Let's have it out

[jaapv]

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With all due respect, Frank, you haven't been active here very long and I am sure that you haven't read all the threads (not that I have either, and I was here before this iteration of the forum started - and the one before the one before that, come to think of it...)

 

There have been loads of "New M8 user here! How do I...?" threads from people who haven't used a Leica before.

 

I am not saying that more new photographers choose a Leica than a Canon or a Nikon (most will choose a cheap point and shoot, I would guess), but there are more than a few people who are new to Leica, via the M8 route.

I can only support this, Andy. RFF shows the same pattern. Amazingly there seem to be more converts coming from the DSLR world these last months.

[delander †]

I also think the M8 is still selling at considerable quantities. More people want a different and straightforward shooting experience and Leica M lenses. The message keeps getting through.

 

Jeff

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[Guest BigSplash]

I also think the M8 is still selling at considerable quantities. More people want a different and straightforward shooting experience and Leica M lenses. The message keeps getting through.

 

Jeff

 

Andy if it is true then it is wonderful news, I am delighted.

 

> We shall have a healthy Leica company making Dr Kaufmann's 250M€uros a year in sales and M9's (FF hopefully) and M10's plus lots of lovely sexy lenses and accessories, plus a well financed R&D activity.

> Hopefully the S2 will be a similar great success although the S2 forum seems to be suggesting a very rocky patch....price erosion, Phase One alliance on hold or whatever a launch during an economic crisis and a leica after sales reputation with pros that is poor etc.

 

Andy I hope you are correct....personally I worry for Leica.

[Steve Pope]

The M8 (or M9) is never going to be the first-time photographer's camera, nor the tourist's, casual snapper's or student's. Neither are gear-head Nikon and Canon browsers Leica's target customer - they simply do not have to compete in the mass-market segment, nor would they have the means to do so even if that was somehow a desirable strategy. Leica are niche players with a couple of uniquely interesting propositions whose perverse attractiveness seems to creep up on the more mature or disaffected DSLR photographer the deeper they delve into the photographic obsession. There will NEVER be a shortage of long-in-the-tooth DSLR shooters coming out the other side and looking to get back to the fundamentals, and Leica's artisanal business model needs only ever to tickle the tiniest fraction of that continual stream of new puritans and non-conformists to stay at peak output.

 

Leica need only present an updated generation of the digital M within the next few years (while avoiding betting the farm on the S2 gamble, of course) and more than enough of the disatisfied high end of the DSLR market will continue to heed the siren call of the classic rangefinder experience. Irrespective of Leica's stubborness in the face of superfluous technological enhancement, I just can't see Leica running out of a supply of new devotees in the foreseeable future, as Canon and Nikon are obligingly breeding new defectors all the time...and they perform this service for free!

Edited July 28, 2009 by Steve Pope

[andybarton]

Andy if it is true then it is wonderful news, I am delighted..

 

Jeff said that, not me.

[SJP]

The joys of flickr. The M8 is the 3rd most used Leica Dlux3 #1, Dlux4 #2, M8 #3 (daily no. of users). The no. of M8 users is increasing steadily.

 

Compared to Nikons (for example) the no. of Leica users is very small depending on the model you compare it with, maybe 30-40x less. Even so a few % of the high end market is not unreasonable and with Leica prices being what they are the turnover per item is substantially higher.

 

Leica has easily sold all the special items (safari, white, panda) typically within a month. The M8 and M8.2 regular editions are also selling quite well from what I heard from the NL importer, better than they had anticipated. Edit: and no noticable effect of the recession.

Edited July 28, 2009 by SJP

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The M8 (or M9) is never going to be the first-time photographer's camera, nor the tourist's, casual snapper's or student's. Neither are gear-head Nikon and Canon browsers Leica's target customer - they simply do not have to compete in the mass-market segment, nor would they have the means to do so even if that was somehow a desirable strategy. Leica are niche players with a couple of uniquely interesting propositions whose perverse attractiveness seems to creep up on the more mature or disaffected DSLR photographer the deeper they delve into the photographic obsession. There will NEVER be a shortage of long-in-the-tooth DSLR shooters coming out the other side and looking to get back to the fundamentals, and Leica's artisanal business model needs only ever to tickle the tiniest fraction of that continual stream of new puritans and non-conformists to stay at peak output.

