[Leica] was leica marketed as a professional camera or a hobbiest camera?

[Kyle Cassidy <KCassidy@asc.upenn.edu>]

I was in Ye Olde Used Bookstore about two weeks ago and found a nice fat
heavy Leica book (The Leica Manual 14th edition) in lovely hardback for $15
so i snatched it up and took it home to read about the fantastic new
developments made by the M2 leica camera and it's pal the M3.

Reading the book I was struck by a) how elementary it was and b) how bad the
photos in it were -- mostly vacation shots and kids fishing. my thought had
always been that the M3 was produced and marketed as a camera for
professional photojournalists, and i was expecting it to be filled with news
tips and doccumentary photos. reading this book, it struck me that perhaps
it was not (marketed thusly), and the status it has achieved as the choice
of pro's came much later; that this was just a well engineered german camera
targeted at hobbiests and weekend snapshooters and later picked up by pros.
it's very common today for a camera company to have a "pro" line and a
"consumer" line. I'd assumed that the leica, since the M3 had always been
marketed as a "pro" line of cameras, with no consumer version till the
CL.... I'm sure there are a bunch of LHSA people out there who know all the
ins and outs of this. My question asked, I'll settle back to listen to more
knowledgeable voices.

Thanks,

kc
- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html