At 8pm (20:00) London time Leica will announce the X2, the new 50mm Summicron and the very highly expected B&W M-mount camera with 18 Megapixel B&W sensor and 16 bit recording. As you know that camera will cost around 7.000 Euro or 8,000 Dollars. Now, I am pretty sure many here like the idea to have a pure Black and White sensor with no aliasing problems with hygh dynamic range and super per pixel sharpness. But….
Stay tuned on MirrorlessRumors! I will report about the Leica event live on this blog!
13 Responses
16bit B&W!!! Seriously?
yes
Obviously not. But I would have the same problem with any full-frame or nice APS-C like D7000, no difference. I already spent my money, and in lenses 😛
I will wait until Leica drops a true retro rig, a sepia camera.
Meanwhile, I’ll make do with Fuji’s.
This is an interesting dodge to get around the M9 sensor’s mediocre-at-best high ISO performance, and $8000 is pocket change to the hedge-fund titans, pop stars and Middle Eastern potentates who make up Leica’s prime market. (I’m sure we’ll soon be hearing how much Seal loves his…)
Price aside, most of us who are involved in actual picture-taking would probably balk at the idea of such a single-purpose camera — golly, suppose you were out shooting and suddenly wanted to make a color picture? But again, this isn’t an issue for the Leica user base, most of whom will have personal staff to take care of lugging a camera bag with color and b&w bodies plus the S2 system etc…
Since almost all of my photography is black & white, I would like camera like that – but currently I can’t afford it.
Color photography is about color, black & white is about everything else.
Would I buy this. If I could afford it in a flash. a good 70% of my shooting is already b/w. all my film RF shooting is b/w now.
paired with a 35 1.4 summicron and a 50 1.4 it could cover a huge chunk of what i do. the potential for huge DR and great sharpness just makes it more appealing
Like all leica cameras though this will be a very niche market product.
I’ll wait for a commodity BW digital camera. Meanwhile, I’ll just shoot real BW film for my BW images. It’s a good reason to use my legacy gear anyway.
Since Phase One already has a high priced medium format B+W only back, there would appear to be a small market for such a product.
Leica users do not seem to believe in a law of diminishing returns and will many will have paid out a lot for lenses to give the highest quality, so why not buy a special camera just for black and white?
While Leica users often seem to be caricatured as being super-rich, nobody seems to make the same judgements of those who pay out thousands extra in order to have prestige cars.
We’ll be posting about the event as it happens as well as a post-event recap of new products over on La Vida Leica (http://lavidaleica.com). Join us!
I wonder if it’s possible to make sensor as thin as regular film, put all digital processing into something small as film container and put inside old mechanical camera.
It would be much cheaper and more fun to reuse old film cameras…