Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/22

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Subject: [Leica] M8 Battery Redux
From: marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)
Date: Mon Jan 22 23:11:07 2007
References: <C1DAE8F5.DBD6%heninger@adobe.com> <B74FD8F2-50D2-4DAC-BBEB-FAA569FACEBF@charter.net>

At 01:56 AM 1/23/2007, you wrote:
 >This reminds me of when the first electronic Rolleis came out. Same
 >mess. Batteries were dying, drained while the camera was allegedly
 >off. Circuit boards and lens motors frying unexpectedly. Yep, some
 >sorry mess.
 >Rollei never recovered from that, among other reasons. It lasted
 >through two model generations, the SLX and the 6006. For a while one
 >could find them being given away in the back pages of Popular
 >Photography. By then, one could count on one hand how many 'real'
 >dealers could be found nationwide.

I understand what you are saying, but Rollei had 
moved beyond that by the early 1990's and owned 
the European pro MF market thereafter.  Tell me, 
just how many cameras does Hasselblad make 
today?  They never had a major battery problem, 
but they are gone, gone, gone, while Rollei continues.

It could be argued that Rollei made a mistake by 
moving from the SL66 to the electronic 
cameras.  Rollei had picked up all of that 
Voigtl?nder work on the electronic shutter and 
took it to heart.  Zeiss shared this but dumped 
it save for the late Zeiss Ikon Contarex 
Electronic cameras and their final spate of 
large-format lenses.  But Rollei soldiered on to 
produce some nice designs such as the SL35E and 
the SL3003.  But it took them a while to work up 
a basis in electro-mechanical shutters to the 
fully electronic shutters in the 600x line, and, 
yes, they did have a lot of problems which they overcame.

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!



Replies: Reply from Jim at hemenway.com (Jim Hemenway) ([Leica] M8 Battery Redux)
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In reply to: Message from heninger at adobe.com (Wade Heninger) ([Leica] M8 Battery Redux)
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