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The average aged won't buy a M240


Paulus

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For the record, I want Leica to succeed in their business.I also strongly belief, that it will be a good camera, no doubts about that. If that means selling lots of M cameras. Good for them. I only think, that the market will shift a little. A lot of M9 users today won't buy the new M.

 

 

a) Because they like the sensor quality of the M9. They don't need the extra quality.

B) Because the first two years, it will be a major cost. Just having paid for an M9 which also was expensive.

c) Because a lot of Leica users are not very rich. They just can afford this M9 and lenses, because they have saved a lot of money during the last years to spend on it. Spending more than required gives them a feeling of guild.

d) Because they don't like the looks of it.

 

People who will buy the new M:

 

a) Those who believe, the M will provide them with better pictures.

B) Those who are so fortunate, they don't have to feel guilt spending the next € 5500,-

c) Those who see the camera as a new way of making films and pictures at the same time.

d) Those who see the camera as a wonderful tool, because of it's enhanced sensor quality to shoot very big pictures. 2 by 3 meters landscape photography.

e) Macro and R lens users?

 

You know, Paulus,

 

It strikes me that you are too price/cost conscious to use Leica. If 'cost' mean so much to you switch to Canon G15 - an excellent camera, or the equivalent from Nikon - or Panasony or what they are called.

 

I am sure that M240 will be a great success and that most (all, sooner or later) M9 users will switch. By doing this more low priced 2.hand M9s and M8s will be available for 'Leica starters'. Which in total will increase the Leica community with younger users. By this bringing the average age of Leica users down. Which will make the future for Leica look bright! Don't you worry about us.

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You know, Paulus,

 

It strikes me that you are too price/cost conscious to use Leica. If 'cost' mean so much to you switch to Canon G15 - an excellent camera, or the equivalent from Nikon - or Panasony or what they are called.

 

Thank you Olsen,

I'm satisfied and saturated with my M9, don't need another " G15 " camera. ;)

 

I am sure that M240 will be a great success and that most (all, sooner or later) M9 users will switch. .

 

That's my point. Why do you think: " all ". Is it obligatory?

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And I find it interesting that some aging folks find a rangefinder hard to focus... I switched BACK to Leica because a bright-line rangefinder is absolutely the EASIEST manual focus system to bring into focus for someone like me with some vision issues and glasses. The frames may be tough to see with glasses, but the rangefinder system is brilliant.

 

It all depends - on motif, lens etc. Ever tried to focus on a moving subject which is not in the middle of the picture? Also - what about backfocus issues with Summiluxes?

 

I was very keen on the M240 when I saw it at the Photokina, also because of the support in focusing. Since I have been using the Nex 6 with focus peaking, hight ISO etc, with CV and Leica lenses, my interest in the M240 has vanished (it might return once the camera is on the market and proven to work as promised).

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People who will buy the new M:

 

a) Those who believe, the M will provide them with better pictures.

B) Those who are so fortunate, they don't have to feel guilt spending the next € 5500,-

c) Those who see the camera as a new way of making films and pictures at the same time.

d) Those who see the camera as a wonderful tool, because of it's enhanced sensor quality to shoot very big pictures. 2 by 3 meters landscape photography.

e) Macro and R lens users?

 

f. those who just want uptodate quality and comfort with less lost shots/opportunities?

 

By the way, for R lens owners, the total cost is more like 7.000 Euro, due to the adapter and EVF.

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You know, Paulus,

 

It strikes me that you are too price/cost conscious to use Leica. If 'cost' mean so much to you switch to Canon G15 - an excellent camera, or the equivalent from Nikon - or Panasony or what they are called.

 

I am sure that M240 will be a great success and that most (all, sooner or later) M9 users will switch. By doing this more low priced 2.hand M9s and M8s will be available for 'Leica starters'. Which in total will increase the Leica community with younger users. By this bringing the average age of Leica users down. Which will make the future for Leica look bright! Don't you worry about us.

 

Condescending to say the least. Of course some of us are price conscious, esp the working pro photographers. There's a reason Leica has to loan S2 and M9's to Magnum photographers - despite their fame very few could actually purchase one of those cameras. It's a shame that Leica makes cutting edge imaging products that many making cutting edge images can't afford.

 

But Leica is a business and it costs money to make those products so it's a conundrum. My iPhone tells time as good as (if not better) than a Rolex, but those that can afford Rolexes do so, and will also be able to afford the latest greatest APO Luxes (chump change compared to many luxury watches of which there are many more sold than Leica cameras per year).

