RE: Re: [Leica] epson digital RF report pages

["Richard F. Man" <richard-lists@imagecraft.com>]

At 09:25 AM 3/11/2004 -0600, grduprey@rockwellcollins.com wrote:

>What I find amazing is the 1.53x  lens factor.  None of you out there who
>were just a few weeks ago saying if Leica comes out with a M Digital with
>less than a 1x lens factor it would be Totally unacceptable, are not
>complaining one bit about Epson/Cosina doing it.  Not One Complaint.  The
>only comment so far on this is I can live with it.  Interesting...  If
>Leica had done this very same thing right now, you would be screaming and
>calling for a revolt and overthrow of the company.

So if a single person complained before, the who LUG bears the sins? If you 
are going to look for hypocrisy or whatever, remember that as short as a 
week before PMA, Leica's position is that a Digital M cannot be done. 
Obviously they got the wind about this. They claimed angle of lights etc. 
etc. and look what Epson/Cosina did - looks like they possibly are just 
using a plain old APS sized Sony sensor. No new microlens, no new sensor. Nada.

A similar "outrage" is happening in the OM group - for years Olympus said 
the same thing about angle of light striking the sensor and designed the 
E-1 from the ground up. They are now begrudgingly (in some markets) giving 
out the adapters to use the OM Zuiko lens with big fat warnings that the 
images may not be optimal. Well, they may not be optimal, but they sure 
look pretty darn good from the pictures people are posting.

There are real innovations or at least cleverness with this puppy. They 
didn't increase the size too much. The battery goes where the film canister 
used to go. This must have driven their decisions to use the wind lever to 
cock the shutter, and to allow "flipping" out the LCD screen. These save 
battery power. With the film rewind lever, it appears to be some sort of 
jog dial control thing. Bingo, no need to add a jog dial thing on the back, 
like other cameras. The tour de force must be the ultra retro analog 3-in-1 
display. Looks like it displays the amount of shots left in some sort of 
logrithmic'ish scale, some sort of exposure/white balance thing, and may be 
some sort of indicator for the filter being used? All at a glance.

The best part is that to be competitive, Leica must now look seriously at a 
full frame solution, otherwise, by the time it comes out in 2 years, the 
Epson R2-D2, or RD-3, or whatever, might have full frame by then.


// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
use richard@imagecraft.com) 

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