You have nothing to do today? And plenty of $$$ to spend on a Leica T? Well you can watch a German Guy polishing your $1,850 worthy Leica T on that video above. Leica itself calls it the most boring AD ever made 🙂
Price and preorders: Silver Leica T at Bhphoto or Adorama. Black Leica T at Bhphoto or Adorama.
via PetaPixel.
3 Responses
Giving new meaning to the phrase “manual labor”. More captivating than a cat video! I mean, it’s 5 am, and I’m actually watching the whole thing!
And now we know why it’s $1850, not $1800.
I wanna know how he talked his boss into letting him get paid to do this. Who is his agent?
Can you imagine the ad for the job? “Must have the ability to discern minute irregularities on brushed aluminum surface.”
And who is the cinematographer? What patience!
At 10:35, he actually uses a sander. [added later: the only time he does it!] You can hear someone else using something mechanical in the room.
Notice how he has to hold the sandpaper in place. No shortcuts at all.
14:48 The gloves are on! There is water! OK. That’s another $50.
Imagine if he messes up one stroke. Or gouges out the lens opening. Back to the start with a 1.2 kg block of aluminum.
I mean, Leica’s taking this “jewel” business seriously, aren’t they. I’m thoroughly impressed.
Can we just pay him the $1850, not Dr. Kaufmann?
In the US, if a woman did the polishing, it would be worth only $1480. $1665 if she is not on “mommy track”. How is wage parity in Germany?
20:10 He moves the water spout!
I mean, you’ve seen the Leica video with someone epoxying a lens, no? They are putting more energy into the exterior of the body.
I wonder if Canon could polish the exterior of the Rebels for 45 minutes and charge a premium.
23:30 Well, Leica did cut corners, here. By having a flat top, they shave minutes off of the labor cost of polishing it evenly. Can you imagine doing this to the top plate of a Rebel? Do Rebels even have top plates?
Why 45 minutes? Does he get a 15-minute break?
25:40 The water is off. A glove is off. A cloth comes out.
26:35 He touches it! I wonder if you can get his fingerprints off the body. Clone his DNA.
27:20 Back to white gloves. Time to do the tricky bit: curved surfaces.
My fingertips hurt just watching him do this…
30:02 You can clearly see irregularities in the finish. Shame!
31:08 I don’t want to see his neckline! I want more action!
31:52 He’s really gonna have to watch it, or he’ll nick the hand grip. The hand grip looks really nice, by the way.
Did apple do this with their brushed-aluminum cases?
33:26 Vimeo keeps pausing the video. Is this a feature so Leica can tell who’s really watching it?
34:14 Foam-backed sandpaper! Just a few strokes of perfection.
In Japan, in the 80s, this used to be the kind of thing you make people do when you want to force them to retire.
So, is this why they don’t have the production capacity to keep up the M lens supply?
35:04 I see the intentionally unshaven look is available in Germany, too. That should knock $50 off the price. So the T could have really been $1900.
37:35 He finally adjusts his gloves! Putting product perfection over personal comfort.
37:47 Baseplate imperfection visible. Will it be fixed? The suspense!
37:57 No imperfections around the hot shoe!
38:46 Or around the popup flash!
38:55 Safari crashed! Just as things were heating up. Now we know who has better engineering. I had to reconstruct the last several comments, but that meant the pleasure of watching him polish the hot shoe again.
40:00 Cutting the corners. Caught on video!
That’s right. I don’t have time to update my blog, but I have time to watch this.
43:00 I don’t know… the baseplate still looks iffy to me.
43:55 There is a red dot on his lab coat. I wonder how much the lab coat costs.
44:13 All done!
44:33 “Edgier?” No, I just watched him take the edge off!
44:43 Well, I did it. I watched the whole thing, except when I was typing. Took me 52 minutes because of pauses, backtracking, and a crash.
Yes Leica, I know what polished metal feels like in the hand on a warm or humid day…
I am a wanna be Leica owner, but in my opinion this is designed to be a marketing gimmic with no attention payed to those of us who dream of Leica and want to experience the joy of photography.
Please Leica, let your best engineers create the best photographers camera, keep your marketeers and half brained gimmicks out of the design process! Please…
Exactly. They’re not the first ones to use aluminum unibody construction. Every MacBook pro for nearly ten years has, every iPhone 5, every iPad ever made, every MacBook Air. Every Olympus OM-D uses magnesium unibody construction. In fact virtually every mid-range to high-end camera on the market today does. Let’s face it: you’re not buying this camera because you actually think it’s worth the money. The value proposition is atrocious, to say the least. You’re buying it for that little red circle on the front that hardly anyone outside of photographic circles knows anything about.
Build that in China, it’s going to be better made, faster and for cheaper by people willing to work harder for less money. From a business standpoint, Leica touting its inefficient manufacturing processes as a feature is silly.