[Leica] New Leica digital rangefinder system ? , was: new M lens?

[director at ubi.edu (Lucien)]

B. D. Colen wrote :

> The first is that your ideal system requires
> that people with thousands, if not 10s of thousands of dollars invested
> in current Leica M glass simply throw it away and start over. Well, the
> reality is that there aren't enough people out there with that kind of
> money who would want to spent it that way.

I think their is a bigger market for an up-to-date digital rangefinder 
designed for new customers than for a Digital M designed only to please 
current Leica M lenses users.

> The second problem is that
> rangefinders are now a tiny, tiny niche photography market. And high
> priced system rangefinders are an even tinier niche - it just doesn't
> make business sense.

Again, I see a market for digital rangefinder targeted for 
photo-journalist, street photographer, amateur, who don't want and 
don't need a camera the size of a 1D Mark II or D2H(X), but want the 
same quality and ease of use in a portable package.

The pictures made with a Leica M7 can easily match (at least)  the 
quality of the pictures from a Canon EOS 1v or Nikon F5.

But a Digital M, the way Leica intend to make it, will ask more 
"Photoshoping" than any modern Digital SLR in the future, because of 
the lack of complete exif due to the lack of information coming from 
the Leica M lenses.

To bad, because the current Leica M's wide-angle lenses used on a 
digital camera will have great use of new softwares like DxO.

http://www.dxo.com/EN/index.htm

I prefer to be out there taking pictures than to stay behind a computer 
because Leica want to stick to an old bayonet.

> And second, Leica's decision to go with an R back,
> rather than with an auto focus digital SLR that would take the current 
> R
> lenses or new autofocus lenses should make it clear that Leica isn't
> going into digital in a really serious way; instead, the company is
> trying to save themselves with half-measures. And introducing a whole
> line of digital M lenses, or going to the 4/3 standard isn't a half
> measure.

Yes.

I don't think the sales of the R-Digital Back will ever cover its R&D 
costs, just like the R8 sales never did...

By the way, the Digital-R will not need ROM lenses to work, which may 
means the same "exif" problem with its pictures.

And the Digital-R will not work in TTL mode with flash. It will only 
work in A mode, because R8 and R9 are not compatible with pre-flash.

Not such a big problem, but for a 2004 product...

Lucien