The future of M

[jacob_brown]

"More affordable alternatives that do far more"

 

"A camera, be it a box Brownie, a handbuilt Gandolfi or a Canon 1ds is used to take photographs; that is its purpose."

 

Yes, and an M, like a Patek Philippe, may be seen as an overpriced piece of jewelry outpaced by modern, more affordable alternatives that do far more. If you want to equate a Leica to a box Brownie, that's your choice.

[neilambrose]

<p>Arturo - yes, I know the TX-1 and TX-2 are Fuji manufactured. I also have an Xpan that reads 'made in japan'. But the legislation in this case has nothing to do with where the cameras are made; it affects where they can be sold. Hence the TX series could still made in Japan, but could not be sold in Europe. And naturally, with the entire European market removed from them, Hasselblad and Fuji pulled out of the product.</p>

 

<p>Regardless of the history, it doesn't change the salient fact that legislation (especially in a foreign jurisdiction) can have strange repercussions on manufacturing. And for the chemical industry it's a particular problem.</p>

[jtdnyc]

There are problems with the cameras that "do far more." First of all, they don't always do what you want or expect them to, if the questions posted on Photo.net are any indication. Yes, you can override them, but then they are doing a little less than far more.

 

The "far more" cameras are generally bigger and noisier than an M and more difficult to repair if broken. In a few years, when any M that hasn't been run over by a truck or dropped in seawater will still be going strong, the "far more" cameras are far more likely to be obsolete.

 

The "far more" cameras don't take M lenses. And, though it's not the fault of their lenses, some of them render skin in a way that makes a human being look like a waxen dummy at Madame Tussaud's.

 

As if that weren't bad enough, these cameras that "do far more" often do less where it really counts: in recording a broad range of tones. Tonally, these cameras that do far more, like any shortcut, can leave you stuck in the mud.

 

In designing the M8, at least Leica tried to reach a reasonable balance of features. You might call it doing "somewhat more," while preserving, to the extent possible within the medium, the look we have come to associate with pictures from M cameras. It's a promising future for the M line.

 

Of course, another way to look at the situation is that no camera does far more; they all just take pictures, and it's the photographer who makes the difference. ;-)

[Brad_]

>>> The biggest threat to film and traditional photography in general is environmentalists

and politicians aligned with them.

 

No, the threat to film and "traditional" photography are photographers who have been rapidly

embracing digital photography leaving miniscule market and incentive for film, film cameras,

photographic paper, and enlargers. Disruptive technologies do that. Similar to sliderules

and electronic calculators in the mid-1970s. Dayplanners displaced by PDAs are another

example of change in progress. No more complicated than that.

[Brad_]

>>> As if that weren't bad enough, these cameras that "do far more" often do less where

it really counts: in recording a broad range of tones.

 

Especially tones in the magenta spectrum - more is apparently better...

 

>>> There are problems with the cameras that "do far more." First of all, they don't

always do what you want or expect them to...

 

Right, and that's why millions of photographers are jumping on the rf bandwagon as we

speak. To do

more and to do it better.

[jtdnyc]

<Especially tones in the magenta spectrum...>

 

Is using an IR cut filter with a digital sensor really so different from using a yellow filter with Plus X?

 

The M8 isn't perfect -- what first-generation digital camera is? -- but reports posted by actual users often say that, at moderate ISOs, it gives the best files of any camera based on 35mm lenses.

 

It's the non-users who seem to be carping most loudly, especially the ones who don't even use a film Leica.

 

The next generation may have a different IR solution. In the meantime, I've read reports from some users who consider the IR sensitivity to be a feature rather than a problem. With a visually opaque filter, they're getting some nice IR shots -- nicer, in fact, than they ever got on high-speed IR film.

