Should Leica introduce a M8.3?

[andybarton]

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I am not responding to this any more, given that I have never said many of the things attributed to me.

[redbaron]

Why don't we just vote, as the OP suggests?

 

I'll run the "No" campaign and Frank can run the "Yes" campaign. God knows what the results will be, or what we can do with them, but what the hell.

 

I'll present my party platform ONLY if voters want to hear it.

 

Vote away!

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[Guest BigSplash]

I have yet to understand how you think that this M8.3 could be made much, much (i.e.40%) cheaper than they make M9s now. The sensor is more or less the same price, the viewfinder is the same. The body, presumably, remains brass and other metal (or are you proposing a plastic M?) and the other bits and pieces are all the same cost.

 

So that leaves a bit of electronics and wiring up the sensor to the microchip. I can't see £2,000 of savings there.

 

So, how are they going to achieve this?

 

Andy please stop mixing up "MARKET DRIVEN PRICING" and "COST TO MANUFACTURE"...they are different animals and that drives the 40% number you refer to.

 

How can you say that the sensor price is roughly the same? Jaapv told us it is cheaper to make smaller chips than large ones......and I last year argued that this was wrong on the basis that small 5 year old technology chips are a hell of a lot more expensive than current technology large chips. The ultimate of course is a small chip in today's technology that enjoys the learning of the big chip sister but runs in larger production volumes.

 

The bits and pieces you refer to should be the same board probably based on the Maestro chip set, whic may have some functionality unavailable for the M8.3 variant. The good news is that using the same basic board drives up the volues and reduces the cost for both models!. I would not recommend using the M8 DSP based electronics board which is IMHO a weakness in terms of performance, level of integration and cost.

[pico]

This BigSplash thing is like a toothache. No more for me. Besides, the gales of laughter coming from Solms is enough amusement.

[jaapv]

(unless of course the world economy has gone to hell in a handcart between now and then, in which case people won't be buying cameras at all)

Even then, Andy. Leica was doing quite well during the Great Depression,developing their expensive new camera. There are always people with money, regardless of the stateof the economy.

[jaapv]

Jaapv told us it is cheaper to make smaller chips than large ones

Excuse me? When did I make that unwarranted extrapolation?

And since when am I the world's #1 expert on sensor pricing?

[janki]

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One thing that I have noticed here in this forum, is that it seems particularly sensitive to make so-called wish lists.

One should preferably not do that, because it will very easily be interpreted as a hostile act against the Leica Company.

 

How is it possible to think like that?

 

Some wish lists seem weird, others more reasonable.

Some wishes will succeed, others will not.

 

This forum is worth "millions" for Leica.

Forums like this are worth "millions" for most companies in the photo-industry.

 

One single post is perhaps not important, but all the posts together show important trends.

There are agencies, which can be hired to search for specific topics in newspapers.

Similarly, there are of course agents that are monitoring the formation of opinion on the Internet.

 

In one of several threads about President Medvedev, in this forum, I expressed that from Russia we cannot expect anything than simple commodities.

 

Some days later, Medvedev went public and stated that Russia is a country in stagnation.

He said one of the most important tasks for him to come would be to make Russia an innovative country to be reckoned with.

 

The man is a "Leica man". He studies this forum! !

 

I'm quite sure that the Leica Company does that as well.

 

Some of our ideas will find their way into new products, some not.

It's as simple as that.

[bill]

Gentlemen, why on Earth are you validating this pernicious gibberish by feeding the troll? He twists every single thread to the same agenda via misquotation, ''misunderstanding'' and outright fantasy.

 

The message has not changed, no other contribution is made, no value is added, no interest is shown in any topic other than how Leica can be ''saved''.

 

Wake up and see this laundry-list nonsense for what it is - a vehicle to bash Leica over and over again.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[AbbeyFoto]

I am not responding to this any more, given that I have never said many of the things attributed to me.

 

Yep - it's out of control again, but I do not think Leica is blameless here. Many of you want to say the M8 is dead but this runs counter to Leica history. Is the IIIf dead? Is the M3 dead? Is the M4 dead? Is the classic M6 dead? I hope I make myself clear. Leica M camers do not die. (Andy: Is the Hassleblad 500 system dead?) No.

 

Jaap suggested the M8 had reached it's technical limits. That maybe true but that does not stop M8 owners and potential owners feeling abandoned by Leica. Let me be clear, as I said elsewhere, I am increasingly happy with my M8.2 but I do feel let down by Leica. It is as simple as that. My "investment" in my M8.2 helped Leica through a bad patch and now I have to work work around the weaknesses of my M8, I do not see Leica helping me.

