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A very hypothetical "what if?"


Me Leica!

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Hi

 

the main reason not to see so many Ms walking around is because most of the owners are very discrete taking pictures due to the essence of the RF spirit itself

you don't dare at people around you except if they do something special: taking pictures with a M is not special it is normal :D

 

JB

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When I am out taking pictures I have yet to see anyone else using any Leica and I live in San Clemente which is a tourist area. In fact we get a lot of Europeans as visitors so I would have thought I would have seen a few. Not even the lowly X1 or X2 have I seen in anyone's hands.

 

 

The X1 and M9 were Leica's bestselling cameras that arguably saved the company.

Only 50k M9s were made over a 4 year life, probably a week or months production for Japanese camera makers.

 

I would be very surprised if you saw any

 

Nevertheless Leica did exceed its target with those cameras and to all I have heard is still profitable. Yes occasionally it will have a product that falls below expectations but I think your statistical samples in one small corner of the USA are irrelevant.

 

Leica is what we call in the UK a "cottage industry". Don't be fooled by the swanky boutiques. I am sure they have increased sales but not massively.

 

Half of Leica production goes to the Far East, mostly China, spot 10k cameras in 4 billion people who are mostly impoverished. Good luck !

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Just about each and every camera Leica brought out in the recent years has exceeded sales expectations. However that does not make them a common sight. How many Morgans do you see driving on the road?

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The X1 and M9 were Leica's bestselling cameras that arguably saved the company.

Only 50k M9s were made over a 4 year life, probably a week or months production for Japanese camera makers.

Wish I could remember who stated, that the M9 series (M9, M9-P, MM, M-A) was almost as successful as the all-times best-seller: the M3. That production number was about 220k units.

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Wish I could remember who stated, that the M9 series (M9, M9-P, MM, M-A) was almost as successful as the all-times best-seller: the M3. That production number was about 220k units.

 

 

Quite

 

I said best selling, not best selling all time ;)

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I have visited quite a few photogenic locations this past year. Saw no Ms, but then I saw hardly any specific models: no Sony A's, no Oly EMs, no Fuji Xs, virtually no SLRs. Mostly small cameras or smart phones. Smart phones most of all, of course.

 

Looking at what my 12 year old and her friends can produce on a smart phone, and how they want to use it, I can see that the future of photography will be very different for her generation. Blended into movie making/multimedia/sound+vision, put together with clever apps. They will never care about the crystal clarity of a Leica lens capturing a moment in time, the way our generations have done. That was the culmination of a twentieth century aspiration.

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I seriously doubt that your vision is correct. The percentage of quality-conscious (for lack of a better description) photographers may have dropped dramatically, but only because the number of photographs/media taken has exploded. Much like the transition from glass plates to film and from large format to 135 film did.

 

I would submit that he type of photography you are referring to has even increased in number, just not in proportion. You just have to search for it a bit more.

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They have to do something because Sony's pricing strategy is so aggressive. It is quite impressive what the A7II offers for well under $2,000. How are you going to compete with that?

 

I have a Sony A7ii, and it's a fine camera . . . but I fail to see what it has to do with Leica (except as an opportunity for them to sell more lenses).

 

Another rangefinder offering from another company is an interesting concept, but the trouble is that they would need to produce lenses for it to compete with 60 years of Leica M lenses - a tough ask! It would also be unlikely that it would be cheaper - making a proplerly developed rangefnder is one thing building it cheaply is pretty much out of the question.

 

 

But the fundamental seems to me to be that if

1 you like to shoot a rangefinder - use an M

2 you don't like to shoot with a rangefinder - then don't

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As car vendors go Tesla is a small boutique manufacturer. At over $80,000 per vehicle, not inexpensive either, yet I frequently see them on the road almost every day.

 

But I bet you can't put one in a bag, under a jacket or discreetly by your side. And you live in a nice part of California.

 

Jeff

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As car vendors go Tesla is a small boutique manufacturer. At over $80,000 per vehicle, not inexpensive either, yet I frequently see them on the road almost every day.

 

Holland is not a poor country and has quite a good electric vehicle infrastructure, yet I only saw one Tesla in the last year, in a charging station next to the one I was using.

I would not not draw any conclusions from that.

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I wouldn't know what one looked like unless I could read the badge on the car itself. That said I notice on the Florida Turnpike that at every rest stop there are now between 10-15 charging "Tesla" stations right near where I park. As yet, I have never have seen one in use.

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Remember that each Leica sold, and perhaps a used one in the hands of a new owner, Leica may well sell more new lenses.

 

My understanding was that one of the reasons for the very limited availability of new Leica lenses (and to some extent Zeiss and CV) after the release of the M9 was that Leica had expected just over one new lens sold per M9 sold but sold over three!

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I don't know about the stores and inventory and who buys all of these Leicas none of us see in the wild. But, I do know that, times of having a Leica and no money are better than times of having money and no Leica. Just saying, for the perspective... I think I lifted this from the Freak Brothers or something from reading Zap Comics.

 

Rick

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