Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/12/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]That will hurt a lot of people Ted, but it's more or less what I wrote to David Young off-list a while back. I might just add that Leica has already long since become a company almost solely supplying professional standard equipment to rich amateurs and collectors. Statistics here show that the total annual turnover of second hand Leica equipment is now way above the figures for any new equipment. Yourself,Tina Manley and a very few others have upheld the proof that a Leica is, can be, could be and should be a professional camera. Leica should be asking themselves " If our stuff is so good why aren't people using it?". The permanent management crisis goes IMO back to the relics of the "Family Firm" They never had managers as such, just a grey eminence somewhere who decided on policy without discussion (BTW a German management trait, after 30 years in a German company where managers think (and say) they're allowed to shout at people and insult them because they're managers I now think this IS typical). On this basis Leica missed the boat at the start of SLR technology, TTL-metering, Auto-focus, Half-frame, 110 format, APS and now digital - plenty of prototypes and pre-production models but then THE WORD from ABOVE - THIS IS NOT LEICA AS WE KNOW IT!! It's a wonder Barnack ever managed to get his stuff approved! Regarding customer/user feedback Leica has been sitting on it's ears for years, I know some people like it, but did anyone want the M5? Why did it have to be Minolta that made the right decision (within limits) to update the CL to a CLE? Leica is not in the Black Forest, they are heading for a black hole and with their "new" developments they are not only going to miss the boat, nobody bothered listening to the directions of how to find the pier. It will, of course, be a sad day when Leica Camera finally folds, but they only have themselves to blame. I will definitely miss them, maybe shed a tear or two, but then business as usual from then on. There's a german saying which translates as "Other mothers have pretty daughters too" which seems to be appropriate. Maybe in 10 years or so there will be a working industrial museum of photography in Solms, probably run by Zeiss (or maybe a chinese consortium)producing a la carte souvenirs for rich tourists,who knows?. regards from the land of Leica and Rollei (for whom the bell is already tolling again) Douglas Still using a bunch of Leicas but also not allergic to a couple of Canon's DSLRs when appropriate, and finding them becoming more and more so. BTW Leica never was in the Black Forest, that's where Cuckoo-clocks and cakes come from. Leica is in the state of Hessen, where the Hessian mercenaries were hired to fight in the Americas.