It’s great to see the designers of innovative producets credited
Panasonic will soon release their L1 interchangeable lens SLR to market. The camera is notable for a couple of things. First, there’s the compact Leica M ‘look’, owing to the flat top, the result of using a mirror and prism design pioneered by Olympus in the brilliant Pen F half frame some thirty years ago. Second, the continuation of the Panasonic-Leica collaboration with the Panasonic vibration reduction system integrated into the ‘standard’ Leica zoom lens.
The last time I remember this sort of thing was when the inspired designer of the jewel-like Olympus Pen F and OM1 cameras, Yoshihisa Maitani, was featured prominently in advertisements, also some thirty years ago.
You can read interviews with the concept designer Makoto Nakamura here and with mechanical designer Yoshiyuki Inoue here. The interview with Inoue is reminiscent of the first advertising for Toyota’s Lexus LS400 which focused heavily on obssession with detail.
This will probably be the ‘Digital M’ for most Leica aficionados as the lens+body pair will list for $2,000 compared with a rumored $5,000 for the Digital M body alone. And with modern autofocus, no one needs the heretofore superiority of rangefinder focusing any more.
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