Mmmmmm - black and white
I'm deeply in love with the Leica M-Monochrom, however six grand is (a) way out of my range and (b) an awful lot of rolls of Ilford PanF+.
Come the lottery win I may have to change my mind though...
Leica unveiled several camera models today, including the world's first digital rangefinder camera with a dedicated black and white sensor for monochrome photography, as well as a compact with a 20x optical zoom. Leica M-Monochrom The Leica M-Monochrom looks like an M9, but replaces the innards with an 18Mp B&W CCD sensor …
I just get the feeling that modern Leica kit is like Ferrari, rich pillocks buy them to make a statement and those on tighter budgets buy them to make people think they are rich pillocks!
Now don't get me wrong, the old film kit is a joy to behold but their modern digital stuff just seems to be trading of the cachet their name carries.
Hmmm, I can't quite work out which Panasonic Lumix TZ model the V-Lux 40 is a reworking of.
For a small superzoom camera, Lumix TZs consistantly score well in group tests... and for something designed to be taken lots of places (and so banged, dropped, and possibly lost) the Leica tweaks over the stock Lumix model might not be worth the higher price.
Every sensor is 'colour blind', what they've done isn't much really, it's the same sensor from M9 just with Bayer filter removed, so it's naked sensor. Oh, they also removed colour related items from menus. So what we have here is old product without colour filter array for more money. Go figure!
The pricing will be based on what Leica think the market will bear. If you can afford a B&W only Leica, probably to supplement an M9, they'll be fairly wealthy so adding another £1K to the price tag probably won't suppress sales.
Of course removing the Bayer filter won't have cost much (although a bit of extra tweaking on the firmware will be required for a small run), but otherwise the costs of manufacturing aren't going to be significantly different to the M9.
@some beggar
By "removing" I mean removing the effect of. Manufacturers are perfectly capable of delivering sensors without the bayer matrix - just use a neutral (ie transparent) filter material. The colour density of the bayer filters is something the manufacturers tweak for individual customers.
And who said the tweaking of the firmware was just removing menu items? However, it also isn't going to be a massive job either.