Leica at Cinegear: 10K?

[Tim Duran]

I gave Leica a heads up that I was going to be asking questions regarding the lens width in response to normal Red-type questions regarding coverage. One speaker said it only covered S35, another said it covered 34mm, a third response was that it covered 8-10K.

Leica is pushing its super HD glass resolution, not the width of the lens. They are promoting the number of pixels that the glass can handle at one moment, not the physical size of the lens. (Not being a lens engineer, and from what I got at Reducation last week, some Red lenses go to what, 40-43mm? But the Red lenses don't have the capactity to handle the bit depth as the Leica's do.) Does that mean that you get a better looking 4.5-5K image with Leica over Red? But only up to 34mm? Or does this allow Leica more pixels to work with when manipulating the pixel image so that you can get anamorphic as Red just announced? Hopefully there is someone regarding this with a technical bent that can clue us in on this.

Delivery is now 12-15 months out for new orders; existing orders hopefully get filled starting December.

Perhaps the most interesting development that came out of the Q&A was whether or not Leica was going to get into the filter business. Why? Because apparently currrent filter quality will degrade Leica's super high quality image!

[Tom Lowe]

Does that mean that you get a better looking 4.5-5K image with Leica over Red? But only up to 34mm?

The Leica lenses cover the Epic sensor, but not much more than that. Definitely not Full-Frame 35mm, aka Vista Vision, at least not the wider Leicas. The lenses are extremely high resolution, even when wide open. In this way, they surpass all other lenses. Master Primes, when stopped down, are as sharp (high resolution) as the Leicas, but not when they are closer to wide open. The MPs might be sharp at T4, for example, but the Leicas are sharp at T2.

When Leica talks about 8K resolution on their lenses, they mean that, in theory, if someone builds a camera capable of shooting 8K measured resolution (or is it Bayer 8K?), with the sensor being no larger than the current Red Epic sensor, then their lenses will transmit that image at full resolution. It's nothing to do with sensor size. They are talking about resolution discernible through their lens, in their current size and form (current image circle).

[Jacek Zakowicz]

5.4 micron pixel translates into 90 or so lp/pmm. Any modern lens can resolve that- even zooms. 8K sensor that size would be 180lp/pmm. many modern lenses resolve that in center, very few off axis. Add to that decent MTF and it's not inconceivable for 8-10K with Leicas- I'd be actually surprised otherwise....

[Christopher Barrett]

Yeah, this stuff gets a little tricky and I could totally see Red moving into a higher MegaPixel sensor that was still S35.

I used to shoot 4x5 film and my Rodenstock lenses seemed really nice and sharp. Then I moved to digital with a 49mm X 37mm 39MP Sensor and those lenses didn't cut it any more. I started buying the new "digital" medium format lenses which easily out-resolved the older glass. Now I'm shooting a 54mm X 40mm 60MP sensor and have had to replace some of those first "digital" lenses with newer designs that attain greater resolution. So... I can see why Leica would view resolving to 8k in an S35 format to be "future-proofing."

It also makes a good argument for Still glass. In particular, my Canon 24mm TS-E is really sharp on a the 22MP FF35 sensor.