Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/12/27

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Subject: Re: R lenses....
From: "Jeff Segawa" <segawa@netone.com>
Date: 27 Dec 96 22:38:22 -0600

>So Leica needs to maintain the optical quality while bringing down the 
>price.  Since the Japanese workers are among the highest paid in the 
>world, there is no reason I can think of why German manufacturing can't 
>compete.

It might be awhile before Leica produces an R-series camera that can
compete with the top Nikon and Canon SLRs for one simple reason:
Electronics. Leica has shown no special aptitude for them, and Minolta
doesn't seem to have any top-notch technology in this area which they can
borrow. Canon makes video cameras and presumably, knows a thing about CCDs.
Nikon has been involved with digital imaging for years. Leica? They're
still very much a brass-and-glass company in the silicon age.

A buyout by Samsung certainly would help them in this regard, and it would
also bring Rollei and Leica under one roof.

Barring any drastic changes in the way Leica operates (where's the Thai
Leica factory and $350 plastic SLRs?) it seems to me that the most logical
approach is for them to continue to find new niches, rather than going
head-to-head with Nikon. Collectables were one such niche. The M-system is,
in itself, something of a niche system, though the Contax must be causing
headaches here. Leica now needs to find a niche which is ideally served by
a manual wind, manual focus SLR of rather large proportions.

My biases regarding 35mm SLRs: I don't like the bulk (relative to image
size), but I tolerate it, because the better designs allow me access to
quality lenses of types which are prohibitively expensive in other formats.
The small-format SLRs also offer quick handling. In terms of price,
handling and size, it should be most interesting to see how the R8 stacks
up against the Mamiya 645.
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