Re: [Leica] Leicavit, After Market Products, etc.

[John Collier <jbcollier@shaw.ca>]

Low production copies should always be more expensive unless the 
original has an obscene profit margin or collector's value. The Bessa 
is cheap because the only expensive part is the viewfinder. That is 
amply illustrated by the price difference between a Bessa L and a R2.

The reason that other manufacturers do not make a high end rangefinder 
like the Leica is that production volumes are too low to recover costs. 
H*** Nikon ended up selling every Nikon S3 (special ed) at a loss and 
they are still languishing on the dealer's shelves. The S3 even has a 
very simple viewfinder compared to Leica's. The only serious attempt at 
a Leica competitor is the Konica Hexar RF which seems to have been done 
to raise the profile of the company (look what it did for Minolta). 
Konica now seems to be completely ignoring the RF line now.

John Collier

On Thursday, March 6, 2003, at 01:23 PM, Kit McChesney | acmefoto wrote:

> And really, B.D., can you say that economics has nothing to do with 
> what
> things cost? I mean, let's say that someone makes an MP 
> look-and-act-alike.
> And does it for less than Leica can do it. They've made a knockoff of 
> an MP
> by duplicating every part inside the camera, but have not had to 
> invest in
> the cost of design and manufacture that Leica had to make. And maybe 
> they
> improve on the design, too, in the process. But the investment in the 
> design
> isn't there. It's someone else's design. And design and development and
> research isn't cheap.

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html