New 2012 Leica Products Debut

Leica unveiled a full slate of new products this week, including five S-lenses, the M Monochrom black-and-white camera and an updated Leica X2 compact camera. These announcements come from Leica's home turf in Germany. The new products are as follows:

• Leica M Monochrom: Maybe the most unique product announced this week, the M Monochrom contains a strictly black-and-white 35mm full frame sensor. Citing an intense interest in black-and-white photography among current Leica users, the M Monochrom offers black-and-white, sepia and selenium toning options, all available to the shooter after capture. Even more processing options exist in Silver Efex Pro 2, the Photo Editing Software included with the camera.
• Five New S-Lenses: The new lenses are Leica Elmarit-S 30mm f/2.8 ASPH and Leica Summarit-S 35mm f/2.5 ASPH wide-angle lenses, the Leica Summarit-S 70mm f/2.5 ASPH standard lens, the Leica APO-Macro-Summarit-S 120mm f/2.5 tele-macro lens and the Leica APO-Tele-Elmar-S 180mm f/3.5 telephoto lens. All use a central shutter with a guarentee of a minimum of 100,000 cycles.
• Leica APO-Summicron-M 50mm f/2 ASPH: A premium lens touted as Leica's best performing yet, this 50mm lens' construction incorporates glass designed for apochromatic correction and utilizes a floating element to produce high quality sharpness.
• New Limited Edition Leica M-9P "Edition Hermes": For someone who has literally everything, design house Hermes offers the stylish limited edition M-9.
• Leica X2: Next edition compact camera with a 16.2 megapixel APS-C sensor and 24mm f/2.8 lens. A new Viso-Flex electronic viewfinder accessory is sold separately as an alternative to composing images on the camera's 2.7-inch LCD.
• Leica V-Lux 40: Succeeding the V-Lux 30, the Leica V-Lux 40 offers a 20x optical zoom range, 14.1 megapixel 1/2.33-inch CMOS sensor and in-camera GPS tracking.
• Leica S-Adapter H: New adapter allows users to mount Hasselblad H lenses to Leica S- series cameras, retaining auto focus ability.

More details may be found at Leica's website.