The Online Photographer

Of all the things you left me to think of, the first that comes to mind is: "2,000 for the X1? That's not totally unreasonable."

I mean, yes, it's expensive, but not outrageously so. I'm still never sure how to calculate the fact that an equivalent film camera of the past would last 20 or 30 years versus the 5-7 of a digital one. On the one hand, not having to pay for film is excellent, on the other, something much better will appear before 5 years have passed. I guess the market is people who want a good camera right now, darn it, and if it costs that much, so be it.

I think I have never used the old sentence of "You nailed it!" in a more meaningful way than now, Mike.

There's nothing else to add: for those with a need, or a wish (and a budget) to use Leica cameras, it's the perfect time to purchase one of their models and enjoy using it.

For the rest of us, it's time to shut up complaining and/or madly speculating.

I concur with your comments. I like the M9 just fine the way it is.

One of the things I noted about the bright ideas the cited authors came up with to "improve" the digital M would,if followed to their logical conclusions, result in...well, would result in a DSLR, actually....

One word.
Pentax 645D.
[they are actually two].

If ever comes to live to the western world, that is quite a serios thing to start with.

If it delivers as promised, there is quite some thinking to do.

Such as: why there is a pedestrian system that delivers 40mpx, has some spectacular lenses up there,[as opposed to the m4/3 platform] and, if rumors were true, sells for the price of a sports Dslr.

?????
Red.dot.com?

Price of Leica M2 w/35mm 2.8 Leica lens, ca. 1960 (in 2010 dollars): $2325.

Price of Leica X1 w/35mm (equivalent) 2.8 Leica lens (2010): $1995.

Yes, there are lots of good cameras for less, but that was the case 50 years ago too. In other words, Leicas have always been more expensive than many other "good cameras." That seems to bother some people a lot and others not at all.

If Nikon makes a digital rangefinder in the next year or two, I'll eat my hat. Actually I don't own a hat at the moment, but I'll go buy one and then eat it.

Of course, they may well make something along the lines of Olympus's E-Pen cameras or Panasonic's GF1 or the wooden blocks that Sony announced that they'll make. I fully expect that they will, and Canon too eventually. Whatever they make may even have rangefinder-ish styling, but it won't be a rangefinder.

Mike - you forgot 2012. The universe ends then. So maybe I should bite the bullet and plunk down the green for that S2 I covet so much with a serious helping of M9 on the side. Only have a bit less than two years to enjoy them .... just being facetious.

Seriously though, I think the ultimate issue is can the product/company pay for itself let alone make money? Even a rabid deep pocketed enthusiast such as Herr Kauffman will not continue to lose money indefinitely. Yes!!!!! I'd buy an S2 and an M( to keep it company IF I had the green. But even with a full order book, are there enough people out there that NEED the product and WANT the product to make it at least pay for itself?
As long as they continue to lose money their future will always be uncertain.

Mike,
Well said!

You are absolutely on the money with this, Mike. Not only did the take on Leica not occur to me at all but I haven't read it else, either. Great insight—seems to make the world a slightly better place for photographers, too.

A thought-provoking and astute assessment, Mike. Some of the best writing on Leica I've read in a year or so of M8/M9/S2 commentary.

RIght on, Mike. The M9 looks so wonderful that I've come very close to selling all of my DSLR equipment for an M9 and a 50mm. I've held off the temptation several times. If I could afford the camera a bit more comfortably, it would be mine, but I can't, so I'm waiting for a cheaper variation like the Nikon mentioned above.

Either way, this is a good time for Leica.

I agree. Great article.

I would love an M9, but with a couple of lenses it's more than I can comfortably afford at the moment.

So for now I split my shooting between my Zeiss Ikon and my Canon 5D2. I still love the ZI it's a wonderful camera, though I don't love film particularly - not a quality thing 35mm is fine, just that digital is so much easier and more convenient.

I'm inclined to disagree, but perhaps only because I don't know what I'm talking about...this is all speculation.

I still believe the S2 will go in the dumper. There are rumors that the new Pentax, which is due out tomorrow or the next day, I believe, will deliver about the same resolution as the Leica for ~$7000. Eventually, the MF price curve will crack -- there are already signs of this -- and I don't think Leica will be able to follow the price curve down. There will be a surge of S2 sales at first, to enthusiasts, and then I don't know who will buy. The price is too high, and the abilities too limited.

