{"id":200,"date":"2008-02-04T10:36:03","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T10:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=200"},"modified":"2008-02-04T10:36:03","modified_gmt":"2008-02-04T10:36:03","slug":"leica-full-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Leica Full Frame?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leica&#8217;s announcement last week of a &#8220;<em>perpetual update program<\/em>&#8221; involving hardware upgrades to the<strong> Leica M8 <\/strong>to keep the camera always  up to date with the &#8220;<em>latest refinements and developments in technology<\/em>&#8221; is certainly an interesting development.  Given that Leica has such a commitment to the body size and shape of its cameras, and the really solid build quality &#8211; unlike other modern cameras, it certainly makes great sense.<\/p>\n<p>The cost of the upgrade is now said to be 1200 euros (\u00a3900.)  This seems fairly reasonable compared to the replacement cost of a quality digital camera &#8211; and particularly given Leica prices. After the upgrade the M8 will essentially be a new camera with a new guarantee period.  I&#8217;m not sure if the update policy will keep my M8 useful for as long as my Leica M2 has been but it is certainly a revolutionary policy for a digital model.<\/p>\n<p>The Nikon D200 which I&#8217;ve now been using intensively for over 2 years, will cost me rather more to replace and I probably will do so fairly soon (and in any case I will soon have to take it in for fairly expensive repair.)  So<\/p>\n<p>One of the more interesting statements from Leica is &#8220;<em>We are presently investigating<br \/>\nthe possibility of further upgrade steps including the camera\u0092s complete digital section, even including the sensor itself<\/em>.&#8221;  What has become clear is that at some future date Leica hope that this will include the replacement of the current 1.3x sensor with a full-frame one, assuming that they can find a technical solution to the problem of using such a sensor with Leica wide-angle lenses. Those people who&#8217;ve said to me that they are &#8220;<em>waiting for the M9<\/em>&#8221; need wait no longer.<\/p>\n<p>I downloaded and installed the new firmware  (1.201) and  it seems to  have improved the  colour balance noticeably; I haven&#8217;t yet found any problems. You can download it and the information about the upgrades from the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.leica-camera.com\/service\/downloads\/rangefinder_cameras\/m8\/\" target=\"_blank\">M8 download page.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leica&#8217;s announcement last week of a &#8220;perpetual update program&#8221; involving hardware upgrades to the Leica M8 to keep the camera always up to date with the &#8220;latest refinements and developments in technology&#8221; is certainly an interesting development. Given that Leica has such a commitment to the body size and shape of its cameras, and the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=200\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Leica Full Frame?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-issues","category-technical"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}