Erwin: Parallels between Apple and Leica?

I don't see any parallel between Apple and Leica. Now, if Apple was selling a rehashed version of the IIe running DOS for $5000 hoping to sell a few thousand of them to guys who band together on internet forums to shout down anyone who sees a $1000 Dual-core PC can out-compute it, well, <i>then</i> there'd be a parallel.

<i> "true innovation didn't not happen for 15 years until the M5 in the early 1970's and then the M6 in the mid 1980's" </i> <p>

 

<b>The M6 was innovative?...Am I missing something?</b> <p>

 

<i> Let's see: self-timer, brass top plate, hot shoe, finder flare, script engraving, M syc post ... </i> <p>

 

You honestly call that "true innovation" in the camera industry?

..Parallels between Erwin and a Turnip..

 

..I fear they are now both a vegetable.

Hiya,

 

"You honestly call that "true innovation" in the camera industry?"

 

Jacob...you said it. I doubt anyone at Leica can spell innovation. The innovation STOPPED with the first M..period. They have just tinkered ever since. That is why they have been and continue to be in financial dire straits.

 

They leave the real innovation to the Japanese. Carl Zeiss are just as bad...living on past glories....tinkering with old designs.

 

cheers Steve.

Sony uses lenses designed by Zeiss. Panasonic uses lenses designed by Leica. Kodak by Schneider Kreuznach. And these three pretty much own P&S and all-in-one digital camera market. In DSLRs picture is slightly different, but when it comes to optics it's all the same - Canon and Nikon are always playing the catch-up game when it comes to quality of their optics vs. optics made by German companies. And that's where most of invention and innovation from Carl Zeiss and Leica is - optics.

 

Japanese companies rarely "innovate" anything. They copy ideas of other companies or they buy them outright and then combine several into a finished product.

 

Here is a quick trip back in history of camera development of last three decades. First autofocus SLR? 1978, Polaroid SX-70.

First Japanese catch-up version? Minolta Maxxum 7000, seven years later.

 

Inventor of CCD? Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973

 

First "filmless" camera design? Texas Instruments, 1972!

First real working proof-of-concept digital CCD-based camera - Steve Sasson at Kodak, December 1975.

 

Bayer Pattern? 1976, again Kodak.

 

And Japanese? 1981, Sony Mavica, still video camera.

 

First megapixel sensor - Kodak, 1986

 

First professional digital SLR? Kodak DCS, 1991.

First consumer-level digital camera - Apple QuickTake 100 camera on February 17 , 1994 which was a version of the camera Kodak had already been selling in Japan for a year.

 

The one area relevant to modern digital capture where Japenese were first is invention of flash memory - Toshiba, 1984. But first flash cards were invented by SanDisk, which was founded in 1988 and by 1991 their flash disks were already used on US Space Shuttle.

 

Most of those digital Canons and Nikons that are so popular today exist due to inventions made by American scientists and companies.

 

So much for Japanese "innovation" :)

 

I personally wouldn't even care who "innovates". I would only care about who makes it practical and easy enough to use. And that's where Japanese at the moment are pretty good.

Leica innovates and all its competition are slackers, eh? I see someone's fallen down the rabbit hole.

Jacob,

 

Seems like you weren't paying attention. Being innovator (and inventing in general) practically never translates into being hugely popular and/or profitable. In case with optics though there is Carl Zeiss and Leica and then there is everybody else, distant second and third. Zeiss in particular had lots of innovations in last several decades. Higher quality cine lenses, lenses for lithography (which probably made it possible to manufacture a computer you're reading this on) and the list goes on. Same goes for Leica in fields outside of photography. Too many times they simply couldn't "port" those innovations back into their lenses for photography because of costs that market wouldn't bear.

 

As an example from a different market current price of Berkshire Hathway share is $109,600. Expensive, eh? Not really, since it's one of the best investments with longest proven records. The key is - their shares were never split because they were always meant for long-term investors only. Not for flippers, speculators, day traders and other people that are out to make a quick buck. Leica products are not for everyone either. Not everyone wants $500 made-in-third-world-country P&S digicam that will be worthless, outdated or broken before the next presidential elections in US. But if you want one, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, Kodak or Sony will be happy to "help" you.

Samsung uses lenses designed by Schneider Kreuznach as well.

Drink me.

It is a valid comparison.

 

Both brands are perceived by their afficionados as offering greater pleasure to own and/or use than mainstream brands.

