[hankg]

While the rangefinder way of seeing is still valid in the digital age there is one major hurdle to overcome. If you want to expand the M market beyond it's aging base you need to get digital rangefinder's in the hands of students and young photographers. In the film era as SLR's became ascendant an aspiring photographer could pick up a used M3 or M4 for to not to much and a new generation of RF shooters was born. I still remember picking up my first Leica a used M4 at Olden Camera in NY in the 70's it replaced my student Pentax.

Without new young blood it's just a matter of time before Leica's customer base dies off. I think Leica needs a reasonably priced reportage camera something between a Ricoh GRD and an M. It could be a fixed lens compact with an APS-C or 4/3 sensor with an excellent optical viewfinder. Maybe it could be the first step in a new digital line. A Barnack camera for the 21st century. The M carries a lot of expensive baggage and not all of it is an advantage in digital - the expensive complex optical finder, digital-unfriendly M mount compatibility, the M form - there is really no way Leica can risk messing with the M formula. Leica should make an M for the forseeable future but it needs something more and more forward looking to survive.

If you didn't have to have M compatibility so you could leverage cheap DSLR technology, and you could make it in Asia, and you had maybe 2 fixed lens models maybe a 28/2.8 and 40/2 equivalent (or 21 and 35). You should be able to come up with a $1600. camera ideally the size of a screw mount Leica or smaller. Skew the performance to higher speeds with a base ISO of 200 and a usable 2500.

There really is not a viable market for Rolex cameras in the digital age. To expensive to develop for to small a market.