[el_fang]

<i>"That's odd, I've been using some sort of camera most of my life, some very old ones, and I've never had to have one repaired until a few weeks ago. Strange thing, it was a brand new DSLR. I have more faith in my old Nikkormat than with my Nikon DSLR."</i>

<P>I'm not surprised, I'm a huge fan of the old Nikons (FM2N is still my favorite). But there's a huge difference between an incidental breakdown and needing regular and frequent major repair in the course of normal use. By that measure I have more faith my FM2N than my Leica M6, the worst camera I've ever had in terms of reliability. Wasn't surprised at all when I read that David Alan Harvey <a href="http://www.lightstalkers.org/leica_m8___is_it_any_good" target="_blank">needed six M6's</a> when he was shooting Leicas just because 2 were always in for repair.</p>

[el_fang]

<i>"The biggest threat to film and traditional photography in general is environmentalists and politicians aligned with them. By just declaring the whole thing "evil" and "extremely harmful to environment" they could simply make it illegal."</i>

<p>By that definition they'll outlaw cars first, starting with really stupid ones such as Escalades, Expeditions and <a href="http://www.fuh2.com/" target="_blank">H2 Hummers</a>. Compared to those monstrosities, film looks like a breath of fresh air.</p>

[michael_londarenko]

To El Fang - Neil Ambrose brought a great point about Xpan. It's spot on.

 

Do you really have any doubt that politicians will outlaw certain types of cars if they think it helps their chances to get re-elected or advance their agenda? The only thing stopping them is car-manufacturing lobbyists from Detroit and labor unions. Heck, if you recall politicians always want to up the Mile-Per-Gallon standard, regardless of whether it can be achieved practically. They don't want to let engineers figure it out. They think they know better. End result is that increase in MPG in all cars over the last several decades has been due to reduction of weight of the car. That quite often compromises safety, but politicians couldn't care less. They don't care that 40,000+ people are killed in car accidents every year - dead people don't vote.

 

When I moved to California I wanted to buy diesel-powered Volvo or Volkswagen Passat sedan. Guess what - passenger diesels are pretty much illegal here. You can't buy one. You can self-import one, but you can't go to a dealer and get one. That's despite the fact that almost 50% of sedans sold in Europe are diesel-powered and they get much better fuel economy than gasoline engines, require less maintenance and last longer. End result is, their cumulative effect on environment is not as bad as gasoline engines over their lifetimes. Just the 10,000 mile service interval alone is probably reducing pollution and toxic waste costs significantly enough to beat the gasoline engines.

 

Diesel are a better alternative than hybrids. All that to California is irrelevant. What was relevant to California is the level of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter (and perhaps some other elements). From what I hear maybe, just maybe, in 2008 some passenger diesels will be allowed on market in California again. That is, until some bureaucrat changes his mind.

 

http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/93338/article.html

[jerry_kirkwood]

<i>Call it the fondle factor,or, whatever. I really don't care a monkeys what anyone else thinks or believes..</i></p>That kind of subversive thinking is strickly against the rules of the Feisty Guys Club.

[jacob_brown]

Call them the Feisty Fondlers then.

[fourfa]

"End result is that increase in MPG in all cars over the last several decades has been due to reduction of weight of the car."

 

not to pick a fight, but this point is demontrably false. Curb weights have been on a slow and steady increase (to some extent due to seeking higher crash test ratings, particularly side impact which is relatively new and generally requires very heavy door beams), which can easily be seen in published data. Successive models invariably grow heavier; I can think of only two exceptions in "several decades." If you follow the automotive journals (I don't mean Car & Driver, rather SAE Automotive Engineering etc) the cost of a pound has steadily increased - i.e. the amount of money that a mfg is willing to spend to lighten the car by a pound. Weight is crucial to meeting CAFE goals but features, crash safety, fashion (i.e. ever bigger wheels/tires) conspire to increase it.

[michael_londarenko]

I'm simply quoting here:

 

"A Collection of Recent Analyses of Vehicle Weight and Safety

(DOT HS-807 677, May 1991), examined the effect of a 1,000 pound reduction in the average weight of new passenger cars on occupant fatalities and injuries. The 1991 study estimated that the reduction of the average weight of passenger cars from 3,700 pounds (in 1970) to 2,700 pounds (in 1982) resulted in increases of approximately 2,000 fatalities and 20,000 serious injuries each year. The large increase in rollover crashes contributed the most to these increases."

 

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/808-575.pdf

(this is a document from NHTSA titled "The Effect of Decreases in Vehicle Weight on Injury Crash Rates")

 

SFC (Specific fuel consumption) of typical gasoline powered combustion engine is pretty much always the same and it hasn't changed at all.

 

Bigger wheels don't mean more weight. If you recall there weren't any aluminum alloyed wheels on mass produced cars in 70s. No engines with aluminum blocks and heads. And aluminum is three times more expensive than steel and about three times lighter. And yet manufacturers use it today, guess why? Hint: not to keep the price low.

