Leica's 1996 futuristic digital camera offered 26 megapixels but took three minutes per shot

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Imagine it's 1996. In the camera business, the runaway success story is the stylish-looking Canon Elph – an APS film camera that quickly becomes one of the best-selling compact cameras of any type, at least in the USA.

Although the new APS film system receives enormous publicity, 35mm cameras still account for the vast majority of camera sales.

One of the biggest sellers continues to be Canon's inexpensive, autofocus Sure Shot series of 35mm compacts, because they offer autofocus, built-in flash and a competitive price of around $100–150, Kodak's Advantix APS series and the Olympus Stylus 35mm models round out the pack.

In SLRs, Canon had become the leading manufacturer by the mid-1990s – and its Rebel G (known as the EOS 500N in Europe) is a major reason. But Nikon's N50 (sold as the F50 in Europe) competes directly with the Rebel and sells in substantial numbers, too.

Remember, it's 1996 and digital cameras make up less than 1% of camera sales. In '96, the market leaders are Canon's PowerShot 600 (0.57 megapixels), Sony's DSC-F1 (0.35 megapixels) and Kodak's DC120 (0.84 megapixels). Most are powered by AA batteries, all have small (typically 1/3in) CCD-type sensors and all sell for between $900 and $1,000.

And then there was the Leica S1.

At a time when Leica's M6, Nikon's F5 and Canon's F1N reigned supreme, it was said that the resolution of Kodachrome 25 was equivalent to a digital resolution of between 20 and 25 megapixels (depending on who you asked).

Yet, in an age where nobody had yet managed to offer a true, 1-megapixel camera, the Leica S1 offered an unbelievable (but true) 26.4-megapixel photographs! There was, however, a big catch: it was a scanning camera that could not take a photograph in the conventional sense.

Introduced at the 1966 Photokina, though not available until the next spring, the incredible Leica S1 was like no other camera ever made. Certainly like no other camera made in the 1990s.

The lens projected the image onto the 36 x 36 mm focal plane and a precision stepper motor slowly moved the sensor across the image plane. The sensor itself had three parallel rows, with each row being sensitive to one of the primary colours.

Each row contained 5,140 photosites, spanning the full 36mm width of the image. After roughly 5,140 scanning steps (and 185 seconds), the complete image measured 5,140 x 5,140 pixels or 26.4 megapixels.

Because each sensor row recorded each color separately, no Bayer filter was needed and colors did not need to be interpolated. Thus, the system offered exceptionally accurate color with virtually no moiré, no false color artifacts and remarkably fine detail.

It was a studio-only camera intended for museums, art galleries, advertising photography and anything else that required absolutely top quality work of static subjects, where speed was not so important.

To function, it was powered by an external (plug-in) power supply – and it needed to be connected to a computer, as it had no internal memory or storage card. I guess you'd properly call it a camera plus high-end scanner hybrid.

It featured a clever, interchangeable lens mount, so optics from Leica, Nikon, Canon and others could be used, making it more attractive to organizations that might already have a set of lenses.

Although the distinctive sweeping metal "arms" were intended to help aim the bulky beast, it would usually be found mounted on a heavy tripod or copy stand as it weighed approximately 7.9lbs / 3.6kg, without a lens!

Some say that as many as 1,500 S1 cameras were made but, according to Leica's own records, only about 160 complete S1-series cameras (including the Alpha, Pro and High Speed variants) are believed to have been manufactured, making it one of the rarest Leica cameras ever built. Almost all were sold to museums, universities and other such organizations.

New, it cost $21,500 (or roughly $43,000 / £24,800 / AU$66,900 today). For comparison, the Nikon F5 sold for $2,000 and the Canon EOS-1N was $2,500 at the time.

But the Leica S1 was not meant to compete with other cameras. It filled just one function, but it filled it better than anything else at the time – making spectacular, high-resolution digital images at a time it was simply not possible any other way.

Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras , as well as his book A Brief History of Photography .

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