens at f/3.4, the hyperfocal distance is well over 300m; with a 90mm at f/2, it's about 290m. (But the M rangefinder seems to be marginal

 

Accuracy is plenty good enough: within a millimetre close up, a centimetre most of the time, and a few centimetres at long ranges in difficult conditions.

 

But:

 

• The laser beam can cause eye damage, don't point it at people or animals.
  
• In bright light it can be hard to see the laser dot and you may need to wear special glasses to increase the contrast (which of course distort the colours).
  
• At long range in very bright light, especially if the object you're ranging on has a non-reflective surface, you may have to use a reflective target plate to get a reading. (Let's have a thread about what sort of tape Jaap should use to attach the target plate to a distant elephant.)
  

So it looks as if a traditional optical rangefinder is still the most practical system to deliver the combination of range and accuracy that M-photography requires.

[lct]

...The laser beam can cause eye damage, don't point it at people or animals...

Not that of my 6 years old Sony DSC-V1 at least.

Otherwise i would be surrounded by a lot of blind people i guess.

Excerp of the Sony's manual (bis repetita placent):

 

[giordano]

Not that of my 6 years old Sony DSC-V1 at least.

Otherwise i would be surrounded by a lot of blind people i guess.

Excerp of the Sony's manual (bis repetita placent):

 

 

This was a class 1 laser system designed to project a target so that an otherwise-conventional contrast-detecting AF system could work in bad light or total darkness. It seems a really neat idea, but Sony dropped it soon afterwards so it must have run into problems (maybe related to people not liking to have even 100% safe lasers shone in their faces).

 

But it's pretty much irrelevant to the question of laser rangefinding for M cameras, because it was only designed for use at short ranges in low light - while (what I tell you three times is true;)) an M rangefinder needs to work beyond 250m in bright sunlight.

 

The Bosch GLM250VF and similar laser rangefinders need to bounce the laser beam off an object a couple of hundred metres away and detect the light that bounces back, all in full daylight: a rough calculation suggests that takes tens of thousands of times as much power as the Hologram AF assist. This is why their manuals state that they are class 2 devices which can damage eyes that look into their beams.

[lct]

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Never got focussing problems at 250m but mainly at short to medium distance where the Sony device excels at night and when the light is poor. It can be disabled in a snap so it sounds like a good idea to me.

[giordano]

Never got focussing problems at 250m but mainly at short to medium distance where the Sony device excels at night and when the light is poor. It can be disabled in a snap so it sounds like a good idea to me.

 

I think it's a great idea too for getting better autofocus in bad light - i.e. a solution to a problem that the M doesn't have - but there must be a problem or Sony wouldn't have dropped it.

 

Just providing an illuminated focusing target - which you can do yourself by taping a laser pointer to the top of an M - doesn't overcome any problems with the accuracy and reliability of the M rangefinder system, which is what the suggestion of a laser rangefinder was aimed at.

[lct]

Just sharing my experience giordano. I can focus with the Sony where it is impossible with any Leica.

[paulja]

R solution......+12....paul

[Son of Helm]

R solution

+13

 

Some sort of Sony alpha 900 full frame and with in-house

vibration reduction. As of now, one has to change the

mount on all lenses, so they cannot be used on my R6.2.

 

Cheers Beshof

[GreyCoupe]

R.

 

We have waited long enough. Lots of M stuff, point and shoot, and good luck with S, but the R solution is way overdue....

 

R.

[rvalarcher]

R.

 

We have waited long enough. Lots of M stuff, point and shoot, and good luck with S, but the R solution is way overdue....

 

R.

 

I have the same feeling !

[zlatkob]

If Leica want to develop an expensive auto-focus camera, then let them. But, please, don't mess with the M...

I agree. There is an irrational fear that if Leica ever developed a full-frame autofocus interchangeable lens small camera, it would be the end of the M. But Leica is already deep into autofocus with the small format the X1 and the bigger format S2. An M-sized camera with fast autofocus would be a dream for photographing moving subjects with shallow depth of field. It would have a ready market in photographers who love Leica, but who have Nikon and Canon systems for when they need autofocus. That includes photographers who have lots of money, aging eyes, and grandchildren who won't stop moving for a photo. Such a camera could never be called an M, but happily the alphabet has other letters.

