M8 compared to M film cameras: how long before a price drop?

Wondering...

While IMO MPs M7s and also M6's and most of the older M film cameras seem to be holding a more or less

stable value on the used market, especially when in mint condition, is the M8 (a Leica, yes, but a digital

one, and we all know how quickly digital cameras value depreciates, with the one exeption nowadays

perhaps still being the 5D) going to depreciate in value fairly quickly too(you know, half retail price or so)

or its Leica status will keep its price high for a few years to come, notwithstanding it will probably never

become a collectable item?

As sensors mature with increased pixels, and are implimented in cheap cameras, the M8 price will dive.

M8 prices don't significantly have to do with sensor prices.

John und Karl,

 

I wonder which one of you is the owner of a new M8?

 

Don't bother to tell us.

 

Jerry

Cameras are not investments.

International markets have everyone panicking? M8 depreciation already? Anyone using his/her cameras rather than worrying over their values?

Pico, I fully agree with you,

but occasionally, like cars or like original Leica MPs, some may become...?

James,

I am not worrying about value here,

just wondering how long until I can afford one (M8 that is, I gave up cars long ago, I only ride

my motorbike now...).

When they are able to make one with fewer problems at the same price or cheaper. Until then, they will be valued as used Leicas.

 

I do not know when will be.

 

Do not count on it anytime soon.

If you're looking for the M8 to drop significantly in price in the near future, I think you're dreaming. The Digital back for the R cameras, despite the initial problems and the announced discontinuance, don't show any sign of significant price decline. In fact, the few cameras which can use Leica glass (M or R) and produce good results don't seem to be in any sort of decline. My suggestion is if you want it...do whatever is necessary to get it. Yes, there will probably be improvements, but there have always been improvements in cameras...film and digital. Whatever you purchase today won't produce lesser pictures because of the introduction of a new model.

as soon as Leica releases their M9.

When M9 comes out M8 will become a piano in its plummett. Just dont think about it as these are the rules of the new photographic world, meanwhile if you can afford the present state of the art go for it and shoot all you can! Good luck. ( I still only shoot film so still not an issue for me...)

The worth of any camera, tool, or appliance is determined by the incremental increase in value produced over its useful life; not its market value as an artifact at any particular point therein. Those who do not employ a tool in producing a valuable increment have no warranty that that tool will acquire 'museum' quality with time. Realistic professional users of such an item are aware of this process and depreciate its worth (for tax purposes, for instance) as time passes. When fully depreciated it may or may not have acquired value as a cultural artifact, subject only to chance. Time and age do not impart such value to such appliances and any possessor thereof who hopes to profit thereby is gambling the same as betting on the toss of a coin.

Wow, I'm getting an Ivy League MBA for free, just reading this forum.

It's a funny thing. Minolta did a digital SLR very early on. Long after the sensor was horribly obsolete, it retained its value on the used market for no reason I could figure. I kept hoping to find it cheap just to fool around with. Finally the KM 5D came and out and I jumped on that. Also, lots of people buy Leicas to look nice in their display cases, rather than strictly as photographic tools to use, so those people won't care if the camera is even useable. It will still be pretty.

 

So... maybe the M8 will go down and maybe it won't.

I doubt the M8's price will fall anytime soon. If you want one, pay the price and use the heck out of it ... it will save you buckets in film and processing costs. Just try to recoup the expenditure as quickly as possible and depreciate the thing. Alternatively, buy an RD-1s and do the same to that ... you'll just pay it off sooner. Maybe by the time you have burned out an RD-1s, the first batches of used M8s will be hitting the shelves and you can pick one up for less [remembering that the seller probably worked just as hard to burn out his M8 as you did trying the burn out the RD-1 :-) ]

