Canon released the world’s first practical full-frame (24x36mm) digital single lens reflex camera, the EOS 1Ds, late in 2002. Canon currently sells a greatly improved version of this camera, the 5D Mk II, for $2700.
Suppose that you introduced a similar product 7 years after Canon. Though you were 7 years late, you decided to price your me-too camera at $7000. Because you don’t have a lot of in-house technical expertise, you buy the critical sensor from an external supplier instead of designing and making it the way that Canon does.
Would you expect the world to stop and pay attention to your product?
Check the discussion in the photo.net Leica forum about the just-announced Leica M9, then do a Google search for “Leica M9” to see the 325,000 documents talking about this sensational innovation (basically an old Leica rangefinder body with a Kodak (are they still in business?) CCD sensor stapled to the back). If General Motors and Chrysler were this good at marketing they wouldn’t have any trouble paying back our $100 billion!
[Note that CCD was what Japanese companies were using 10-15 years ago. A CMOS sensor is the heart of a modern Canon, Nikon, or Sony digital SLR.]
[November 2009 Update: The December issue of Popular Photography has arrived in the mail. This issue put the Sony A850 and the Leica M9 through their standardized test protocol. The Sony is the world’s cheapest full-frame digital SLR, selling for $2,000 (compared to about $2,650 for the Canon 5D Mark II). The Leica is the world’s most expensive, at $7,000. How did the cameras compare on Pop. Photo’s test bench? The Sony, with a 24 MP Sony-built CMOS sensor, achieved “low” noise through ISO 1600. This is greatly inferior to the 5D Mark II, which had a very similar noise measurement at ISO 6400 (two f-stops more sensitive). The Sony delivered 3135 lines of resolution and a superb “7.7” on color accuracy, albeit still inferior to Canon’s.
How did the Leica perform, at 3.5X the price of the Sony? Noise from the 18MP CCD sensor became “moderate” at ISO 1600 and “unacceptable” at ISO 2500. The noise of the M9 at ISO 800 was comparable to the Canon 5D Mk II at ISO 6400. Leica’s color accuracy and resolution were significantly inferior to the Sony.
How did Popular Photography deal with the embarrassingly poor image quality results of the $7000 Leica compared to the Japanese cameras? “They’re completely differently tools for completely different styles of photographer. We don’t categorize the M9 as a pro model–think of it as the ultimate (deep-pocketed) enthusiast’s camera.”]
Your post-script is unfair. In general, CMOS is not superior to CCD (you do not say it but the allusion is clear). On the contrary, first CMOS cameras addressed the low cost market because CMOS technology is much cheaper (but quality was not that good some years ago!). Nowadays both approaches have pros sand cons, but I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other. Japanese companies are opting for CMOS because, with the same technology, they can more easily produce camera with different prices (!) and sell them to a broader market.
I’m not a camera nut, but I thought that CCD vs. CMOS was just a bunch of tradeoffs to be made and as such you could get equivalent performance at nearly the same system cost. (Feel free to disparage the neophyte.)
http://www.dalsa.com/shared/content/Photonics_Spectra_CCDvsCMOS_Litwiller.pdf
Bah! As an adventure photographer who burns up camera’s at a horrific rate (thus guaranteeing having “pretty good equipment”)…
http://www.pencikowski.com/TravelsAroundPlayaVista.html
…and here’s a camera test (note all pics “super compressed” that’s the actual “test”)…
http://www.pencikowski.com/articles/CamComp.pdf
…I agree w/Philg 100%. It’s not a question of CCD vs. CMOS, but of “image output”. No doubt: Leica lens superb. But not “so superb” as to be worth 10x the competition. If-indeed you could tell image-difference between M-9 and Oly Pen EP-1 or even (“Leica lens”) Panasonic LX-3…
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicdmclx3/
Point: Like Leica lenses? Buy PANASONIC 🙂
Dino, Jeff: I did not mean to imply that CCD was low quality. I think a lot of astronomers put CCDs behind their multi-million dollar telescopes. However, I don’t think that it is an economically sustainable way to compete in the camera market, unless a company has some other kind of edge (which Leica obviously does).
