[Leica] Teds comments

Mon Sep 22 20:33:41 PDT 2014

As if by coincidence, from Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer Blog
today - this is the full excerpt of one of the postings.
Cheers
Jayanand

*Money utility *

Several months ago when I last met Ctein in Madison—May, it was—he had with
him a Panasonic 12–35mm lens that John Camp had loaned him. I put it on my
OM-D E-M1 and was instantly smitten: it seemed just the right lens for that
camera to me. I love the optical look of that lens, too. (Or at least I
think I do. It could be that I'm just falling prey to suggestibility,
looking at online samples and letting my imagination fill in what I want to
be seeing.)

I intended to get one. But shortly thereafter, stocks of that lens ran out.
It's been back-ordered at B&H Photo for months. (We forget, but Panasonic
does this regularly with various products.)

Then reader B.R. George pointed out something very interesting yesterday,
which is that the entire Panasonic LX100 costs $100 less than the Panasonic
12–35mm zoom lens alone...and the lens on the LX100 is slightly faster and
has slightly greater range than the standalone lens to boot. So it's like
they're throwing in the entire camera for free, and then some.

And that's from the same company.

Between different companies, the contrast is even greater. A similar
thought occurred to me when Jack MacDonough brought his Leica T by the
house recently—much as I liked the T, in comparison with my utilitarian
Sony NEX-6 it reminded me of that super lightweight Porsche which they took
a lot of and then charged more for. Slick as the T is (and it's beautiful,
a work of art), it omits a number of features that I want, and that I
like—and that I get to have on the Sony. And yet the Leica costs fives
times what the Sony (admittedly, on closeout) is currently going for. The
value equation is...disparate.

Digital can be enormously expensive...but it can also be remarkably cheap.
All you have to do is be willing to buy a less popular camera once it
reaches end-of-lifecycle closeout. You can't be too picky if you're looking
for the best deal, but the argument could be made that you don't need to
be, because so many cameras are so competent these days. As B.R. George and
the curious case of the LX100 vs. 12–35mm zoom reminds us, the money
utility equation with this stuff is all over the place.

For another case in point, consider that the Leica T's initial lens
offering, the Summicron-T 23mm ƒ/2 ASPH, is being manufactured by a no-name
Pacific-rim OEM optical supplier. (Something Leica admits while also
declining to name names.) It's ideally spec'd by my lights, and a better
size than my Zeiss equivalent, but, considering that provenance, and its
~$2k pricetag, that lens also comes with a very thick built-in padding of
profit margin. No, not for you.

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 12:11 AM, Frank Filippone <red735i at verizon.net>
wrote:

> I think you are reading too much into my comments. I have no problem with
> the pimped out versions. T.hey require little resources. They yield,
> presumably, higher margins ( however, given the short runs of a few
> hundreds, I doubt the total extra income is really significant to the total
> bottom line).   I am not a fan,  true.
>
> The M9p ( I think this was the Seal influenced camera) was an example of
> short run, heavy resources used, little flow over to standard edition
> cameras. Ditto the M-M3 version we now have offered. It is limited
> production, required major effort ( new tooling, new body, new/truncated
> FW, etc) but will it yield the average user anything?
>
> Leica M mount users need more feature rich cameras.  In detail, better
> high ISO noise, a model that has an EVF, maybe a monochrome CMOS sensor,
> better battery use, etc.
>
> Growth and success depend on innovation and response to the needs and
> desires of the larger community. When Leica last lost hold if that concept
> they almost ceased to exist.
>
> BTW and unrelated, did you note that the newer silver lenses are made from
> aluminum, not brass barrels?
>
> Kaufmann's red APO Summicron too.
>
>
> Frank Filippone
> Red735i at verizon.net
>
> On Sep 22, 2014, at 7:44 AM, Jayanand Govindaraj <jayanand at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Frank,
> True, but you would probably not buy even then, and these "Special
> Editions" do sell out fast, and also deliver the high margins required
> to keep normal R&D chugging along in a company of Leica's size. A
> judicious mix of the two is really the only sensible course for Leica
> to prosper as a company.
>
> Who can blame the company for the Digilux line either, when consumers,
> it has been proven time and again, are only too willing to pay a hefty
> premium for a red dot? Any self respecting luxury company will price
> its products at what the market will bear, not on a cost plus basis.
> After all, one of the fundamental tenets of the Laws of Contract is
> "caveat emptor"...
>
> Cheers
> Jayanand
>
> > On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Frank Filippone <red735i at verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > There are 2 kinds of special edition cameras:  one uses garish finishes
> and leathers to pimp up the standard body or lens.  This uses infinitesimal
> R+D resources. Think gold bodies with ostrich leather in wooden boxes
> > The other uses totally new body castings, added or subtracted features
> to the HW/SW.  This is like a new development, requiring much work of
> resources. Think M9P, M Edition 60, etc.  made in small quantities, 99.99%
> of us never get a chance to use these new or revised cameras.
> >
> > Maybe, in this population, we would rather the resources spent in
> developing new, more useful gadgets in our M for all of us rather than the
> pimped out version or those with limited availability.
> >
> > YMMV
> >
> > Frank Filippone
> > Red735i at verizon.net
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Leica Users Group.
> > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
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