 

Anyway, this has very little to do with what the new M will actually be able to do. I really really like the look of the M9 images (to me it's like shooting slide film, CMOS sensors like shooting color neg) so many will just hang in there and be happy with what they've got. Just like there working successful photographers still using 25 year old cameras. If the new M doesn't do it for me and my vision then I'll probably sell a bunch of stuff (like my back up M9 body) and go after a Monochrom and use my $2K D600 for all the stuff the new M is supposed to do and the M9 doesn't. Or wait three years for the M mkII. ;)

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It all depends - on motif, lens etc. Ever tried to focus on a moving subject which is not in the middle of the picture? Also - what about backfocus issues with Summiluxes?

 

Well, Wolfgang, I guess my reply is that folks were taking photos and focusing accurately long before the advent of the coincident rangefinder... zone focusing using hyperfocal distance works just as well today. That may seem quaint by today's instant selectable million focus point phase detect AF... but believe it or not, it still works and works well. Actually, it works better for me than the contrast-detect AF of the Fujifilm X-Pro1 that I could seldom get to auto-focus on whatever the subject I wanted it to do, and that's a big deal when you're shooting a large aperture lens wide-open. I've got subdirectories of photos where the background is gorgeously sharp and contrasty, while the person in the foreground is blurred un-recognizably.

 

Using a coincident rangefinder, bright-line view finder camera has a very different set of working rules from those of today's techno-wonders. The coincident rangefinder remains the fastest and clearest manual focus method I've found. I used to enjoy a split-image ground glass on SLRs once upon a time, but I haven't seen one of those in years either.

 

I apologize for the quality of this attached photo, but I shot it twenty years ago using a Canon EOS1 and a Canon EF 75-200 (or maybe 80-200, I don't really remember any more) zoom, zone focused on manual settings. And it's obviously a scan of a half-tone newspaper tear sheet. I shot sports that way because the autofocus of that time wasn't adequate to keep up with the action. Autofocus really hasn't, IMHO, advanced all that much. While it's faster and has more points to select, you still have to select those points and track your subject. It's still faster and easier for me to use manual settings with the coincident rangefinder and/or zone focusing.

 

On edit: And the attached photo was not taken as a motordrive sequence. I've only used a motordrive sequence once in my shooting career that I can remember and that was on a building demolition.

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An old pro once told me: "If you shoot at 5 fps an 1/500th your shutter will be closed for 99% of the time, so you have a 99% chance of missing your shot. If you press your button at exactly the right moment, you have a 100% chance of nailing it. So never use drives and practice your timing. " I am aware of all the counter-arguments, but it taught me a lesson.

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An old pro once told me: "If you shoot at 5 fps an 1/500th your shutter will be closed for 99% of the time, so you have a 99% chance of missing your shot. If you press your button at exactly the right moment, you have a 100% chance of nailing it. So never use drives and practice your timing. " I am aware of all the counter-arguments, but it taught me a lesson.

 

Yep. My sentiments exactly. One of the interesting things about being a young working pro (once upon a time) is that your pay is pathetic and you often have to supply your own gear. Since you don't have much money, and typically only one body and a lens or two, you figure out how to shoot all of the stuff you need to with what you have. Necessity is the mother of invention. As I'd never owned a camera capable of sequence shooting until I owned the EOS1 (which was well-used when I bought it and at least one generation behind) I learned how to time my shutter release to the action. The building demolition sequence I linked to I shot four years ago with an Olympus E3 shortly after I got the camera. I used the sequence function to document the building falling. The "pro" from the local paper had cameras set up in various locations around the building, all radio tripped. None of them took a single frame. He tested them before and after, but apparently the EMPs from the explosions prevented the low-powered radio triggers from working. He had better angles; but my sequence was published because my finger was on the shutter release. It's all about knowing the limitations of your equipment and using it to its strengths.

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Condescending to say the least. Of course some of us are price conscious, esp the working pro photographers. There's a reason Leica has to loan S2 and M9's to Magnum photographers - despite their fame very few could actually purchase one of those cameras. It's a shame that Leica makes cutting edge imaging products that many making cutting edge images can't afford.

 

But Leica is a business and it costs money to make those products so it's a conundrum. My iPhone tells time as good as (if not better) than a Rolex, but those that can afford Rolexes do so, and will also be able to afford the latest greatest APO Luxes (chump change compared to many luxury watches of which there are many more sold than Leica cameras per year).

