Leica’s long-time-coming S2 DSLR is about to hit the stores in the UK for a bank account-emptying £16,000, or around $26,000. And that’s not even the top-end version. To get a sapphire-glass LCD screen and some gussied-up “Platinum Service”, you’ll have to drop another £3,100, or almost $5,100. To put that in some perspective, you could buy a Leica M8 and a lens for around the same price as the upgrade alone.
The camera looks sweet, though: 37.5 million pixels sit atop a huge 30×45mm sensor, a whopping 56% bigger than a full-frame sensor or rectangle of 35mm film. This is unashamedly a big, fat medium format camera, and it looks like a battleship, although it is actually smaller than a lot of pro 35mm DSLRs. The entire S range will launch in October, and you can see the full line-up of lenses and prices over at DP review. To give you a taster, the cheapest thing on the list is the battery charger, which will cost a ridiculous $420.
Leica reveal S-system pricing and launch date [DP Review]
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Watch out, Flip, Kodak’s in town, and he’s a’gunnin’ for ya. Kodak’s new Zi8 pocket video camera comes in at $20 less than Flip’s Ultra HD and manages to beat it in almost every way. The Kodak shoots 1080p, the Flip just 720p. The Kodak has built-in image stabilization (electronic, not physical), a microphone socket and an SD card slot for adding up to 32GB of memory (although it ships without a card in the box and just 128MB internal memory). The Flip doesn’t. The Kodak even has ther Flip’s trademark flip-out USB plug and snaps five megapixel stills.