New Panasonic Full Frame with SL Mount?

[pgk]

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Leica seek a larger share of the professional FF AF mirrorless market.

 

Actually Dunk I doubt it. The 'professional' market is a minute part of any companies' sales these days. Sales are all about consumers/enthusiasts and their vagaries. I see a lot of expensive cameras used as 'snapshot' cameras (I do use all mine in this way too at times) and suspect we have reached an impasse as regards sales by specification alone. Its now about perception. I think that Leica, by allying itself with other camera manufacturers, could, if things run as they might hope, provide the company with an ingress into a larger market share and/or continuing rolling sales because they may be perceived as increasingly penetrating into the mainstream photographic market. A reasonable position to try to place a relatively small company in.

Edited September 27, 2018 by pgk

[LD_50]

I don´t understand the math with this win-win-win l-mount alliance: Sigma is selling more lenses and cameras, Panasonic is selling more lenses and cameras, Leica is selling more lenses and cameras - really? If I buy my next body from Panasonic I am not buying it from Leica... yet I suppose I could still buy it from Leica but then I would not buy it from Panasonic. Let's see in 5 years...

If you buy an L-mount body from Panasonic or Sigma, Leica has a better opportunity to sell you a lens than if you buy from Sony, Canon, or Nikon. More available customers (due to lower price hurdle to get into the ecosystem) is apparently seen as a good thing.

 

I sold my Nikon gear and purchased an SL kit. I’m in the minority because the cost is so high to do so, along with a much smaller lens selection. If Leica had shared a mount with Nikon at the time, I would have bought the 24-90, 90-280, and 50 Summilux to replace similar Nikon lenses in my kit. Perhaps later the SL body would have won me over as well.

[Chaemono]

The math only works if the conversion of the DSLR market to mirrorless accelerates because of more compelling options for photographers now and the alliance makes each of the three companies involved a more relevant choice to consider than before. That’s why there seems to be so much negativity in this thread. Frame the whole thing as a desperate attempt by three failing companies. Imply that Sony is still the obvious choice for DSLR users to switch to. Sony has the only mirrorlless FF bodies with dual card slots and great AF. The framing attemp is a bit pathetic, but let’s see how good the Panasonic AF really is. In theory, the faster the processor, the better the algorithms, the quicker Panasonic’s DFD-AF technology should work.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Chaemono

[BernardC]

If you buy an L-mount body from Panasonic or Sigma, Leica has a better opportunity to sell you a lens than if you buy from Sony, Canon, or Nikon. More available customers (due to lower price hurdle to get into the ecosystem) is apparently seen as a good thing.

Exactly. If you buy a Nikon Z, then it's unlikely that you will buy an SL camera or lens.

However, if you buy a Panasonic or Sigma L-mount camera, it's very likely that you will want to buy a Leica lens or camera. It seems reasonable to think that a significant portion of those customers will eventually buy a Leica L-mount product.

 

It doesn't matter if they buy a used Leica lens/camera, because that keeps the value proposition of new lenses and cameras strong.

 

Maybe what is missing is a sense of scale. Panasonic will probably sell more L-Mount bodies on the first day than Leica has sold in 3 years. They will sell more on the second day, etc. All of those customers will want to try a Leica lens, and many of them can afford one (you already have to be well-off to buy a Panasonic).

[dkCambridgeshire]

Actually Dunk I doubt it. The 'professional' market is a minute part of any companies' sales these days. Sales are all about consumers/enthusiasts and their vagaries. I see a lot of expensive cameras used as 'snapshot' cameras (I do use all mine in this way too at times) and suspect we have reached an impasse as regards sales by specification alone. Its now about perception. I think that Leica, by allying itself with other camera manufacturers, could, if things run as they might hope, provide the company with an ingress into a larger market share and/or continuing rolling sales because they may be perceived as increasingly penetrating into the mainstream photographic market. A reasonable position to try to place a relatively small company in.

 

 

 

Mike Owen states in this interview that Panasonic is chasing Nikon and Canon professional sales and is also setting up a Lumix professional support network 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45627055  … go to 02.15 

 

dunk 

[mmradman]

Mike Owen states in this interview that Panasonic is chasing Nikon and Canon professional sales and is also setting up a Lumix professional support network 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45627055  … go to 02.15 

 

dunk

 

So in that BBC interview Panasonic manager is pitching camera strength as having 2 memory card slots, I can see where this is coming from and am not going to argue against, personally happy with single slot, even in SL I use only single card.

 

Second selling point is to build support network, probably easy to beat Sony in that game, Canon and Nikon already have established support networks and that is why pro shooters use them.

 

As much as S1R is full of promise it is still only show dummy. On the other hand Z7 is being delivered to customers from today.

 

Comes Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 it would be interesting to see how race for the hearts and minds of pro shooters unfold. Nikon and Canon dishing out long primes as they usually do and Panasonic/Sigma providing Leica 90-280mm Without TC and maybe some L converted Art lenses.

 

It is a tall mountain to climb. Good luck to our bold L-P-S trio.

[Timkr]

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There seems to an awful lot of excitement over this announcement. I have been browsing a number of forums and it seems there a lot of folks ready to take the leap into the L pool. Time will tell. I know I’ll be at the front of the line for an S1R.

