At a normally ‘dead’ time for product news, Leica has announced the development of a new digital camera based on the current rangefinder-style M-system body.

 

December 31, 2005: At a normally ‘dead’ time for product news, Leica has announced the development of a new digital camera based on the current rangefinder-style M-system body.
The announcement was made in the latest issue of the in-house magazine, Leica Fotografie International (www.lfi-online.com), which states the company is “complimenting and expanding the Leica M and R systems with digital components…”, although technical details of the new model are sparse. Pre-production samples are not expected before Photokina 2006 in late September. Most reports give a likely roll-out date for production units as “some time in 2007”.
From what has been published on the Internet thus far, it seems the new Leica Digital M will have a Kodak-built 10-megapixel sensor. It is expected to be released “as a complete package that will include new wide-angle lenses”. The sensor will apply a LMF (“crop factor”) of 1.33x for current M-series lenses. Images will be recorded on an SD card and the camera will offer both RAW and JPEG formats, as well as RAW+JPEG. The camera’s rear panel will carry a 2.5-inch display, probably using LCD technology and it will be powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Leica’s last digital camera, the Digilux 2, was released in 2003 and had a non-interchangeable lens and 8.8 x 6.6 mm 5-megapixel CCD sensor. Since then, the company has released the Digital-Modul-R camera back for R8 and R9 cameras. Other recent digicams the company has been associated have been built by Panasonic with Leica-branded lenses.