Would Leica Ever License The M Mount?

[drew bedo]

A point of view held by myself and many others is that the future of Leica lies in producing high qwuality

lenses....So...

 

What if Leica were to license the M mount (for camera bodies only) to a few major companies. There would be a

design pressure to keep quality at the upper end to match the quality of the Leica lenses, yet they would

produce an affordable body to make the volume needed. Leica could then (as part of the license agreement)

produce Leica branded bodies with proven technology that the Leica-phyles of would buy. When the

Voightlander/Bessa bodies came out, plenty of people bought them wishing they WERE from Leitz. Now its my

understanding that Leica released the screw-mount rights completly...So, why not selectively license out the

right to make an M mount body?

[bobtodrick]

Wow...and here I was under the impression that my R2 Voigtlander had an M mount!!

[waltflanagan]

I think you need to read up on other cameras using the Leica M Mount. I think the first M camera was from 1954 so any patents for the mount should have expired decades ago. There is no need for a company to license the mount from Leica, they can just make a camera or lens that fits it. The first Cosina/Voightlander Bessa R was a screwmount but the R2, R3, R4 all use the M mount. The Zeiss Ikon uses the M mount. Even the old Konica Hexar uses the M mount and added a lot of automation. The Minolta CL in the 70's also used the M mount but that was codeveloped with Leica.

[ronald_moravec1]

I do believe the patents have run out, meaning no license is required. CV is making Besa cameras in M mount under their label and also in Zeiss label.

 

Besa /Epson RD1 digital in M mount did not last for reasons I do not know. Suspect reliability.

 

Nobody else is willing to give it a go so far except for Leica and they must because it is their main business, read no choice. Changing the mount or optical register to make sensor design easier will kill the brand.

 

Maybe Nikon or Zeiss. Zeiss reportedly gave up on the concept because the technology is not ready. Nikon rumors surface ocassionally.

 

Leica is not the big pro brand it once was, so they sell to well heeled amateurs who have already an investment in Leica glass. Few new photographers are willing to start or switch to Leica. Furthermore the Leica glass advantage is eroded by digital processing and the big advange it had with film is much narrowed.

 

What does this tell you about the future for Leica?

[steven_moseley1]

Drew...I think you need to do more research about patents and licensing...

[drew bedo]

OOPS...Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[majid]

The M mount is a niche market. Leica could probably make a lot of money producing Nikon F mount lenses much as Zeiss did with their ZF line. Canon is trickier because the EF mount is so electronically involved, although there are companies that successfully reverse-engineered it.

[timothy_robson]

Nikon might well respond to the introduction of Leica F-mount lenses by introducing a digital rangefinder of their own - perhaps a Digital SP or something similar (after all, they reintroduced limited editions of the S3 and SP more or less on a whim in the last ten years) with a reasonably complete assortment of lenses. They could offer those lenses with their own mount (preferably a new proprietary mount that they could license themselves, although the old Contax derived Nikon S-mount would be an option if nostalgia ruled), and they could offer them in M-mount as well, as they did with the old Leica thread mount fifty years ago. The most ardent Leicaphiles would sniff about the absence of that unquantifiable "Leica look", while the rest of us would buy a car with the money we saved on a basic set of lenses.

 

Leica needs to be very careful who they pick fights with. Nikon already wiped the floor with them once before, and it would be sad to see history repeat itself.

[just eric]

Tim

 

Funny you should bring up the Nikon SP digital back. I put it on a wish list this morning on another forum.

 

With enough positive karma, perhaps it will come about.

 

Eric