Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/11/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:30 AM 11/13/97 -0500, Doug Williams (R) wrote: >Hello...I was wondering if anybody could tell me about the mechanical Leica >R6/R6.2 bodies. I have a M body/lenses, but am thinking about the SLR side of >the coin. Other than the glass, what make the R6/R6.2 so expensive? Contax S2 >with the titanium covers sells new for about $1000.00. The Nikon FM2 sells for >less, even the titanium version sells for less. Yet I see the R6.2 selling for >quite a bit more (w/o the titanium cost factors.) I do realize the R bodies >are made to last, but I am looking for a bit more depth as to what makes the R >bodies so rugged and expensive. I think this is partly the usual Leica story of having to amortize large development costs over short production runs, but the R6 and R6.2 are also just a bit more fancy than the other cameras. The R6.2 is and was made in small numbers, but required a substantial development effort. It has some expensive little features, like mirror prefire, built-in diopter correction, and nighttime illumination of the f-stop scale, that require more cuts in the body and more parts inside. It offers a choice of spot and integral metering, and its meter is sensitive for a couple more stops than the Contax and Nikon offerings. I don't know if Leica did the shutter themselves, but it seems possible that they did, because there aren't any mechanical shutters I know of in current Japanese cameras with exactly the same specs -- so this would be quite an expensive proposition, with some unusual features for a mechanical shutter, such as an additional electromagnetic release (for the self-timer). These are nice little cameras. They really are uncompromising in some respects -- the developers clearly had in mind the famously expensive SL2 and tried to mimic its features (at lower cost, of course). The R6 can be had for about $1000 used, and of course you get access to the superb R lens line. You might want to try one.