Thursday, July 12, 2012

LEICA CRITICISM - JUSTIFIED?



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



2 comments:

  1. What about the criticism regarding no digital replacement camera to accept Leica R lenses? Isn't that justified?

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  2. I 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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