 

Airbags protect you from hitting inside of a car and injuring yourself. They have no effect whatsoever on lethality of hood of a car that hits you on the side since the hood would simply penetrate through it like a projectile. Cars that are bigger and heavier are inherently safer to occupants. Guess which car is safer if we assume head-on collision between Honda Civic and Ford Crown Victoria? Side collision would have similar result.

 

A little extra MPGs are being squeezed out by better aerodynamics of car bodies, better tires, less friction and so forth. But biggest improvements by far come from weight reduction.

 

This has gotten way off-topic though.

[fourfa]

from 1970 to 1982, yes, cars got lighter. From 1982 to 2007... wanna guess?

[michael_londarenko]

Andy, you said that my statement "End result is that increase in MPG in all cars over the last several decades has been due to reduction of weight of the car" is false.

 

Are you saying that weights go up AND MPG goes up? What I said is that MPG improvements are due to weight reduction. Therefore, when weight goes up - MPG goes down.

 

See quote from NYT article below:

 

"Average fuel economy peaked at 22.1 miles to the gallon in the late 1980's, according to the agency, but has eroded since then to 20.7 miles for the 2003 model year."

 

http://www.ca.uky.edu/fcs/HSFP/updates/2004/update0094.htm

[tekkie]

Film will go, but it will take some time for the B & W film combination to go. Nor should it.

There is enough money to be made and fine prints to be displayed.

 

To go out and shoot and display the capabilities of film is the answer to keeping great film

imaging companies.

 

The market will decide, but we are also the market.

 

I'll keep my M6 TTL, Olympus OM1, Minox GTE and Nikon D200 side by side.

 

I love em all and they love me :)

[michael_londarenko]

We're the market. Ultimately we decide. Unless of course as a result of mass hysteria all film manufacturers stop production despite existence of sizeable market. Not likely though.

[jerry_kirkwood]

50-60 years ago they sold a gajillion gallons of fountain pen ink a year, for the last 30 years very few people use them but you can still buy ink. 25-30 years ago they sold a gajillion typewriter ribbons a year, now "nobody" uses typewriters but you can still get ribbons. If the film manufacturing business can be shrunk like those others, it will survive because a few mavericks will always want to use it just to stick out from the herd and assert their artistic individuality. The biggest change may be that film will need to be manufactured sporadickly and frozen, rather than constant production like in the past.

[jtdnyc]

<...just to stick out from the herd...>

 

...by recording a wider range of b&w tones on a proven archival medium that can be easily printed at home on gelatin silver paper.

 

Guilty as charged!

[jerry_kirkwood]

Me too. Dedicated LF shooter here. Not everyone has the skills to make silver b&w look better than digital though, in fact a lot of people will probably find it the reverse, if they have a solid lead on the digital learning curve and very little experience in the wet darkroom. I don't care what reasons people shoot film, I'll just be happy if enough of them do to keep one or two companies in the game. I've tried a 39mp Hassy and aside from the cost which is uneconomical for a hobby shooter, it can't match LF. Not to mention the whole small-screen right-side-up eyelevel interface and needing to do the movements in CS3 just doesn't light my candel.

[Allen Herbert]

by recording a wider range of b&w tones on a proven archival medium

 

Hmm ,methinks you worry too much about such things, Jonathan. You should get out there and take some photos ,and share them here.,so we can all enjoy them.

 

Stop being a shy maid,Jonathan,lets have a look at them. Promise i won't look while you are getting ready.<div></div>

[wuyeah]

What if there were no FILM in the future anymore. Fuji & Kodak struggle for survive and

bank crupt in the end. No body produce film for cameras anymore just like "tape". Where

do yo find "tape" to buy these days? Perhaps North Korea? or coutries that are behind in

technology?

 

Don't get me wrong, I love film. I don't own a single digital camera. Unless you want to

consider the low quality camera on my cell phone that I don't even use. Seriously got me

worry here. We are talking about FUTURE.

 

If there were no film in the world, and we are just holding on a few paper weight says Leica

on it that we can't even sell. No value, no demand. Just like a gun with no bullet, a chunk

of metal that does nothing.

[vasilis_hristidis]

there's something about nice mechanical stuff that just goes well together. I'm only 17, but

consider myself an avid photographer and just bought myself a classic M6 to go with my

Blancpain Flyback and Rolex Seadweller. now i just need to find myself a job that keeps up

with my taste!