I looked in my crystal ball, and here is what I saw. Leica is very aware of the effect that their next upgrade will have on the value of M8s, so they will make the upgrades very gradually, especially if they have supplies of M8s that need to be sold but are selling even if slowly. When sales of the M8 slow enough, (and I imagine that what represents slow sales to Leica must be very different than for other camera makers), perhaps in 2 years they will introduce an M8-2. This will allow them to liquidate remaining new M8s for around $3999 US with a rebate while the M8-2 will cost $5500. Used M8s will then go for about $2800. This will partially be dictated by the introduction of a Zeiss digital M for $2500 new in early 2009 as a last exploration of the M market to which they have already made some committment. The Zeiss will offer certain benefits over the older M8s, but its overall fit and finish will not be up to the older M8s even though their will be "buyer beware" warnings about the M8s. This theater will continue to play out partially because Nikon and Canon will not offer a reasonable manually oriented compact pro-oriented SLR. By this point, when the megapixel wars are really actually ending with 20 MP point and shoots with HD video, Canon and others will finally attempt to diversify their product offerings with risky propositions that attempt to bring in the most conservative market with cameras with un-heard of manual controls. Many of us will buy these even thought they are not Leica-like. Leica will finally offer an M9 in about 2010 that will correct every problem, but it will cost $7000 US. Old M8 and M8-2 prices will actually rise as a result because of inflation and will cost $3400 and $4500 respectively, so that people that paid $4800 for a new M8 in 2006 won't really be too upset.

 

In 2012, the price of the electronics will have reduced so much that someone will speculatively introduce a mediorcre 10MP plastic body camera that will take M mount lenses for $700. Many of us will buy them, but it won't be enough to make a success of the idea. Still, this will be the moment we hoped for, but it will be experienced as a total anticlimax, and the camera will be discontinued after 18 months.

 

We devoted will continue to buy Kodachrome at $22 a roll and wait one month for the slides, and we will continue to be gratified, but we will increasingly struggle with how to scan these slides well to put them in a format that posterity will appreciate enough to preserve so they do not end up as a mildewed binder of yesterday.

 

However, what we will have achieved, in the mediums available to us that we enjoy, will endure in the few slides and images we scanned, and the aging CD discs of images from our primative digital cameras that survive long enough to be copied by someone we loved that may not have even known us very well.

 

In our end, we may be represented by two or three pictures that were valued, but they won't be the ones we hoped would be preserverd to represent us, but they will play a role in the present image that came before our ancestors then. We will then bow to their own images of themselves.

Mark, that is one of the best posts I have seen in a very long time. But I think we will see the Leica digital clone for 2500 in the next few years and it will offer more than 10MP. If Zeiss were really on the ball they would run with this one. They could come out with a new upgraded model every few years and many of us would buy it, I know I would buy one. Don't get me wrong, I love Leica but 5k for a body is just too much for me.

That's cute. Some of you think there's going to be a price drop.

Hi Luigi, you seem to overly concerned with possible price drops for the M8. All I can add to this is I am still waiting to get the M3 at a reasonable price.

Manfred

I'm not a Leica user/collector, but i am interested in the topic of the price of the M8 (ie. dreaming of owning/using digital rangefinder with Leica glass). Digi-cams from other brands drop in value when they have new updated models, and the life expectancy of a digi-cam nowadays is around ~1 year (a computer's life expectancy is ~6 months)! But I do not think this will hold true for Leica. I do not believe that Leica Camera AG 'thinks' the same as other camera manufacturers and will not release another digital M9 rangefinder 'willy-nilly' (there may be upgrades/updates). Therefore, the price of the M8 will be maintained for some time (~3-5 years? which is a long time in digital time). But to think of the M8 as a collectable, that is another question entirely.

There were rumors that Leica will introduce a 3x10 (without the RGB) = 30+MP M8(B&W)camera. If and when that happens, there could be a potential reduction (not a drop!) in the prices.

 

On the other hand, with the current trends at Solms, prices are only likely to go up!

I didn't mean to say anything about the appreciation/depreciation of used M8 in the future when I commented that the sensor wasn't a significant part of the price. The price is largely the body and brand.

 

When Leica's red dot is applied to the inevitably outsourced M-?, profits will skyrocket and price will plummet.

 

The effect on collector valuation of original M8 is not guessable, but perhaps today's M5 prices, if not todays price for last years laptops, provide clues.

Prices will collapse from the bottom. I have put cameras (not M8's) on EBay for $0.99 and had no takers.

That's cute, some of you think the digital Leica will retain its value like a film Leica. ;)