Jump to content

Leica's Enemy #1 is us


pico

Recommended Posts

x

Leica's enemies in the past have been those forum members who disapproved of its new products and who failed to understand and appreciate the products' design parameters. If Leica announce new products tomorrow which do not meet with some forum members' expectations, let's hope that they at least read the available reviews and maybe try the product themselves, before commencing their usual armchair board member rants. 

 

Best wishes

 

dunk

Link to post
Share on other sites

 

...before commencing their usual armchair board member rants.

Do you mean to imply that it is possible that the design team and board of directors at Leica know more about camera design, performance and market demands than members of this forum?? 

 

That just can't be!  :rolleyes:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Leica's enemies in the past have been those forum members who disapproved of its new products and who failed to understand and appreciate the products' design parameters. If Leica announce new products tomorrow which do not meet with some forum members' expectations, let's hope that ....

..... the expectations have at least a little basis in reality rather than being the irrelevant theoretical posturing all too common in the past. Personally speaking I'm more than satisfied will all my current cameras and none are the latest models. Upgrading would achieve nothing more than a newer and less used camera for the most part. Leica and other manufacturer's products are pretty good these days and I'd suggest that very few photographers actually NEED 'better' than they've got already. Second guessing many vociferous buyer's whimsical desires must be a hard game to play ;) .

Link to post
Share on other sites

I wonder whether you might included those misguided and ill-informed Marketing Whiz-Kidz who occasionally seriously mislead prospective buyers with way off-beam descriptions off shortly to be launched new products? Remember 'mini-M'? And Summilux lenses which wander well away from historic f/1.4 starting lens apertures?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I believe those of us who actually use M-series cameras - - and not buy them to fondle or put into a glass case - - know what we want, and might be slightly opinionated.

There are two very different Leica buyers...  there are folks who buy cameras, for whom it is a tool to make images; and then there are folks who buy expensive paperweights to fondle and coo over and for whom it remains a status symbol to be brought out to impress themselves. 

 

And unfortunately, sometimes it seems that there are a lot more paperweight buyers than photographers buying Leica.  For those of us who buy M-series Leicas, for the most part, nothing else matters.  Again,unfortunately, sometimes we M-series owners are SO entrenched in what we do, we can't see merit in anything else FOR anyone else.  That's quite sad, really.

 

I remember the M5 debacle quite clearly.  The M4 form-factor mob shouted down anyone who extolled its virtues.  I always wanted an M5, but they were so far out of my ability to buy, they were built from unobtanium.  Such is the case with the SL as well...   now I can afford an M5, but I don't shoot film often enough anymore really to even justify keeping my M4-P.  But that's another whole discussion...

Link to post
Share on other sites

The wonderful thing about technology, humanity is ever learning more and things can always be improved.

 

"Things" (cameras, lenses) always can; what about "photography?"

 

Paul (happy with the M6 Classic and the M9)

Link to post
Share on other sites

...but it is also lovely to fondle and coo over ;-)

 

Ha ha ha, Mark...  Yes it is.   The reason I keep it is that I sold my first Leica, an M2 when I lived on Guam in 1978 after it developed such a case of fungus that it became a paperweight.  But I sold it at a local camera store for big bucks for export to Japan.  In 1981 I decided I wanted another and I found a used M4-2 at a camera store for $600; a princely sum then.  I really wanted an M4-P as it was the latest model, but it was built of unobtanium as well, priced at $1800 new.   I did, however, get an M4-P brochure when I bought the M4-2.  That M4-2 I had for several years.  The poor thing rode about 30,000 in my BMW motorcycle saddlebags.  It went to Yosemite several times, traveled around the country, photographed my young family, and photographed the space shuttle Columbia land at Andrews.  But it also got quite beat up over the years, and by the late '80s was looking pretty outdated with the advent of auto focus, I sold it for Canon EOS1 gear in 1988.   Since then, I've had another M4 kit that I enjoyed but never really got attached to, and I went digital with Olympus in '03 for ten years.   But a couple of years ago, I finally had a chance to buy an M8 and return to Leica M with digital... and liked it so much I ended up with the M9-P I have today.

 

Last year I found a like-new condition M4-P with a winder grip, MR-4 meter and a rigid Summicron for a price I couldn't pass up. so I bought it.  I sold the accessories and the lens for more than I paid for the entire camera kit,  and basically got the M4-P free.  I still have that original M4-P brochure I got when I bought that M4-2 so many years ago... so now after only another thirty-four years, I finally have that M4-P to go with the brochure that I've kept all these years.

 

And THAT sir, is why I'm keeping the M4-P. Oh, and it makes some really nice negatives.   :) 

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

There is also a contingent of armchair CEOs who provide "guidance" to Leica in the form of telling them what products to make and sell. The basis of the advice is "research" in this form: "I will not buy a camera with [insert any feature] so that means nobody else will and it is stupid to think so".

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...