Jeff: That was a good article from January 2001. But remember that the audience for that article is mostly military or medical system engineers building small quantities of very expensive instruments. A lot has happened with CMOS in 8 years at companies such as Canon and Sony (which also supplies Nikon).
Paul: Thanks for linking to your camera comparison. It is basically useless, though, because you don’t say what Canon camera you used or what lens was on the Canon camera. A cheap superzoom lens attached to a Canon 1Ds Mark III will still yield a poor quality photo. Also, you tested the cameras under the conditions that are most favorable to small sensors and cheap zoom lenses, i.e., high noon bright sunlight. People who want to take pictures towards sunrise or sunset, on overcast days, or indoors are going to get much better results from a larger sensor (lower noise).
Phil… Personal note…
Canon was A-650 (exact optics/sensor as upscale G-9)
Did *not* test in “high-noon bright sunlight”, all pics prior to 0900 lcl. Welcome to the Mojave desert!
Panasonic FX-37 (Leica Digilux-3) completely falls apart in low-light, terrible.
My days of “micro-cams” are over. Convenient, yes. Effective, no.
P.
Clearly you’ve never read what one of the leading authorities on photography in the world, Ken Rockwell, has written about the M9:
http://kenrockwell.com/leica/m9.htm
Allow me to quote one of the many salient passages, about the M9’s ultra-advanced built-in anti-vibration systems:
The IS and VR of the LEICA also comes from its lack of recoil.
There are no flipping mirrors or other shenanigans going on
inside the camera when you record your decisive moment.
Your M9’s focal plane shutter quietly slides past your image
plane to capture the peak of the action just as it happens.
World-changing photos slip through your shutter at just the
right instant, unblurred by camera shake caused by the flipping
mirrors which degrade image quality from SLRs
I suppose you don’t get it, Philip, because you take “ordinary” photos, not world-changing ones. You are not (and I quote) a “Leica Man”. You can’t be expected to even understand.
(A fake “comedy-scarcastic” closing tag at the end of my previous comment didn’t make it through. I feel the need to make it clear, lest anyone not get that I was being sarcastic!)
Leica hasn’t been about up-to-date technology for quite some time, although if you have $22,000, the new S2 medium-format DSLR gets you autofocus now. (The M9 doesn’t.)
On the other hand, if you started buying Leica M lenses 40 or 50 years ago — or collect older ones — they’ll all work on the M9. While if you’d bought lenses for a Nikon or Canon rangefinder, or a Canon manual-focus film SLR, you wouldn’t have anything digital to mount them on today.
As long as money is no object, Leica is a good long-term bet, right?
Leica has always been expensive, even compared to Canon top of the line SLR. That’s a fact. What sadden me with the M9 is that it is what the M8 should have been, and they don’t even seem to have learned the lesson.
The other sad part is that today, in the area of compact camera, the all remove the view finder, and there is now only ONE rangefinder on the market, the Leica.
EPSON has done the RD-1 which was terrific and probably well priced at the time (all things considered). But it is gone.
Paul: Thanks for the clarification on the camera test. When you said “Canon medium-size” I thought you meant a Digital Rebel similar. I didn’t realize you were talking about a $299 Canon P&S camera. It is certainly not surprising that one P&S camera could be better than another, though anyone who wanted higher image quality would use a camera with a physically larger sensor, e.g., a DSLR.
Derek: “As long as money is no object, Leica is a good long-term bet, right?” If you took the price of a Leica system and deposited it in the bank ($30,000 with a telephoto lens or two?), the interest at 3% per year would buy a complete Canon or Nikon system, including lenses, every 7-10 years. You could give each system away when you were done. So the fact that your Canon lenses from 1955 didn’t work on a 5D Mark II wouldn’t be a serious problem because you’d have given them away in 1965.
Marketing, branding and being a “Leica Guy” are central to the value proposition of almost every “luxury” product.
