Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The Rollei 35 was the camera that launched the concept "compact camera" and e.g. effectively killed the half-frame format. After the little Rollei all cameras started shrinking, just look at the Canonets before and after it. Leitz was not particularly fast to follow the trend - but the decision not to accept Waaske?s design was a big mistake - in retrospect - and based on the well-known Not-Invented-Here principle. All the best! Raimo Personal photography homepage at http://www.uusikaupunki.fi/~raikorho - -----Alkuperainen viesti----- Lahettaja: Holger Merlitz <merlitz@int.fzk.de> Vastaanottaja: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Paiva: 05. maaliskuuta 2002 18:31 Aihe: [Leica] Was Leica CL a Rollei 35 clone? <snip> >With 400+ Mark this was not a cheap camera, but meant to >be a precision instrument, certainly within the potential >scope of Leica's business strategy and the Leica marketing >division must have observed the success of Rollei's little >camera with great interest and, maybe, some jealousy, too. >Somewhere in the early seventies, when Rollei already built >hundreds of thousands R35 per year, they must have decided >to try a move and introduce (with Minolta) a device which >looked close enough but with additional features like >rangefinder and TTL to make it a better choice for the >customer than the ascetic Rollei. As we know, it was a >limited success, but with 65000 cameras in 3 years the CL >was still considerably better selling than the M. Probably, >they were a little too late, since customers either turned >towards the SLR market or cheaper electronic point and shoot >cameras to satisfy their high tech needs. If Leica had >introduced the same camera in the 60's things had certainly >developed better for the CL. > >Finally, one may ask why Rollei could not follow up the >line and build their own improved R35 versions. From 1967 >until recent days the R35 has hardly changed. In fact >they were trapped by the tiny dimension of their camera: >There was no space left for much improvement. There exists >a prototype with rangefinder, designed in Braunschweig, >but the engineers in Singapore, where the R35 was produced >since 1971, found it technically too difficult for a mass >production. Therefore one may come to the somewhat ironic >conclusion that Leica had the potential to build the >perfect mini-rangefinder, but were unable to get it on >the market, whereas Rollei had a camera which was made >in huge numbers but were unable to turn it into a real >rangefinder .... > >Holger Merlitz, >Karlsruhe > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html