This week’s pre-Photokina announcement of the Leica M-P has raised the possibility of a minor upgrade to the two-year-old M (type 240) at next month’s exhibition. In the past the -P version of the M cameras (as with the M9 and M9-P) has been differentiated solely by a tougher screen and the suppression of front branding.
Yet he M-P adds two unexpected features, a bigger buffer memory and the return of the frame line lever. Neither of these, especially not the extra 1GB of memory, represents a significant additional cost at manufacture. From a production point of view I suspect it makes little sense to withhold these enhancements from the standard M. For this reason, I think it likely that the M could be upgraded in September to narrow the specification gap between it and the new M-P.