When two great people team up, the results can be spectacular. Fred and Ginger. Abbott and Costello. Batman and Robin.
Or Kodak and Leica. Over the past several years, Leica has used KODAK CCD Image Sensors in their most advanced digital products - most recently, the LEICA M8 (which brought the legendary Rangefinder family into the digital age) and the new LEICA S2. World-class products from Leica, all powered by world-class CCD Image Sensors from Kodak.
And now, there's one more.
Today, Leica unveiled their latest Rangefinder camera - the new Leica M9. (The M9 on 09/09/09 - get it?) And just like the M8 camera before it, the M9 is based on a CCD Image Sensor from Kodak - this time, the new KODAK KAF-18500 Image Sensor.
While the KAF-18500 includes a number of key improvements over the sensor used in the M8 (such as a new red color pigment and new IR-absorbing cover glass to improve color fidelity and overall image quality), one of the big changes in the new sensor is that, well, it's big - as big as a 35mm frame of film. In fact, it's almost twice the area of the sensor used in the M8 camera. That means that the new camera can make full use of R-series lenses (which were originally designed for use with 35mm film).
At first, making a "full frame" sensor might not sound like a big deal - Kodak already manufactures several image sensors that are 35mm format or larger (the 50-megapixel KODAK KAF-50100 Image Sensor, for example, is almost twice the size of 35mm film). But because of the way M-series cameras and lenses are designed, making a 35mm format sensor for the M9 is a little more complicated that you might think.
One of the hallmarks of Leica's M-series of cameras is that they are very compact, making them comfortable and convenient to handle. But to be this compact, the camera's lens needs to be very close to the surface of the sensor - a lot closer than it would be in a standard DSLR camera. And because the lens is so close, light coming out of the lens ends up striking the edge of the sensor at a pretty sharp angle.
Now for a film camera this isn't a big deal, because film is really good at detecting light that comes in from almost any angle. But image sensors tend to work best when light comes in "straight" (at a 90 degree angle to the surface of the sensor), so if you're not careful about the overall design, the performance of the camera can degrade around the edges of the sensor if these angles are too steep. You can correct for some of this with software, but the problem just gets worse as the lens gets closer to the sensor - or as the sensor gets bigger and bigger. And it's a problem you just can't have if your camera is going to be a Leica.
Since the sensor in the M9 is about twice the area of the one used in the M8, we had to make sure that this larger sensor would work properly with M-series lenses (where the lens is really close to the surface of the sensor). That meant redesigning both the actual pixel as well as the microlenses used in the KAF-18500 - all without impacting the performance that customers have come to expect when working with an M-series camera. A tall order, but one that needed to be done - and done properly - in order to help bring M-series photography to a new level.
Left to Right: KODAK KAF-10500 (in Leica M8), KAF-18500 (in Leica M9), and KAF-37500 (in Leica S2) Image Sensors
In the end, we solved this by using the most powerful resource we have - really smart people who know a lot about image sensor design. The result is a sensor that really helps Leica's new camera shine - all the way out to the last pixel.
We're pretty excited to be working again with Leica on the M9 camera - a product that Leica customers have looked forward to with great expectation. And I can't wait to see the images that photographers will be able to capture using this latest world-class camera from Leica.
Especially since they will be taken using world-class CCD image sensors from Kodak.
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