New Leica system! (update 3)

OK, I did not see this coming.

Just as I'd pretty much dismissed Leica as a dinosaur in the digital age, they come forth with a completely new camera system and fomat!

The Leica S2 has a format which is 50 percent larger than full-frame cameras, both in terms of megapixels and milimeters. And yet it is smaller than the Canon 1Ds. (Though larger than the 5D.)

And it has already a line-up of entirely new lenses.

Wow. It will be highly interesting to see how it performs in speed and image quality. It will be a tough test, because since it has a 35mm-like form, people will be comparing it to 35mm-sized camera rather than to medium format cameras, even though the latter would be more fair. But if it performs well, this could be a really influential release.

I'm rooting for Leica with this one. The big boys could use some hard competition.


By the way, the article is real, I got the issue this morning.

1001 Noisy Cameras has a good phrase for what Leica has been doing recently: playing possum! Very funny.

Update: It's official now. Pictures here. I think the camera and the lenses are beautiful. A powerful, simple, modern design.

Now we all wonder what the price will be like. The cost of developing this system must have been astronomical.
Update: Apparently it's aimed to be 20k Euros. This is more than the 31MP Hasselblad, too bad. But if it's really as awesome as Leica claims, it'll be worth the price for many.

Best article so far.

And here is one more, from the launch.
"Pretty impressive lineup. The CS lenses already give wide-angle, normal, macro, and tele. Then, the standard S lenses bring extreme wide angle, long tele, fast standard wide-to-tele zoom, fast portrait lens, and a wide tilt-shift. Word is that Peter Karbe, the head optics designer has been very hard at work. The performance of these new lenses is being heralded as reference class optics with no measurable distortion or vignetting anywhere in the frame, and no software correction needed to optimize the performance. This last part is a certain jab at Hasselblad. MTF charts of these lenses are supposedly totally flat with no drop."

The last part is an astounding statement, I have never seen an MTF chart which did not fall off. (Meaning that the lens would draw exactly as sharp at the edges of the image as in the center.)