RE: [Leica] Leica M6 AE

["Stewart, Alistair" <AStewart@gigaweb.com>]

Austin,

I believe Peter was referring to me as the other party in his conversation.
It might not sound right to you, but the issues are more complex than you
imagine. German law requires spare parts and serviceability-over-time that
would be abnormal in the USA. IC manufacturers require significant volumes,
of which Leica are incapable. The inventory management processes used take
all this and much more into account. When a manufacturer, for whatever
reason, stops making money on a product (assuming they can detect that),
unless there are good reasons, they cease production. This is only
indirectly related to their customers' inventory of some of their purchased
IC's being retained as spare parts, and not being used in production.

I'd be happy to discuss this with you if you want more detail.

best of light,

Alistair
- -----Original Message-----
From: Austin Franklin [mailto:austin@darkroom.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 10:39 AM
To: 'leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us'
Subject: RE: [Leica] Leica M6 AE


> He said that the reason for the TTL M6 wasn't so much TTL, but to
> justify the larger body that was needed to fit the electronics from the 
R8.
> He said that the electronics for the M6 meter were no longer available 
from
> the manufacturer and Leitz had no option but to use the R8 electronics 
for
> the meter.

[Austin] I don't know that I believe that.  How are they going to repair 
ALL the M6 non-TTL meters if they can't get any of the electronics?  I 
doubt it is patented, and they certainly could just have someone else 
'make' them, it isn't rocket science...  If some component went EOL (end of 
life) there would more than likely be an available replacement.  That juts 
doesn't sound correct to me.

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