 

Leica need only present an updated generation of the digital M within the next few years (while avoiding betting the farm on the S2 gamble, of course) and more than enough of the disatisfied high end of the DSLR market will continue to heed the siren call of the classic rangefinder experience. Irrespective of Leica's stubborness in the face of superfluous technological enhancement, I just can't see Leica running out of a supply of new devotees in the foreseeable future, as Canon and Nikon are obligingly breeding new defectors all the time...and they perform this service for free!

 

I hope you are correct and that the Canon & Nikon deserters leave in sufficient numbers to support the 250M€uros annual revenue that is required for continued R&D and a healthy company.

My day job is turning around high tech companies and living in hope when the numbers do not materialise fast enough never seems to please the investors. Asking them to inject more cash really upsets investors and doing this when the product startegy is not well matched to the market really upsets them... so as I say I hope Leica has all the bases covered. I am sure they have.

 

I agree about the S2 gamble which seems to also be beset with the bad luck of a tough economic environment and Phase One and R&D delays ...quite apart from the challenge of ousting an entrenched competitor.

[AlanG]

Reading this thread, the M8 is a simple minimalist camera, but takes a while to learn how to use properly. And that is supposed to be a good thing.

 

At the same time a DSLR is too easy to use and doesn't require use of your brain, eyes, and fingers... as it has all of these automatic features that do the photography for you... yet somehow it is also too complicated because of all of the buttons and many choices, thus requiring you to work hard and study up on how to use it.

 

I don't think you can have it both ways.

[jaapv]

I don't think it is about having it both ways. It is about selecting the tool that suits you best and learning to use it properly. But there is a vast difference in types of tools for the same job. Fortunately - as there is a vast difference in users of those tools.

[Guest BigSplash]

The joys of flickr. The M8 is the 3rd most used Leica Dlux3 #1, Dlux4 #2, M8 #3 (daily no. of users). The no. of M8 users is increasing steadily.

 

Compared to Nikons (for example) the no. of Leica users is very small depending on the model you compare it with, maybe 30-40x less. Even so a few % of the high end market is not unreasonable and with Leica prices being what they are the turnover per item is substantially higher.

 

Leica has easily sold all the special items (safari, white, panda) typically within a month. The M8 and M8.2 regular editions are also selling quite well from what I heard from the NL importer, better than they had anticipated. Edit: and no noticable effect of the recession.

At a business level what does this mean for :

> The basic M8 or M8.2? ...apparently the main revenue stream?

> Enjoying revenues from selling safari, white and panda.....at 500 units per item

> S2 ????

 

If this and I guess other revenue stream such as Sports Optics, and Panasonic rebadged items plus after sales can sustain an ongoing growth business with heavy R&D costs that is great news.....My view is that the Leica company need to asap make clear their product roadmap in a way that engages new users and keeps the faithful on board.

[andybarton]

Is that what all your companies do, Frank?

 

Reveal all your business plans to the general public?

[delander †]

Reading this thread, the M8 is a simple minimalist camera, but takes a while to learn how to use properly. And that is supposed to be a good thing.

 

At the same time a DSLR is too easy to use and doesn't require use of your brain, eyes, and fingers... as it has all of these automatic features that do the photography for you... yet somehow it is also too complicated because of all of the buttons and many choices, thus requiring you to work hard and study up on how to use it.

 

I don't think you can have it both ways.

 

Alan, Actually I think that a lot of what you say is true for me. The M8 is a rangefinder but its simplicity also appeals to me. I have two Canon DSLRs and I find their complexity a nuisance. Reading the ISO amongst a plethora of other info for example. To use a modern phrase simply 'too much information'. The various settings and custom functions can take endless time to refine with very little, if any, improvement in the cameras performance.

 

I wrote in an earlier post in this thread that I would like a digital Nikkormat FTN and I meant that. I used to do motor racing (F1, Nicki Lauda, Ronnie Peterson, Carlos Reuteman etc) shots with my old FTN and a 200 F4 nikkor. When I look at those shots today on film they are good, sharp, panned etc, quite atmospheric in the wet etc and printed well at 20 x 16.

 

I can imagine that for younger photographers who have grown up with digital, autofocus, variable iso, 5-10 fps, multi selectable focus points etc that the M8 is really a joke. But as they get older and they no longer need the latest electronic fad a number will embrace the experience of going back to the basics of photography. Those are the future customers for Leica M cameras (or a digital Nikkormat if they were ever to produce one). Hopefully for Leica there will be enough of them.

