[Leica] Live View Electronics (was maybe a dumb question on the M8)

[cummer at netvigator.com (Howard Cummer)]

Hello Frank,
A friend who works for Sony engineering told me that the live APS  
sized sensor in the Sony R1 (the first of its kind, I believe) was  
designed to run "cool" and thus able to maintain live view. The  
problem with most sensors, he told me, is that if they are on  
continuously they warm up and generate more noise the hotter they  
get. So, I think your contention about heat is correct, except,  
perhaps, for the sensors in the Sony R 1 and the Olympus 330E / Lumix  
1/ Leica Digilux 3. Perhaps Epson will take another run at a digital  
M rangefinder camera and replace the finder with live view, although  
on reflection I suspect they had enough trouble with QC that they may  
not ever come back to designing and marketing M mount cameras.  
Perhaps Mr. Kobayashi will whip up something for Zeiss. As a constant  
user of an Olympus 330E with Leica R lenses (which I can actually  
accurately focus on the live view with 10X magnification!) I am sure  
there is a market for such a camera for M lenses, although not likely  
among most of the LUG members.
Cheers,
Howard (in HK)
On 11 Nov 2006, at 4:51 PM, lug-request@leica-users.org wrote:

> Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:54:10 +0000
> From: Frank Dernie <Frank.Dernie@btinternet.com>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] OT: Maybe dumb question on M8
> To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
>
> As I understand it the large sensors as used in DSLRs and the M8 and
> Epson RD1 (which is a Cosina camera with Epson electronics) are one
> shot sensors, unlike the tiny sensors used in P&S cameras and
> camcorders which are live all the time. They are only active when the
> shutter is open. I have no idea why that is, perhaps to reduce heat???
> Anyway, given this fact it would be far from easy to have the LCD
> live like a P&S digicam as another little digicam sensor with
> attendant optics would not get the correct field of view and the
> mechanism to get it all out of the way of the optical path to the
> main sensor to take the shot would add noise, delay, cost and weight.
> I imagine if it were technically feasible such a feature would have
> been included, even if many would not care one way or another.
> Frank