Re: [Leica] Where does Leica make its point and shoot cameras?

["Tom Schofield" <tdschofield@email.msn.com>]

The original Mini Zoom was more truly a re-badged matsushita camera, which
was sold under the Vivitar Series 1 name in the US and Panasonic in Europe.
If I recall correctly, the original Mini was also sold as a Minolta.  Now, I
guess it can be argued whether Leica did the lens computations, and I heard
that the coatings may have been different, QC higher on the Leica models,
and possibly different AE algorithims.  Don't get me wrong, these were great
little P&S's.  I gave one of the Vivitar Series 1 cameras similar to the
Mini Zoom to my step son.  When he came home from college and put his snaps
up on his bulletin board, I walked up and pointed out which ones were taken
with his camera and which were from others.  He was surprised!

Tom

> >You sound surprised.  Why?
>
> "rebadged", in my opinion, is just "re-branding" of an object with very
> small, if any, changes (mostly cosmetic). Like the Fuji MX-700/Leica
> Digilux, Fuji MX-1700/Leica Digilux Zoom and Fuji FinePix 4700/Leica
> Digilux 4.3 digital compact cameras.
>
> Leica's 35mm compact cameras are manufactured by a third-party, but with
> added Leica value like the lens computations. As such, they are not
> "rebadged" products, at least not in my dictionary. You cannot buy an
> *identical* camera under another brand name. The Minilux is not something
> you'll find on the marketplace under another name.
>
> I find it sad that, if what you say is true, Leica only put their name on
> another maker's product (in this case, Fuji again).
>
> Re-branding should be avoided as much as possible by Leica. While that
> may be different for other makes, the buying public is expecting
> something different from Leica !
>
> Case in point: a friend of mine was interested in buying his first
> digital camera. When I told him about the Fuji/Leica offerings, he was
> more than surprized when he heard that these are basically identical
> cameras. In his view, he had never expected Leica to do such thing, given
> the uniqueness of the Leica name.
>
> Pascal
> NO ARCHIVE