Leica stubborness will hurt sales

[newyorkone]

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How about some patience and letting Leica breathe. I'm inclined to give Leica some benefit of the doubt since this is the first M digital ever. Things need to get sorted out and I'm sure they will listen to their customer base up to a point that's reasonable. What needs to be fixed will be and so far this has played out in reality. There are still some issues of course, but all in due time. Extras and bonus features are secondary to sorting out the main issues.

 

For now, I don't use either filters or lens coding and I'm getting amazing pictures that people ooh and ahh over. And more importantly that take my breath away.

 

Let's calm down and just enjoy the fact that we even have a M digital. Six months ago, it wasn't even available.

 

Just my humble opinion.

[truando]

all I can say, is that I am one happy m8 shooter and I am really grateful for this fantastic piece of equipment, I rather be out there shooting instead of complaining.

 

there is no perfect camera system. period.

 

I know, I've had them all. well, not all - but many...

 

live with the one you have or change to one that pleases you.

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[marknorton]

[Edit: obviously Mark N., Ed C. and I ALL hit on the same argument at the same time]

 

LOL. Great minds think alike...

[Riley]

indeed what would be next

Leica would be spending the time they should spend on the camera figuring out codes for every non Leica M mount there ever was. The what about the screw mounts.

 

Is it any wonder why Leica keep one step removed from the forum

the continual bickering about what some people suddenly see as vital

 

The Upside: The cameras must be working better now I guess

[sdai]

Far beyond embedding the focal lengths and apertures etc in the EXIF, the menu choice system could greatly benefit the users of third party lenses in various ways.

 

Once the information for the usage of a certain lens is recorded, people could fully utilize it in any future RAW conversion or image editing software which has built in or added "lens profiles" which will take care of vignetting, cyan corners and such. Even for Leica's own lenses, there're possibilities that a third party could build an as-good or even better profile ... I can only see benefit to the users here so why would someone object to the idea except that, understandably, Leica would certainly embrace a fully closed system?

[marknorton]

Mark, we do know: Biogon 21 coded+B&W +1.02= cyan corners with IR filter switched on.

 

Jaap, sorry, my post was a bit delayed by a garden glass of wine (Cloudy Bay Chardonnay 2004) in the fabulous weather we've been having in the UK.

 

Thanks for the test with the CZ 21. Based on that result, post processing fine tuned to the lens seems the best option.

[Guest Olof]

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1. At first Leica had to be sure that their own lenses will work with the M8, thats the reasason why we get the latest firmware update.

 

2.You can use all lenses you want with the M8, if you disable the lens recognation.

 

3.If you want to get coded lenses from other suppliers than Leica ask THEM, to make this possible. Its not Leicas job to make this possible.

[jaapv]

Jaap, sorry, my post was a bit delayed by a garden glass of wine (Cloudy Bay Chardonnay 2004) in the fabulous weather we've been having in the UK.

 

Thanks for the test with the CZ 21. Based on that result, post processing fine tuned to the lens seems the best option.

Ah- I'm drinking summer wine as well: Tungisheimer Johannisberg Muller Thurgau Kabinett Trocken 2005. A surprisingly good Frankenwein.

 

I have a feeling the Leica filter will do a lot better job, if and when it appears.

[Riley]

looks like we are out of beer

[Guest Olof]

Forget about Panasonic, Jaap. Think about auto focus M lenses similar to those in the Contax G system. Then Leica could have more effective means to block the use of third parties lenses. LOL

 

Autofoucs is nothing for the M-System, if Leica would bring a Autofocus it could be for the R-System (by the way, the first Autofocus in the world was presented from Leica, but they never sold it).

[lct]

What am i supposed to do with my Summicron 40/2, Summaron 35/2.8, Minolta 28/2.8 and the like in all that?

Buying new Leica lenses?

I did it already thanks but am i supposed to trash my dear old lenses including Leica's?

Or should i use a 'sharpie' after having spent little fortunes in 30 years for Leica?

And all this to compete against Cosina?

What a shame my friends.

A closed Leica is no more a Leica.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Well I have been saying all along we will not get any optional menu items until after 1.10 and the cyan cast is fixed for Leica coded lenses and the IR filters . That alone is to just get the M8 to a normal state alone otherwise we were fighting a incomplete M8. I have not read any of the posts on this thread yet just got home from a trip but this really is the bottom line in all of this is Leica by moral obligation to there end users is to have a normal M8 in there customers hands. they wanted this 6 months ago and got slammed hard with a major IR contamination and any companies moral obligation is to fix it to some degree to get it working right. Now that 1.102 had hit the streets and that obligation is mostly satisfied than the can start adding optional features but we have to rember all the bad press and hard aches that leica has been hit with this whole issue. They absolutely had to get this to normal ASAP to save there reputation and financial support o survive so during that timeany optional stuff was put on the back burner, frankly we would all do itthe same way running any company. So i know this is up everyones crawl space but come on guys realize the crap they have gone through and us the end users to just get this thing working as it should. You simply can't expect them to throw this option at us without putting the resources there to make the M8 a normal working camera first. It really is just that simply . You have to but your feet in there shoes to understand this. So now that it is a normal working camera let's see what the do. 1.10 was for a specific functioning reason to make the M8 normal after this let's see what happens