The M line may do okay for a while, but it's dying. It's a slow death now, with enthusiasts hanging on, but they just aren't enough to keep it going.

To get growth, the M will have to be modernized -- and I think that means either an M, or a new body that uses M lenses, with an EVIL, like the m4/3 cameras. And if Leica modernizes, they may lose their enthusiasts. In other words, there's no easy path forward.

A $2000 fix-lens camera is not going to make anyone rich.

I think a key incorrect assumption on your part is that the owner will *continue* to take the losses, indefinitely. This is not how rich families get rich. Leica is functionally bankrupt, as a company -- it's only because of its owner's other financial abilities that it can keep going at all.

JC

The M9 is scarily good. I used to hike around with Mamiya 7II and three lens. On prints that I am making now, the M9 cedes nothing (of course a darkroom print would look different etc.).

On looking at various forum, it does appear that most current M9 owners are shooters. There will be a share of "oh-dosh-it, rangefinders are really not for me" type of fire sale later, but the M9 is what a digital M should be.

Frankly, I don't think MR or TH get it. Sure, the M9 can take some improvements, but it's a world class machine for what it does.

Once again, you make an extremely well-writen, intelligent, informed, and very interesting post about a subject that is interesting to your readers.

Not all blogs understand that formula. You do, hence why I visit a few time a day.

Thanks!

Nicely done Mike. Enjoy the M7.
BTW all this talk of Veblen goods reminds me that you should have a pay only password protected site that cost $1,000/ year to view, in addition to this site. Call it The Very Exclusive Photographer or VEP. Limit it to just thirty subscribers. Then you can buy an S2 with the profit.
JackM

Well, I bought an M9 and it's been a horror story. After picking it up in a large European city on October 14, I took a dozen pictures before leaving the following day for Bangkok, where I live. While recovering from jet lag I didn't have time to look at the first pictures taken until a week later when I noticed two parallel line in one of the corners of every frame, from the very first one on.

After a few days, I figured that these lines must stem from the sensor and, upon examining the sensor with a loupe, found two parallel cracks in one of the corners of the sensor cover glass. Leica Service in Solms asked me to send the camera back and they replaced either the sensor or the sensor cover glass — I'm not sure which — and turned the camera around in five business days: a good performance in acting quickly, although the whole process took one month because of getting the camera in and out of Customs both in Germany and in Thailand. Incidentally, from postings on the Leica Users Forum (LUF) I found that there was a small batch of M9s that had also been delivered with cracks in the sensor cover glass.

It was now early December and I was able to use the camera for three weeks before seeing that the M9 was intermittently producing a spurious lighter-colored rectangle within the frame for some 6-10 frames. After writing an e-mail to Leica Service I received a response on December 28 stating that this was a "processor fault" and asking me to send the camera back again through the Thai importer for replacement by a new camera, as soon as they received my M9.

I dropped the camera off at the Thai importer on December 29. But, by early February I had heard nothing. After a series of telephone calls and e-mails to Solms, I then learned that Leica Service had not been able to reproduce the spurious rectangle problem and the technicians had concluded that the problem was produced by Lightroom and wanted to return the camera to me as is. But I explained I wasn't using Lightroom but was using Aperture and Raw Developer, and insisted that the problem could not have been caused by the raw developer because, then, it wouldn't have been intermittent.

I kept of refusing to have the camera sent back to me because I had encountered the problem several times and knew it was there. Around February 18, Leica finally was able to reproduce the problem, and informed me that they would send me a new camera on which they would replace the top and bottom plates with my old ones because they had a few smalls scratches on them: it seems that Leica reuses for the production of new cameras these parts from cameras its service department replaces.

I wasn't happy about that because I wanted a completely new camera untouched by Leica Service, because when the camera went back to Solms for the sensor crack problem Leica Service exchanged the defective part rather than replacing the camera; and, for all I knew, the processor problem may have been caused by that repair. But nothing doing about sending a new camera straight from production: they had to put my old top and bottom plates on the new camera.

