Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/09/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]It's one thing to play an April Fools' Joke...but that's just downright cruel! ;-) At 07:42 AM 4/1/2004, you wrote: >According to a Lecia web forum, Leica is buying the Epson R-D1 technology! >They claim that this will allow them to ship the digital M by the year's >end, instead of in 2006. They have a crash team adapting their 10 >Megapixel full frame sensor to the R-D1 body and release it as Leica R-D1 >by Photokina. The team that was working on the original Leica Digital M >will continue to work on R-D2, that uses the Leica M7 body instead o the >modified Voigtlander R2. Due to this buyout, Epson will not be releasing >the R-D1 as announced :-( Of course we will have a full frame camera >instead of the 1.5x crop factor so this is good news indeed. > >Apparently the deal only works because Epson couldn't see how they can >sell the R-D1 into this niche market. So instead of just dropping the >whole project, they cut their losses and struck a deal with Leica. There >are some rumors that Epson bought out the Hermes shares of Leica (30%) at >200% premium to make the transaction appealing to Hermes, but there's no >independent confirmation for now. > >// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please >use richard@imagecraft.com)