 

Anyway, this has very little to do with what the new M will actually be able to do. I really really like the look of the M9 images (to me it's like shooting slide film, CMOS sensors like shooting color neg) so many will just hang in there and be happy with what they've got. Just like there working successful photographers still using 25 year old cameras. If the new M doesn't do it for me and my vision then I'll probably sell a bunch of stuff (like my back up M9 body) and go after a Monochrom and use my $2K D600 for all the stuff the new M is supposed to do and the M9 doesn't. Or wait three years for the M mkII. ;)

 

Charles, IMHO your photos are strong enough to back up your thoughts. And you're also 48...;)

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Well, Wolfgang, I guess my reply is that folks were taking photos and focusing accurately long before the advent of the coincident rangefinder... zone focusing using hyperfocal distance works just as well today. That may seem quaint by today's instant selectable million focus point phase detect AF... but believe it or not, it still works and works well. Actually, it works better for me than the contrast-detect AF of the Fujifilm X-Pro1 that I could seldom get to auto-focus on whatever the subject I wanted it to do, and that's a big deal when you're shooting a large aperture lens wide-open. I've got subdirectories of photos where the background is gorgeously sharp and contrasty, while the person in the foreground is blurred un-recognizably.

 

Using a coincident rangefinder, bright-line view finder camera has a very different set of working rules from those of today's techno-wonders. The coincident rangefinder remains the fastest and clearest manual focus method I've found. I used to enjoy a split-image ground glass on SLRs once upon a time, but I haven't seen one of those in years either.

 

I apologize for the quality of this attached photo, but I shot it twenty years ago using a Canon EOS1 and a Canon EF 75-200 (or maybe 80-200, I don't really remember any more) zoom, zone focused on manual settings. And it's obviously a scan of a half-tone newspaper tear sheet. I shot sports that way because the autofocus of that time wasn't adequate to keep up with the action. Autofocus really hasn't, IMHO, advanced all that much. While it's faster and has more points to select, you still have to select those points and track your subject. It's still faster and easier for me to use manual settings with the coincident rangefinder and/or zone focusing.

 

On edit: And the attached photo was not taken as a motordrive sequence. I've only used a motordrive sequence once in my shooting career that I can remember and that was on a building demolition.

 

Looking at the quality of today's football images, and the bodies and lenses (plus sound coming from them) used. I'm reasoning most of them have moved on from zone focusing, and 'timing' a single shot. I guess probably for good reason. The images they deliver certainly aren't lacking. Far from it.

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It strikes me that you are too price/cost conscious to use Leica. If 'cost' mean so much to you switch to Canon G15 - an excellent camera, or the equivalent from Nikon - or Panasony or what they are called.

 

There is usually quite a bit of patronising advice doled out in these forums but this pretty much takes the biscuit.:rolleyes::mad:

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I don't think the decision re buying the new M has much to do with age but rather with the satisfaction that many users are getting from their M9 and the (at least currently perceived) somewhat marginal benefits offered by the M. I will be 45 this year, so nearing the "average" age and I originally did put my name on the M waiting list; however I just bought a new M9P (to complement my S2 system the purchase of which I funded partly by selling my first M9 about a year ago). The point was that when I look at my catalog I really like the images shot with my first M9 and I reached the conclusion that perhaps I don't need/want the new M after all (but I know I want some of the newest Lux lenses...). Now, maybe to contradict myself and back up Paulus in his original assertion: I have noticed that the older I get the less I am interested in new camera gear and the more I value interesting images. I have bought a ton of photography books over the past year or and I enjoy watching talented photographers' work much more than reading about camera X or lens Y. So maybe Paulus is right...

 

NB: The reason I personally think the benefits of the new M are not so great over the M9 is that the basic form of both cameras is the same. Ok, the M will have better high ISO (good thing), better display (good thing), live view with focus peaking (useful) but in the end it is still a RF camera requiring very deliberate and specific style of work and being less than optimal for some uses. The primary reason why I went for the S2 a year ago was not more megapixels but the far greater percentage of "hits" afforded by the very accurate AF system of the S2 and its accurate viewfinder. My issue with the M9 at the time was that although I loved the rendering of the images that were "hits" (and my percentage was getting higher with practice), I just still wasn't satisfied with the number of "hits". The S2 addressed this very quickly (but is not so portable, of course..).

 

So my conclusion is this: for me at least, the M is not such a great advance over the M9, not because I don't value its improvements in ISO etc. but because it does not offer the qualitative leap (at least in some directions) that I can get from cameras using different concept / form factor or utilising technologies that facilitate a higher number of "hits" (e.g.very precise AF).

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Looking at the quality of today's football images, and the bodies and lenses (plus sound coming from them) used. I'm reasoning most of them have moved on from zone focusing, and 'timing' a single shot. I guess probably for good reason. The images they deliver certainly aren't lacking. Far from it.

