Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/02/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Leica cannot compete with Canon and Nikon and if they try that road they will out of business in a fortnight. They occupy a niche market that has not proven profitable for any other manufacturer except Cosina. Cosina's failing is that they use a very cheap and noisy mechanical shutter. Leica's raison d'être, the optical line, is becoming somewhat moot in a world obsessed with digital. Perhaps that will change with a new sensor that can take advantage of Leica's optical finesse but that is not going to feed anyone in Germany or Portugal anytime soon. Though I am fond of the TTL, it has been a dead duck since the M7 was released. Frankly, what else could Leica do but try to woo the nostalgic and the practical back to the fold. If it has TTL flash, the only operational change from the TTL will be the smaller wrong/right way shutter dial. That is hardly a big deal. I prefer the larger TTL dial but I like the looks of the shorter top plate so it is a toss up in my book. Let's see, a regular production black paint camera, a reborn Leicavit and a shorter top plate, seems like they will sell a bunch of them to me. What will I do? I will stick with my two TTLs (0.72x and 0.58x) and my M2. All of them have RWs, thank you Tom, and what else could I possibly need? I am interested in the new optional rewind crank for my M2 as I never cared for the one from Mr, Wasserman. Hopefully Leica's will be a little more discrete. John Collier On Sunday, February 23, 2003, at 03:48 PM, Martin Howard wrote: > > Leica never ceases to amaze me. They cancel the production of the > M6TTL in favour of bringing out the M6P (or whatever it will be > called) which has less useful features and ignores some of the lessons > they've learnt during the production/design run of the M6/TTL/M7 years > (lack of on/off switch, old style rewind, and old (pre M6) shutter > dial to name three examples). > > To boot, they offer the finishes which people seem to desire the most > (if the LUG is anything to go by) on one camera only -- while > reserving the .58x and .85x for chrome cameras. > > They then follow this up with a poorly designed manual winder that > ignores the lessons learnt about *those* in the past, what, 30 years? > priced way out into the stratosphere. The fact that it is backwards > compatible with the older M4-M6TTL cameras is just about pointless > when the damn thing costs more than most s/h bodies in the first > place. > > It's like this company *wants* to go out of business. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html