 

Jeff

[epand56]

t the same time a DSLR is too easy to use and doesn't require use of your brain, eyes, and fingers... as it has all of these automatic features that do the photography for you... yet somehow it is also too complicated because of all of the buttons and many choices, thus requiring you to work hard and study up on how to use it.

 

And you can get out of the shop with a good DSRL and a decent zoom in your hand with little more than 1000 euros. We must not forget this.

An M8.2 and a couple Leica lenses have the same price of a car. Not many amateurs out there have all that money to spend.

[AlanG]

 

I wrote in an earlier post in this thread that I would like a digital Nikkormat FTN and I meant that. I used to do motor racing (F1, Nicki Lauda, Ronnie Peterson, Carlos Reuteman etc) shots with my old FTN and a 200 F4 nikkor. When I look at those shots today on film they are good, sharp, panned etc, quite atmospheric in the wet etc and printed well at 20 x 16.

 

 

I have some 24x36 inch prints made form scanned 35mm film that look great. I think I can relate to your F1 shooting. I did a little of that (and other types of racing) in the US and Europe with a Nikon F, 200, 500 as well as with the Leicaflex SL and Novoflex lenses. (I shot a slide show for Ferrari back around 1976.) Yes photography was pretty mature by the early 70s. (Although fast slide film was terrible.)

 

My professional background is mostly shooting architecture with view cameras. So I know what it is like to work slowly and deliberately. And I resisted going to AF with Nikon for a long time. And when I finally did with the 8008, N90 and the lenses that drove AF though the camera body motor, I found it not very useful. But I have to say that since I went to the dark side with Canon digital AF gear, I have been totally blown away with what it can do. And I really appreciate having all of those features. (I even want more.)

I would have a hard time accepting a camera that has fewer features if I planned to depend on it for the wide variety of things I shoot today.

 

As I said earlier, if you need to shoot with fill flash, it is nice to have a dedicated button that lets you quickly adjust the flash/ambient ratio.

 

Here are some 33+ year old F1 photos - Motezemolo (who runs Ferrari today,) Lauda, and Regazoni. If I could go back to those days with a modern DSLR system, I'd have way more "keepers." Of course I could still shoot with that "primitive" gear. But why should I?

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Edited July 28, 2009 by AlanG

[offshore]

And you can get out of the shop with a good DSRL and a decent zoom in your hand with little more than 1000 euros. We must not forget this.

An M8.2 and a couple Leica lenses have the same price of a car. Not many amateurs out there have all that money to spend.

One word- "credit card" :eek:

[jrc]

A lot of stuff I have written in this thread has been interpreted as accusatory in some way, which I didn't intend, so I hope this doesn't sound the same way, because I don't intend it to.

 

I write thriller novels for a living, and when I'm writing, my whole concern, my total focus, is to make the words invisible. The words have to be appropriate (even when multi-syllabic) or they will throw the reader out of the story, which is the last thing you want to do in a thriller. So I finish a good draft of a book in, say, the last week of October, and then for the next two months, working four or five hours a day, I comb through it, smoothing it, trying to get it to the point where no single word will make a reader sit up and say, "Wait a minute -- I'm reading." I want him/her to *live* the story.

 

I (perhaps wrongly) referred to Leicas as often functioning as jewelry. What I meant by that is that the owner's focus seemed to be on the machine, rather than on the product of the machine. By the very nature of what I do for a living, I have obsess on the opposite end of things -- the product. No reader cares whether I write on a typewriter, or a Mac, or a PC, or with a quill pen, for that matter, because they're buying a story. By the same measure, what difference does it make whether you use a Nikon or a Leica, if nobody can tell the difference in the product? All that should really matter is whether the machine helps make the product better. I accept the idea that for many Leica owners, it does. (It certainly does for me, which is why I own them, as well as a couple of NIkons and m4/3 machines.) In tracking down why people buy Leicas -- and this thread has helped -- I don't think we can ignore the machine-oriented impulse. People like Leicas because they like Leicas. If no Leica existed, they might instead use a P&S, because they're really not so much interested in the product. If Leica is going to continue to exist, it has to take that market into consideration. But it also has to consider people who would use the machine purely as a means, rather than as an end in itself -- people who are not so much interested in the machine as in the product. For those people, Leica offers a few slim advantages, and lots of disadvantages (like the inability to use long lenses.) But for those for whom the Leica's advantages outweigh the disadvantages, there is really nothing else in the market (although you have to keep an eye on the G1 and the E-P1.) The two rather different markets, machine and product, are both fairly small, and Leica needs both to survive.