 

Actually, the technology being used at sporting events for still coverage is unbelievable. And the market isn'f for a single shot or two from a game, it's for dozens of images of various kinds. My point wasn't that the technology is bad or shouldn't be used; merely that it isn't necessary to produce quality images. I think that there are folks who tend to believe that the ability to produce quality images depends on the number of buttons, menus, and automated features a camera has.

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Actually, the technology being used at sporting events for still coverage is unbelievable. And the market isn'f for a single shot or two from a game, it's for dozens of images of various kinds. My point wasn't that the technology is bad or shouldn't be used; merely that it isn't necessary to produce quality images. I think that there are folks who tend to believe that the ability to produce quality images depends on the number of buttons, menus, and automated features a camera has.

 

Thanks. Yes, I agree. Although I would argue that "necessary" is subjective. If I were stood next to the 1DX guy and competing for payed work, I'd consider all the gizmos necessary! :)

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Just my opinion. To a certain group of Leica enthusiasts, the M240 represents a Swiss army knife of photography - theoretically you will be able to shoot any Leica lens ever made and with adapters ANY lens made, speaking of 35 mm here.. You will be able to have a rangefinder and an EVF thereby satisfying most. OTOH, way too many bells and whistles for the traditionalists who espouse Leica minimalism. And many of us are all too familiar with Leica's track record of teething problems.

I do disagree with the OP because as I age I'm in a much better situation financially to buy anything I want and feel certain this pertains to others of my age group.

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people of all ages will want this for all sorts of reasons.

 

Assuming the camera performs decently- many of those that can afford it will buy (and some who can't) and Leica will sell enough to do very well out of it. Many current Leica M digital owners will also buy this camera as soon as they can. They will employ a myriad of justifications and rationalisations for their purchase- possibly none of which will be entirely true. The market will be flooded with M9's during these days. Unexpectedly Leica will deliver in greater volume than is customary- lenses also... Leica will also make a lot of money from the accessories- and the special editions... These are my predictions...

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I agree this is a pretty pointless and highly - if not solely - speculative discussion. But points to Paulus for managing to stir up the forum a bit - much needed :)

 

 

However, I am wondering if - given the pre-conditions set at the beginning of the thread, which included non-M9 users and specifically those who use film Ms - the average age from that thread is correct. It seems to me there are quite a few youngish photographers who are using film Ms (and M8s) because they are affordable models. I would think the average age, therefore, is lower.

 

Still, as well all know, or at least realise as we grow older, age is not even a number, just an attitude.

 

My 2 cents on the statement that "The M 240 is made for the new un-known- to-Leica market" is that it is not at all right.

 

We will only stop buying new cameras when we are either dead or broke.

 

And if broke, we'd steal 'em.

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I agree this is a pretty pointless and highly - if not solely - speculative discussion. But points to Paulus for managing to stir up the forum a bit - much needed :)

 

 

 

However, I am wondering if - given the pre-conditions set at the beginning of the thread, which included non-M9 users and specifically those who use film Ms - the average age from that thread is correct. It seems to me there are quite a few youngish photographers who are using film Ms (and M8s) because they are affordable models. I would think the average age, therefore, is lower.

 

Still, as well all know, or at least realise as we grow older, age is not even a number, just an attitude.

 

My 2 cents on the statement that "The M 240 is made for the new un-known- to-Leica market" is that it is not at all right.

 

 

 

And if broke, we'd steal 'em.

 

Thanks Philipus for your points.

 

And maybe this is a better poll:

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/about-leica-forum/166762-members-ages.html

 

 

 

I think you're right about the 2 cents. Leica has made a camera "listening" to this forum, so it must be so, that those speakers will buy the M. But.. the M also resembles the Olympus Pen in a way.

When I talked about the M to a friend of mine he said in a blasphemous way Oh, it's a kind of Olympus Pen, but than "better" and more expensive. I did not sound so well I thought.

 

You also convinced me, that people keep buying cameras until dead or broke or both. This evening I went to visit the wife of a friend that passed away recently. We were in his study, a room full of books, but also full of photographic equipment.

I did not know he had so much! I knew he had sold his second house in Ireland well, but I did not realize that his house was lying before me in this room in photographic equipment!

It took me two hours just to see what was lying there. She wanted to sell it all. She's not a photographer.

I convinced her to keep the Leica IIIf with the two tiny lenses.

 

When I cycled home this evening, I made a mental note to myself. Paulus, don't leave your wife or children with al this junk. Leave them with memories and great pictures of great times.

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