[hammam]

Well, thank God there was some «bickering» on the forum - as some like to put it - otherwise we would still be stuck with the banding, the blobbing, the magenta cast, the green stripe, the sudden death and what not. We wouldn't have the complimentary two filters (iF we ever get them) and the 30% discount on Leica lenses. And Guy M. wouldn't have collected all the early M8 users' wishes and complaints in a laundry list to pass on to Leica.

 

They corrected a major defect (the magenta cast) with a solution (the IR-cut filter) which in turn brought another major defect, the cyan vignetting with wide-angles. What I'm saying is that they're now compounding this grave defect with the obligation to buy their lenses. In other words the only solution they're offering me now to just get normal results from my M8 is a very expensive one, and I don't think it's fair. I resent it.

 

Here is Leica's own litterature on their M8 Web page:

 

« The dream of many Leica photographers has come true: the Leica M system is now open for professional digital photography. Breaking completely new ground, the LEICA M8 doesn't only look like an M - it utilizes all the benefits of the analog Leica M system for sophisticated and creative digital photography. It is the only digital camera for professionals to incorporate the rangefinder system with its advantages of discreet and quiet operation, speed and precision. And the no-compromise quality criteria of the M system continue to apply to the M8. Full compatibility with nearly all M lenses means that their unique imaging performance is now available for digital photography, too....»

 

The M8 was introduced as an «M», albeit digital. Great news. An M with «full compatibility with nearly all M lenses...» So, I guess everybody, including me, concluded that this digital M would take the M mount lenses they were already using, which probably included a mix of Leica, Zeiss, C/V and a few others. But no. Rather, yes, but with inferior results, not because of these lenses inherent inferior quality, but because of the M8 inherent weaknesses.

 

As for the argument that «if you don't like it, sell it» it is lame and irrelevant. May I claim the right to complain about a less than perfect product which has already cost me a lot of money, and to suggest Leica can do better in order to help people who have unknowingly invested in their defective system than to ask them to dunk even more money in it?

 

Let's forget about photography for a minute, and all the technicalities, optical specs, competition and all, and let's put it this way: it would be a first in history that a company would ask people to spend a lot of money to correct their defective product.

[egibaud]

I understand your frustration but I understand Leica's policy too.

 

developing a new camera such as the M8 surely means investing a LOT OF MONEY... why should they also spend some more to make their competitors sell their lenses?

 

Do you think that Leica has had its return on investment selling around 5000 to 8000 M8 bodies? NO WAY... the profit is still to come by selling Lenses, coding older lenses, accesories etc. If M8 buyers just buy a body and no Leica lenses how long will it take Leica to see some financial sense?

 

It is easy to blame Leica about their lens policy.... but why don't you blame Zeiss and CV for not making a Digital range finder ???? so all the cv and zeiss lens fans can use a cheaper way of using a digital range finder camera?

 

No one stops you from buying and RD1

 

Many posts here speak about back/front focus with some Leica lenses and many other problems. Leica still has a lot of work to be done, sincerely I prefer them to be solving Leica material problems than to spent half a second on third part products (athough I do have a cv 15 in my bag).

 

Then.... when eventually Leica M8's problems will be solved they'll have time to decide if they want to spend time fixing things for third parties.

 

By then I am sure we will be more interested in an M9 or an R10 than in saving some bucks using older lenses or third parties' ones.

 

Eric

[waterlenz]

So now, after three iterations of the firmware in the M8, it seems that Leica won't budge and will stick to their idiotic lens coding system, instead of implementing a menu system, and allowing the use of third party lenses as well as Leica's. This, plus the «Leica filter» blunder message (I absolutely think this is a blunder) will, I'm afraid, hurt their M8 sales in the future.

 

After the initial enthousiasm among aficionados like us, real nuts who are ready to take whatever Leica will throw at us (even me ), and work as their beta testers (thanks again Guy, Sean, Jamie et al) they will have to go deeper, and get to a bigger market. This is where people will realize how expensive the M8 system actually is. And how complicated, when they in fact wanted a clean and simple system. These people - let's call them the «middle class second wave of Leica fans» - or would-be fans - will either already have an M system with a few lenses, among which many third-party lenses - Zeiss or C/V, who are now formidable competitors for Leica lenses - or they will consider buying an M8 plus a few third party lenses because they won't be able to afford the whole Leica stuff, right? This is where they will be told that, no, sorry, you won't get good results unless you buy our lenses and our filters. Then why would they dunk such astronomical amounts in a system to only get second rate results? Adios Leica, hello Canon or Nikon or Fuji... No, the whole digital RF magic won't work, and neither will the so-called fabulous Leica image. We're talking money first here.

