Looking at the photographic
press and media reports, there is a lot of severe criticism about Leica and
their prices, often quite hateful and in most cases not based on reality.
Unfortunately most consumers
are woefully unaware of the differences or, how cameras are made in
general. The bench made process that
Leica uses throughout requires a lot of actual hand making. That alone sets them apart from almost the
entire rest of the camera world which is almost entirely based on mass production. In
addition, Leica applies substantially tighter tolerances across the board. I have reported on this elsewhere on this
blog. This process not only is a lot
more time consuming, it also results in noticeably higher production
costs. Since Leica is not an electronics
manufacturer, they have to obtain all electronics from different sources. Because of their much lower production
numbers, the cost of these items is necessarily higher than what mass
production manufacturers experience.
This includes the sensors used in their cameras, especially the black
and white only sensor in the M Monochrome.
This sensor is not used by any other company.
The hateful criticism I often
experience in regard to Leica is for the most part based on ignorance and in a
lot of cases most likely the result of the photographic equivalent of penis
envy.
For more on this, please go
to:
PRODUCTION NUMBERS OF LEICA
CAMERAS AND LENSES VS CANON AND NIKON
LEICA PRICES - JUSTIFIED?
In Memory of the LEITZ GLASS
LABORATORY
MANUFACTURE AND PERFORMANCE
OF PHOTOGRAPHIC LENSES
LEICA and OTHER CAMERAS
OPTICAL GLASSES
What about the criticism regarding no digital replacement camera to accept Leica R lenses? Isn't that justified?
ReplyDeleteI can't deny that users of the Leica R cameras do have a legitimate complaint. There has been very little to accommodate them with digital Leica equipment. There was the Leica Digilux 3 which will accept the R lenses with an adapter and one could argue that an adapter will also allow the use of Leica R lenses on the M8 and M9, but those are not the equivalent of a digital Leica R camera. I have no insight why Leica chose not to address that issue so far. One reason might be the dire financial straits they were in just a few years ago, prior to Dr. Kaufmann taking the helm of the company. I can well imagine that their resources had to be channeled where they would be most effective. That obviously were the Leica M and Leica X cameras. Now that the company is in much better financially, there might finally be an answer. Rumors are that Leica will introduce a new system camera, most likely a mirrorless system, with its own line of lenses that will also accept the old Leica R lenses. This years Photokina will hopefully give us the answer.
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