 

Chris

[redbaron]

The term "dead" is, perhaps, not appropriate, since we are talking about an inanimate object. Terms such as "superseded" and "obsolete" might be better.

 

Whichever name you give it, its R&D is finished.

 

Would Porsche, Rolex, Apple, or any other right thinking company release a cheaper version of a discontinued model?

[dcoombs]

... Let me be clear, as I said elsewhere, I am increasingly happy with my M8.2 but I do feel let down by Leica. It is as simple as that. My "investment" in my M8.2 helped Leica through a bad patch and now I have to work work around the weaknesses of my M8, I do not see Leica helping me.

 

Chris

 

I am really not following you here. You are "increasingly happy with (your) M8, but...feel let down by Leica." What?

 

I've had an M8 for four years now, and enjoy it every day, even if not "increasingly". How could I complain, or feel abandoned?

 

As for "investment", I won't even go there. Suffice it to say, a camera is a consumable, including a Leica.

 

Doug

[tbarker13]

As for "investment", I won't even go there. Suffice it to say, a camera is a consumable, including a Leica.

 

Doug

 

I can't disagree with you Doug. Not only are these cameras consumable. They are also computers, which tend to age very fast.

Unfortunately, Leica really dirtied its own waters on this one, when former CEO Steven Lee started making bold promises about a perpetual upgrade programme that would allow the M8 "forever to be state-of-the-art."

 

Obviously, the company has no intention of making good on that promise. (We'll be lucky if we even get another firmware update) And Leica wishes those words had never been uttered - or written. But they were. And you cannot un-ring a bell.

 

Regardless of whether you think the company was right or wrong, it seems that some hard feelings could linger over what's perceived by some as a broken promise.

[MikeMyers]

If for some silly reason I was in a position to want to manufacture a less expensive rangefinder camera, I'm pretty sure of one thing.

 

I'd keep the "shape" and "feel" and "look" of a Leica, but the camera would have modern electronics, auto-focus, and decent exposure control. The auto-focus could be switched on/off as desired, and users could use the rangefinder any time they wanted. Or, they could let the camera do the work. One lens might be similar to what comes on an LX5, a lens that zooms, but which stops at pre-set focal lengths, which the viewfinder would adjust to. The window that illuminates the frame lines would be replaced with a flash.

 

If there was a concern about damaging the Leica name, maybe it would be sold as a Lumix. Or, it could be sold under both names.

 

 

 

 

If such a camera existed, and if it had the capabilities of the LX5, I'd already have bought one. I highly doubt it will ever happen, and I doubt even more that a M8.3 will ever happen.

 

(Thank you to Jaap for explaining the reason why future firmware updates might not be possible for the M8; until now, I had been hoping for one.)

[NZDavid]

Phew, this thread has taken on a life of its own! Still, some interesting points for me, as I am keen to find out more about success strategies of small high-end companies, and specifically what role design plays. There are many such companies, many of them smaller than Leica, of which the watch industry is a good example -- not just Rolex, but some German companies, too. Design plays a big role, as I discovered during a media tour last year. The hi-fi industry is another example.

 

The question seems to have morphed from "Should Leica introduce a M8.3?" to how to make a cheaper entry-level product. But first, who wants one? There don't seem to be many takers for an M8.3 so far.

 

Would a cheaper digital Leica M be possible? Produce offshore to cut labor costs? It has already been done, but there is a danger that individual pride of workmanship will be lost as the desire for cost-cutting takes precedence.

 

Hand-made quality and craftsmanship costs, and that's what differentiates top-end products -- not just a label. (Frederick Winslow Taylor and his followers, from what I read, had a dim view of workers' capabilities, and his ideas were widely followed.)

 

As cheap as chips? Yes, the sensor costs, and it is quite right that top digital cameras cost at least twice as much as top film cameras used to cost (or in the case of the M7 and MP, still do. Worth checking as prices keep changing). Actually, prices have been falling at the same time as performance has been rising. But at the top end, the difference may no be as apparent. You can now buy a digital camera with a 10MP sensor for maybe a couple of hundred dollars-- it would have cost a fortune just a few years ago.

 

If sensors fall further in price, can we expect to see a cheaper Leica M? Yeah, right!

 

My feeling is that most photographers would prefer to see quality maintained above all else, so long as costs do not soar to absurdly stratospheric levels.

[spylaw4]

This thread seems to me to be going nowhere - as usual - is it not about time the Mods closed it down?

[farnz]

I can't disagree with you Doug. Not only are these cameras consumable. They are also computers, which tend to age very fast. ...