 

So, what Leica are actualy doing right now is taking the way on an even narrower niche of buyers, instead of luring an all new market into the M8 system.

 

Stupid policy, if you ask me. And very worrying for the future of Leica.

 

Actually, you will most likely get the most out of other manufacturers original lenses too, those that have chipping or some other code for digital. This is the case for Nikon with which I am most familiar. The vignetting and CA control does work. Hasselblad has recently implemented an anlogous system that has folks fired up. One of the advantages of digital is making fine adjustments that are specific to specific lenses. For this to work, the firmware-software needs to know which lens, the aperture, and in some cases distance focused may be important. This has to be communicated somehow. The FW/SW has to have parameters for each lens too. Leica only knows these parameters for their own lenses. They would have to reverse engineer the others, why should they? For example, does Ford try to enable you to use a Chevy engine in your Ford?

 

One is not OBLIGATED, however, to use these lenses refinements. One can use any M or LTM, via adapter, on an M8 and host of other lenses via the Visoflexes, as-is. It's the same with Nikon. I have used some vintage Nikkors with the D70, D1X, D2H, and D2X with good results, but am more limited in terms of image tuning built-in to their current system (i.e. with Capture NX).

 

Regardless, one can simulate many of the corrections via post-processing software. There is even an opportunity for someone to develop PS plug-ins, which would have certain lenses parameterized for these corrections. For example you would tell the plug-in via a menu that you used the CV15mm lens, and it would make the corrections. It might even give you a slider for the various apertures in case you did not know which one you used - you could trial and error it.

 

The M8 is NOT preventing you from using these other lenses you mention. Of course they only claim max image quality with their new lenses, coding etc, same with Nikon, Hasselblad, etc.

Tom

[egibaud]

Let's forget about photography for a minute and put it this way: it would be a first in history that a company would ask people to spend a lot of money to correct their defective product.

 

LOL should I think you never had a car? normally there is no fix they just issue a new model every year. You obviously have no washing machine either, no tv.

 

Any way I back you up regarding bringing record and music companies to court..... why? because they only make cd and I cannot buy music for my 30 year old vinyl record player !!!!

[waterlenz]

I went to an ICP workshop yesterday and showed some prints and the question came up, what camera, and I said, Leica, and the response was, ok, film right? and I said, no, this is the new digital Leica, and instantly the interest was redoubled. It never fails. And yes, the results on paper are just that much better than I can achieve with canon or nikon, having made the comparisions myself.

.

 

Great points!!!

The actual results, which are already beginning to speak for themselves such as this example, will be the vindication of the M8!!!

Tom

[waterlenz]

the proprietary argument has been around for so long, but the reality is that the reason apple is so good is because it is this way. design an OS for a known motherboard/chipset, package drivers for a known group of hardward etc, and absolutely DON'T depend on OEM's to engineer their own support for third party items. The world "standard" may indeed be PC's but to actual users of computers individually this is irrelevant. Leica is similar in this stance, engineer one product as close to perfection as you can and let the rest do what they may. Quality and innovation will rise to the top, regardless of what the 'standard' (or Lowest Common Denominator) is.

 

.

 

 

This is too true. I have had colleagues who can make certain software work on one PC but not another, all using the same MS OS. Apparently this is particularly big problem for laptops. A colleague ended up taking a desktop out on a boat to run data acquisition off an instrument that was 'PC compatible' because he could not get to work on any laptop he tried.

Tom

[waterlenz]

 

Nikon and Canon, to name only two, allow the use of lenses by Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Zeiss, with no loss of quality in many cases, if not with gain in quality, sometimes..

 

Not so! The new Zeiss lenses for Nikon are not 'chipped' (i.e., coded) so image optimization via FW/SW like with 'D' Nikkors is not possible, other attributes of a lens (e.g., intrinsic resolution) notwithstanding. The Nikon FW/SW, even if they were chipped, might not have instructions specific to each lens either.

Tom

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[robsteve]

What am i supposed to do with my Summicron 40/2, Summaron 35/2.8, Minolta 28/2.8 and the like in all that?

Buying new Leica lenses?

I did it already thanks but am i supposed to trash my dear old lenses including Leica's?

Or should i use a 'sharpie' after having spent little fortunes in 30 years for Leica?

And all this to compete against Cosina?

What a shame my friends.

A closed Leica is no more a Leica.

 

Sell the three of them and buy a Leica lens used Then get it coded.