Leica's M9 and Mini M plan

Bring M8 price down to $2900-, crank M9 price up to $6200-. Skip the Digital cl, Skip the R series till later when the USD recovers. they are in business.
 
johnastovall said:
13x19 prints on an R1800 same for 5D's.

You have a 5D but do you have an M8?
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In using both professionally, the 5D still pulled a bit ahead when published. I now use the D3 and I have had not had time to go there yet. Obviously, the M8 for reportage is nearly unmatched sans the only so-so high ISO limit.

As good as the M8 is, it did get a little wiggy below zero last week where the D3 simply did not even flinch. This is why we have tools, there no one size that fits all.

I get mad scrolling, occasional too many photos in the buffer lock ups and have to take my IR filters off when shooting Kodachrome. But I also get nice images from a small camera.

Such is life...
 
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sitemistic said:
Hank, I think you are right. We've reached a level where real world prints from the various cameras are all pretty good.
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Actually the CL sold so well, that it almost killed M sales. It was a very popular camera.
 
IGMeanwell said:
This is a pipe dream

but I like the idea of the D-CL, however I would love to see it with a Fuji Super CCD (1.5x crop), love the DR of that sensor

perhaps with a fixed 35mm 1.8 lens ... would be a sweet shooter
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Now, you're talking. The chip in the S5 pro is only 6MP, but you get 10 stops of DR.
Almost as much as film gegative(12-14 stops). I'd take one of those
 
rxmd said:
As far as products are concerned, this article is not news at all. The section on new developments does not quote any Leica sources at all; on the contrary it says "the company does not give information about the future of the Leica lineup".

They are just reproducing hearsay and the wishful thinking of the online Leica community, where they've probably done their "research" on that matter. The article does not present Leica's M9 and Mini M plans, it presents the M9 and Mini M dreams of the Leica fan community and interprets them to be Leica's plans.

Philipp
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That's exactly what a sports journalist who writes for "Die Welt" does most of the time. He sums up rumours from fan sites and from a chat room with some football fans. The funny thing, at least twice we got him to publish complete BS we made up when he was in our Chat Room :)
 
Just a small aside:
jlw said:
*FUD: Back in the bad old days when Microsoft was an evil software empire, one strategy they used to crush more-innovative competitors was "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt," commonly abbreviated as FUD.
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Microsoft may have done it - but IBM specialised in FUD (named as such) back before Bill Gates so much as thought of supplying BASIC interpreters. Discredit where its due, please!

...Mike
 
mfunnell said:
Just a small aside:
Microsoft may have done it - but IBM specialised in FUD (named as such) back before Bill Gates so much as thought of supplying BASIC interpreters. Discredit where its due, please!

...Mike
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IBM was even more know for its "Paper Tigers" and as a result got sued and Control Data became for many years a major force in mainframes.
 
OK, since everyone is in prediction mood today..

- R10 will look just like R9, but without lever and with color LCD on back
- M9 will look just like M8
- there will be no digital CL

And the specs? Who knows :)
 
sitemistic said:
According to Hove, the CL sold 65,000 units in its three year run...
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Does that include the units labeled "Leitz/Minolta CL" and "Minolta CL"? If the 65,000 figure includes only the "Leica" branded units and the others were in addition to that, I think it might add up to a pretty strong seller.

Of course, the only thing that made the CL possible at its price point was the participation of a major Asian manufacturing partner... which might tell us something about the prospects for a "CLd"...
 
varjag said:
OK, since everyone is in prediction mood today..

- R10 will look just like R9, but without lever and with color LCD on back
- M9 will look just like M8
- there will be no digital CL

And the specs? Who knows :)
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predictions...

the m8 will remain leicas rf offering for at least another two years
r10 will cost a lot of dough
the closest thing to a digital cl won't come from leica
 
I take the entire thread in the spirit of recreational speculation, as none of us really knows what Leica has up it's sleeve. The CL actually sold pretty well, it was the M5 that was a disaster and the presence of the CL had a hand in it. Offering an entry-level product is a popular and successful marketing strategy. The Lexus E330 doesn't look like a ringer for the LS460 for nothing. Porsche has the Cayman, Rolex has the Air King. Today's sales figures are paramount, but laying the groundwork for future sales is equally important. Right now Leica has mostly an aging customer base. Lee, the CEO in his 40's, probably would like to position the company to be viable for the long-term, and knows that means getting a younger customer base on board. And he's probably astute enough to know that re-labelled Panasonic consumer digicams leave too wide a gap to slide customers into $5000+ cameras and $2000+ lenses. The Summarit lenses show where Leica's thinking lies, and it wouldn't surprise me to see a comparable body sometime soon. As to a successor to the M8, I think there may be some real hurdles technologically-speaking, to offering something really substantially improved such as full-frame. I personally have less than zero interest in the R10 (I had my fling with Leica R, the lenses alone were way too heavy for my wants, and even the much lighter Canon bodies and lenses are more than I feel inclined to carry around. I also question the potential return Leica can expect from the ultra-tiny group of R fans, and doubt anything Leica does will steal many customers from Nikon and Canon, but I certainly wish Leica nothing but the best.
 
Predictions?

I think it will be quiet on the Leica front for another year at least. Maybe in 2010 we will see an M9, Leica has a lot of work to do in order to get past the issues of the M8.
 
Predictions:

The next release will be an M8-lite, using the same sensor but built in Asia using modern manufacturing techniques. Price point will be 1/2 to 2/3 of the current M8. This will hit the streets before the end of the year. M8s will cease to be manufactured as the new body is released.

Within 12 months, a second, and well-publicised camera will be brought out. The M9 will be full-frame, weathersealed and selling for 50% more than the current M8.

Thus will the M8 investment be realised, and the digital M brought to a younger audience, while the M9 will satisfy the needs of the demanding professional and well-heeled amateur alike.

Regards,

Bill
 
Whatever the smaller digital rangefinder is based on, I think the M8 will cease production and the M9 will be the high-end model. Thus, the small rangefinder won't compete against the M8, it will supplant it.

~Joe
 
Peter Walnes said:
The R10 would spell suicide for Leica. How could it possibly compete with Canon EOS 1DS mark 3, Nikon D3 or upcoming D3x, Sony A900?

Now if they could continue evolving the R lens programme and produce some of them with Nikon and Canon mounts, that would start to make sense. There would be a genuine economy of scale there. One lens, 3 different systems to sell it into.
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I agree with this. Like Zeiss with their ZF line for Nikon mount. Leveraging the same lens formulations for multiple formats.

There are quite a few people using R lenses on EOS SLR's so if Leica can help them to do away with the adapter AND provide focus feedback using the readily available chip that is being used in some of the adapters (except at a higher quality), they might have a winner. I know I would buy some of these lenses.

And for Nikon, there is no way to use R lenses except via very cost prohibitive lens conversions. Leica R lenses made with F mounts would be awesome and with the D3 boom there is definitely a market for better glass.
 
POINT OF VIEW said:
Crisis? Leica is the only company in the world making a digital rangefinder camera ( a excellent camera, in my opinion, I might add). They just came out with 4 brand new lens. They have the only real professional Rangefinder film camera in the world. Last but not least they are designing lens for some very fine point and shoot plus midrange cameras. That doesn’t look like a crisis to me.
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And you have any idea how much money it takes to produce something like this? So with their backs up against the wall, already, then you know what they have had to do to produce new products....


(hint: borrow a lot of money)
 
I've heard that Leica will get even with Zeiss for bringing out an M-Mount camera, and bring out the Compact Contax Mount Digital. Then, a Nikon S-Mount variant.

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I'll buy one!
 
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