Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Frank: On the other hand, Nikon didn't go the EOS route - and on its latest pro DSLRs, it allowed profiling for maximum lens aperture for any AI lens and focus-detection offsets for any lens. Nikon doesn't require a proprietary Nikon chip in the lens to function. That's the counterpoint. And it exudes confidence: you can have this feature if you want, and you can use your ratty old Vivitar lenses, but we know that in the end, you'll be back to buy an AF-s ED Nikkor with a big aperture and a gold ring on it. Get people in the door and then keep the purchase stream moving. You talk of moral obligations. Fair enough. There are no such obligations to support other people's products.* But Leica needs to "bust a gut" (as you say) to sell bodies just to stay in the game - any way it can. This is a pressure that does not exist with lenses - whose technology is slow-moving, whose development costs are smaller, and whose production proceeds in batches from long-stockpiled parts. The economic reality of digital cameras is that if you're not a volume producer, you're not going to get good electronics or good economies of scale (witness what an S2 costs...). The Leica M, assuming it sells a massive 20,000 a year (didn't the M8/8.2 sell 20,000 total?),** will have .014% of the digital camera market (140 million cameras a year, per Leica).*** You and I might like the "exclusivity," but the reality is that it translates into high unit prices for components, buying short runs of "end of life" electronics (c.f. the early change in M8 chips), and being dependent on what little technology that can be bought off-the-shelf outside the Japanese DSLR keiretsu. Kodak and Jenoptik do not have core competencies in making small-format, high-iso digital cameras. Moreover, from the user's standpoint, small production quantities also affect the availability of independent repair options (ever have a digital M fixed in the Fisk era at Leica USA?) and of aftermarket accessories. Few people would undertake to reverse-engineer the camera to repair it or to tool up to accessorize it when the potential market ceiling is so low. The fixation with "lifetime" cameras is also a little misplaced in the digital world: there is little reason to put a $500+ rangefinder mechanism with a 50-year lifespan (rather than the functionally identical but cheaper Japanese version) into a digital M body whose other components (like LCDs and electronics) have much shorter expected lives. Regardless of promises to "support" the cameras for 20 years, digital M cameras will be uneconomical to fix in about a quarter of that (because Leica has no ability to repair electronics except at the board level). Why not cut back a little on overbuilding that adds nothing to image quality (and that currently adds nothing to shock or water resistance) and instead put the money into sensors and electronics (the prime determinant of results during the product's expected lifetime)? Regards, Dante * Although if you spend time working in manufacturing or wholesaling, you'll see that competitors often buy, integrate and resell each other's products to achieve economies of scale and cut development costs. Before it was bought by Ford, Jaguar bought Delco air conditioners and Hydramatic transmissions. Lotus bought Toyota engines. Every Japanese camera company buys flashes from National (Panasonic). The Nikon D3x uses a Sony chip that Sony itself sells in its Alpha. Leica, for its part, bought zooms from Sigma, sourced SLR bodies from Minolta, rebrands compact digitals from Panasonic, and still buys the 21-28mm finder from Cosina (Voigtlander/Zeiss). ** We keep seeing the figure of 50 M9s being built a day. Over a 200-day work year, that's more like 10,000 annually. *** For the first year. We have already seen that Leica operates under the same forces any other industry does: a demand surge for the new model followed by a sales drawdown and price reductions to where marginal revenue runs down to marginal cost. NO ARCHIVE On Dec 22, 2009, at 2:05 AM, Frank Dernie wrote: > PMFJI again, but it is perhaps worth mentioning that Canon changed the EOS > mount electronics several times without telling 3rd party lens > manufacturers. This resulted in owners having to return lenses to their > manufacturer for modification to match. Until then they perhaps did not > function at all. They did the same with flash control. > What this means to me is that the onus is on the lens manufacturer, not > Leica, to make -their- customer happy. Why should Leica bust a gut to make > profit for Zeiss or Cosina??? > IMHO. > Frank > > On 22 Dec, 2009, at 06:46, grduprey at mchsi.com wrote: > >> Dante, >> >> You assume that Leica designed the M8/9 with extra memory for additional >> features. Leica has already admitted that there is very little space for >> this type of upgrade, at least in the M8, which does not look well for >> additional space in the M9, assuming they made the same design decisions. >> Granted since the M9 has this for their lenses, you could say there is >> room for other manufactures lenses. But then nobody else does this, so >> why would Leica do it? I would not hold my breath waiting for this. >> >> Gene > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information