Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/06/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Some interesting takeaways. Canon lenses are ok, but not nearly up to Leica snuff. Many photogs "won't notice." In any case, Canon's current R&D is oriented toward IS zooms where even more design compromises are the norm. Good PR is really important to sell products these days. The tech driven companies got it, and the traditional chemistry companies don't. Rings true with me. Leica has lacked imagination over the last 5 years. Has (had) a chance to closely identify their product with the tradition of B&W film photography but so far has failed to gain/increase significant mindshare in the market. Sounds right to me. Focus on collectors and historically driven buyers alienates shooter oriented potential customers. Rings very, very true to my ears. Digital will require partnerships because Leica doens't have enough money to completely roll their own digital solutions (duh). They haven't managed the existing partnerships well, in terms of disitinguishing their products from the partner's. OK. All makes sense. -1- Cheaper 135 format film camera. Little smaller, polycarb. A few polycarb build Summicrons. This is to help strengthen Leica's mindshare amoung the "traditional B&W film" crowd. Get new customers, and get some of the used buyers to buy new. Also a good backup body. Smaller appeals to the Leica III and CL crowd too. It's all good. -2- Keep making the nice traditional M's to satisfy whatever marketshare is out there. These things are art :-) Same for flagship build lenses. Keep building the best. But body R&D comes out of the digi group. -3- APS-C Digi M. Just gotta get one out the darn door. Please make one that's sturdy polycarb and doesn't cost $6K for a friggin 6-8MP sensor, when every snot nose consumer will have their eye on 10MP in just a few years. Again, make it a little smaller than a current M7. Make a few "special edition" traditional build digi M's to keep the collectors happy and critics otherwise at bay. -4- Make a wide Tri Elmar - W3E to work on the digi M APS sensor. -5- Make an APS-C CM-D. Really nice 28/2 lens or thereabouts (rough 40-42mm equiv.). Nice fast fixed lens, small APS-C sensor P&S with great high ISO performace. Zippo shutter lag. I'd buy one of these. -6- License a few decent flash units, at least one smaller bounce head unit that works with the TTL on the CM-D and digi-M. -7- Hire a good PR and advertising firm in key markets. Sell the damn things to new customers (yes, still a niche). Creepy LFI bable be damned. Small, best quality, candids, B&W film standard bearer, best optics now available in the digital age. The 2nd digital camera everyone wants to have in their bag (SLR's are going to dominate now and for always, so basically skip marketing to the RF only shooter). Give some of the damn things away to notable photogs in exchange for adverts. Have a killer Web site - Leica shooters galleries (free), software updates (free), forums, monthly contests, etc. I like the idea of selling some nicely priced rebranded Fuji or Ilford B&W products. Makes those B&W film shooters feel nice and secure and taken care of. Rebrand Fuji's slide processing envelopes for the chrome shooters. Hell, buy one of the many image editting programs out there, integrate RAW processing and make it open source. Solicit end user plugins and build an online database. Who knows. Whatever. Just some ideas. But get modern. You know, get "digital." Drop the creepy, stuffy image. No more poorly translated German press copy. Hell, if IBM can do it (and they sell some very high priced products), so can Leica. There. Plenty of imagination. Distinctive products. Modern. Priced to sell, but still premium priced compared to Canon/Nikon. Nothing so gradiose that it requires a Canon/Leica scale of operations. Bold enough moves to entice new investors. Now just execute. Scott David W. Almy wrote: > All, > > http://www.imx.nl/photosite/comments/c012.html > http://www.imx.nl/photosite/comments/c013.html > > The second is of particular interest. > > David W. Almy > Annapolis > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information