Leica S system being discontinued?

[Jon Warwick]

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On 9/28/2023 at 2:18 AM, fotofool said:

But I will be surprised if they come up with something that is going to lure me back at this late date.  WIth my sunk cost, and the fantastic value of the Hasselblad and Fuji systems, it would take something both a lot better and with very un-Leicia-like prices to pry me away from my new system.  Still, I'll be watching with great interest and holding back on further investments in the meantime.

Yes, and probably similar to my experience with the GFX100S and how I might approach any Leica medium format system. One gets a lot of image quality off the Hasseblad and GFX systems at 100mp at a reasonable price vs full frame, and from a few comments and samples I’ve seen on the internet, it seems to me that Fuji has notched up the image quality of the lenses if the new GF 55mm is anything to go by. As it stands, I’ve found the resolution and (more importantly for me) rendering off my GFX to readily replace E6 from my 5x4, albeit without camera movements of course.

[Stuart Richardson]

12 hours ago, helged said:

It is also my understanding, based on talks with Leica representatives, that a mirrorless S is designed to use L-mount lenses through an adapter. If so, this makes the mirrorless S-system much more attractive, as one can start with the body and, say, one newly designed mirrorless S-lens, and complete focal lengths with L-mount lenses. Plus existing S-lenses. Plus a wide range of other lenses.

This is very good news, and I truly think the best move for Leica. The S system does not seem to ever have been a big seller. Maybe in the early early days, but even then it was so much more expensive than a good 35mm camera, and yet not as appealing to many studio based pros (after all, a digital back can live on a view camera and then be put on a hasselblad, contax or phase camera etc, it can be swapped out without changing all your camera bodies, and at the time it was higher resolution and way better for tethering than the S was). As soon as the D800 came things got shaky, and then the GFX and X series made it even shakier.

As professional as Leica makes their cameras, it is my impression that they are a company whose fortunes are driven by luxury buyers and well-heeled amateurs by and large. There are professionals of course, but they are not as large a fraction of the people who buy the cameras as they might be with Phase One, for example.

In any case, an S that can lure more buyers from the 35mm market would sell more cameras, particularly if the users could use many of the lenses they have already bought or at least add other lenses to the mix for not so much money. I think this is a win win for everyone. Leica will sell more S cameras (and probably more S lenses along with it, as I imagine most buyers will buy at least one or two medium format lenses for it), but they will also lower the threshold for entry.

I remember when I was initially buying the S2, I had to make some hard choices given the very high prices of the lenses and body. I bought the 35mm and 120 with the camera, but that was only after selling a ton of gear to cover as much as I could...there were really no used lenses at the time, and the camera was 22 or 23,000 dollars with 6-8000 dollar lenses. Pretty extreme! Only after more jobs and a few months I added the 70mm. An S with support for the L mount would make the transition a lot easier for users...particularly pros who usually need to have a full range of lenses in hand to take on work.

If they do make it this way, it would also probably wind up being the most versatile camera in the whole camera market, and Leica the most synergistic camera system available. It would be a camera that can shoot everything from a range of APS-C lenses (if nothing else, perhaps for video) to the full range of L mount lenses 14-600mm, all the S lenses, nearly all the M lenses, nearly all the screwmount lenses and nearly all the R lenses. Nothing else out there can do that...the closest would be the GFX but it cannot use the S lenses nor fully support M, L or R lenses to the same degree. 

I am sure the camera will cost an arm and a leg, but in this case it really sounds like it could be worth the price, if only for the ultimate in flexibility.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Stuart Richardson

[Pieter12]

1 hour ago, Stuart Richardson said:

The S system does not seem to ever have been a big seller. Maybe in the early early days, but even then it was so much more expensive than a good 35mm camera, and yet not as appealing to many studio based pros (after all, a digital back can live on a view camera and then be put on a hasselblad, contax or phase camera etc, it can be swapped out without changing all your camera bodies, and at the time it was higher resolution and way better for tethering than the S was). As soon as the D800 came things got shaky, and then the GFX and X series made it even shakier.