When I was looking for a new car, I asked a friend of mine who writes for an automotive magazine what he recommended – he simply said he couldn’t help. After all, if you weren’t going to buy a Toyota Camry or a Honda Accord, the decision was going to be emotionally based. It’s a truism that works for most things.
Who could possibly justify buying Prada, Gucci, or Armani clothes – much less Jimmy Choo shoes or a Louis Vuitton purse? There are any number of clothing makers that offer equally wearable, longer lasting clothes for far less than 1/10th (even 1/100th?) the price of any of these.
Why would anyone pay for an Ivy League school, when they can get the same (probably far better) education for a fraction of the cost elsewhere? But plenty of people do.
Economics discounts the “emotional value” or “status value” that drives human decision making at its own risk. Efficient markets and rational behavior can help point out optimal financial patterns, but I believe that in the real world this emotional component drives decision making far more than does pure rationality.
As for the car – I bought a BMW. It easily cost me 2x as much as an equivalent Toyota or Honda – either of which would almost certainly be rated higher on almost every “practical” measure. But every time I walk outside and see my car it makes me happy. When I start the engine and it gives it’s aggressive rev-up “vroom”, it makes me happy…
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/m9-video-intro.shtml
Just in from Denmark:
http://www.overgaard.dk/leica-M9-digital-rangefinder-camera.html
The M9 is unique. It is the only full frame 35mm digital rangefinder in the world. Which means that most any M mount lens ever made will work on it at the focal length it was intended to be. When designing, engenieering and making something unique, especially something that there is pent up demand for, you can charge what you want for it.
The M9 sensor itself is unique and not to be found in any other camera. Due to the fact that there is no mirror box, the rear element of rangefinder lenses sit very close to the digital sensor … which produced unique problems with a large 35mm sensor … especially with wide angle optics … until the M9.
Kodak and Leica worked to solve this issue, and the result is not your average run-of-the mill tiny sensor camera … but one that provides a comparatively tiny, easy to carry, full frame 35mm digital camera with image quality and resolution the equal of Nikon/Canon’s biggest dogs … with lenses that outperform either of them.
I can pack an entire 2 digital camera M system with 5 fast aperture lenses and a flash in a bag that I can just barely fit my Nikon D3X and one lens in. Nice for travel … trust me on this.
Rangefinders are not for everyone. Also, they do not replace DSLRs which are a different photographic form factor.
Leica M shooters aren’t enamored of all the bells a whistles, they just want to take photos that they are in control of with the least path of resistance to that goal.
The whole approach for presenting the Canon/Nikon issue vs the Leica M9 is either presented by somebody incompetent in the photography medium or with a strongly biased opinion built on very little research before presenting the case.
Leica cannot be compared to either Canon or Nikon and if he was to compare those brands to Leica, he should have opted for the Nikon/ Canon top model sold around 8-9k.
Anyway, with Leica, what is being paid for aside from exceptional mechanical precision and near perfect optical quality is the Legacy of lenses and the superiority of images over the top selling SLRs.
I owned the Half frame M8 as well as the Canon 5d FF and in every respect, the M8 would leave the 5d by far behind in all aesthetic aspects.
I am eagerly waiting for my M9 to be delivered, also to deliver me from the plastic feel I am getting with my 4 month old 5D MKII that yields images with no character.
Keep on the Good work Leica, at least there is still One camera manufacturer that believes in the real values of photography and not just promote the next unusable gadget filled Electro Optical System as they call it.
Marc: I am aware that the M9, a “lens-shutter camera”, lacks the pentaprism and mirror mechanism of a single-lens reflex. That should make it cheaper to produce than a modern SLR, not more expensive. The rangefinder mechanism itself never cost more than $100 at retail when delivered to consumers by Canon, Kodak, or Nikon (who made rangefinder cameras through the 1950s and 1960s). Indeed, Canon, Kodak, and Nikon are today able to deliver lens-shutter digital cameras, complete with electronic rangefinder, for $100.