[lct]

The new Panasonic bodies look as bulky as the SL at first glance. "Surprisingly big, larger than the latest a7III and Nikon Z6/Z6" according to Macfilos. Sounds like a deal breaker to me so unless the SL2 proves to be significantly smaller, which is hard to believe, my next digital back for M lenses could well be another Kolari modded Sony. 

[Chaemono]

The weather sealing looks state of the art.

[wjdrijfhout]

Sharing standards is a sign of a maturing market. Locking customers in into an ecosystem through lack of standards is risky and only works if the barrier of entry for competition is high.

With the transition from DSLR’s to mirrorless all manufacturers had to develop new mounts. This is a huge development effort. It is highly questionable if all of them will succeed using their traditional business model and make it as successful. And with that uncertainty at the horizon, it is questionable if customers still want to lock themselves in again as they used to do with the previous mounts. Up until now the EF mount seemed like a pretty safe bet. It could be adapted to most new mirrorless cameras, it is a recognized standard in the video world. So EF glass had a prominent position. For the new mounts, it is not an automatic consequence that the EOS R mount will take over that position. All options are open at this point.

And the L-Mount could be an interesting candidate. In the alliance, within a year or so it will have the most lenses of any mirrorless system probably. Customers can choose from three brands of cameras that will all have their own target audiences. And above all, how about potential new players?

Developing a mirrorless camera is much simpler than a DSLR camera. It is mostly an electronics challenge. So what if other electronics companies come to the game, such as Samsung, or Huawei. Let’s not forget about Olympus.... What mount would they go for? More likely that they join an existing eco-system than that they develop themselves. So unless Sony or Canon open up their mount to others, the L-Mount would be a good option.

With Oscar Barnacks heritage, Leica set the standard for what we call today full-frame photography. With Dr. Kaufman’s move toward the L-Mount alliance, chances are that Leica set the standard for what we will call in the future ‘the’ mount.

 

 

... or not, and then we still have a lot more lenses to choose from than that we have now :-)

[MarkP]

Licencing use to others to create and maintain a platform standard has it's benefits for survival of the design and licencing income.

 

If we go back to the days of VHS and Beta videos.  Beta was the better system. Philips licenced VHS to other companies which ensured survival of the platform and licencing revenue (till replaced by DVD, I think CD and DVD are also owned by Philips?), whilst Sony held onto it's design limiting penetration into the market and unfortunately Beta died a horrible death. 

[dkCambridgeshire]

There seems to an awful lot of excitement over this announcement. I have been browsing a number of forums and it seems there a lot of folks ready to take the leap into the L pool. Time will tell. I know I’ll be at the front of the line for an S1R.

 

 

 

Panasonic likely have a vision of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with professional photographers using Panasonic FF cameras … and L mount lenses.   And Leica Camera AG likely have a similar vision for the rumoured SL2 for which they'll also require some long lenses … a lot longer than current Leica SL offerings … and which could be supplied by either Panasonic or Sigma. 

 

dunk 

Edited September 28, 2018 by dkCambridgeshire

[jaapv]

Actually DVD was backed by Sony and Philips jointly.

[jaapv]

Panasonic likely have a vision of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with professional photographers using Panasonic FF cameras … and L mount lenses. 

 

dunk 

Well, they should prioritize long fast lenses in that case.

[bags27]

Maybe what is missing is a sense of scale. Panasonic will probably sell more L-Mount bodies on the first day than Leica has sold in 3 years. They will sell more on the second day, etc. All of those customers will want to try a Leica lens, and many of them can afford one (you already have to be well-off to buy a Panasonic).

Wow! There is probably enough truth in this to make us appreciate Leica's strategy....

[dkCambridgeshire]

Well, they should prioritize long fast lenses in that case.

 

 

Given all the effort that Leica/Panasonic/Sigma have put into the 'L' mount (since mid 2017 or prior given Dr K's hint during the Kevin Raber interview) long fast lenses must have been on the agenda for many months … no sense in doing only half a job with the Olympics looming if they want to make significant inroads into Canon/Nikon/Sony FF mirrorless territory.

 

dunk 

Edited September 28, 2018 by dkCambridgeshire

[Keith_W]

Let's hope that Leica uses this as an opportunity to further develop their "das wesentliche" philosophy. Given that there is now another SL mount camera that is overloaded with buttons and tries to do everything, perhaps the next SL can have video deleted, make the camera body smaller, and make it more minimalist. 

[sillbeers15]

Let's hope that Leica uses this as an opportunity to further develop their "das wesentliche" philosophy. Given that there is now another SL mount camera that is overloaded with buttons and tries to do everything, perhaps the next SL can have video deleted, make the camera body smaller, and make it more minimalist.

Video delete button I support.

 

No to reducing camera size. Firstly, the SL lenses are not compact, reducing the camera dimension does not have an overall effect impactful to user. More importantly, the M camera has a shorter Long exposure than SL due to overheating sited as the reason due to camera dimension and poor heat dissipation property. Reducing the SL size will kill the landscape photography application and reduce the camera’s functionality.

[Chaemono]

Commercial clients don’t like it when photographers show up with bodies that look like consumer cameras. They associate size with specs. I was standing next to a photographer at a fashion show recently and she was using a 5D Mark IV. I asked her why. She said she can’t show up to do paid work with a camera that doesn’t look like it packs enough specs. I said how about Sony. She said Sony mirrorless is definitely a no-go.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[lct]

Hard to sell a camera to pro photographers w/o attracting a lot of hobbyists so question is how many of them are interested in a FF camera as bulky as an MF one more or less.