The advantage of the S at the time was that it was much easier to hand-hold than any other so-called medium-format digital camera. That is a factor in fashion and portrait photography. The Nikon D800 had high resolution, but not close to the color rendering of the S CCD. Plus the Leica S lenses are incredible. It was the GFX and X cameras that pretty much stifled the S. Still, the S is the only one with a large, bright optical viewfinder. That alone allows for little start-up lag and longer battery life. I, for one, will keep using my S until it dies. No interest in a mirrorless at this point.

[irenedp]

I use a Phase, and there’s something in the files that is not there in the S3 files. Depth and also color gradation (the latter can be the 16 bit vs the 14). But yesterday I shot for a class I was teaching today a focus stacked panorama with the 70 mm, and the definition of the lens is all the way as good as the Schneider 80. In my view, although that is debatable, the S lenses resolve better than the GFX ones. If they adapt the current S lens array they will definitely sell a lot of the new camera because you can find them used at reasonable prices. 

Edited September 30, 2023 by irenedp

[Stuart Richardson]

2 hours ago, Pieter12 said:

The advantage of the S at the time was that it was much easier to hand-hold than any other so-called medium-format digital camera. That is a factor in fashion and portrait photography. The Nikon D800 had high resolution, but not close to the color rendering of the S CCD. Plus the Leica S lenses are incredible. It was the GFX and X cameras that pretty much stifled the S. Still, the S is the only one with a large, bright optical viewfinder. That alone allows for little start-up lag and longer battery life. I, for one, will keep using my S until it dies. No interest in a mirrorless at this point.

I know the advantages of the S. I shot with it for 8 years or so. But my point is that it was a hard sell to a working pro when they could match the resolution and form factor in a D800 with the entire Nikon ecosystem for about a tenth of the price. And photographers who did not have cost problems usually would just right to Phase. So it left the S, as brilliant as it is, as a kind of neither here nor there camera for all but a very small niche of photographers. As you note, the GFX and X series were the nails in the coffin from a market perspective, but I think it was really the sensor improvements to 35mm, allowing those cameras to match the S for resolution and in most cases image quality as well...maybe not the lens character or color, but the detail and noise etc. I knew a couple of photographers who were using medium format digital who went down to the D800, A7R and 5Ds just because they were like "my clients can't see the difference and I save so much money...not just on the camera, but also on insurance, repair, accessories etc". Another friend of mine switched away from an IQ100 because it just got bricked in bad weather and Phase was not very helpful....he just went to Fuji and never looked back.

Anyway, the S is great, but market changes upended it dramatically much quicker than I am sure Leica hoped. Now the task is to bring the camera to the current market and hopefully maintain most of what made it great, while allowing it to serve the needs of a broader group of users. If it doesn't, it is not going to last as a system.

[Jon Warwick]

8 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

, but I think it was really the sensor improvements to 35mm, allowing those cameras to match the S for resolution and in most cases image quality as well...maybe not the lens character or color, but the detail and noise etc. I knew a couple of photographers who were using medium format digital who went down to the D800, A7R and 5Ds just because they were like "my clients can't see the difference and I save so much money...not just on the camera, but also on insurance, repair, accessories etc".

I think that comment is also applicable to me! I've recently been doing detailed comparisons of the same landscape images from my GFX100S and M11 and at 55" prints the difference is very subtle indeed. I was switching in and out the cameras on a tripod, base ISOs (the new ISO 64 on the M11 is great), and using APO Lanthars on the M11 and GF50mm on the GFX.

When looking at the files, it's not unusual that I might give the nod to the M11's image quality, given certain parts of the frame are simply better resolved by the excellent Voigtlander lenses, albeit in general the GFX at 100mp is normally ever so slightly better resolving across the images in aggregate - but it's typically very subtle as I say.

