What about FF mirrorless cameras?

[doug]

and this was said June 2009 (i.e. five months earlier than Doug's link):

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/customer-forum/89591-summary-q-session-stefan-daniel-during.html

Given the earlier promise of an R10 then the abandonment of the entire R system, I won't believe there's an R solution until it's on the market... but the latest I've heard from Leica is that they're working on it. FWIW.

 

[Jonathon Delacour]

... I'm guessing that the camera won't be exclusively R. There would be a much bigger market for a mirrorless camera with a short mount register that can take adapters for all sorts of 35mm lenses. If it's a 'smart' adapter that preserves the lens' auto-diaphragm and full-aperture metering functions, and a decent viewfinder, I'd be looking very seriously at it.

I had imagined the most we could hope for was that auto-diaphragm and full-aperture metering functions would be available for ROM version Leica R lenses only. Would it be possible to design an adapter that provides such functionality for cam-based Leica R lenses plus lenses with widely varying mounts from Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc?

 

[doug]

I had imagined the most we could hope for was that auto-diaphragm and full-aperture metering functions would be available for ROM version Leica R lenses only. Would it be possible to design an adapter that provides such functionality for cam-based Leica R lenses plus lenses with widely varying mounts from Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc?

I don't see why not. The functional difference between a 3rd-cam lens and a ROM lens is similar to the difference between coded and non-coded M lenses. The auto-diaphragm is completely mechanical and the 3rd cam tells the camera everything it needs to know for full-aperture metering. The ROM tells the camera what lens is attached for software corrections and the like, but there's no reason a smart adapter can't have a lens database built into it, as the M9 does for non-coded lenses.

 

[Tim]

I suggested a M9 with no top deck when the M9 was released here http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/98271-m9-no-finder-mechanism-no-top.html

The idea was a FF M-Camera with liveview kind of like a FF Leica M version of the GF1 but as you can see in the thread but the idea was pretty much ignored. My thinking was that the RF and associated alignment was a cost that some of us don't want to meet.

I still think it would sell -- Oh well!