[Leica] Any S2 experiences?

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Monday, Oct 20, 2008 around 7PM EST it as raining went to Bergdorf Goodman,
third floor and I was not at all sure what it was I was going to. 5th Avenue
across from the Apple store and the Pulitzer fountain and the Plaza Hotel
where rich people get married... In NY we have department stores in which
everything instead of being cheap are very expensive and classy. That's
Bergdorf's.
Hubertus von Hohenlohe. I'd never heard of. And it had something to do with
Leica.
I made it up there through some solid security in a closed building down
hallways and up elevators and found myself underdressed surrounded by
society types. I was shooting continually with my D40x  wearing a dripping
raincoat. People were dressed formally.
Dr. Andreas Kaufmann was there in the middle looking like a kid with a new
toy.
And it was in his hands. It said S2 on it. and he handed it to me. He was
smiling .
I shot a bunch of pictures for several minutes standing there with it with
him and these people all checking me out I was having a ball. He told me it
was AF as I was focusing it manually. But the  AF would not work and then
the battery went out. . And they didn't have another one. And the soir?e was
only a third over.  Meanwhile a photographer fella I think from Germany
they'd hired who I saw in Rochester the first time I met Kaufmann was again
shooting him with his Olympus 4/3's camera. I didn't think it was
practically good PR that they would not be having that done with an M8. But
nobody was thinking about the M8 at that point the S2 was about to take the
photo world by storm and everybody knew it. And everybody wanted one. And a
few of these people I think by now have one.
Clicking off those pictures and don't know if there was a card in the camera
or not I got a giddy feeling of power. I knew that I could outshoot any
photographer in Dodge City. I was taking no prisoners. It was a tremendous
feeling I've not gotten over.
The best way to sell this camrea is to simply hand it to sombody and let
them play with it for a minute.  I never got over it just like I never got
over going 2 blocks in a twelve cylinder green Jaguar XKE in 1973 when I was
21. 8 cylinders is not enough.
The shots I got that night of people trying out the S2 I'll put on the lug
gallery tonight or soon. I shot quite a few.

Christian Erhardt looked very happy holding one and I think he wanted it.
There were glass cases of very old Leica prototypes in the corners and
visions of sugarplums .... Two days later he had it at the photo show at
Jacob Javits center and was being videoed.

The camera feels like a very well balanced top of the line 24x36mm DSLR
which just happens to have a  30x45mm sensor in it -
A 37.5 million pixel packing mama with stealth black internal focusing
glass. Very sexy. Iron man I think placed an order for one. And one for his
blond girlfriend assistant.

The people running Hasselblad now  need to get that system going on a faster
track (it drags) with better optics or their market share is going to
plummet. And I  think that is going to happen.
Leica is making a very big splash.. I think any catalog which is not junk is
going to be wanting to be shot with the Leica S camera system in the next
year or sooner. As will a slew of other High profile commercial photographic
print and display jobs. I think a lot of the shooting will be tethered with
art directors looking at very large apple monitors making sure everything is
going well.
We're going to be seeing a lot of pictures of stuff we want very badly taken
by the Leica  S camera system which we're also going to we want very badly.
But like the Hasselblads they are going to be mainly rented. I'm not that
plugged into how much money there is in that.

[Rabs]
Mark William Rabiner