Carlos: As the founder of photo.net, I’m well aware of the beliefs of Leica users. In the film days the only question on the photo.net forums was whether a Leica M user would assert that his camera’s tiny negatives produced superior images to those from a 6x6cm Hasselblad, a 4×5″ view camera with Rodenstock lens, or an 8×10″ view camera with Schneider lens. The consensus seemed to be that Ansel Adams was a fool for hiring a mule to lug that 8×10″ view camera up the Sierra because he could simply have slung a Leica around his neck.
Have you ever compared the image quality of Leica M with Japanese cameras? Leica simply better and superior. I have both Leica M8 and Nikon D3 ($5,000 cost) and it does not take a professional eyes to conclude Leica M8 is far better. Japanese make great products, but they never make the best (in cars, piano, audio systems, etc). Leica is behind Japanese in features, but far ahead of Japanese cameras in image quality. If you are serious about photography, Leica has its position. BTW, CCD sensor still has better quality than CMOS sensor. That is why Leica uses CCD. Also CCD sensor was not invented by Japanese. Also they did not invent photography, cameras and auto focus, autoexposure meter system. Simply none was invented by japanese.
I think most of you are missing the point here. I for one have been longing for a product with good optics, good sensor, and compact design for a long time. I agree that this has been a long time coming from Leica but at least it is here. I was an M user that had a ton of medium format gear as well as a giant Nikon SLR system when I shot film. I have a giant Hasselblad system, and a giant Nikon digital system now but the hole in my equipment is a small very high quality image making device – a no excuses device. The M9 promises to be far beyond the micro 4:3 system and lightyears beyond a digital point and shoot like the G9 and other cell phone camera like devices.
It is true that Leica digital up to this point has been a joke but for the first time ever it really looks like they have a credible digital line up.
!) A sub-compact DX sensor X1
2) A compact no excuses super high quality image making device that I know I for one am in the market for when I do not want or need something like my Nikon D3’s
3) What looks like a very solid competitor in the medium format space, especially if it handles anywhere close to a typical DSLR with a sensor of that size and quality.
I for one am glad Leica finally looks like they are on track in producing a digital lineup that both pro and serious amateur photographers will be interested in.
RB
Oh,
One more thing – the marketing. It’s called branding – Leica is (still) a fantastic brand, either through luck, planning, or both. When they release a new product that people are interested in all of the “marketing” was already pre-done for the last century. That’s not marketing – that’s branding.
RB
Yang: Since Canon, Leica, and Nikon prime lenses all give very similar measured image quality, it sounds as though Nikon, which currently buys its CMOS sensors from Sony, could crush Canon in image quality and the marketplace simply by going back to purchasing CCD sensors from Kodak. Kodak was happy to sell CCD sensors to Nikon in the past and presumably they’d be delighted with a high volume customer such as Nikon today. What’s your theory for why Nikon does not choose this simple path to overtaking Canon?
@RB
But brands fade quickly, so you can’t really say that branding isnt marketing. It cannot exist without it!
philg: It is the optics that make Leica better. Nikon can use the same CCD sensor, but Nikon still can not beat Leica. I am a physicist by training. Given the complexity of optical imaging, the best lens can not be designed only by computer simulations. It takes many empirical data and mind of art to set the right boundary condition for the design. Nikon and Canon simply are missing the artistic part of the design capability. Just like Yamaha piano that can not reach the sound quality of Steinway even though Yamaha makes great great products.
Yang: I remember seeing an English photo magazine about 10 years ago. They did a very careful test of all of the world’s 50mm lenses that covered a 24x36mm frame. They considered both MTF and subjective image quality. The Leica 50/2 and faster lenses did well. The lens that had the highest overall quality in their opinion? The Nikon 50/1.8, which cost less than $100.
If Canon failed to dominate that test, they have distinguished themselves in TV and movie production lenses, which are much more challenging to design than still camera lenses.