 

Both brands are perceived by their critics as overpriced and not offering a commensurate increase in performance over mainstream brands.

 

I'm a firm fan of both Leica and Apple, owning four Leica M camera bodies, five Leica M lenses and a Powerbook. But I also own two Canon EOS 5D bodies, two Canon and five Carl Zeiss lenses, and a Dell PC, so I know from experience that the mainstream brands can also do a very good job. <g>

Michael, Depends on how you define innovation. If Canon and Nikon had not enter the DSLR arena how much do you think the latest ground breaking 10 megapixel pro offering from Kodak and Polaroid would cost? What good is innovation if 99% of the popular can't benefit from it? Taking a raw patented invention and develop a manufacturing process for it, market it, package it and sell it at an affordable price take more courage and innovation then you think.

Raymond,

 

I believe you missed the point too. It's the innovators that stand to lose the most. They spend a lot of their time and money for R&D and then fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the general public why their solution is good. They're the ones to take the highest risk.

 

Later adopters that use technology and ideas developed by someone else benefit the most by not taking as much risk. That's why they're so hugely profitable, their profit margins are substantially higher specifically because they didn't have to spend as much time and money developing something entirely new and then trying to make money off of it.

 

Competition coupled with supply and demand is what's driving the pricing on the market. If you recall before AMD became a real competitor to Intel, Intel could charge just about any amount of money they wanted for their CPUs. They were the ones however who spent the most on R&D and took a lot of risks. Luckily for them they also managed not only to survive, but also to make it big. Didn't work too well for many of their other non-CPU related businesses though.

 

The problem with most revolutionary ideas is always the same - nobody wants them. It takes a long time for revolutionary idea to become "common sense" and by that time the original inventors are usually gone out of business. Do you really think Canon or Nikon would have been around in camera business if they were the ones to spend decades perfecting the CCDs, inventing the AF, taking a huge risk by introducing the first ever digital SLR camera (kodak DCS) that would fall far short of film quality and on an on? Most likely not. Most likely in this case they would be out of business. Canon and Nikon are in business to make money, they adopt many outside ideas to create a product for which there is a demand in order to make money. Once demand dries up, they no longer want to keep the product alive, no matter how good or innovative that product is. Think about it, most CCD and CMOS sensors are about APS sized. Neither Nikon nor Canon wanted to spend time and money on R&D to develop entirely new system that would be based on this new size of the medium. Instead they adopted what they already had - their EOS and F bodies, their existing lenses and accessories, even same shutter mechanisms and so forth. There was very little innovation going on there as far as consumer is concerned.

 

Four-Thirds system is pretty innovative for example, despite the shortcomings (one of them being that I personally believe best image can be obtained using sensors where each photosite is about 8 microns in size).

 

But you don't see much of sales in that system. Part of the reason is because technically they're ahead of their time. I could see a variation on that idea being adopted by Canon or Nikon in future, especially if CMOS sensors become more common. Time will tell.

 

With Leica however, as I mentioned, their main innovations are always in lenses. The M body in all its variations has very little effect on the final image. It's the lens that has the most effect. And that's where true heart of Leica system is. The body is there to make it easy for you to use the lens to its highest potential to capture the moment as you wish. There isn't much innovation required there - it already does exactly what it's supposed to do. In lenses however there is always room for improvement. R&D in optics however always takes a long time and a lot of money to do. And then it takes a while to make up for R&D costs and start making profit. The end result from Leica or Zeiss is almost always quite spectacular though.

hahahahahah

 

Leica is also not innovative because M8 uses the same M-mount that has been around for 54 years!

"could they do away with the LCD altogether, not because it's not useful, but as one of several simplifications for cost saving?"

 

$99 point and shoot cameras have LCDs. You need a lot more than that to trim $4000 off a Leica.

 

"I mean, in raw mode, you wouldn't need sharpening or white balance to be set as on an LCD,"

 

Actually, you do. Raw processing may let you change your white balance, sharpening, contrast, etc. settings after you shoot the picture, but you still need to set them right before you take the picture, or you end up having to adjust them manually for every single picture you take.

Steven asks for "Parallels between Erwin and a Turnip".

 

They both keep their heads buried firmly in the sand.

 

Well, you asked.

Who gives a flying f*ck about parellels between Apple or Leica.

 

It's the parellels between Canon and Windows that count.

 

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile at ISO 10000.

 

Rangefinders, schmangefinders. Pass the Apple juice, por favor, and take a f*cking picture already!

red apples and red dots?