The biggest benefit of 100mp for me is the lack of any need to eliminate the probs from the color filter array that can occur in those areas of very high frequency detail of an image, such as a rocky outcrop on a distant mountain ( ....the problem shows up as purple / pink speckles that are embedded into the high frequency details - is that "false color"? I can normally successfully remove it on the M11 files with the purple defringing slider in ACR). But at 100mp, this prob doesn't seem to occur ever. If I had an SL2, I'd assume the problem would also be eliminated in camera by the high resolution mode, but that mode isn't always perfect for other reasons (saw-tooth edges at times). So for me, the best bet likely remains using a 100mp+ camera with a single shot to avoid such issues.

[Stuart Richardson]

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1 hour ago, Jon Warwick said:

The biggest benefit of 100mp for me is the lack of any need to eliminate the probs from the color filter array that can occur in those areas of very high frequency detail of an image, such as a rocky outcrop on a distant mountain ( ....the problem shows up as purple / pink speckles that are embedded into the high frequency details - is that "false color"? I can normally successfully remove it on the M11 files with the purple defringing slider in ACR). But at 100mp, this prob doesn't seem to occur ever. If I had an SL2, I'd assume the problem would also be eliminated in camera by the high resolution mode, but that mode isn't always perfect for other reasons (saw-tooth edges at times). So for me, the best bet likely remains using a 100mp+ camera with a single shot to avoid such issues.

That is moire or at least the bayer filter not being able to portray the finest details accurately. You probably are not seeing it on 100mp because of diffraction or slightly softer lenses. Another way to help with this is to use the "enhance" command in lightroom (and maybe camera raw? I don't often use photoshop...). If you select that it will do a better bayer demosaicing and it often minimizes this issue. But ultimately, until they implement sensors that do not rely on a bayer matrix, this is likely going to be an issue when the lens can fully resolve detail down to the sensor's Nyquist limit.

[Jon Warwick]

1 hour ago, Stuart Richardson said:

That is moire or at least the bayer filter not being able to portray the finest details accurately. You probably are not seeing it on 100mp because of diffraction or slightly softer lenses. Another way to help with this is to use the "enhance" command in lightroom (and maybe camera raw? I don't often use photoshop...). If you select that it will do a better bayer demosaicing and it often minimizes this issue. But ultimately, until they implement sensors that do not rely on a bayer matrix, this is likely going to be an issue when the lens can fully resolve detail down to the sensor's Nyquist limit.

Amazing! i've just tried that out in ACR (control + click on a Mac reveals the drop-down list, under which Enhance is located).

I see the purple-colored speckle artifacts now largely gone, just by using Enhance's "Raw Details" command .... additionally, with a little Enhance "Denoise", but just needed for some of the images. I also seem to see better texture and more crispness from using Enhance - and not in a fake or oversharp way, at all. It looks like realistic texture that was perhaps otherwise lost in the regular ACR demosaicing that I've been using before.  

So many thanks for the suggestion! It was very helpful.

That aside - I wonder how well a Monochrom would have done for these types of landscape. With no CFA, I was always impressed by how unprocessed the images were off my (now sold) M10 Monochrom, I would imagine an M11 Monochrom would be quite a bit ahead of even the GFX100 in terms of recording a pure representation of a distance landscape chocked full of very small rocks that create a challenge for the color filter array cameras!

Edited October 1, 2023 by Jon Warwick

[jaapv]

On 9/30/2023 at 9:10 PM, Stuart Richardson said:

The S system does not seem to ever have been a big seller.

Actually it has done quite well over the years. When it was introduced Mr.Daniel told a group of forum members that it had a marketing target of 1000 cameras a year. As far as I can see that number has been amply exceeded.

[Stuart Richardson]

I am just going by the fact that dealers seem to want nothing to do with it, the secondary market is a total disaster and I have only once or twice since 2008 seen someone using one other than in a test video or myself in the mirror. Maybe they are more popular somewhere else?

