Leica has promised journalists and members of the trade a “special highlight” at an event to be held in Berlin on April 24. This is widely expected to be a new compact system camera which will sit between the fixed-lens X series and the full-frame M. Back in November last year Leica CEO Dr. Alfred Schopf was interviewed by a journalist from an Australian photographic magazine and confirmed the likelihood of the camera: “We will have one, definitely. And it will, of course, be quite different to M system. We want to have autofocus with such a system and we may well have an APSC size sensor rather than a bigger one…….”
It will be a German built camera, however I’m not sure we can make all of the lenses made in Germany because we are talking about a different price range to M system so I could imagine that we do some fixed focal length lenses in Germany and maybe with the zooms we will co-operate with a partner.
The new camera, codenamed Typ T, is more than likely to be an APS-C device since Dr. Shopf also made it clear that Leica will not be using Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds system.
If this rumour proves true, Leica will be entering an established market, currently dominated by Fuji and Sony mirrorless systems, at a difficult time. Full-frame sensors, as seen in the Sony A7r and RX1, are now becoming cheaper and more accessible to enthusiastic amateurs, a trend that will undoubtedly effect the both the starter DSLR and mirrorless markets.