[Leica] leica zeitgeist

[photovilla at aol.com (Rich)]

<<However, I do truly hope I am misinterpreting the "Leica Zeitgeist" 
comment.
I do truly hope they are not actually trying to create, foment, gestate,
instill, force-feed or piddledate some ethereal Zeitgeist in or into a 
digital M
body. After all, one man's Zeitgeist is another man's historical, and
irrelevant, artifact. In camera design, I'm betting it's suicide by 
committee. >>

I should clarify. The "Leica Zeitgeist" comment is mine, not his.

Perhaps what I was thinking was the conflation of some of very "now" 
technology with some of that "retro" feel that most M's have. (Maybe 
more -say the MP than M7- but none of them feel like a Nikon D70 or 
Canon EOS wiz-banger etc. post-modern super plastic.)

I don't know if Zeitgeist is the right word for that, but it as close as 
any I can think of. This reminds me of the debates I used to lose in 
grad. school trying to read Hegel. Oh well, I think I lose again, but it 
is ok as perhaps I clarrified a bit. ;>

<<Leica's demise?>>

If there are 300+ million people just in the USA and 8 (?) billion on 
the planet, 99.999% of them will find everything Leica makes to be an 
"irrelevant artifact" and that other .001% will keep them going strong.

Probably only 1% of that .001% is ever even going to find this 
thread...so it really doesn't take too much to keep them going. If .001% 
of the world's population could afford $3k cameras that alone would be 
pretty impressive, never mind upgrade those to digital, with its 
correlate of upgrades every 2 years.

A while back I read (maybe here?) that they were only going to make 
10,000 of the Digilux2 for the total run. I think I heard also that the 
new digital R module is going to have a run of about 2000.

That is a drop in the bucket compared to Canon (200,000 10D's were made 
in one month I was told a while back) or Nikon (still not a big company 
btw) and yet it is enough to be worth it to them to do (I presume)...so 
they don't need a home run, they can just play small ball and stay in 
the game.

My .02. Not anyone elses...

cheers,
Rich






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