[Leica] No fool's paradise

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

On 1999-08-04 Rob Schneider said:
   >I, however, must live in a fool's paradise.  Neither of my
   >cameras scratch up film, my rangefinders are accurate, my meters
   >are accurate, my shutters don't leak light (except when fired),
   >my lenses (all Solms) don't fall apart, my pictures look
   >fantastic.  This is the best 35mm equipment I have ever used.  It
   >does exactly what I want 35mm gear to do.

If I define Leitz equipment as being equipment either designed or
built before the Leitz family sold its majority shareholding, then I
can say: "None of my Leitz cameras scratch up film, my Leitz
rangefinders are accurate, all but one of my Leitz meters are
accurate, my Leitz shutters don't leak light, my Leitz lenses don't
fall apart... This is the best 35mm equipment I have ever used."

The only item of post-family-era gear not to have given me a problem
was my table-tripod (and given that it's only three castings and a
wing nut, what else could I expect?).

One of the surprises I had during the LHSA expedition to Wetzlar and
Solms earlier this year was that most members of the Leica HISTORICAL
Society were carrying M6s (I had the only Leicaflex, and one of the
few screw cameras.) Talking with the other members during the trip, it
became obvious that their experience of Solms-era equipment mirrors
that of Rob Schneider. So I conclude from this that I may simply have
been unlucky, and the vast majority of equipment leaving Solms is
probably as trouble free as the earlier Leitz equipment was.  So Rob
Schneider isn't living in a fool's paradise - he and the majority of
Leica customers are getting the quality they have paid for.

However, postings from others concerning problems they have had with
R8s, M6s and modern lenses leads me to a second conclusion - today's
Leica company is not as good as pre-1974 Ernst Leitz Wetzlar was as
detecting such problems as do arise. Although the sophistication of
today's test methods at Solms is impressive, Leica simply does not
have the cheap manpower which allowed the labour-intensive inspection
methods of the past. Writing in the mid-1950s. Lipinski warned in his
book "Miniature and precision cameras" that Leitz would be unable to
maintain its traditional assembly and inspection techniques. It is to
the old company's credit that it was able to maintain those
traditional standards for a further two decades.
Cameras and lenses will never be manufactured in that way again.

The challenge which Leica faces today is one of tightening up its
inspection and testing procedures to reduce the number of problems
which a minority of customers is seeing, and reviewing the effects
that some of its cost-cutting design decisions have had on product
quality and reliability. Forty years ago a Leica cost as much as a
car, yet the company faced an unprecedented demand for its products.

Regards,

Doug Richardson