[Leica] Leica's manufacturing

[Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie)]

Most Japanese branded cameras are made in China now. Nikon and Canon  
still make their most expensive cameras in Japan, but Olympus, for  
example even makes the E3 in China.

A friend of mine is was involved in the development of the BMR  
loudspeaker driver. To make these at a saleable price the production  
items are made in China and quality control has been a real problem,  
with production units bearing little relationship to prototypes  
initially.

Japanese manufacturing is excellent, and their product design very  
clever. I remember evaluating some competitive (with my British  
client's products) Japanese items in the '70s. The external finish,  
fit and control feel was exemplary and all achieved with the simplest  
inexpensive internal parts and the styling was good but subservient to  
inexpensive production engineering. The products were actually nowhere  
near their published specs either, though no customer would be able to  
check this. The UK product designers had to fit the functionality to  
the stylists whim, with external control positions nowhere near  
sensibly placed relative to the internal parts, resulting in complex  
and expensive linkages (unappreciated by any customers).
The production engineering cost of the Japanese items was about 15% of  
the cost of the British models, and had the same retail price.  
Needless to say, the British company closed down in the early 80s...

I think the Leica is functional in both design and styling. They are  
aware of the importance of extreme precision in the manufacture and  
assembly of the parts. I do not believe that any of the Japanese  
manufacturers have been close to producing the precision that Leica  
do, but most customers are not in a position to check this. One only  
needs to look at how crude the shutter is on the Nikon S and F series  
cameras was, compared to the Leica, and yet exposure evenness was  
acceptable to most/all customers and the item, yet again, probably  
cost about 15% of the Leica design, so the extra accuracy and  
consistency was probably unnecessary/masked by film latitude/not  
noticed by customers and  a waste.
If one looks at this site, which I pointed out a few weeks ago, it is  
clear that manufacturing a MF digital camera sufficiently accurately  
to fully exploit the technology of the sensor is a big problem,  
probably bigger than the makers know, or acknowledge, it is OMO likely  
that many cameras are not sufficiently precisely made to achieve the  
full potential of their sensor, but most/all customers will never check.

<http://www.josephholmes.com/news-medformatprecision.html>
<http://www.josephholmes.com/news-sharpmediumformat.html>

I do believe Leicas are made sufficiently precisely to get the full  
potential of the sensor. I hope they become sufficiently profitable to  
continue to do this. It is impressive to me, as an engineer, that they  
are selling the M9 at a lower list price than Canon's 1Ds mk3 and  
Nikons D3x when one considers the relative production volumes.

Frank

On 16 Sep, 2009, at 04:05, Richard Taylor wrote:

>  Japan is the best at releasing high quality high-tech goods these  
> days.  I never give the reliability of Nikon, Olympus or Panasonic  
> cameras a second thought when buying one.