If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present, DxOMark has reviewed the Leica M10. This $7,000 digital camera body puts up image quality scores similar to a 1.5-year-old compact Sony. Don’t forget to budget $2,000+ for a lens!
8 thoughts on “Leica M10 for Christmas”
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So, what’s your camera of choice these days? Are you still in the Canon ecosystem, or have you pivoted to Sony or something else?
With film, buy a camera body is just that, buy a mechanical box which holds the lens and has a shutter in it. There were cheap bodies and posh bodies. There were fancy bodies with lots of features and basic ones with not much. But at the end of the day, the body does not ultimately have anything to do with the image quality.
Today, buy a body is like locking yourself in to a particular film since the sensor is ultimately the image capturing implement. You buy an A7RIII with that 42MP sensor which is high res, low noise and fast thinking it’s the best thing since sliced bread. But, in 5 years it’s probably garbage compared to what $500 cameras may have then. It’s like paying a lot of money for a body with ONE kind of film at a time when film wasn’t very good and is getting better each year.
If you have all the money in the world, sure get whatever you want. For me, I tend to spend more on lenses and use the CHEAPEST body that takes them. That 50/1.4 Planar T* will still be something you want 5 years from now. The A7III not so much.
TimB: I keep waiting for Canon to make a competitive sensor or, as Nikon has done, purchase Sony sensors. So for specialized projects I am still a Canon EOS user. For more casual photography, the Sony A6300.
I fundamentally disagree with Sony’s move to the FE platform. Using a full frame sensor on an 18mm flange distance mount is RETARDED. With normal lens the rear element does not benefit from being that close to the sensor plane to lenses end up padding the rear with empty space. The camera as a package is no smaller given that the lenses become longer for the same focal length even if the body is slimmer. While ultra wide angle lens theoretically benefit from the 18mm flange, in practice they don’t. The CMOS sensor is not film and it cannot work well with light hitting it at very obligue angles as anyone who has tried wide angle Leica M or Contax G mount lenses adapted to Sony A7 bodies will attest to. So, in practice the ultra wides still end up as retrofocus designed with the optical centers pushed forward to reduce the incidence angles of light hitting the sensor towards the edges of the frame.
The E-mount truly shines in APS-C and Sony should kept it APS-C. The smaller sensors allow for lenses and overall packaging to truly exploit the virtues of the 18mm flange. I’ll love to see a 33MP (or thereabouts) N7 not the A6500. I’ll also love to see a superlative walkabout zoom for this platform. Something like a 33-66/3.3 Vario-Sonnar T* or a 16-32/3.3 Vario-Sonnar T*. It doesn’t have to be fast and a mere 2x zoom range is just fine. Just keep it optically superlative (like the 35-70/3.4 Vario-Sonnar T* of yore) and keep it small!
I suspect the intended market for the Leica is “people with too much money”.
It’s more “Rolex” than “Casio”.
Is Leica designing and manufacturing their own sensors?
davep: As with almost everyone other than Canon, Samsung, and Sony, Leica buys sensors. See https://www.slrlounge.com/leicas-sensor-manufacturer-announces-8k-global-shutter-cmos-chip/
One of my favorite shopping experiences in Tokyo was visiting the Leica shop in Ginza. It’s done up like a high-end art gallery and the prices are even more absurd when displayed in yen ($7,000 is almost ¥800,000). I’m sure it’s like a Ferrari dealership where you have to prove that you have previously handled a used one before they actually let you touch anything.
And yet Leica still manages to have a better FF sensor than Canon despite having a fraction of the R&D budget and no fabs.