[Leica] IMG: LHSA Rochester

[jshul at comcast.net (Jim Shulman)]

The LHSA Meeting was a wonderful chance to see so many members of the LUG.
The people were wonderful; the PowerPoint presentations got to be a little,
well, tedious. (I described the presentations somewhat more bluntly to
Tina.)

Most impressive (to me) was that Leica Camera is investing some serious coin
in R&D, much of which will come to fruition as products for 2008's
Photokina.  During a guessing game session with Leica Camera, the following
are unsubstantiated rumors that might just occur, including:

Rumor one: A digital R camera, with AF and a larger than 24x36 sensor.  
Rumor two: A new M camera with full frame sensor and a remedy to some of the
ills that ail the current M8.
Rumor three: a newly computed f0.9 Noctilux to replace the current version.

And my thought: if Leica is going in these directions, can brand C/V and Z
be far behind, at lower prices?

Leica currently has more than 25 lenses in development, though there was no
breakdown as to the applications.  Speaking of applications, there is going
to be a new area of concentration: Leica cinema, supposedly with lenses and
projection systems.  Perhaps the high resolution digital projector we really
crave will come from Leica?

That, sadly, was a weak point in the show.  PowerPoint (and the projection
system used) just doesn't have nearly the image resolution we crave--a
contrast between LHSA images from PowerPoint projection and then from
standard 35mm slides was the difference between Kansas and the Land of Oz.

We did learn that Leica is still committed to their film cameras, though
most of the M film cameras are now purchased through the A La Carte program.


North America accounts for well less than half of Leica's sales--so I would
hazard a guess that we shouldn't expect any major price adjustments to
compensate for the rapidly falling US dollar.  

I did get to see samples of the new "budget" Leica Summarit lenses, where
looked really impressive--mainly for their smaller size.  Smaller lenses are
increasingly attractive to my ageing corpus.

Interesting hint from Constantine Manos: to bring out color saturation in
the M8, underexpose it by 1/3 stop--just like Kodachrome!

And to Tom A.--George Eastman will never be quite the same.

Jim Shulman
Bryn Mawr, PA
Who sent off his two rolls of Tri-X reversal double-8 film, shot on a
Leicina 8SV at the LHSA meet.




-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+jshul=comcast.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+jshul=comcast.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Henning
Wulff
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:42 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: [Leica] IMG: LHSA Rochester

Here are some quick looks at the LHSA meeting and events in Rochester:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hwulff/rochester/?g2_page=1


-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
  |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com

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