Last week a couple of days after the M9 came back, I sold it for what I had paid for it, the buyer accepting that it was a new camera. While I did not feel that I necessarily would have still more problems with the M9, the two-month bagatelle during which I had to fight not to have Leica send back the old camera to me without having found the spurious rectangle problem did not leave a good taste. Basically, I sold the M9 for the following reasons, some of which may not seem valid to other people, and hope I won't be taken to task for that:

1. As I had reported to Leica Service, the LEDs in the viewfinder were not visible in the bright light extant in Thailand, and were less bright than those in my M6 by what seems to be a factor of ten times and also less bright than those on an M8.2 that I had used previoulsy. Leica Service did not recognize this as an issue because no one else reported this problem and, hence

2. The shape of the exposure area of the light meter were different from those in the M6 and M8 to a degree that, for me, made exposing with wide-angle lenses somewhat unpredictable.

3. The quality of the 230,000 pixel LCD was not good enough to judge exposure, which compounded, for me, reason 2 above. Unlike some people, who don't even want a digital-M to have an LCD, I tend to feel that a digital camera should have the facilities that are inherent to digital cameras.

4. The general finickiness of the camera, much of which, but (crucially) perhaps not all, will be fixed through the forthcoming firmware update.

5. Just after New Year, I bought on impulse the Ricoh GXR/A12 when I unexpectedly found that a dealer in Bangkok already had for sale. This is a camera that I like a lot.

6. This year I expect to have to travel extensively between, and in, Asia, Europe and North America, which is more easily done with carry-on luggage only — an absolutely requirement for my frequent travel — with a Ricoh GRD3 or a GXR/A12 than with an M9 and several lenses.

So, now I'm left with eight Leica-M lenses, some of them of superb quality, and an M6 that I'm unlikely to use again, but which I cannot get myself to sell in the light of the low prices this camera is currently fetching. I think it's better for me to wait this dance out and perhaps get the successor camera to the M9.

This should be the end of the story, but unfortunately it continues. The buyer of my M9 was a visitor to Thailand and has gone back home. As all of my original papers for the camera are in Europe, to where I won't get until at least mid-April, all I was able to provide the buyer was a scanned copy of the guarantee. When I contacted Leica Customer Support through their website asking how I could transfer the ownership and the guarantee to the new owner I got the following response:

"It is necessary to hand out all paperwork, waranty card, your sales slip and so on to the new owner because of the warranty !
It will be transfered to the new owner also !"

"As long as you didn´t hand out all paperwork to the new owner, the transfer isn´t finished.
He needs to have your sales slip or the warranty card, stamped by your dealer and he needs..
…if he would have a repair. It wouldn´t be free of charge."

I responded to Leica Customer Service stating that this response was too rigid and unfair to the new owner, but did not receive the courtesy of a response. This position makes no sense to me at all: the camera is under guarantee and Leica guarantees are transferable when the camera is sold — there is a form on one of the cards included with the camera for transferring ownership. Just because I do not have access to the original documents should not mean that the new owner should not benefit from the guarantee, as I can easily e-mail of fax a signed letter stating that I have sold this camera to this particular person. Leica gains nothing for taking this rigid position except for bad will from a long-standing customer.

It seems to me that both this rigidity on the change of ownership and the unwillingness to replace my M9 when the technicians could not reproduce the problem — after all I had sent picture files showing the spurious lighter-colored rectangles — exhibits an attitude of "the customer must be wrong", which is the opposite of what the company should be doing. Both Leica Service and Customer need fixing badly.

Interesting that everyone will bitch and moan about the expense of the M9 but not the cost of the lenses.

I have two M8.2s and the M9. I chose Leica for the glass. No more. No less.

The M8.2 is in some ways better than the M9 and others not. Too bad the M8 got such a bad rap. I never shot with an IR filter and never had "issues." In the eye of the bolder I guess.

If I wanted to save a large chunk of change I would put said glass on a Zeiss Ikon film body. But digital is where I am (mostly) at and probably blew thru at least $7K on digicams and the like during a period of "transition." That I regret. Spending the same amount on a camera that offers all the pleasures of using film....none at all.

And for the record....mirrorless m4/3rds boxes are no different than the Minolta A-1 digicam I still have rotting in a closet. They are not however, digital rangerfinders. Only the M8, M8.2, and M9 deserve that moniker. I state this an owner of 4/3 and m4/3 Panasonic cameras (with Leica spec glass of course).

