Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 11:56 AM 11/28/1999 -0800, Jim Brick wrote: > >I guess I'm wondering, if the Viso is so good, and nothing since has even >come close to being as good, why did they stop making them? You probably were using a Viso II. Try it again with a III: it's a bit more flexible, Jim. It isn't that the Viso is "so good", it is that it is a necessary compliment to the general-purpose Leica M or LTM set. It makes a really fine camera even better. As to why Leitz quit making them? Two things: the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and the family had nothing more to contribute. When Wild looked Leitz over, they told them to cut back on their unprofitable lines. At the time, this was the M gear in general -- note that LONG spell between new lenses, from 1982 until '91 or so? And R sales were solid at that time, which Wild liked -- so the Telyts went to the R's. This created a storm of protest as, since the death of Zeiss Ikon, technical companies wanting to buy German could only go to Leica to get everything from microscope to lab gear to camera body. Once the Viso was killed, it took Leitz five years to begin offering the range of doo-dads for the R's necessary to fit them to this unaccustomed task (shades of the motor drive for the R8!), and an entire market was wounded, if not lost. Attorneys are crafty and underhanded folks. When you have a lab tech or doc on the stand, and start examining him about his gear, HE knows he damn well better answer "Zeiss" or "Leica" or your experts will chew him into dogfood. The jury does not want to hear "Pentax" or "Nikon" no matter how good their stuff is: neither one is known as a great producer of lab gear. And a Viso was perfect for this use and had stable, though small, sales. So they axed it, just one of the dozens of dumb corporate decisions littering the board rooms of the German camera industry since the Second World War. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!