It is not clear how expensive the full-frame CCD device would be, or how expensive re-engineering the Leica M8 body to accommodate it would be, in terms of manufacturing a marketable commercial product as opposed to a prototype.This dimensional constraint may have been one of the reasons why Leica's designers had a hard time getting the M8's sensor to clear the rear components of wide-angle lenses.

The M5 was enough of a flop in the marketplace that Leica almost abandoned the camera business before resuming production of the M4. Leica's designers may have had in mind the degree of customer resistance that the firm encountered in the 1970s when it tried modifying the size and shape of the traditional Leica M body to accommodate the exposure metering technology then available, resulting in the M5, a camera larger than an M4 that was not as successful as the firm had hoped. One of Leica's design goals may have been to produce a digital M body with the same approximate physical dimensions, including front to back depth, as existing Leica M film camera bodies.

The distance from the rear of the lens mount to the rear of the sensor body on your prototype appears to be deeper than the front to back depth of a traditional Leica M film camera body.

Leica's designers apparently had difficulty designing an M8 digital sensor that would clear the back of wide-angle lenses but still sense the light from them well enough to avoid unacceptable light fall-off in the corners of the image. (You got a 35mm to work with it after a fashion, but apparently not in the same way as the 50mm.) Since wide-angle lenses are quite popular with Leica users, one of Leica's design goals may have been accommodating existing wide-angle lenses on a digital M body without modification.

As you note, the setup you have developed will not allow the use of existing Leica wide-angle lenses in M-mount, without some sort of adjustment for the protrusion of the rear elements of these lenses into the camera body.

This is not intended as a criticism of your excellent effort, which is truly groundbreaking, but rather as speculation about the possible reasons why Leica's engineers might have gone a different route in developing the M8. There are, however, some characteristics of the camera you have developed thus far that might possibly explain why Leica has not yet provided a full-frame Leica digital M, and has instead provided the M8 in its current crop-sensor design. The M8 is good, but the crop factor is one of the things (along with price, color-shift and reliability issues) that may be keeping it from wider acceptance. Ī full-frame digital Leica M body would be of interest to many Leica photographers. The quality of the sample photo you took with the Industar is quite good, considering the lens and camera used to make it.

What you have done is comparable, in certain ways, to Oskar Barnack's development of the prototype of the original Leica, the so-called Ur-Leica.

It clearly required considerable technical knowledge, mechanical skill, and initiative to do this, and the result is admirable. I am greatly impressed by your ability to assemble an operating digital camera from a variety of components and make it work properly. But I think some people would be happy to sacrifice a little quality on the wide angle side, in return for a full frame Leica M camera. Also, for wide angle, maybe SLR type design will be needed to avoid dark corner vignett. So my assumption is: a full frame sensor on M camera is technically possible, but it requires the redesign of some of the Leica M lenses. I am so excited that I have got crystal clear pictures tonight! So I switched to Industar 55mm screw mount lens as the lesn for the testing of my prototype camera. But found the lens end protruding too much. First, I tried to use the Leica 35mm/1.4 Summilux as the lens. Now I have acquired a 24x36MM digital back, so I used it as the back end. But I want to do my own experiment to find out the possibility of a full frame Leica M camera. Most people would say that it can't be done under the current CCD sensor technology. I have been interested in Leica M camera for serveral years and I want to see a full frame Leica M digital camera.

Leica full frame sensor