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New Leica M 240 follow-up in 2017 : The speculations.


Paulus

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I don't think the different models have different electronics; some have connectors missed out. The M-P has a double density RAM chip. The M-D has an extra rotary switch controller. None has had a processor upgrade.

The designers will always want to go further than tweaking an old pattern and it is unlikely that in the cramped space inside a camera a new set of electronics will have the same shape.

 

 

No that is not how electronics are made. 

 

Let's take the M-P for example, it is highly unlikely to have a discrete RAM. Instead, it will be a SOC, system on a chip, which will have all the RAM, the processor, the graphics processor for the image data, the IO etc all inside one package on one piece of silicon. Then when you are doing the electronic specification, you pick the processor's clock speed and the amount of RAM for a particular application.  Of course as you add features the cost of the SOC goes up. When Leica made the M-P they picked a different part number from the manufacturer's catalog one that has  more memory, and a faster processor, while having the same pinouts and electrical current specifications. I suspect that because the the battery life of M-P didn't change substantially, the SOC used for the M-P for the new part vs the old part also underwent a semiconductor process change. Something like going from a 50nm process to a 36nm process or something like that. This refers to the size of the features on the chip. A chip designer will adapt the older design to a new process and for the old parts they will get more chips out of the silicon wafer or they will add new features or more of a particular kind of feature to the chip's design so that it takes up the same amount of space on the wafer. Many times the chip vendor will do both and introduce new part numbers. RAM is an easy one to vary because it is highly regular and so adding or removing RAM doesn't take much design time. So what you'll get is for every wafer you may be able to get 200 chips which have 1GB of RAM or 150 chips which have 2GB of RAM. The reason why I think that there was a process shift is because adding more RAM would consume more energy if the process didn't change. When you change process, you also often get a power reduction as well feature size reduction.

 

Each one of these chips has various kinds of IO pins. These IO pins are taken from the SOC's pins to headers on the logic board and then where they plug into little flex cables that route through the case to the other headers on the tiny circuit cards where the switches are mounted. It is rare that all the IO pins are connected but the header or headers on the logic board are big enough to support all the the IO pins coming from the processor. 

 

I don't know if the lever that selects frame lines needs a microswitch of its own above and beyond what is there to sense the len's tab but assuming that it doesn't then the flex cables between the M and the M-P are probably identical. 

 

On the other hand the M262 which doesn't have as many buttons and doesn't have the microphone or speaker has a different flex cable part. However, the header on the logic board is probably identical and is located in the identical location on the logic board. It just doesn't have the pins connected to anything. The firmware in the SOC just tells the processor to ignore the unconnected pins. To change the meaning of the LV button they just attributed a new meaning to the switch connected to that particular IO port in the firmware and relabeled the button.

 

That is why I say:

- The M-P is the same as the M240 but with a higher speed processor which has more RAM. The switches and thus the flex cables are probably the same. The firmware load is probably identical or at least extremely close to what that they have for the M240.

- The M262 probably has the same logic board as the M240 with a different firmware load. The flex cables connecting to the various switches are different.

 

Anyway, the point is they have the case which includes the rangefinder and the switches. It just adds a few additional design constraints to make a new logic board and sensor assembly that fits into the old cases and accepts the same flex cable headers. The increased engineering time necessary to satisfy these constraints is at least partially offset by the decrease in the engineering time needed to design and route the flex cables within the same housing.

 

So I would argue that it is at least conceivable that Leica could implement my hypothetical CLAU program and there are also at least some debatable reasons why doing so would advantageous for both Leica and their customers.  

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The frameline selector is mechanical, as are the framelines.

 

I'm not questioning that. I get that.

 

But mechanical linkage ultimately triggers a set of switches that actually turns on and off the LEDs that light up the frame lines. This set of switches or another one in parallel also becomes an electric signal that is used in conjunction with the LEDs reading the 6bit encoding to divine the EXIF data for the lens.

 

The part that I don't know is when you move the external lever do any of these switches in some way record the fact that you moved the lever on the outside vs. the lens tab moving the linkage on the inside. That would require another microswitch to sense that fact and that would require a change to the flex cable running through the body. I suspect that Leica kept the parts the same and the camera does not recognize how the mechanical linkage was moved.

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AFAIK the LED is switched on by the camera on/off switch and has no connection to the mechanically operated  frameline masks or lever-mechanical position trigger. It is nothing more than a replacement of the passive frameline illumination window of earlier models.

 

The six-bit coding does not control the framelines, there is however a position sensor to tell the camera which one  of the framelinemasks has been selected.

The lens recognition is controlled by the electronic input of the IR sensor (six-bit) and frameline position combined.

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I found a video of a partial disassembly of a M240 with a sticky rangefinder mechanism. It doesn't go far enough to show the actual logic board in the main body however you can see some of the electronics up in the rangefinder. You can if you look carefully you can pick out little details like the flex cables and the headers that they plug into on the the small circuit boards where the switches are mounted. 

 

 

Too bad we don't have somebody who does well documented tear downs and reassemblies of the various M series cameras the way that iFixIt does for iPhones or Chilton does for automobiles.

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When you turn on the camera the LED that lights up the frame lines is on. Period.

The lens mount tells the camera, mechanically, what frame line mask to put in place to give you the proper frame lines. This can also be done by the frame line lever, if equipped.

There are no LED's in the six bit code reader. The 6 bit code reader simply tells the camera what lens is mounted. In the case of no 6 bit code on the lens it can be manually selected in the menu to record in the exif. More importantly corrections can be made for certain lenses if the camera knows which one is mounted.

 

Frame line masks - mechanical.

Frame line lever - mechanical.

6 bit code reader - simply a rudimentary bar code scanner.

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"Too bad we don't have somebody who does well documented tear downs and reassemblies of the various M series cameras the way that iFixIt does for iPhones or Chilton does for automobiles."

 

Isn't all of this because our slice of the photographic market is so small you can barely see it?

For the larger part of the market there are better and cheaper ways to make a photo with a very high IQ.

Edited by ECohen
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I found a video of a partial disassembly of a M240 with a sticky rangefinder mechanism. It doesn't go far enough to show the actual logic board in the main body however you can see some of the electronics up in the rangefinder. You can if you look carefully you can pick out little details like the flex cables and the headers that they plug into on the the small circuit boards where the switches are mounted. 

 

 

Too bad we don't have somebody who does well documented tear downs and reassemblies of the various M series cameras the way that iFixIt does for iPhones or Chilton does for automobiles.

 

 

 

What you see is the flex that carries the signal of the focus movement sensor which controls the magnification in live view, and it probably carries the signal of the frameline mask position sensor as well. No switches. The part he pushes is the prism carrier that shifts the rangefinder patch.

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Hello Jaap,

 

To add to your Post #20 above:

 

Leica did more than that. They also built the S1 which took Leitz's/Leica/s both rangefinder & reflex lenses and produced a 25,000,000 pixels image on a 24mm X 36mm sensor surface. That is a digital image that is equivalent to Kodachrome. They did this in 1996.

 

Today's World. 20 years ago.

 

2 significant accomplishments for a little Company.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

Edited by Michael Geschlecht
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By the way did anyone else notice that Leica announced a new services organization today? Yeah it is clearly geared at addressing the needs of professional photographers and probably has more to do with the SL and the S but an enhanced service organization could execute something like my hypothetical CLAU service.

 

Yes, I noticed this and the apparent lack of any mention of the M system... 

 

Let's hope they're first able to bring service turnaround times back to a reasonable span of a week or two rather than a month or two!

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Yes, I noticed this and the apparent lack of any mention of the M system... 

 

Let's hope they're first able to bring service turnaround times back to a reasonable span of a week or two rather than a month or two!

Is not "professional" the status of the photographer ... not the camera? (as a professional photographer using M only, there seems to be no professional business service)

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I think Luigi analyzed the omission of the M from the Professional Business Centre concept rather well in another thread:

 

 

Reading better the Leica announcement, I think that  it and the ProCentre Agreement are two slightly different approaches, to pursue a "multi-channel" strategy towards the (wide and very diversificated) world of what we simply call "pro" :

    - The Professional Business Unit insists on the concept of "B2B" ... which makes to think of a DIRECT relation of Leica with "pros" in the sense of Business entities who can be users (but mostly, buyers) of Leica gear : isn't by chance, imo, that they quote as part of this BU also the Cine Lenses Unit (the "customer" of Cine Lenses is typically a company who rents cine gear to producers/studios and similar... the "user" is a person, but he is not at all involved in what means to BUY and MAINTAIN this gear).  Also for photography there are similar kind of business... in the "fashion district" of Milan downtown you have photo studios who rent, for x Euros/day (x can be easily 5000) a complete set with stage, illuminators, cameras with MF digital backs etc. : a people who I know well (manufacturer of gas valves) recently rented such a studio for two days (with a model, too) , came in with his trusted photographer who went in cameraless , took some pictures of valves with the model, using the sudio's gear and then went away with his files to prepare the images for a sales brochure.

    This is defineitely a business for S line, for Sinar and (hopefully for Leica) SL too...

    - The ProCentre Agreement has to do with local professionals, probably private single persons, who have ProCentre as their typical/trustable "shop" for all the needs (in gear and services) that a professional has : in Leica view, this is, generally speaking, a "dealer"... but owing to his specialized market, Leica establishes (I think, through its current organization targeted to dealers) a specific policy in commercial and services terms on the products that this entity evaluates to be of interest for his customer base... and this can easily include the M line.

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Yes, but in general the M is rather irrelevant for the PBC isn't it? It is not some kind of professional customer care. I wouldn't be surprised if, given that it is a B2B model, that the M line can be included in an individual contract.

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Why should Leica produce another M?  Numerous posts in the M thread by die hard M users suggest it is not needed.  Further, the large number of M users moving to the SL is a much larger market opportunity for Leica to make money with new lenses and more flexibility in product design.  In the meantime they have a cash cow in the M until the market dies (or at least its adherents). :)  Why invest more money in a dining market when the SL offers a completely new and expanded market that actually may cost them less to manufacture and which they can sell for a higher price?  Maybe Leica will throw the M die hards one last bone but I wouldn't suggest holding ones breath in waiting. :)

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Why invest more money in a dining market when the SL offers a completely new and expanded market that actually may cost them less to manufacture and which they can sell for a higher price?  Maybe Leica will throw the M die hards one last bone but I wouldn't suggest holding ones breath in waiting. :)

 

Well, as a 'dining' market, they just need to be sure there's some meat on the bone that's thrown.

 

Jeff

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I speculated quite awhile back that the M, or M240 and its variations was the last M. So far it is holding true. And for the most part it doesn't need improving. When I had my two M6 cameras, I never gave a thought to upgrading to a newer version. I wish had held onto one of them!

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