[Leica] Lifespan of digital cameras

[hoppyman at bigpond.net.au (G Hopkinson)]

Henning I think you have made very valid points there. Maybe battery or 
media availability might be issues too. I think that we have
gone through a number of years now where the digital prices have declined 
markedly compared to the early examples. Now we seem to be
seeing more and more capability for similar money, a la Moore's law as you 
said. I think it is fair to say that many current DSLRs
or compacts are not built nor priced with an expectation of M3 type life 
spans. This is in accordance with what the market demands.
The same might be said of most consumer technology of course.
Applying the same criteria to film cameras:
They can be very expensive or difficult to fix, unless you go back to 
entirely mechanical designs,
Here in Aus locally just a CLA on something like a Nikon F3 might easily 
exceed the second hand price for another unit. A CLA for a
1.4 50 for it is maybe twice the price of a replacement off the Bay.
Batteries in the case of the older mercury designs are an issue,
Finally, media still available ATM! Thank you Fujifilm.

Cheers
Hoppy

-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Leica] Lifespan of digital cameras

One of the issues with digital cameras, and why they often might seem 
to have a short lifespan is that

a) They are expensive to fix,
b) Parts are not readily at hand and cannot be installed by just any 
good camera technician,
c) After a couple of years fixing a camera that cost $750 new doesn't 
make a lot of sense if a new, better feature camera of a similar type 
costs the same as the repair. That's not really the fault of the 
camera, but purely a function of the fact that digital cameras are 
mostly computers, and Moore's Law comes into the equation.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
  |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com

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