I also use a Nikon D3 with Nikkor and Zeiss glass... go figure! You shoot with the camera / glass combination that makes you happy or pays the bills. No more. No less.

The best digital Leica is a M6 with a Nikon 5000 scanner.

Speaking of which, Leica should just have bought the 5000 manufacturing line from Nikon. Would'a saved Herr Dr. Kaufmann a bundle of loot, and made for happy faces all the way around.

Hey, just say'in.

Mike, you're sentiments reflect my exact feelings. Leica has come into its own as a digital photography company, after so many years of excelling as a producer of some of the finest 35 mm film equipment. Sure, the M9 is not perfect, nor is the X1 or S2. IT doesn't really matter. These cameras are imminently useable, highly functional, and bring unique, and in some cases, novel experiences to their owners. They are satisfying as digital photo taking and digital photo making machines, and for all of those curious about the rangefinder way, this is the time to find out more. M8's are cheap and very good, M9's are expensive and the top of the game, and there are options for M glass (Leica, Zeiss, Voigtlander, and don't forget all of the heritage lenses) that make the possibilities for customization and style nearly limitless.

Thanks for the summation! I was particularly dismayed by MR's comments on Luminous Landscape. The whole discussion seemed wrong. THe time is now, and if MR's posts on his front page are any reflection, he and the M9 seem to be getting along just fine in the here and now.

Mike, I'm confused by the people who reply
to you in their comments. Are they ones who love to collect cameras or are they ones
who love to take photos?

Must say, I find Mitch's story both rather unreasonable on his part and a positive indicator of Leica's service. Not only did they honour his warranty without proof of ownership and attempt to fix a fairly specific image problem they were also happy to transfer warranty to a second owner (with appropriate papers, natch).
I don't know of any other company off-hand who would be so accommodating.
Bitching about it on public fora doesn't help one's case.

A digital M is like reinvented Kodachrome. Nice to have but already completely dispensable.

@Thom: I think Thom point against the Mike point is that in the foreseeable future even digital SLR vendor could be in trouble.

Leica has to find a niche in the foreseeable future. It is not now because as Thom said and everyone can observe that there is a very strong demand for M9 -- e.g. here in Hong Kong you have to pay an extra US$2k to get to a new M9. The issue here is whether the niche Thom has mentioned over the other site is the niche Leica can live with as a small and hopefully viable firm even if it is small.

Discussion aside, I think some of the Leica customer sometimes are not that reasonable. Leica is a small firm. In fact, we need small firm (like Cosina) for diversity and one really has to take small firm as small firm.

@Mitch, Leica needed time to reproduce your problem and given its production scale is only in thousands not millions, they have limited number of staff. They have tried hard to help and give them a break. Also, it is really not the job of the original vendor to take care of second hand transaction IMHO.

@Rick in CO: There is still an Epson RF being made by Cosina and if it is not that expensive, that actually is a better ergonomic than Leica. It use the V body and not hard to imagine to fit in the Ikon body. The case is that a cheaper and not as good one can be easily made. Is it good enough? If it is $2k cf $9k as a M9 go, it might be a case.

The M9 looks nice but what I really want is a minty double stroke M3.

The future of Leica is Panasonic built Leica-branded cameras.
Maybe someday they'll build a digital M that I could buy for a
mid-level Canon SLR price.

The wealthy enthusiast buying Leica and losing lots of money reminds me of a joke a professor told me in business school:

How do you make a small fortune?

You take a large fortune and go into venture capital.

Leica has now informed me if there is a need for the new buyer to have warranty service before I am able to send him the original papers all he has to do is to send them together with the camera the scanned copy of the warranty card that I gave him, which is stamped by the dealer.

I can't consider the X1 as an entry to the digital Leica system because it doesn't offer interchangeable lenses nor rangefinder focusing. I am sure it makes nice images but it's not really an entry to the Leica system.

I think the M9 is missing one very important feature, weather sealing. The top Nikon and Canon cameras have it and the prices are comparable, why not the M9? More than one person has been bitten by poor weather sealing on the M8 so I expect to hear the same stories on the M9.

The S2 is an impressive effort by Leica and I do hope a commercial success.

I am an amateur and still shoot film with an M3, with an M2 as a backup body.