The new Leica M as a filmmaker's tool - an interview with Leica's Jesko von Oeynhausen

[tony wilson]

i will assume you a scared to speak to them..
what is the point of shouting at a fucking FORUM board.
STOP BEING A COCK.
SPEAK TO THEM AND REPORT BACK YOUR CONCLUSIONS.
THEN WE CAN DECIDE.
OR SHUT UP : )

[galenb]

No. that's not right actually. Getting data off the sensor has never been the bottle neck. It's getting that data into the card fast enough. How do you think they can get uncompressed streams out to the HDMI like they do on so many cameras? You can even read the interview with the Panasonic engineer on this site, he explains how it works on the GH3. Basically, They take the image from the sensor at full res (16 mp), down sample it to 4k then down sample again to 2k and still have time to compress it and then write it to the card. Image acquisition is not the problem here. What governs whether video looks good or bad has everything to do with the algorithm used for down-sampling/scaling/summing/etc. Canon, Sony and Nikon have never put video quality ahead of still image quality in their DSLR's. Panasonic on the other hand, have made a very clear point of trying to get the best quality video out of their cameras. And they know that scaling the video is where all the aliasing and moire come from so they have worked extra hard to make it look better then anyone else. Keep in mind to that they were making video cameras long before they made still cameras so you can bet they know a thing or two about making video look good.

What does all this have to do with Leica? Well who do you think have been making most of their digital cameras up until now? Do you think Leica haven't learned anything from them in the process? Well, we won't know until one of has one of these cameras in their hands but I'm betting it's going to be really nice simply due to that former relationship with Panasonic.

[hmcindie]

[quote name='galenb' timestamp='1349312960' post='19376']
No. that's not right actually. Getting data off the sensor has never been the bottle neck. It's getting that data into the card fast enough.
[/quote]

I disagree. Some sensors are way too slow to be read fully. That's why they skip lines. The faster the sensor is, the less there is aliasing. If it's so fast that you can basically do a full scan in 1/60s then no line-skipping is necessary. Line skipping is also used to make the sensor faster and then they can go to 60p. That's how the FS700 works. Pair a natively fast 4k sensor-readout to lineskipping and you get a nice HD 240fps slow mo. Aliasing is increased as it starts to lineskip but atleast there is no crop as in the RED cameras.

[jgharding]

I have absolutely no doubts that this camera will have a unique and lovely quality to the footage, Leicas always look unique. They use their own sensors, they have their own feel. The stat spiel beinf flung about just doesn't really mean much, on paper an Epic should be nicer looking than Alexa, but I prefer the footage of the latter, in general.

I can't afford one, but I'd love one. I do know someone who is getting one, so will get to play at some point...

[riccardocovino]

Leica is probably the best photography hardware maker, past and recent history show it clearly.
By hardware I mean glass, metal, leather, and so on.
Leica joined digital photography later than the other companies and has always struggled in filling this particular gap.
Everybody who used their Mx serie knows perfectly what I'm talking about.
Interface is sluggish and image recording takes ages compared to other brands.
Lcds have ridicuolus resolutions and sizes, and sensors have always been inferior ot others (by the way, as many others, they buy them simply because they don't have the know-how and facilities to produce them).
Dynamic range and high ISO of their sensors have always limited the spectacular quality of what their lenses captured.
No secret M9 had ISO limited to 2500 because it was already awful to be seen, and M8 was even worse, more than 400 meant unusable pics.
As a reference I picked from Imaging Resource comparison tool M9 at 2500 and 5DII at 3200, judge by yourself.
In conclusion, we all hope the new M to be a killer video tool, but assuming that Leica will have better than others digital processing is at least pretentious and without evidence from past facts.[img]http://www.eoshd.com/comments/uploads/inline/16527/506dbda24e3e4_leica.jpg[/img]

[jgharding]

Interesting stuff! They do seem to fall down pretty hard in tests and the like, but I've always loved the images people get with them. low light hasn't been the best up to now but perhaps the CMOS will catch up

Hey, what o you mean you don't have the 50mm huh? ;)