Re: [Leica] R8/R9 Digital Back announced

[Slobodan Dimitrov <sld@earthlink.net>]

Does that mean the Fotron will never have a second life?
Slobodan Dimitrov


Martin Howard wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
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