On Wed, Dec 23, 1998 at 08:47:17PM -0600, Jay Maynard wrote:
> It's interesting watching this discussion in parallel with a similar
> discussion on a list dedicated to the Olympus OM series of 35mm SLRs...
> 
> On Wed, Dec 23, 1998 at 12:10:15AM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > You know what I really want?  A Contax G with a good CCD in it.  It'd be
> > *so* easy for them to build, and it would kick ass on every other digital
> > camera out there... which is why they'll never do it. :-)
> 
> Well, sort of. The problem is that the CCDs required to give decent
> resolution in a 24x36mm image wind up being about 12 megapixels. Expen$ive.
> There's a company reputedly working on a drop-in cartridge that should work
> in any 35mm camera, but it'd still be frightfully expen$ive. Shame, too,
> cause I want something like that.

Yes, but a G has interchangable lenses, including several short lenses.
"It'd just work".  Besides, they need a digital camera to compete with
the Leica one anyhow -- though with its fixed focus and fixed lens it's
not hard to beat. :-)

You don't have to *use* the whole 24x36mm "circle of coverage" (a
misnomer as in any reasonable 35mm camera coverage is limited by
mechanical vignetting fromt he camera body anyway, not the lens itself)
to be able to recycle a successful miniature 35mm camera design; in
fact, you might be able to make the physical camera itself even smaller,
and you can easily enough build digital-only short lenses that don't
cover 24x36, and keep everything but the film transport and lens.

Heck, I'd take a digital Minox over 90% of what's on the market today.
Unfortunately, most digital cameras seem to be built to be marketed to
people who don't know a damn' thing about cameras. :-/