Leica M10 With 24-Megapixel Full-Frame CMOS Sensor, ISO Dial Launched

The German camera maker Leica has officially announced its new camera - M10 to add to its M series of digital cameras. The new M10 has its compact design as its USP, and Leica is emphasising that this new camera will set a new milestone to the 'ongoing history of Leica M photography'. The Leica M10 is available for purchase at $6,495 (roughly Rs. 4,42,500) starting Thursday but in limited quantities.

The Leica M10 packs in an all-new 24-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with an impressive dynamic range, contrast rendition, better sharpness and finest resolution of details in the photograph. In addition to that there's a glass cover plate mounted on the sensor that acts as an infrared cut-off filter, which ultimately helps avoiding undesirable refraction of receiving light by the additional layers of glass. "The omission of a low-pass filter also ensures that the Leica M10 delivers maximum sharpness. This leads to significantly better imaging results, especially in the case of wide-angles and very fast lenses" explains Leica in its press release. The ISO sensitivity range has also been raised to the values between ISO 100 and 50,000 that will give better night photography experience.

The much-talked feature of Leica M10 is its ergonomic design that makes it quite handy. A depth of only 33.75 millimetres, a whole four millimetres less than that of its predecessor, the Leica M240, makes Leica M10 the slimmest camera of the M series. Following the compact design on M10, Leica has engineered its rangefinder as well. It has been updated to improve the view of the subject, wherein the field of view has been enlarged by 30 percent and the magnification factor has been increased to 0.73. The Eye-relief, the optimum distance you should have from the viewfinder eyepiece, has also been increased, so well that even people with glasses won't feel uncomfortable using the camera.

Coming to the image processing technology inside, the Leica M10 has the latest-generation Maestro II image processor, which in combination with new 24-megapixel sensor give better photography results. There is also a 2GB buffer memory and a burst mode to shoot photos at five frames per second. In addition to this, the loupe function given in the camera allows free positioning for better assessment of sharpness. This new function can be additionally used in conjunction with the Visoflex electronic viewfinder (EVF) with 2.4-megapixel resolution, apart from the camera's monitor. The viewfinder is turnable with swivel functionality and there's also a GPS module inside.

The design of Leica M10 packs some integral buttons that help in a comfortable operation of the camera in hands. At the back the controls are limited to the joystick control and just three buttons for Play, Live View and Menu. There's an ISO setting dial on the top as well for manual adjustments, along with Aperture, Focus, and Shutter Speed controls. The Leica M10 features Wi-Fi connectivity for easy sharing to iOS devices where they can be edited using Leica's M-App. The photographs are further ready to go on social networks via the same app. The camera can also be remotely controlled from a smartphone or a tablet making photography easy in situations where you want to be present in the photograph without giving pain to other people to snap the photo.

'The Leica M is the heart, the backbone and the soul of Leica Camera. In this, the innovative camera and its concentration on the functions essential to photography set new standards, while its exceptionally lean handling concept takes us a further step towards absolute perfection', explains Oliver Kaltner, CEO Leica Camera AG.