BJL

Update: the CEO Kaufmann's family owns the other 55%

30% can be enough for control if the rest are scattered amongst small holdings, but I believe that the rest of Leica is mostly in one large holding.

The current 45% owner Blackstone is a private equity company. Do you mean if such a company gets a majority share rather than 45%?
The good news is that so far Blackstone has not pushed to either break-up or dumb down Leica.

In response to a "push question" that essentially demands agreement with the idea of a Nikon full-frame mirrorless, this curmudgeon for whom the Df is not old-fashioned enough so he had his customized his back to the early 1960's replies:
"we must consider doing full-frame"
which only says that this option must be _considered_, even if mirrorless Nikons in the more mainstream DX format are also offered, or if in the end only DX format is chosen.

So where does the headline get "it must be full-frame" from?
UPDATE: "must be" is from a human translation. I trust that the computer translation did not spuriously add the word "consider" and suspect that the human translator overlooked it, maybe out of wishful thinking.

P. S. definitive news about future products does not come though back-door chatter like this!

P. P. S. Or maybe this curmudgeon is from the part of Nikon management which thinks that "D850 users must be male".
UPDATE: he is retired, so yes: a nostalgic curmudgeon.

New "Mk x" models are not usually aimed at people who already have the immediate preceding "Mk x-1". More likely customers are people buying their first camera at this level (maybe coming from a fixed-lens compact, or a phone, or a non-EVF MFT camera), or who have a model from further back in the series, like the original OM-D E-M10 in this case.

Updates like this are a matter of staying competitive with other brands, not with the company's own recent products.

@keep calm, the article predicts the _death_ of entry-level ILCs, but the two most popular ILC lens types are standard wide-tele zoom and telephoto zooms, so my point is that there are many users of such cameras who do care about telephoto reach and better low light/action handling than a phone-sensor will ever be capable of. Those numerous ILC users will not abandon them for phone-cameras with background blurring software, so the "$500 ILC" will not by any means become extinct.

Those who use just wide-angle primes might be vocal in forums like this, but are a small fraction of all users of entry-level ILCs. (Also, a lot of them are gear snobs who would never embrace fake-bokeh software or cameras without an eye-level viewfinder!)

entoman Interpolation does not add detail (that is, it dos not increase angular resolution, as a longer focal length or smaller photosites do); it just smooths out data. And despite the caption, that Light L16 does not have any "150mm f/2.4" lens: such a lens would require a front element diameter of at least 150/2.4 mm = 62.5mm. It probably has "150mm equivalent FOV", but for example an actual 150mm lens on MFT has "300mm equivalent FOV" and the far larger 4/3" sensor can have more pixels than phone sized sensors, allowing more cropping to an even longer "effective focal length".

None of the examples of computational photography magically add greater angular resolution: the "portrait mode" instead blurs backgrounds (actually reducing resolution) and the so-called computational zoom seems to be about imitating effects like shallower DOF and different perspective relationships between foreground and background, not adding any actual fine detail.

This article nonsensically dismisses the obvious ILC advantages of telephoto reach and low-light handling by blustering that "smartphones are already well on their way to solving those problems", without offering the slightest evidence, or dealing with limits set by basic physics.

The low light handling of sensors is within about one f-stop of fundamental physical limits (photon detection is already about 50% or better) and sensor resolution is not far from fundamental limits, because pixel pitches are down to about twice the wavelength of light. So for example, phone-camera focal lengths limited by pocketability to around 8mm and constrained to similarly small entrance pupil diameters will never match what even a fairly light-weight and compact zoom lens reaching a modest 150mm can do. If you try to argue that a heavy crop (say to about 1MP) is enough with a phone-camera, then cropping to the same pixel count from a modest ILC telephoto zoom lens will still reach far further.

Adaptors for many MF mounts are already available
https://fotodioxpro.com/collections/lens-mount-adapters/gfx
These just cover even more options

Lots of MF lens systems are already covered by adaptors announced earlier. For example:
https://fotodioxpro.com/collections/lens-mount-adapters/gfx?page=2

Lenses for 36x24mm usually project a circular image of at least 43.2mm diameter (the diagonal length of the 36x24mm frame) but often the image circle is larger than this bare minimum. In particular, longer focal length lenses often have an image circle of diameter far larger than needed, not much less than their focal length—those images are then "cropped" by the 36x24mm sensor. Also, the image circle is not a hard boundary; there is often just a gradual decline in image quality and brightness for some distance beyond the 36x24mm frame.