But let’s accept your proposition that Canon and Nikon are incompetent at lens design and only a German elf can design a good lens. Leitz, Rodenstock, Schneider, and Zeiss have all been happy to work with camera manufacturers for minimal $$ (and in fact, except for Rodenstock, you see these brand names on lenses from Asian companies such as Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony, usually on their point-and-shoot digital cameras). The stakes in the digital SLR market are at least billions of dollars. Why wouldn’t Nikon contract with, say, Zeiss, to redesign all of their lenses? Or with that much money, Nikon could actually license Leica’s lens designs. Then Nikon could go back to its old vendor Kodak for CCDs. The image quality of a Nikon would now be so much higher than Canon that Nikon could take over 100 percent of the market.
Well, whatever the cynics say I love my M9. It is a sublime piece of kit. I am delighted that Leica have not chosen to muck about with the M, it feels just like my old M3. The M system is not for everyone but for those who want a compact, quiet and discreet camera that can take pics in the most demanding of situations, there is no better.
I can take pics hand held at half a second and I can focus when there is practically no light at all,, even with a very wide angle lens. Try doing that with an SLR! No doubt the Nikon D3 is a fabulous camera but it’s enormous, you couldn’t very well blend in wearing that! A strange and often not talked about aspect of the M system is that you can take pics without anyone noticing, often the camera seems invisible to my subjects. Another point worth mentioning is the inspiration that comes with a Leica, you simply want to go out and take pictures, something I never felt like doing while holding a heavy and bulky SLR.
Yes the M9 is expensive but all is relative. I do not plan on buying another camera. The M9 is all I have ever wanted from a camera. Because it is a Leica it is beautifully built to last. I can keep it for 20 years and it will still be worth something. The pics it takes are fantastic and this camera will still be taking fantastic pictures decades from now. Actually I think the M9 very good value and a breath of fresh air in this disposable throw-away world.
It takes balls to do what Leica have done and I wish them all the luck in the world. I think the M9 is a winner. Well done Leica. I’m off to take some pictures
A small story from a French guy (I apologize for mistakes in english…). A few month ago, I was in Bangkok for holidays, after three days carrying my Nikon D3 + 28 + 50 + 105 + 180 lenses ( I love fix lenses), under quite warm sun, I feel become an exhausted donkey, and finally my Nikon-set stays in the safebox of my bedroom. as I cannot imagine to stay without camera, I buy a small a canon PowerShot G10 in Bangkok for the end of my holidays. When come back in my country i sell the G10 to a friend, without loosing money (because France is a very competitive country for heavy taxes…). A few days later, I test a Leica M8,2 for one hour, it was a revelation…..my lovely but heavy Nikon-set is for sale now….I am dreaming about my future M9 with one or two fix lenses. End of the story.
I’m another person who has moved from various DSLRs (most recently the 5D and D700) to the M9. I just can’t be bothered with the ridiculous features that get in the way of a photograph that you get from Canon and Nikon.
Who cares how sensor performance is measured by some random piece of software? The M9 lets me take better photos more often.
Phil, In a round about way your reference to Ansell Adams sums up what I’m saying: it wouldn’t have mattered if the resolution of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs was ever so slightly worse but it would have made a huge difference to Adams.
To Leica users the camera is just a tool to take a photo. To others I believe the camera is the paint brush, the paint and the canvas. I’m not a painter but a photographer and that I guess is the reason I’m happy with the M9.
Nick: “Ridiculous features” that get in the way? What happened when you turned the dial to “M” for manual exposure and flipped the lens to “M” for manual focus? At that point, what features of the 5D or D700 were getting in your way? I don’t find there to be a big difference between a 5D II in manual mode and 1970s film SLRs that I started with. I adjust aperture and shutter speed until the needle is centered. I twist the focus ring until the viewfinder image looks sharp. Then I press the shutter release. The only difference in the process is that I can immediately see whether or not I made any huge mistakes.
[And did you actually own both the 5D and D700 or just borrow them and the associated lenses? If you owned them, did you discover the control memories? If there is some mode that you like other than full manual you can have the camera to remember exactly how it was configured and then get back to that configuration instantly. (At least you can do this with Canon; I am assuming Nikon has the same feature.)]
I am learning, about two years into serious efforts at photography. I left my Nikon and Cannon DSLR cameras about a year ago for the Leica (version of the LX3) D-Lux 4 when I started to focus on ‘street’ photography.