Edited October 2, 2023 by Stuart Richardson

[davidmknoble]

On 9/30/2023 at 7:47 PM, Stuart Richardson said:

Anyway, the S is great, but market changes upended it dramatically much quicker than I am sure Leica hoped. Now the task is to bring the camera to the current market and hopefully maintain most of what made it great, while allowing it to serve the needs of a broader group of users. If it doesn't, it is not going to last as a system.

Stuart, I think this is true for many things - the CL, the X systems all sort of came and went.  I've been playing with the Hasselblad CFV and the 16 bit color is pretty amazing, and I'm not sure why Leica (and some others for that matter) have not really taken advantage of that.  It may be it's not really necessary, but I see a difference.  I know there's been conversation about 35mm high density sensors versus medium format sensors and I haven't quite gotten there yet - but I've also invested in the S system to the point where I can make it do exactly what I envision and I can pull out the colors and tonality.  You are spot on about whether it stays or not though - if they can create a new mirrorless system that works with all the lenses, much like the SL system does, it will live a little longer, if not, I think it will be buried... and I will hate that as much as I hated the R9 system ending!

[Pieter12]

On 10/2/2023 at 12:38 PM, jaapv said:

Actually it has done quite well over the years. When it was introduced Mr.Daniel told a group of forum members that it had a marketing target of 1000 cameras a year. As far as I can see that number has been amply exceeded.

Is there a source for the sales figures?

[djmay]

Of course not. Leica, like many companies, does not disclose numbers of products sold. Maybe in 20 years they will say how many S cameras were sold.

[jaapv]

3 hours ago, Pieter12 said:

Is there a source for the sales figures?

Yes. It was in the presentation speech by Stefan Daniel at a forum meeting. 

[Pieter12]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

Yes. It was in the presentation speech by Stefan Daniel at a forum meeting. 

The actual numbers or the goal?

[jaapv]

The goal. I’ very sure that they exceeded it. 

[frame-it]

the NEW Leica S!! 😇

 

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by frame-it

[Overgaard]

Leica S dLSR mirror-and-prism based camera vs Leica SL Hybrid mirrorless camera from Leica Definitions:

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[frame-it]

while traveling the last few weeks i seem to have missed this interview >

"Je pense que Fujifilm a toujours été très fort dans le moyen format hybride. Nous, pour le moment, on arrête le S3, mais je pense qu’il y aura des projets pour un futur S4.Quand est-ce que ça arrivera ? Ce n’est pas demain, ce n’est pas dans un horizon proche. Je ne pense pas qu’on verra cela en 2024, je ne sais pas pour 2025, mais je sais que Leica a des projets en termes d’appareils photo hybrides dans le moyen format."

>>I think Fujifilm has always been very strong in hybrid medium format. For the moment, we are stopping S3, but I think there will be plans for a future S4. When will that happen? It's not tomorrow, it's not in the near future. I don't think we will see this in 2024, I don't know about 2025, but I know that Leica has plans in terms of mirrorless cameras in the medium format.

 

https://phototrend.fr/2023/10/interview-leica-salon-de-la-photo-2023/

 

https://phototrend.fr/2023/09/interview-dr-andreas-kaufmann-proprietaire-leica/

 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2023 by frame-it

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[Pieter12]

On 10/10/2023 at 12:41 AM, Overgaard said:

Leica S dLSR mirror-and-prism based camera vs Leica SL Hybrid mirrorless camera from Leica Definitions:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

I believe we all know the difference in design, weight and size. I wouldn't call the bottom image a hybrid. The Fuji X and XPro are hybrid because you can use the viewfinder in both optical and a digital mode, plus the optical mode has digital information that can be superimposed.

I have not used many mirrorless cameras, but for those I have used the viewfinder image was never as pleasing to me as an optical viewfinder. There seems to be a certain harshness, lag and detachment from the actual scene that I don't like. I also never use a rear display as a viewfinder. Unfortunately, that seems be the direction the industry has chosen.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Pieter12
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