Next step of Leica?

Never imagine there will be so many responses and good debates! Thanks a lot! Just learnt that Erwin has a new

essay about the Leica CRF. So could it be an indication that the new M will still have the CRF?

 

I appreciate very much the artistic view of Erwin. But this view may not be able to win the support of customers or

market. It is quite disappointed to learn that Erwin's view already gives up that Leica M could still challenge SLRs in

the market. His view already sets aside Leica from the competition by accepting that the CRF does not have any

functional advantage but just preservation of classic user feeling.

 

In my personal view, Leica M definitely not just an obsolete concept, but is still very capable of challenging current

SLRs. Indeed M3 was launched with the high ambition of challenging then SLR concept and earned a market wide

success. If leica already lost that enthusiam, that would definitely be the key failing factor.

 

Leica should recall that enthusiam and modernise M concept again with high ambition of challenging the current

competition.

 

M-concept actually has a lot of advantages over SLRs, absence of mirror, vibration-free, optical quality due to short

distance to sensor/film, and much smaller size of the lenses, small size of body, simple but direct controls and

functions.

 

Just want to do a simple survey. Would you be interested in a new M with:

- Similar size and shape as M;

- Optical viewfinder with electronic rangefinder focus indications

- Optical viewfinder with zoom capabilities which can handle 21mm - 135mm

- Auto-framelines and optical viewfinder zooming determined from lenses. Since the framelines are electronic, they

should be 100% accurate (but of course not WYSWYG)

- Full frame sensor 1,600mp (DNG, RAW and JPEG only) - need to resolve the technical issue of microlense

reflection

- Good high Iso/JPEG performance by post processing software developed/provided by Leica instead of inbuilt

processing inside the camera(to keep the body small)

- 3 frames a sec but can be up to 10 with a bottom attachment which shaped and sized like a Leicavit

- Develop M lenses for 180 - 300mm (autofocus) with separate optical viewfinders. The viewfinder has electronic

contacts and also a sensor inside to determine the distance, light metering. The distance will be conveyed to the

lenses which will be autofocussed by the motor inside the lenses. Mass-produced by Panasonic

- Develop new, small, rotatable TTL flash

- About USD3,000, manufactured by Panasonic

- Due to framelines are electronic, develop M high quality zoom lenses (migrated from existing R-ones)

 

What do you guys think?

I think 1,600 mp is a little over the top. Otherwise I think the concept is financially impossible. :-)

OK, after 476 postings, what's the conclusion on the next step for Leica? Self-immolation or resurrection?

How about self-erection?

Allen, you need to learn to use italics when quoting someone

 

I'm gonna do that,Josh. I'm gonna learn that italic thing. Heck,Josh, i'm gonna do a night class and be real proper with all that writing stuff...you just wait and see.

 

Sure am,Josh. Thanks for the heads up;)

Sorry. It should be 16mp. Cheers

"OK, after 476 postings, what's the conclusion on the next step for Leica? Self-immolation or resurrection?"

 

Dunno. Here's what I got from it.

 

The M concept doesn't seem to translate well to digital.

 

The R slr is a good candidate for full-frame dslr-ization.

 

Leica needs to conjure up the ghost of Barnack and ask him for a digital camera design.

 

Imo, if Leica continues on its boutiquey Porschey Rolexy (and whatever other swank product its cameras are

compared to here) collectable luxury approach to cameras...well "self-immolation" is accurate. If they can

recover, for digital, the original small format concept they began with, then resurrection is possible.

<p>Just stumbled on this! Tho' I did read many of the posts I can't say I read them all, so my apologies if this has been stated before. But here are a couple observations I'd like to offer:</p>

<p>With the advent of digital, as people have intimated, a different relationship with making images has emerged:</p>

<p>1. It's cheap and easy to make lots of images. And we tend to view them on a computer screen. Which many have pointed out isn't the same as viewing a 10x12 or even larger on the wall. So there is a huge difference now in how we value the photos taking process, and how we view them. The apparent low cost of digital makes people sloppy photographers. And viewing the majority of them online instead of as hardcopy makes us, I would argue, sloppy appreciators of the form: there's a lot of crap to view, and we do so on a computer screen.</p>

<p>2. Once you had a good camera, innovation happened on the emulsions, in processing and in printing. The camera is only one part where innovation in the creative process took place. And in this, Leica was much stronger than its competitors: a camera despite its size able to take very good photos (sharp, contrasty in low light situations, consistently). Digital has now completely overturned this reality. As people have implied here, we don't improve on film anymore, we improve on sensors and in-camera software processing. Leica could get away with charging a pound of flesh for its bodies, esp. for pros who shoot thousands of rolls per year. The cost amortized over thousands of frames made the expensive body tenable. Think: even after a huge investment in your Leica camera body, you could always be shooting the latest emulsion. Now, however, in order to get the latest "film" you have to get a new body. And so long as Leica is still in the world where an expensive body is amortized over hundreds of thousands of images, it won't survive long when people expect to upgrade bodies not a little unlike upgrading in emulsions.</p>

<p>The whole "ecosystem" of the creative process has changed. Before it was:</p>

<p>body + lens + emulsion + processing + printing (wet)</p>

<p>The marginal cost of film (emulsion) is low. A 50 year old Leica works as well with Fuji Reala as Kodachrome.</p>

<p>Now with digital it's</p>

<p>body (sensor) + lens + post-processing + printing (dry)</p>

<p>The marginal cost of a new sensor and its post-processing is now very high: the body becomes as dated as a brick of last year's discontinued film, at 10-100x the price.</p>

<p>3. As someone noted before, Leica needs to get back to what it did very well. But given the digital "ecosystem" what does that now look like? People often think of HCB and others as such great photographers who used the Leica and so we should all too. Well, what else were they going to use? They used what was best at the time. Leica is probably not that anymore... but it could be, if it could find out what helps a someone be better at sharing the visual experience s/he has with a subject. I agree with what others have said- Leica must get out of its own history and forge a new path- what design best helps a person share their visual experience with another?</p>