Designing the new M-series Leica

There’s a controversial thread over on the L-camera forum.  The  topic is what the next Leica M-series camera should be. There are two diametrically-opposed approaches: a) build a thoroughly modern camera that takes the M lenses, or b) provide the best expression of the gestalt of the film-era Leica M’s. My own personal desire is for the former, but I understand the intellectual and emotional purity of the latter philosophy.

So I decided to see what could be done along the purist lines. I talked to the crack design team at Lirpa Labs, whose Sloof Lirpa photographic instruments have been featured on these pages: here and here. Their busy period is the first three months of the year, getting ready for the annual April product launch event, so they have a little time on their hands now. They agreed to rough out a spec sheet.

Here are the salient points:

• No LCD on the back of the camera. Allows a thinner, lighter camera with better battery life.
• No light meter. Encourages the photographer to be conscious of the light levels, just as with the M3. The camera is fully compatible with the Leicameter.
• No electric motors. The shutter is cocked with a thumb lever. Just two short strokes will do it.
• Mechanical frame counter for 36 frames.
• No separate on/off switch. The camera is turned on by pulling the advance lever out slightly, and off by pushing it back in.
• Shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/1000 set with a single wheel on top of the camera.
• Coupled combination range and viewfinder, with bright lines for lenses 28mm to 135mm, in pairs.
• The camera comes with four cassettes each of which contains a small battery and storage for up to 36 black and white images. The cassettes set the ISO setting on the camera to a value unique to their configuration. They are color coded to indicate the ISO setting, and it is also marked on the cassette. The values are 32, 80, 200, and 400.
• There is an optional line of cassettes for making color images. The ISO values are 10, 25, 64, and 160.
• Extra cassettes are available singly, and in “bricks” of 20. Cassettes purchased as part of a brick must all be of the same ISO.
• The camera is loaded by removing the bottom plate and dropping a cassette into a slot on the left side of the camera. This operation resets the frame counter to zero.
• The user winds the lever twice to advance the frame counter to 1 and make the camera ready for the first exposure.
• The user should check the dial in the “rewind” knob to make sure it spins as the lever is moved with the thumb.
• Randomly, about 5% of the time, the “rewind” knob doesn’t show any motion as the lever is moved. In this case, to ready the camera for picture-taking, the user must take the bottom cover off, remove and re-insert the cassette, and re-install the bottom cover.
• When all 36 exposures are made, the user twists the “rewind” knob on the top left of the camera for several turns. This operates a small generator which charges the battery in the cassette for its next use.
• The camera is unloaded by removing the bottom plate. If the bottom plate is removed before the rewind knob is twisted, all exposures made on that cassette are lost.
• Once “rewound”, new images may not be added to a cassette.
• There is a temperature sensor in the cassette, which is used to trigger a special function: when the cassette gets over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, images stored on it begin to fade away.
• There is a humidity sensor in the cassette which is used in conjunction with the temperature sensor to implement the following special function: when the rewind knob is turned rapidly and the cassette is cold and dry, white jagged marks appear on images stored on the cassette.
• The cassettes are sent via mail to processing centers and are returned empty of images, along with a USB memory stick containing the images. Prints are available as well, as are transparencies.
• {from a reader — see comments} Occasionally the “processing ” goes wrong and unless you handle the USB sticks with lint-free cotton gloves and store them in acetate sleeves, dust, fingerprint and scratch marks slowly accumulate on the stored images. The special USB sticks also cannot be reused.
• For those who wish to process their own images, cassette readers are available.

The Lirpa Labs engineers point out that all the underlying technology to create this breakthrough camera already exists. Brilliant, huh?