Leica has delayed the release of its Digital Modul R once again, this time until the end of May.
I had a chance to play with the digital back attached to an R9 at PhotoVillage last Friday. We were able to see how the film and digital backs can be interchanged and were able to shoot the camera.
Pretty nice. Surprisingly light, good controls on the back, really nice, bright viewfinder. One particularly interesting thing about the R9 viewfinder with the digital back attached; looking through it, you see more than the frame. Rather than change the viewfinder to accommodate the 1.4 cropping factor of the smaller sensor, Leica did the rangefinder thing. The viewfinder contains framelines showing where the image falls in the digital back. Very interesting.
My only issues were with the camera itself; something about a manual focus SLR feels weird to me. I'm sure I'd get used to it, though.
posted by Eric Hancock at
10:03 AM
2 Comments:
I had a great Leica camera many, many years ago. It seems to me they've never made a happy marriage with their analog skills and new digital technology. As opposed to, say, Canon, which carried their analog camera skills all the way through the digital end. Does that make sense?
By
Jeff Faria, at 12:24 AM
It does.
Canon had an advantage, as it is a little easier to make a digital SLR than a digital rangefinder. Canon also is not so obsessed with total quality as is Leica, and has a lot more money to spend.
I think Leica will catch up, as long as they can clean up their financial issues.
By
Eric Hancock, at 12:30 AM
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