[Leica] finally got my R9/DMR back-yesterday

[bensonga at gmail.com (Gary Benson)]

*afirkin at afirkin.com* wrote:
>I too have the digital back for the 'blad. Its far from perfect

I don't own any camera that is perfect....and I don't expect them to be so.

>and to be honest was not as good a solution as the DMR in many ways,

I don't own a DMR, so I really can't comment on this comparison.

>but it does work and work very well.*.....

*Agreed,

>The battery is indeed easy to get, but makes the camera a bit 'ugly' and
less ergonomic.

Obviously, a subjective opinion,,,,,I don't have a problem with the "look"
or ergonomics of my 503CWD, with external battery.  Quite the contrary.

>These cameras however were made for film, and I don't see many car owners
expecting their petrol car to run on Hydrogen.

Not a relevant comparison, in my opinion.  It's pretty easy (and now days
reasonably affordable) to add a digital back to a Hasselblad or Mamiya
medium format camera.

>It was 'gutsy' of both firms to try to keep their aging designs in use,
but the limitations of the solutions,
>the cost of research and development and the cost of maintaining a small
camera base was never going to work.

In the case of Hasselblad and Mamiya....it is working just fine.
Hasselblad released a 50 megapixel version of the CFV a year or two ago,
which is in production and still available. Mamiya/Leaf and Phase One are
still making digital backs in a variety of resolutions for the Mamiya 645
and RZ67 Pro IID cameras.   Not to mention Canon, Nikon etc who made the
transition from film to digital SLRs quite nicely.

It's only Leica who decided to pull the plug on their established base of
owners (R system, of course).  Instead of putting the money into a digital
R10, they spent the research and development dollars on an entirely new
platform, the S system.  That might have been the right decision for the
Leica corporation, but it certainly wasn't good news for R system owners.

Gary Benson
Eagle River, Alaska
R8, R6.2, R3....and 8 R lenses.