This week Luminous Landscapes was one full of discussions. In short: LL asked Leica to abandon the rangefinder “mentality” and to choose the path of the new “mirrorless and interchangeable compact cameras”. The Leica M9 is selling well in amazon.com (it is under the most sold top20 cameras)
And more important:
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12 Responses
I don’t care. Leica is too expensive for me.
It’s more interesting what Fuiji will do 🙂
Not invented here?
Maybe Leica thought they could go their own route, which may work for the expensive M8/M9 & S1/S2 cameras.
But for consumer products, you need an image processing platform in volumes. So I found it a bit strange to see that Leica yet hasn’t utilized the old existing partnerships. However, I guess they base their decisions on the past, so perhaps the Four Thirds didn’t take them far enough to contimue that path?
It’s still not too late to enter m4/3, but they need not to be the first to enter outside of Panasonic/Olympus, however there is already a (Panasonic) Leica DG O.I.S. Macro 45mm.
Like LL writes, Leica has more headaches with a M9 successor, For sure, that’s where their core business is, and where they should focus first.
I think Leica will not be able to keep up with competition when making m4/3 cameras. m4/3 cameras are all about electronics, Leica holds a unique position as a rangefinder-camera manufacturer. Competition in m4/3 will come from the electronics giants like Panasonic and Samsung; it’ll be interesting to see if for instance even Nikon could be successful in m4/3; Canon stands a good chance as being more of an electronics company.
There is no point for Leica to abandon all the great lenses from the past decades. They just have to renew bodies.
It seems to me that Leica IS in the micro four-thirds game, vis-a-vis partner’s Panasonic M and R M43 adapters, as well as the DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm. If they launch a few more premium lenses in Micro Four Thirds, particularly in a shorter focal length, I’d be well satisfied.
The Leica X1 is an intriguing boutique product and useful tool, but I’m not convinced it was ever intended for the same market niche as the GF1 or E-P.
Leica is well-regarded and well-known for its (full-frame) lenses for the M mount. They’d be crazy to leave that all behind for a new format and mount.
I got the impression that LL was imploring Leica to simply build a full frame SLD that uses their current M-mount. Thus not abandoning the m-mount in favor of m4/3’s. To that I agree. I wish they would make a full frame SLD that’s about 1/3 the cost of the M9. I’d certainly rather have something like that then I would their new $2000 X1.
leica just need to launch a M9 EVIL model!
It is totally meaningless for Leica to join the m4/3-camp. The value of Leica is designed to be a German premium brand targeted for small group of people of interest. Although most people may want to get the premium product in a more common form, there is no way Leica is selling cheap products, because Leica is the product of art and uniqueness from Europe. That is just buying a chair designed by an European designer, it is a matter of taste but the price will never be as low as wished.
Leicas are just too expensive to try to compete with anyone head to head. it would be like Ferrari getting into the Ford Transit business.
It is more like rolls royce ,actually because Canon is Ferarri and Nikon is Lamborghini thank you !
Leica could make a great business just supplying primes to the m43 market.