The reason why Leica didn’t join MicroFourThirds (+ Leica lens test on the E-P2)

Popsci tested the [shoplink 14883]Leica Elmar-M 24mm f/3.8 lens ($2,400)[/shoplink] on the [shoplink 14830]Olympus E-P2[/shoplink] ($850 body-only) using the Novoflex’s Leica M-Mount Micro Four Thirds adapter ring ($270). They also shot with the Olympus 17mm f/2.8 lens ($275) for comparison.

Christian Erhardt, Leica’s VP of Marketing tells why that combination doesn’t work very well:

“Our lenses our designed to work best with full format, the light can hit different pixels of the sensor at a very extreme angle–once you have that, the image may be slightly out of focus, or not as bright around the edges.”.

But he also explained why Leica choosed to not join the MicroFourThirds alliance: “One reason why we’ve decided not to move into Micro Four Thirds is that we have looked at the sensor size and realized that it cannot produce the image quality that we need. Therefore we decided to stick with the full format in addition to APS-C. It’s all about the ratios“.

Do you really think the Leica X1with fixed lens(!) that sells for $1,995.00 is a better solution?
By the way, Popsci came to the conclusion that the price difference doesn’t justify the use of the Elmarit instead of the Olympus 17mm lens :)

Source: Popsci
Found via: Noisycamera