[hoppyman]

The last time Stefan Daniel spoke officially to a Forum meeting (mid 2009) he told us that a full frame AF dSLR (the R10) would cost too much (6 to 7 thousand EURO) and not be competiive in the market and that existing owners of R lenses were not a sufficient customer base. He went on to mention the 'suitable solution'.

 

All of that has been discussed extensively here of course.

Not long to go until the meeting. I'm sure that the answers will start quite a bit more discussion.

[menos I M6]

The last time Stefan Daniel spoke officially to a Forum meeting (mid 2009) he told us that a full frame AF dSLR (the R10) would cost too much (6 to 7 thousand EURO) and not be competiive in the market and that existing owners of R lenses were not a sufficient customer base. He went on to mention the 'suitable solution'.

 

All of that has been discussed extensively here of course.

Not long to go until the meeting. I'm sure that the answers will start quite a bit more discussion.

 

I can fully understand the corporate decision and reasoning regarding this.

 

What I (and maybe others) really would dream about is a one of a kind product, which Leica could produce as the only remaining manufacturer, that simply would be very different from the rest of the offerings:

 

A very light and compact manual only SLR with the full frame sensor unit, that is at the same time window in production in the digital M camera.

 

A camera, that is more compact, light and simple, than the last colossal R8 and R9 bodies - more the size and shape of an R6.2.

No other maker produces such a camera, but some openly asking people have already expressed their will, to buy such a camera, would it be made.

 

Thom Hogan, as an avid Nikon user and analyst did express many times after a digital Nikon FM3a.

Why should Leica not make this happen?

Take the sensor unit and the shutter unit out of the M9 series production and design a compact SLR around it.

The camera can even have "only" the same simple center weighted metering, to compress development costs and purchase price.

I am sure, a production run with costs about an M9 would have demand.

I would seriously think about getting one and some of the wonderful second hand tele primes (which would skyrocket after introduction of such a digital body).

 

Is Leica willing, to produce the old existing R glass in a select, reduced line?

 

I would be interested in a sufficiently fast super wide prime, a very fast (newly developed) 50mm (think f1.2), a Macro lens for product shots and a tele (fast 200mm + optional 1.4 or 1.7 TC or even an 2.8 300mm).

 

I don't need an AF body for this. I would prefer a classic, compact SLR body with an excellent sensor and medium pixel count.

 

I bet, when Leica does it right and would had some features in this body, unique to Nikon and Canon, this camera would slowly, but consistently spark a demand (no AA filter, exchangeable prism housing for addition of an waist level high mag finder for studio and Macro, exchangeable screens, an adaptor solution for S mount lenses in manual focus use, top quality mechanical dials and the magnificent Leica R glass).

 

Heck - it could be the regularly updated (with every digital M generation) parallel line to the M with compatibility to S glass for potential S series upgraders with it's "affordable" price tag, much lower than an S body.

 

I am very curious on Leicas solution, but to me the itching for an all manual digital SLR camera, be it Nikon or Leica will remain.

[rosuna]

Questions will come to mind after Leica's press conference at Photokina. Many of these a priori questions are a blind shot.

[masjah]

Questions will come to mind after Leica's press conference at Photokina. Many of these a priori questions are a blind shot.

 

Though it's just possible that Leica reads this Forum, and might therefore address some of the issues raised a bit more comprehensively than if they did not read it?

[rosuna]

Yes, but this is a thread for preparing questions to Leica. It would be easier for us and the forum members meeting Leica to make precise questions later. Many possible questions will be answered by Leica in their press conference, and many others will arise then.

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[rvalarcher]

Yes, but this is a thread for preparing questions to Leica. It would be easier for us and the forum members meeting Leica to make precise questions later. Many possible questions will be answered by Leica in their press conference, and many others will arise then.

 

If I can understand marketing strategy ,NDA ,and so many reasons given for this silence about the R solution for those having a lot of very expensive telé lenses , it's very hard to admit this infantilism , I feel like a child having to wait for santa claus on christmas day , is leica company going to collapse if to day they say : Yes we will annonce a solution announced for R users !!!!