Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/06/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Teresa and/or Kim wrote: > Oh come on. In the real world using a Leica anything is a joke. Not necessarily. Leaving the collector's market aside for a moment (who buy things, regardless of cost, simply because they exist) Leica's forte is mechanics and optics. These are two things that hold their value. Which means that buying a $2,000 lens may seem nuts, but the fact is that it is (a) likely to be useful 20 years from now, (b) likely to be sell-able 20 years from now. I bought a 1935 Leica II camera around 1999 and sold it a few years later (after having used it quite happily as a daily shooter) without loosing a penny (the opposite, in fact). If it had broken down, I could have had it fixed, for less than the combined purchasing price + cost of repair would bring in a sale, and I would have had a choice of qualified, competing, independent repair guys to choose from. Try doing that with a second-generation digital camera 64 years after its introduction. Even the madder-than-a-hatter Visoflex system, which in the face of competition at the time was a pretty bizarre move, made some kind of economic sense, because you can still use or sell the system today. Sure, it's waaaaay behind SLRs in terms of usefulness, but it has residual value. The only way I would be able to sell a tricked out IBM PC (first version) today is as a curiosity item. The point is this: A $5,200 digital back for the R8/R9 makes no economic sense for anyone except the insanely rich, or the insanely dumb. If you can afford to dump five grand on something simply because it says "Leica" on the front, great for you. Professionals who need that kind of digital quality will use an EOS1D (or, more probably, whatever is going to be available in 16 months time), because there are going to be alternatives that are cheaper, better quality, or both. > Yeah, $5,200 is a lot of money. So were the original digital offerings > that came out from Canon, Nikon and the other gods of the digital > world. Canon, Nikon, and Kodak could charge what they did for their early digital offerings because they were FIRST. They were breaking new ground, they were providing a competitive advantage to professionals who could afford to shell out $18,000 on a digital body becase (a) no-one else was offering one at $10,000, and (b) they knew that the advantages in speed made it competitive against film... even over an 18 month period. Leica has none of that. It is not first. It is unlikely to offer remarkably better quality than other offerings at the same (or lower) price, judging by past digital efforts from Leica. And it doubt very much that it is going to be cheaper than the competitors equivalent products. Which leaves happy amateurs. The number of happy amateurs that are going to drop $5,200 (using today's exchange rate -- and it's getting worse) on a graft-on digital back for their R8/R9 can probably be counted in the hundreds -- if that. Why? In five/ten years time, who's going to buy a second hand Digital-R back? What are you going to do if it needs to be repaired? How long is it going to work? We all know Leica's track record with electronics. (Ever considered the similarity between "Leica" and "Lucas"? Both are five letters long, they share three of those letters... ;) If you buy a new Digital-R back, you're going to have to kiss pretty much the whole investment goodbye, because very, very few people are going to want to buy it off you when the glitz of owning it has worn off. And in 2006 when the prices have plummeted, are you going to want to shell out $1,500 -- $2,000 on a two-generations old, second hand Digital-R back, or use that to buy a "proper" digital SLR from Canon, Nikon, or Olympus? It's a curiosity item. I'd love to see the economic and market plans for this item. What are they basing the recapturing of R&D costs on? 200 sales? A trickle-down of technology into hitherto unknown, cheaper, consumer-grade products? What would make sense? A $2,000 -- $3,000 component-based, prosumer grade, camera body that would take M, R, & Visoflex lenses. Austin is fond of saying that a digital back for M lenses won't work because of physical limitations -- and I for one trust his knowledge in this area enough to believe him. Which leaves R and Visoflex lenses. (Why viso? Cheapest, most flexible macro system in the world.) With the 14167 adaptor, you've got Visoflex lenses on an R body. Which leaves R lenses. Component-based? Yeah. This is electronics and software, guys. Make the imaging chip exchangable. Make the physical unit (the bits you hold and twiddle) the base, enable the owner to upgrade to the newest, greatest chip when it comes along (rip out the old module, plug in the new one) and make the software downloadable/upgradable. THAT makes economic sense, because you can see an upgrade path, you can protect your investment, and you know that you will be able to stay with the technological development withouth having to throw away an entire system. In some sense, it can be argued that that is exactly what Leica is going. But $5,200?? Come on. Pull the other one too. M. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html