 

JC

[JBA]

The M8 (or M9) is never going to be the first-time photographer's camera, nor the tourist's, casual snapper's or student's. Neither are gear-head Nikon and Canon browsers Leica's target customer - they simply do not have to compete in the mass-market segment, nor would they have the means to do so even if that was somehow a desirable strategy. Leica are niche players with a couple of uniquely interesting propositions whose perverse attractiveness seems to creep up on the more mature or disaffected DSLR photographer the deeper they delve into the photographic obsession. There will NEVER be a shortage of long-in-the-tooth DSLR shooters coming out the other side and looking to get back to the fundamentals, and Leica's artisanal business model needs only ever to tickle the tiniest fraction of that continual stream of new puritans and non-conformists to stay at peak output.

 

Leica need only present an updated generation of the digital M within the next few years (while avoiding betting the farm on the S2 gamble, of course) and more than enough of the disatisfied high end of the DSLR market will continue to heed the siren call of the classic rangefinder experience. Irrespective of Leica's stubborness in the face of superfluous technological enhancement, I just can't see Leica running out of a supply of new devotees in the foreseeable future, as Canon and Nikon are obligingly breeding new defectors all the time...and they perform this service for free!

 

As anecdotal evidence to support this, I can cite my own experience and that of a friend.

 

I was a faithful Nikon user since the ''70s, so when I decided to go digital it seemed only natural that one of the Nikon digitals would best serve my needs. Wrong! I hated everything about the digital cameras and ended up doubling my budget to get a used M6 and new 35 Summicron Asph. and going back to film. Nikon defector and new Leica user as of 2 years ago.

 

A friend of mine learned and shot for years with a Canon digital before getting a similarly bulky Canon film camera just to see what film was about. A few weeks ago he started expressing an interest in trying an M7, and last weekend he got one with 35 'Lux Asph. and flash, all bought new. He's new to Leica but not new to photography, and wanted to up his game.

 

Not M8 users, it's true, but nonetheless new Leica users and happy to have made the jump.

[RSL]

Reading this thread, the M8 is a simple minimalist camera, but takes a while to learn how to use properly. And that is supposed to be a good thing.

 

At the same time a DSLR is too easy to use and doesn't require use of your brain, eyes, and fingers... as it has all of these automatic features that do the photography for you... yet somehow it is also too complicated because of all of the buttons and many choices, thus requiring you to work hard and study up on how to use it.

 

I don't think you can have it both ways.

 

Alan, Where on earth did you get the idea that a camera's ease of use or lack thereof has anything at all to do with the quality of the photographs made by a photographer? Great photographs are made by the photographer's subconscious mind, not the conscious part of his brain and certainly not by his eyes or his fingers. Walker Evans was suspected of making great photographs only because of the fine equipment to which he had access. So he bought a box camera and proceeded to make a series of great photographs with it. A good photographer can do good work with any equipment that comes his way. The most important thing about equipment is to become so familiar with what's in your hands that you stop thinking about it.

[Guest stnami]

Some cameras are a struggle to use well the box brownie just couldn't cut it under water............ and my digital point and shoot struggled to get a picture of JFK being shot ... my m4 was a shot duck as it battled with me at the Malaysian GP probably because I sold it long before the event.

 

Camera technology has added huge benefits in image making..... god I wish I had one of those canon full frame thingies with video when me and Armstrong were doing our lunar stuff in the studio,................. maybe that nikon D3 would have saved me from a gammy leg when I played hop scotch in that mine field and dodgem with m16s

Edited July 29, 2009 by stnami

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[pgk]

...the M8 is a simple minimalist camera, but takes a while to learn how to use properly.

 

At the same time a DSLR is too easy to use and doesn't require use of your brain, eyes, and fingers...

 

In fact both have commonality of the actual picture taking mechanisms - focus, aperture, shutter and sensor - its just that in one the decision making process of setting each of these as desired is entirely the photographer's, and accordingly the photographer has to understand the effect of each mechanism on the resultant image. The other can 'make' (automate) the decisions on thephotographer's behalf and depending on their understanding of its decision making controls, can make them as wanted, or otherwise.

 

I use both M8 and dSLRs - each as appropriate. What puzzles me in this thread is why anyone would consider that making a 'simple minimalist' M rangefinder into something more complex would be beneficial. Personally I think that some features could be happily discarded (usb port, jpegs, etc) rather than added to.