[Leica] Leica is buying the Epson R-D1 technology!

[aaron.sandler at duke.edu (Aaron Sandler)]

It's one thing to play an April Fools' Joke...but that's just downright 
cruel! ;-)

At 07:42 AM 4/1/2004, you wrote:
>According to a Lecia web forum, Leica is buying the Epson R-D1 technology! 
>They claim that this will allow them to ship the digital M by the year's 
>end, instead of in 2006. They have a crash team adapting their 10 
>Megapixel full frame sensor to the R-D1 body and release it as Leica R-D1 
>by Photokina. The team that was working on the original Leica Digital M 
>will continue to work on R-D2, that uses the Leica M7 body instead o the 
>modified Voigtlander R2. Due to this buyout, Epson will not be releasing 
>the R-D1 as announced :-( Of course we will have a full frame camera 
>instead of the 1.5x crop factor so this is good news indeed.
>
>Apparently the deal only works because Epson couldn't see how they can 
>sell the R-D1 into this niche market. So instead of just dropping the 
>whole project, they cut their losses and struck a deal with Leica. There 
>are some rumors that Epson bought out the Hermes shares of Leica (30%) at 
>200% premium to make the transaction appealing to Hermes, but there's no 
>independent confirmation for now.
>
>// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
>use richard@imagecraft.com)