Leica

Attracting all the attention on the Leica stand was the newly announced 37 megapixel S2 medium format SLR. The project has been solely developed by Leica, the company says, but with an image processor by Fujitsu. The prototypes on the stand had working autofocus and both JPEG and DNG output, but not yet to final specification. All of the lenses will apparently incorporate their own leaf shutter, and the prototype cameras have even been redied for a wi-fi module that is still in development. All seems on track for the camera's planned release date of mid 2009. The camera and associated lenses managed to overshadow not only the revised M8.2 rangefinder, but also the NOCTILUX-M 50mm f/0.95 ASPH lens.

Also on show were the four new M lenses announced a couple of weeks ago (the SUMMILUX-M 21 mm f / 1.4 ASPH, SUMMILUX-M 24 mm f / 1.4 ASPH and Elmar-M 24 MM F / 3.8 ASPH). Of course it's not all hugely expensive cameras and glass, there's some moderately expensive small sensor compacts too; this is the first public showing of the new Leica D-LUX 4 and C-LUX 3 (re-badged versions of the Panasonic Lumix LX3 and FX37 respectively).