By site editor Dan Chung:
Today Leica announced possibly their boldest digital camera to date. The 24 megapixel SL (Typ 601) is a mirrorless camera with a full-frame sensor. It has a weather resistant body milled out of aluminium and uses Leica’s own L bayonet mount. This allows the use of dedicated full-frame lenses as well as many other lenses, such as those with the legendary Leica M-mount, by the use of adapters.
It has most of the features you would expect to find in a high-end stills camera, including a high res 0.66″ 4.4MP 0.8x EVF, 14-bit DNG raw and fast burst shooting up to 11 fps.
The big news for video shooters, though, is the inclusion of 4K movies in both UHD (3840 x 2160) and DCI 4K (4096 x 2160) resolutions. It has Panasonic’s V-Log L gamma from the GH4 and DVX200 – a sign of the close co-operation between the two companies. Video is recorded internally at 4:2:0 8-bit to SD cards. In addition, it can output 4:2:2 10-bit over HDMI – just like the GH4. The HDMI jack is full size which is a nice touch and very welcome. It can record in both full-frame and Super35 crops depending on the resolution and frame rate (Edit – it appears that it only shoots 4K in Super35 crop and you need to use HD for full-frame mode). There is 24P for DCI 4K and 30P, 25P and 24P frame rates are supported for UHD. HD is also available at frame rates up to 120fps. A sample video from Leica has been posted on Vimeo.
Other video-centric features include focus peaking, exposure simulation, clipping/zebras, grid overlays, aspect ratios, and safe area markers.
Audio comes in the form of 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks on a breakout accessory cable. Manual audio control is also available. There are no XLR audio options at this point, but you can of course add something like a Juicedlink. From early product images it appears that the 1/4 20 tripod socket on the base has secondary locator pin to stop rotation – another nod to video users.
On paper, this sounds the perfect combination of a full-frame sensor with Panasonic’s image processing and output options – something Panasonic themselves have not offered yet. The SL (Typ 601) has the advantage over Sony’s a7R II and a7S II of having 10-bit output. Of course, the proof is in the pudding and we will have to wait to see just how good the images this camera produces actually are. There are no indications of claims about low light performance yet; nor is there any detail about how the camera downscales to 4K from its 24 megapixel sensor. Assuming that Leica have done all their homework, however, it could just be that we have a new king of the compact system camera hill.
Before you rush out to order the camera, be aware of one thing – it isn’t cheap: the body alone will set you back $7450 US. It is due to start shipping towards the end of November.
We will update this post as more info comes in.
UK site The Video Mode has already had hands on the camera in the video below:
