I have an idea for a digital M:

Interchangable rear doors. The digital one would have full frame sensor and LCD screen on the back, with additional electrcal contacts (depending on storage body needs this too).

Storage could be in the film chambers or outboard, cord or wireless.

When tech. gets better change the back and sell the old one 2nd hand to someone who can't afford the new one.

To go back to film, change the back. Or, have one film, one digital that take the same lenses.

Modular.

-- Allison Reese (a_b_reese3@hotmail.com), May 15, 2002

Answers

The back would be outsourced, of course, the Leica one would be too expensive. What company is coming out with the three color pixel chips?

-- Allison Reese (a_b_reese3@hotmail.com), May 15, 2002.

The Digital M option has been beat to death in many forums. It won't work with current technology. Even Leica admits it in public.

Current CCD detectors have to have light rays that are more-or-less parallel in order for them to work well. Glancing light that does fine for a flat emulsion produce bad CCD food. An M camera, with it's narrow body and deep-set wideangle lenses, is far from an ideal platform to deliver parallel light to the detector. Maybe you could set the CCD back further and transfer the light to the detectors, but I believe that that idea has also been investigated. Perhaps you'd be able to use the center of the frame, as many of the digital SLR's do, but it would still stick out from the back of the camera enough to be ugly.

So I think that a digital M is a distant dream. A much easier dream is a digital camera that uses M lenses. But someone would have to build it, and Leica doen't have the cash to do that.

Skip

-- Skip Williams (skipwilliams@pobox.com), May 15, 2002.

Actually, if the main problem is that the lenses are set too close to the image plane, then any digital camera that uses M lenses is out of the question, no matter who makes it. That's OK by me, though - just the thought of an anti-aliasing filter sitting between my 90 AA and the sensor is enough to make me somber and morose. Leave that sort of degradation to lenses where it doesn't matter anyway...

-- Paul Chefurka (paul@chefurka.com), May 15, 2002.

Then how do the smaller than M digital cameras work?

-- Allison Reese (a_b_reese3@hotmail.com), May 15, 2002.

Current Leica digital cameras do not use M mount lenes. They are all fixed lens out sourced Japanese cameras.

-- Pete Su (psu@kvdpsu.org), May 15, 2002.

Leica does have a digital camera that uses the M lenses, the S1. But it's a scanning-back studio camera that has to be tethered to a workstation to be used.

Skip

-- Skip Williams (skipwilliams@pobox.com), May 15, 2002.

Allison, the 'smaller than M cameras' a) have very small ccd chips (about the size of your pinkie fingernail) and b) have lenses in the 5 - 8 mm range. You're comparing apples and oranges here. As stated above, to get a decent size CCD that would use existing M lenses, would require a deeper body and focus recalibration of the lenses.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), May 15, 2002.

The last time we had a thread about digital M's, a few folks said they already owned one: An M6 + a film scanner.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), May 15, 2002.

Mommy! I see pictures! Leitz M6, Elmar-M 50mm 1:2.8, B+W KR1.5 MRC, Fuji Sensia II 200, Polaroid SprintScan 4000, SilverFast 5.5 HDR, Photoshop 6.0.1 = Digital "M" Baby!

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), May 15, 2002.

Lookhere for this topic and design idea from time ago. I still think it is a posibility.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), May 16, 2002.

Nice shot Travis, I am glad I persevered with the beginning of the thread, otherwise I would have missed it

-- sait (akkirman@clear.net.nz), May 16, 2002.

As often as I have wished for a digital Leica M, the light angle issue was one I had wondered about.

Personally, i don't care if I have a digital Leica or not. I want a digital interchangable lens RF camera. Something smaller and quieter than the Fuji S1/Canon D30 I have owned (more importantly, with smaller lenses). Even a digital Contax G would work for me. The issue for me isn't getting the images to a digital form, otherwise a scanner would be fine. But rather I have grown to love the digital shooting itself for a number of reasons (which I will spell out to anyone who cares to know).

I think that a 3rd party solution is most likely. But unless the light angle issue can be dealt with, it may (sadly) be a while.

-- Josh Root (rootj@att.net), May 16, 2002.