I have learned more and made better images with the D-Lux 4 then with the larger cameras. It is always with me and is small enough and quick enough not to be noticed. The image quality is amazing. It has a Summicron F 2 lens and Leica software.
I ordered the M9.
I enjoyed reading the comments of this post very much, i like that everybody here is taking it not on the very serious side, and honestly I have lost track of phils lens-sensor-brand redistribution scheme between canon, nikon and leica. I am sure it will work out fine.
Anyway, I feel that reviews like those on dpreview, or popphoto, and comparisons of high iso noise levels are only relevant to a very small slice of photographers. Their main value is entertainment. (thats my opinion)
A better way to judge a camera is pure empirics. So here is mine: I have owned a second hand M6 for some time, and I produce consistently more photos I like with the M6 than with a feature loaded DSLR. I don’t know why. Setting the DSLR to M just doesnt work. The M6 Film development has become a real hassle, and so I use the DSLR more often, and only slowly start to get where I would like to be with it. So saying that Leicas are only for crazies with too much money to burn is a bit lame, again in my opinion.
Also, I estimate Leica Camera has about the overall size of the Canon marketing department for Liechtenstein. So yes Canon can produce cheaper.
Here is an interesting experiment (Mike Johnson pointed it out recently): search hivemind for cameras, and you are shown heaps of photo made by a certain model:
http://fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi.
Type in some crazy old cheap model, and a superDSLR and compare. You will be surprised.
svenl: So your theory is that the same photographer using an old film body will produce superior images, especially if that film body has the magic talisman “Leica” printed on the front, than if he or she were using a modern DSLR. Nearly every photo-heavy magazine in this world faces rigorous competition. If a magazine could deliver better photos to readers it would earn millions of dollars in extra profits each year. Yet no magazine has suggested that its photographers switch to Leica-brand cameras and lenses. So… you’ve noticed something that the photo editors of all of the world’s magazines have failed to notice? TIME, Newsweek, National Geographic, German Geo, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, Town and Country, et al., carry on year after year publishing photos that come out of standard professional cameras such as Canon, Nikon, Hasselblad, and Mamiya, collectively losing tens of millions of dollars in the process, because they’re not clever and discerning enough to see that supplying their staff photographers with Leicas would enhance their profits?
You’ve also noticed that “crazy old cheap model” cameras produce fantastic pictures, far better than the latest DSLRs from Canon and Nikon. So basically the problem is that Canon and Nikon systems are in an unhappy middle. A camera that has inferior lab bench performance, but is 3X as expensive, such as the Leica M9, would do better. But also a camera system that is 1/300th the cost, such as an old film compact point and shoot from eBay, would also yield better images. So the typical magazines and newspapers that invest in closets full of Canon and Nikon lenses for their staff photographers could be doing better by moving either up in cost to a Leica system or down in cost to a Lomo.
As far as consumers go, there are a lot of crummy pictures out there in flickr taken with Canon Digital Rebels not because Canon has sold 10 million of them (source) and there are regrettably not 10 million great photographers on this planet, but because if those 10 million people had been equipped with either a Lomo or a Leica they would have blossomed into sensitive artists. (I might have to agree with what I believe to be this restatement of your theory; any camera with an on-camera flash in the hands of a consumer is almost guaranteed to yield disastrous results.)
I think Leica has done what many have always wanted, create a small, portable, ff camera that will enable the photographers to take great photos. Whereas, Nikon and Canon are boat anchors of cameras. I Currently have a Canon with some L glass and it becomes a bit much to pack when traveling, and has even become a chore on a day out.
I hope there will be more like the M9 to come, only far cheaper so that the rest of us can enjoy the benefits of quality and portability. Hopefully Canon reads your blog.
Is there anybody who agrees with Philg?
I don’t.
To me the only issue(s) with a Leica M9 is its price tag and (perhaps) its “low” ISO limits, but I have handled one recently and it is just simply “my” perfect camera.
