It might sound odd to talk about the innovations of a company whose best-known product is anachronistic to this stage you've to take the baseplate away to change the film memory card, but I'm serious. I understand I'm supposed to be impressed by the corporation's history, its (rather obsolete ) utilize as a press camera and the leading reputation of its lenses. But I am not, especially.
It's not that the lenses are not great. It's just that I am not terribly impressed a organization's capacity to make single focal length, manual focus lenses good when money's basically no thing and you can independently correct every one in the event that you must. My experience of working as an engineering journalist constantly reminds me that it's many times harder to create a kit zoom that has to provide good performance at multiple focal lengths, provides quick autofocus for both stills and movie, includes picture stabilization and can be made with a degree of consistency to get something like $35.
But while I'm not so fussed about all that'red dot' business, I really like that Leica does not only have crazy ideas, but it transforms them into workable, purchasable goods. Even if they are not always the most affordable ones.
The Bayer color filter array is wonderful. It allows spectrally-indifferent detectors perceive color and does so with a fantastic level of resolution and quite few drawbacks. Except that it steals about a halt of light.So why not make a mono-only camera? None of the softness and noise that comes from demosaicing, and much better, cleaner image capture since you are not allowing a string of color filters absorb half your own light. That's a wonderful idea, why would not someone do this?
Nicely, Leica has, together with the Monochrom series of cameras. They do just what you'd expect: create super-detailed mono images.
Needless to say, provided that you've only one'colour' channel, it becomes more important than ever to avoid clipping, so I wish there was monochrome camera which didn't meter by taking a look at the light reflected off the stripes painted on its shutter blades. Additionally, since it would need to be another camera for me, I'd prefer it to charge under a little car. But I have to applaud Leica for doing this, instead of simply thinking about it.
What's the opposite of Iconoclasticism?
Again, who'd have thought it would be Leica: a camera brand which added an artificial winder lever onto its latest camera, that would design one of the most advanced user interfaces of the previous decade?
Again, who'd have thought it would be Leica: a camera brand which added an artificial winder lever onto its latest camera, that would design one of the most advanced user interfaces of the previous decade?
Love it or loathe it, the most icon-led touchscreen interface of the Leica T series is one of those few real attempts we've seen to fully re-think how you should interact using a camera and its preferences. The person I have met who participates it is also one of the few that I know who owns a digital Leica rangefinder (although could be because the very first iteration had any intriguing quirks). Personally, however , I thought the design struck a great balance between command dials that controlled the key exposure parameters while still letting you tap and swipe the settings, just as you are on a smartphone. Certainly an ambitious thing to get a'traditional' camera company to do.
Settings? There's an app for that
On the topic of smartphones, it has long been suggested that they might provide a way to solve the uncontrolled menu sprawl that is overpowering even the best-designed contemporary UI. Connecting cameras to smartphones over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is ever more easy and more commonplace, in the same way the complexity of menu choices becomes unbearable, so why not pass-off obligation for configurations to the phone?
On the topic of smartphones, it has long been suggested that they might provide a way to solve the uncontrolled menu sprawl that is overpowering even the best-designed contemporary UI. Connecting cameras to smartphones over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is ever more easy and more commonplace, in the same way the complexity of menu choices becomes unbearable, so why not pass-off obligation for configurations to the phone?
And, if looked at from a specific angle, that's what Leica's M10-D really does. I am not always convinced that it made sense to keep moving and take the whole LCD display away but shoving set-and-forget preferences off into a smartphone app I could get behind. A program can offer a more straightforward interface with better guides and instructions, meaning the on-camera interface may be stripped right back to focus on the primary shooting parameters. But perhaps leave me a display, eh, Leica?