On Aug 19, 2008, at 9:07 AM, Thibouille wrote: > ... > * Panasonic pulls off of SLR (officially or not) > > * Leica drops Panasonic (good idea IMO) and goes with... Canon ;) > The rumour is they might go with SLR based on Canon ones to replace > their R SLR line. > ...
I know nothing of rumors and don't go hunting for them. I am expecting, based on the recent announcement with Olympus, that Panasonic will debut a new camera built to the microFourThirds specification. I'm looking forward to seeing what they produce on this development of the FourThirds specification. To me, this could be the most interesting new development in digital cameras in several years. In a couple of discussions both with the local rep and with other connections who are close to Leica executive management, it was said that Leica felt Panasonic was obtaining more from their collaboration than they were getting out of it, and Leica was rather unenthusiastic about promoting their 4/3 gear (Leica dealers have yet to be offered the Summilux-D 25/1.4 or Vario-Elmarit-D 14-150/3.5-5.6 ASPH OIS, for instance). And it's a pretty clear message from Leica's R system users that they want a body comparable to the R9 that will allow them to utilize their large investment in Leica R lenses on a body made for them, not adapted to a different format. So both the rep and my "friend of a friend" were of the mind that a new direction for Leica digital SLRs was in the offing, which aligned with my own thoughts on the matter: the question is when. It would not surprise me to see a Leica R built on a Canon chassis, just as the Leica R3 to R7 were built on a Minolta developed chassis, simply because the Canon chassis die has a short enough mount register that it can be modified easily to suit a Leica R or R/AF lens mount. And Canon has a sensor chip fab, and chips in a variety of sizings. Exciting times.. :-) Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
