Ricoh GXR pictured with the 24-72mm ƒ2.5-4.4 10MP "lens"
Ricoh’s GXR system is about to get a Leica M lens-mount. This will let you take pretty much any of the legendary lenses and put them in font of a tailor-made sensor.
The GXR system, you may remember, is Ricoh’s rather weird take on cameras. The “body” is just a shell with a screen and some buttons. The “lenses” are where the action is, and each lens unit features its own sensor. These sensors vary in size and sensitivity depending on the lens they are paired with.
The new lens unit is actually lensless, with an M-mount for your legacy lenses. The sensor will be an APS-C sized 12.9MP CMOS model, and have its own focal-plane shutter.
While being able to use Leica lenses on any camera is desirable, the non full-frame sensor is less than ideal. Except for a handful of lenses made in the early days of Leica digital, all M-mount glass is made for 35mm film. Thus the 35mm focal length, the most popular on a rangefinder, becomes around 50mm. Fine, unless you like wide-angles, in which case you’ll be paying more and suffering from (typically) slower maximum apertures.
Ricoh has yet to announce a price, and the specs you see above are the totality of the sparse press release. We do, though, have a vague launch date: Fall 2011.
See Also:
- Ricoh's Inside-Out GXR Puts Its Sensors Inside the Lens
- Ricoh Speeds Up AF With Old-School Tech
- Ricoh P10: A 10-Megapixel Zoom Lens
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