[Leica] Re: Photogs rebuying Leicas

[scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin)]

This is certainly true in many parts of the computer technology
industry, most clearly in consumer computing, but also in
"industrial" equipment to a lesser degree.  BTW, this does back
to cameras and Leicas, so bear with me.

I came up in the 80's - Apple IIs, Macs and PCs at the personal
and small business level. Then professionally with Sun gear
running Sybase RDBMS, Windows in its various  incarnations,
and finally for the last 7 years, mostly Linux often running the
Oracle RDBMS.

Folks like me target Linux because it's a less expensive way to
get what Sun has traditionallly offered - an extremely stable set
of industrial tools that do not change over decades - literally
(let's not get into SunOS vs. System V). I'm talking the software
here, for the moment. There may be bug fixes and a slow stream of
enhancements, but complete backward compatibility (hence extensive
testing of any new code) is put at a huge, huge premium.

Some of the world's favorite Web sites run on Unix, Linux or other free
Unix variants (FreeBSD): Google and Yahoo, for example.  And for good
reason.  I have customers who have not rebooted their servers for over 18
months!

I'm a great admirer of Microsoft. They did their customers well during the
80's and early 90's.  Hell, there still is alot of value in a copy of 
Windows
XP.  Windows NT was designed by none other than Dave Cutler, the architect
of the famed industrial strength VAX VMS operating system (hardcore stuff).

The problem is the economics of consumer technology. Cheap always wins out
over quality.

At least in the mid-90's most of the famed "Blue Screens of Death" were 
caused
by errors in the add-in device driver software that make the modems, video
cards and other peripherals go. A big, big % of the cost of making a 
video card
is making the software drivers.  But to get cheap stuff out the door 
quickly and
into consumers hands for $69, well, "scimping" on software quality and 
testing
was the order of the day.

So when we buy our BestBuy HP wonder computers, they're  filled with cheap
peripherals with really crappy, hastily written software drivers.  Hence 
our "boo
hoos" when our Windows boxes crash and burn.

No surprise, but go buy one of nVidia's higher end $1,600 video cards, a 
dual
Opteron mother board, an industrial Gigabit ethernet card, a dual redundant
power suppy, a CAD engineer grade optical mouse, a 3Ware SCSI RAID hard
drive controller card - you get the idea - and then driving your Windows PC
might bee almost like driving a Leica M3 with a fresh CLA :-)

For me, I use mostly Linux (personally, not just professional systems 
work) .
Religious backwards compatibility (with just a tiny few all-to-human
exceptions). The peripheral drivers are very good, and if they're not, 
no one
lies about it. It's all out in the open. No surprise, but the 
professional grade
components often get good, solid drivers first.

So I might buy some cheap consumer electroncs - a dvd player or a palm
pilot. But for me, I think of it like buying some really nice imported goat
cheese - it will be tasty as long as it lasts. Cheap electronics are 
consumables.

Fortunately, there is a large industrial market for high grade computer
equipment. High quality, excellent support for years and years to come.
You to  can have it for personal use if you are willing to pay. 

But I'm a photo newbie, and I'm not so sure about the emerging economic
dynamics of the camera market. From what I hear on this list and elsewhere,
major changes are underway.

Is there a healthy market for "industrial grade" camera gear?  Maybe
Mamiya RZ stuff for "industrial" studio stuff. I don't really know.

Scott

Lee England wrote:

>Regarding the comment "but for my own inner, personal ambitions I seek a
>medium that will change little over time."
>
>I recall an article by a writer for, I believe, the New Yorker whose premise
>was that technological change was coming too quickly for even the
>manufacturers to master.  In the old days some new innovation, say automatic
>transmissions, would last long enough for manufacturers to perfect and for
>users to master, until finally the product was near flawless and void of
>quirks and bugs.  Now, computers and software are not around long enough for
>that process to occur.  Computers freeze, crash, have glitches, and this is
>regarded as common and with no one able to figure out what's wrong.
>Software is the same--new products come out with patches following in weeks.
>Bugs are common, followed by products having new bugs.  Mastering the use of
>these products becomes difficult and may affect its use for artistic
>purposes.  The people I've seen buying digital cameras are already
>considering buying the new, improved versions.  Of course, there will be a
>new learning process.
>
>Lee England
>Natchez, Miss.
>
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