carstenw
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 p.1 #20 · What happened to the DMR? | |
Yep, I have a good chunk of it saved as a PDF, but it was only about 8 months or so, ie. about half the thread. However, it is the first half, which was arguably the more valuable half, although many of the photos are missing due to some accident on the FM server. I offered once to put it somewhere on a website, but it is 372.3MB, so the only way I will pass it on to anyone is if they will put it up on a website. Hubsand offered once, but I lost contact with him before sending it.
From what I have heard, Leica made a single run of the DMR, and it was meant to last until the next camera came out. Unfortunately, they sold out early, since it was popular, in a slow Leica kinda way. The R9 was discontinued due to an EU regulation about lead in solder. It would have cost too much to redesign it, for little benefit, so Leica has no SLR/DSLR for sale at the moment, sadly. However, the new CEO is primarily an R fan (whereas the owner is an M fan), and the fires are burning under the R10 developers, and there is meant to be an announcement in time for Photokina 2008.
The current guesses make the R10 to be a FF camera, due to some leading comments from Leica's owner, and it should be around 14-18MP. It will be R9 size, with no DMR, and will be just digital, no film. Little more is "known" at the moment, but one Leica employee I chatted with (stressing that he does not know; the R10 project is super-secret, even within Leica) felt that there would be no point in bringing out a camera with no autofocus. I don't presume that Leica will be able to match Nikon or Canon's autofocus in a single generation -- except the 1D3; that should be a snap  -- but they have gained some experience with both autofocus and stabilisation in the Digilux 3, so it doesn't seem too far fetched that they could design something useful.
Someone from Leica once made a comment about "full-frame or larger", which has of course led to massive speculation. Since the R lenses are all designed for a 35mm image, they couldn't cover a sensor larger in both dimensions, so my personal guess is that they will have a larger sensor which can be switched between 3:2 and 4:3 mode, both fitting with the image circle, the latter being popular with photographers shooting for print, as I understand.
Edited by carstenw on Sep 03, 2007 at 06:42 PM GMT
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