At Photokina today, Leica announced development of a radical new digital SLR system it calls the S-system. The company’s concept marries a larger digital sensor and a 35mm-style SLR body to make “a camera that would give the quality of medium format and the handling and flexibility of 35mm,” according to Leica UK’s David Bell.

UK-based Professional Photographer says the body is somewhere between a Canon EOS 5D and EOS 1D in size. But the camera features a Kodak-developed, 37 megapixel sensor that measures 30 x 45mm. A standard 35mm frame measures 24 x 36mm, while many digital SLRs use a APS-C size of approximately 16 x 24mm. The larger size is comparable to some digital backs designed for medium-format camera bodies.

Leica has a prototype of a model it’s calling the S2, and the lens system will include nine different lenses at launch. The camera features a dual shutter system, pairing a focal-plane shutter with an in-lens leaf shutter for some lenses, which allows for high flash sync speeds. It also has a high-precision, single-point autofocusing system, and uses Leica’s Maestro image processing system, which is supposed to deliver double the speed of comparable medium-format backs.
“We started from scratch,” Leica’s product manager Maike Harberts told British Journal of Photography. “All the components that define the quality of the image were designed for each other. We began with a large-format CCD sensor and literally configured the camera around it, rather than adapting existing technologies.” Though the working prototype is being displayed at Photokina, the camera isn’t expected to be available until next summer. No pricing information is available but, given Leica’s reputation for high-end prices, expect the camera and lenses to sell for more than pro Nikon or Canon gear.

You think your 300mm lens is long enough? Think again. For extreme shots, you need extreme equipment. How about a 1540mm lens?

The Orion SkyView Pro 127 (SVP 127 among friends) is really a 5 inch astronomical telescope, featuring a Maksutov-Cassegrain design similar to that used in Nikon’s own reflex (mirror) lenses.

I primarily got the SVP 127 as an astronomical instrument, but the eyepiece holder accepts a standard T-ring adapter for prime-focus photography, effectively making the telescope work like any other lens.

CALL 2009 THE YEAR of convergence, the point at which each frame produced by a movie camera came to have more resolution than any photo in this magazine. Red Digital Cinema, started in 2006 by Oakley Eyewear founder Jim Jannard, is set to release two breakthrough digicams, the Scarlet and the Epic, later this year. The new devices will change the way everything from feature films to action sports to nature shows are shot.

Both the Scarlet and Epic are small—three pounds, and no bigger than a home video recorder—yet the high-end Epic model makes movies with better resolution than a 200-plus-pound Imax film camera, while the consumer-level Scarlet is nearly as good as the cameras used to shoot Hollywood features. And both cost a fraction of their competition, from $3,000 for the base-model Scarlet up to $53,000 for the Imax-beating Epic. If you’re used to shopping for digital still cameras by megapixels—a good one now gets 10 to 20—consider that the Epic shoots up to 260. That’s not an incremental shift; it’s like releasing the iPhone in 1980.

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