[Leica] Well worn threads: Leica QC

["Greg Bicket" <gbicket@home.com>]

Tristan, Mitch,

Consider that the reason only one responder to that particular Leica QC
thread might very possibly have absolutely *nothing* to do with your point
that LUGgers have no stomach for criticism of Leica.  Your derision may be
misplaced.

Perhaps a trip around the archives would demonstrate that your "neglected
topic" has been focused upon repeatedly ad nauseum.  It may mean that we
have worn it out [several times] before you picked it up, and are
collectively bored with it.  We have certainly been there, and criticized
that, repeatedly.  It may mean you have to move your coordinates for the
center of the universe.  Or it may mean something else entirely, as this
group is sufficiently diverse in its opinions to make arithmetically risky
such a conclusion.

For example, many pages have been written about dust in new lenses, smudged
paint, gremlins in the early R8 circuitry.  I, for one, became aggravated
that many of us seemed willing to mingle Leica QC issues with design flaws
in the R8, leading to the wholesale condemnation of a damned fine camera.
And an R8 performing as intended is a terrific tool.  QC is no safety net
for flawed design, and I suspect that it [QC] did indeed reduce the number
of flawed R8s that hit consumers' hands.  Early models should have gone to
field testing, not retailers!

While I am not defending the company's error[s] in failing to "wring out"
the R8 camera in prototype and alpha model testing, I also missed the
celebrations truly due this camera when they got it right.  Many have
written that it was hurried to market.  Leica's lovely but increasingly
anachronistic commitment to human craftswomen and men and hand assembly
[more M than R] requires a proportionately larger QC effort, elevating costs
at least twice.  Despite the perhaps inevitable movement away from this
approach, I think that less of Leica's [M and R] catalog is today made in
clean rooms by robots than most [probably all] other 35mm camera
manufacturers, hence more dust and smeared f stop numbers than one finds on
those other manufacturers' products.

Market pressures on Leica's publicly held stock, as well as market pressures
created by the economies of automated assembly and manufacture of
competitive products will mandate changes at Leica we might regret.  But
this concern too, has been kicked around over and over again.  So I think
you addressed covered topics, not unresponsive LUGgers.  Having both lurked
and contributed around here for years, I would estimate that no single topic
has had more electrons dedicated to it than Leica's QC.

Enjoy the light,

Greg Bicket