By the way, Philg, just a silly question, but I wonder, have you ever handled a Leica M (and Leica lenses)…???
LV: An amateur photographer friend of mine owns an M9 and some lenses. He says that he doesn’t use it because the switches are “all in the wrong places”. He uses his Nikon DSLR system instead. I don’t know anyone else with an M9, but he did offer to lend it to me any time that I would like to use it.
Have I ever used a Leica M? My parents had a Leica M3 that they received as a wedding gift and I used that camera from age 10-14 (at age 14 I went off to college in Boston). I was never very happy with the image quality from 35mm film, though I it was nice to have a Nikon 300/2.8 lens for http://philip.greenspun.com/samantha/samantha-X . My favorite film cameras were a Rollei 6008 and a Sinar 4×5 view camera.
Ironically, they probably could have made a much better camera by outsourcing its manufacturing to shenzen (modern manufacturing facilities!) and licensing a canon/sony cmos. Maybe for less than $2000! Sticking w/ my film M’s until someone (cosina? olympus? panasonic?) figures out how to do this.
Or maybe spend some investment capital to buy some modern automated machine tooling…
I see some good photojournalism from M9 shooters but the best ones by far are by nothing-to-lose broke photojournalism students who use their student loan money to buy a 5dM2 or 7D, or equivalent nikon. Would they like a smaller camera? probably. but they don’t give ($7000 worth of) shit, the “feeling” you guys can’t “get” from a japanese dslr, they get because they are hungry and they want it.
On the CCD vs. CMOS perspective:
First of all, I am coming from a slightly different background on sensors than many photographers, in that I am in a business where we use cooled CCD cameras intended for astronomy. However the same principles apply across the board.
Regarding the OP, Kodak is indeed still in business, and they make excellent, top of the line sensors. The name is rarely seen in the dSLR world, to be sure, but Kodak is one of the few companies in existence that manufactures sensors of such high quality.
In general, CCD sensors are superior to CMOS sensors in every measurable way. Higher dynamic range, higher sensitivity, lower noise, etc.. This is true in the sense that the best CCD sensor is better than the best CMOS sensor. You can buy a Kodak 9 MP sensor with 12um pixels, that will give you far superior performance to a typical CMOS found in even full frame dSLRs. The reason these are not used instead is that these sensors are typically full frame rather than interline and therefore inherently slower, ruling out effective live view and movie mode, and that they are also much more costly. A sensor like this can easily cost several times that of a pro-level digital camera. There are CCD sensors that cost six figures.
These are obviously extreme examples; CMOS are used because at this point the dSLR manufacturers have enough experience with them that at a given price point CMOS can be superior to CCD. It is still unwise to make such sweeping statements. CCD sensors in general are capable (today) of performance that will even give medium format film a run for its money, and that dSLR users will only be able to dream about for many years to come. Problem is that they can’t do this at price points that are as attractive, and thus they are not used by the major digital photography players. Even so, the fact that a camera uses a CCD sensor is not in any way indicative of poor quality.
That said, the M9 is massively overpriced for what it is.
There’s some truth to what Phillip is saying.
For some time I viewed Leica as a luxury brand, like Coach or Tiffany — and that’s indisputably what it is. Note their licensing deal with Panasonic, in which the simple application of a red dot allows for a 100% markup. Note their mystical-sounding lens names — “summicron”, “noctilux” — that could easily double for the names of robots in “Transformers”. Note the inclusion of the suffix “lux” in their most expensive lenses, which is downright cheesy in its status-y-ness.
But I evenutally succumbed, buying a used M6 and 35 summicron (that robot name again) for $2000. And I have to admit, my pictures are nice. For whatever reason — placebo effect? — I seem to enjoy what I get out of the camera. Part of this may be due to the lenses themselves. Many of them I consider to be overpriced baubles, like the aforementioned Noctilux ($10K for “bokeh”). But some of them, particularly the summicrons, have a nice quality that I don’t seem to get out of my Contax G1 and Zeisses (which are sharper, by the way). It may simply be that I try harder because I think I’m using a “special” camera.
