NikonWeb.com

dpreview has visited the Leica factory in Germany. Always interesting to see how these things are made:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/leicafactory2009/

There's also a photo of "Leica's little-known first digital camera - the 1996 S1, which featured a scanning back with an image area of 36 x 36mm and 26 Mp resolution".

Update: After first posting the above, I came across this interesting blog post by David Farkas. Same factory tour, different perspective: http://dfarkas.blogspot.com/2009/09/lei ... tzlar.html

Update 2: Yet another report from the same tour: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/revie ... irst.shtml

Jarle

Hi, here some pictures of my Leica S1 High Speed, which I sold two years ago.







It was a heavy but nice construction.

Regards,
Nico

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D1/D1X/D1H etc.

Hi Nico,

Thanks for sharing! I haven't found much information about this camera, but here's a 2006 thread on photo.net: http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00GqzV

My favourite reply: Aaaah... the famous "Bear Trap Leica". A little known fact is that production was discontinued after a rash of nasty law suits from users whose paws became entangled when the camera's arms snapped shut. ;> (By photo.net user "dennis c").

Jarle

Hi Jarle,
it wasn't a camera to walk around on a city-trip. Mine was used in a laboratory on a tripod. The 'high speed' was 1 image per second (sic!) and there wasn't a CCD but the sensor scanned the viewfinder image. They have become rather rare; the price when new was sky-high and it was difficult to use. Leica wanted to show that it was a modern company.
Regards,
Nico

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D1/D1X/D1H etc.

Hi,

Looks like some USAF 'black' project to me! Like, a new style orbiting imaging platform!

I could use one of these to image our T-shirts for the screenprinting shop website. Much better than a Kodak DCS560 / Canon D6000, for sure! Of course, if I did so, then one could 'pixel peep' and count the thread density of the cloth!

As pointed out, a scanning digicam produces wickedly high resolution but your subject has to stay put!

Later!

Stan

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Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer