Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:53PM



Road repair equipment in AM fog • click to embiggenToday was the day for Leica to announce / reveal their newest digital cameras, to include their new flagship rangefinder M9 (18mp full frame sensor). And so it has come to pass and it can be yours for $9,000 US.

On a certain photo blog/site there has been much to do about how this camera, although expensive, actually represents good dollar value because Leicas go for big bucks on the used market. Assuming that you can come up with the price of entry (which does not include a lens like, say, the Leica 24mm f/1.4 Summilux-M Aspherical Manual Focus Lens, which will set you back a cool $5,995 US), this may indeed be true.

On the other hand, in the digital camera world this may indeed NOT be true.

A quick check for a used Leica M8 body - Leica's most recent digital rangefinder flagship - on ebay revealed that they can be had for up to 40% less than they sell for new. Considering that the M8 hasn't been around for very long, that's a very hefty depreciation for a Leica camera. That may be due, in part, to the fact the M8 had some ... ahhh ... "problems" which hopefully got fixed this time around, but ....

There is absolutely no guarantee that a Leica digital camera will hold its value better - as a % of original purchase price - than any other manufacturer's digital cameras will. As we all know, "flagship" digital cameras come and go seemingly with the wind, at least with the winds of digital change, that is.

All that said, here's what I'm waiting for - I'm dreading the day, and it's probably coming soon, that Olympus will be introducing their next "flagship". Even though they have declared that 12mp is enough, they have stated that their intent is to concentrate upon improving things like dynamic range, noise, resolution and the like - things that matter much more than more mp when it comes to IQ. Good for them. These are things that with noticeable improvement would motivate me to "upgrade" to a new flagship model, but ...

These improvements are obtained by improving a camera's sensor and internal processing software, not the camera body. Sooooo .... when is a camera maker going to design a body with an interchangeable sensor capability?

Now, I'm not asking for a user-changeable sensor - I'd be more than happy to separate myself from a camera body for long enough to have the sensor changed by an authorized repair facility. No problem. My Olympus E-3 has superb build quality - it can probably last a "lifetime" like, say, the 2 Nikon film camera bodies sitting on a shelf (right within arm's reach of where I am sitting), but, unlike the Nikons, which can keep on making pictures until all the film runs out, my E-3 is destined to become a superbly built paperweight in fairly short order (by film camera standards).

Operating under the assumption that the current sensor in my camera can be replaced if it were to be damaged or become defective in some manner, how difficult can it be to design the body so that the next generation sensor - along with a software upgrade - can be inserted?

Seriously, how hard can that be?