Tim,

 

I have to pick you up on this common misconception about 'computers' ageing quickly. Certainly solid state electronics are made obsolete very quickly now because the waterfall of new models is increasing to meet perceived consumer demand, which is perhaps why we view digital cameras as short term commodities. But this doesn't mean that they stop working and in fact electronic failure is comparatively rare (and by 'comparatively' I mean that since its sheer volume is increasing so rapidly that instances are more common but the failure rate is still very low).

 

It's common to think of digital cameras as ageing quickly but we all seem quite happy to fly many thousands of feet in the air dependent on 30-year old electronics.

 

Pete.

[lct]

The M8.3 will be an X, a Pana or a PanaLeica EVIL i bet.

[RichardM8]

This thread is getting quite silly imo...

[Guest BigSplash]

Once the M9 production catches up with orders Leica should be hard at work developing future M products I fully agree and have said so several times above. and re-tooling the production facilities for the new product.I fully agree and here I would go further....the way that they hand craft each M9 camera means that the volume is not easily scaleable, it leads to quality issues as we see here all the time, it requires difficult and time consuming callibration which then when in use goes out of callibration .....The thing needs to be engineered for quality easy production while maintaining the structure of a M ...so NO PLASTIC! When they have surplus production capacity, it's not a large surplus and rather than use that capacity for a few units of a low-margin product it's more profitable to tap the collector market with special edition M9 bodies. I agree if you constrain yourself to the present production methodology that revolves around 10 cameras a year and 20 in a bumper year and run a single shift. That is hardly a good way of amortising capital and R&D costs.

 

 

 

You've got a lot of MAYBE in your argument and the biggest problem that you seem to be blind to is LIMITED PRODUCTION CAPACITY. There are only LIMITED ways any company can get more cameras out of limited production capacity without sacrificing quality. Additional sales volume from a low cost body will not generate additional lens sales because Leica is already selling every lens they make. There is no surplus lens production capacity. The premise that the production capacity is what it is seems to be driving your thoughts. Leica have publicly said that they will eventually move to a new site in Wetzlar to a purpose built factory rather than the current converted furniture factory. They have said that they will move the current equipment as modules to the new facility .......I am asking could this be an opportunity to product engineer during the next year or two a M10 that has the extra features and is more produceable plus do the same for a M8.3?

 

 

 

Despite the enthusiasm many of us express for the CRF concept there's only a limited demand for this type of camera. The AF SLR rules. Yes but a lot of people are moving towards the M9 that previously were DSLR fanatics...even some pros are doing this. Furthermore market research data suggests that the high end market is growing fastest and by the way Leica are seeing new comers driving M sales. The CRF camera is a specialized tool. Your argument reminds me of the DeLorean fiasco: the concept was to mass-produce a specialized product in order to drive the cost down. There wasn't enough demand for a specialized car, production out-stripped demand and the company failed.I thought that other issues were the cause of the downfall....high purchase price, social unrest / union issues in Belfast, under capitalisation and Belfast where they made the thing being a war zone! There was a latent demand for the deLorean and this was served by manufactureres that grew their business significantly but did not have the issues of DeLorean.

 

This is Business 101: if demand for your product is inexhaustible, make as many as you can; even if the profit is small you make your money with volume. If the demand for your product is limited, you maximize profit with a premium product and high prices. Leica doesn't exist to keep enthusiasts happy. Leica exists to make a profit.

Your last paragraph seems to suggest that there is insufficient demand for a Leica digital M yet they sold the complete production run in just 9 months, have attracted a new younger breed of owner rather than M film affectionados. Obviously many people will be put off by the price and that is my point.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Guest BigSplash]

Excuse me? When did I make that unwarranted extrapolation?

And since when am I the world's #1 expert on sensor pricing?

 

Jaapv you repeatedly said that last year in many threads where I also pointed out that you do not know much about SC business. I suggest you look at the threads. I spent 14 years at it and was European technical Director at Texas Instruments so I do have a view.

 

As I say here big chips are cheaper than smaller chips due to the smaller area of wafer used (You can get more chips on a single wafer). Last year you then correctly suggested that big chips have more defects per sq area so yield less good ones per wafer.......that is very relevant if yields are say 30% but today the industry is nearer 99%.

 

I mentioned that wafers these days are larger than they were 5 years ago and that drives minimum batch sizes in most cases (unless you want to run different chips in the same batch, which for a highly controlled sensor chip is not obvious). Processes change every 5 years or less and what was state of the art 5 years ago, and produced in high volumes (ie low cost) is likely to be an expensive end of life item now.

 

What I have suggested is use the same chip technology for the sensor as a M10 (whatever that is) for a M8.3 ...drive up the process tech volmues in the wafer fab, and have small and big chips running together.