[Leica] digital glass

["Mark J. Rosen" <mjr@grok.org>]

There were many reasons I moved from a Nikon F4 system to a Leica M6 system,
not the least of which was the weight of my full kit making me not want to
bring my camera everywhere.  But I certainly do appreciate the quality of
the system, particularly the Leica M lenses.  Now, when people are talking
about the greatness of digital, and how it's catching up to film, I think
about a lot of things like resolution, and scanning, etc.  For example, I've
scanned slides to be printed at a good lab, and they generally do 6000 dpi,
for a total of about 54 megapixels.  I don't know if that's really beyond
the ability of a 35mm slide, such that 36 megapixels might be enough to
capture all the detail in there or not.  But the digital cameras available
are still under 10 megapixels, which surely my slides can surpass,
particularly when I like to blow things up large when I get a good shot, say
20 x 30 or even 24x36.  Yes, I know medium format is better for such large
enlargements, but I have some very nice and sharp 24 x 36 blowups from 35mm.

Anyway, I've thought about switching to digital once they get reasonably
priced for, oh, 20 megapixels.  And I'm sure that day will come soon.

But the question is, is the glass on these cameras of sufficient quality to
make the megapixel count a meaningful number?  That is, surely one 10
megapixel camera with good glass compared with a 10 megapixel camera with
poorer glass should produce finer photos, no?  Or is the glass of sufficient
resolution such that one doesn't even need good glass to achieve the actual
10 megapixel resolution in reality?

I hope I'm not confusing the issues here; my basic question is, doesn't the
quality of the glass affect the quality of the camera in the digital sphere?

Mark J. Rosen
mjr@grok.org

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