So there might many lenses that cover the 44x33mm frame (55mm diagonal) with at worst slightly weak corners, and for the rest one can still crop to various shapes. For example a 4:3 shape of about 35x26mm or a square of 30x30mm both fit in the same circle as 36x24mm.

@IR1234 Of course I am not the slightest bit surprised that yet another online discussion is guided more by tribal loyalty than attention to the facts of the case—this is one of the most pervasive bad side-effects of modern hyper-factionalized online communication, where people can choose to hear mostly only echoes of their own opinions and priorities, and join a virtual mob to shout down dissenting views.

@Roland Karlsson OK, I agree on that: a lot of posters here either have very poor reading comprehension and/or just jump with tribal loyalty to take the photographer's side.

"Prince never have claimed that he did. Prince's claim is that the image is a part of his piece of art."
This does not change the fact that one generally needs permission to reproduce another's work even if used as part of another creative work. How does this differ from a creative work like a book that reproduces photographs and adds new creative material in the form of commentary on them or poems inspired by them, or such?

P. S. I do not dispute that Prince has created a new work; just that he should "pay his suppliers".

Roland, I read what you said: as far as I can tell, the image itself was _not_ transformed (in contrast to other derivative works, like some by Andy Wharhol and Shepard Fairey, where significant color manipulation was done). Instead, the original photographic image was duplicated intact, with other stuff added _around_ it. This is the reason for my "picture reproduced in a book" comparison, and probably for the judge's observation that "Prince has not materially altered the composition, presentation, scale, color palette and media originally used by Graham."

Aside: in the case of Shepard Fairey's "Hope" poster based on a photograph of Barack Obama taken by Mannie Garcia, the copyright claim was more or less conceded in a settlement, even with Fairey's significant manipulations of the image itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster#Origin_and_copyright_issues

He reproduces images (unmodifed, as the judge notes) and adds some text and such below and around them. This seems little different from reproducing the original images in a book and adding text nearby—and that usage requires permission of the photographer (or other rights-holder.)

The Venmo-enabled scammers picked up the cameras in person in at least some cases.
Venmo is at least liable as an enabler: if using it for sales is not allowed, why does it let they buyer/payer who violated this rule get the money back as well as the product? So the scammers said to Venmo "I made payments that are against the rules, so give my money back and stiff the person who received payments"?? More strange given that the payer acted in a highly suspicious way, making multiple small payments.

Anyway, the moral is: do not accept an online payment through a medium you do not know!
Or at least hold the goods "till the check clears"—money transferred to your bank account.

The sensor is 32x24mm, so why not call it that instead of the inaccurate "Full Frame" which means 36x24mm — except when it means 54x42mm for medium format fans!

By the way, 32x24mm has the advantage that it can be made without on-chip stitching, with the needed fab equipment having a maximum field size of 33x26mm. And the squarer 4:3 makes more sense for astronomy.

Steve jobs had a good description of a smart-phone back at the iPhone launch event. He teased that he was about to announce three products:
- The first one: is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.
- The second: is a revolutionary mobile phone.
- And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.
If there had been third party iPhone apps from the beginning, he could have added:
- And one more thing: a computer that fits in your pocket.

If Red phone models stick with the same form factor and USB-Cinterface, it might make sense to use them as the touchscreen I/O, CPU, WiFi and uplink module of a high-end modular camera system.

@dante; you are not educating me: I am well aware of Leica's efforts with SLRs, both film and digital. My statement was simply that Leica has a very long and respected history with mirrorless cameras, not that they have only ever made that sort of camera.

P. S. I do not know of any video cameras that lack an eye-level EVF, so even if you are not interested in video (nor am I), it seems hard to deny that for the now wide-spread use of "stills-first" camera for video benefits from having the option of an eye-level VF—and for video that must be EVF, not OVF. In fact, Leica even makes an accessory EVF for its recent CMOS-sensor M cameras!