But the M9? No. The images I see from this camera just don’t stack up to those from a Canon 5D. When there’s a digital M with a sensor that outperforms the 5D, I might think about buying it. Until then, I shoot film.
I’ve owned the Leica M8.2 and the Leica M6 cameras. I bought them used. I used a 35mm Summicron on the M8.2 and the 50mm Summicron on the M6 camera. Though the M8.2 wasn’t full frame, it produced some unique and beautiful results. The M8.2 also produced some off colors and has the IR issue. Still, it was a pretty nice camera, easy to carry around all day. The few things that irked me are that Im spoiled with AF, the camera wasn’t full frame, the expense (even used), and the crappy results from anything higher than 640 ISO. You can’t shoot wildlife, sports from far away, or fast. This is a manual beast. The camera was rock solid, but I really wanted the m9 from the start. After the cooling off period, waiting on the list for 6 months and getting more pissed off from waiting, I decided to not buy the M9 camera.. Not being even remotely wealthy, I couldn’t justify the expense given all the little quirks of the camera. If money were no object, it’s a lovely camera to shoot, but it can be annoying too. I think that’s why the results are quite beautiful and unique. When you nail her focus and the shot, the files are beautiful. Now, I use Nikon gear, and I can honestly say that my D90 produces shots that are just as lovely as the M8.2, especially as the ISO gets higher. I’ve see what a Canon 5D Mark II with L lenses can do also.. Nikon and Canon are just as lovely, just different. I think the files all have a unique signature to their brand.
I can tell you that I liked shooting with the Leica M6 better than the Leica M8.2. I understand that whole Leica thing. I don’t know why it was more pleasurable to use the film camera than the digital M camera. I known the camera fit well, it was a joy to carry around, and I took my time using it, not knowing immediate results. It’s just that film is expensive now to buy and develop, though not as expensive as the M9! LOL! So, Im torn. I would love the M9, but I can’t justify spending that amount of money on a camera body that is really just a computer that can fail, when Nikon or Canon can do the job just as well, and cheaper. The only issue I have with D-SLRs is the size. I’m older and don’t want to carry around such large cameras anymore. (I make them sound like medium format! LOL!)
Now, if the M9 would last as long as the M6 camera and still be up to snuff years from now in the digital world, perhaps it would be worth plinking down the 7K for it. But being that its a digital camera, will it last longer than what the camera cost? I don’t see people using this camera after 20 years like someone mentioned above in the responses. If it was a film camera, then it would. I don’t know what the right answer is here, but being that photography is an art form, the camera has to fit the person using it. If that person doesn’t like the camera, they won’t use it. If the camera is too big, it gets left at home on vacation. If the camera uses film, it can get expensive and hard to find labs if you don’t want to develop yourself.
No camera is perfect.. I think Leica is expensive, and both a joy and a pain to use.
If they had AF option, and cheaper CL digital body that would take M lenses, with a large sensor that would produce medium format results, I’d jump on it. For now I sit on the sidelines debating whether I should sell my Leica gear and stick with my Leica D-Lux 4 and the Nikon D90. Granted, the D-Lux is not a micro 4/3 camera, but I like the files it produces for what it is. I’ve also always liked my Nikon gear, just not the size of the zoom lenses.
Regarding the OP, Kodak is indeed still in business, and they make excellent, top of the line sensors. The name is rarely seen in the dSLR world, to be sure, but Kodak is one of the few companies in existence that manufactures sensors of such high quality.
In general, CCD sensors are superior to CMOS sensors in every measurable way. Higher dynamic range, higher sensitivity, lower noise, etc.. This is true in the sense that the best CCD sensor is better than the best CMOS sensor. You can buy a Kodak 9 MP sensor with 12um pixels, that will give you far superior performance to a typical CMOS found in even full frame dSLRs. The reason these are not used instead is that these sensors are typically full frame rather than interline and therefore inherently slower, ruling out effective live view and movie mode, and that they are also much more costly. A sensor like this can easily cost several times that of a pro-level digital camera. There are CCD sensors that cost six figures.