Re: Still no DMR
- From: Mark Rabiner <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: The LEG <leica@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 22:17:49 -0700
Everyone was convinced Leica would buy the farm when the SLR thing set in
and they underestimated just how much it would catch on.
Their response was too little to late with a non TTL Leicaflex.
It was corrected in a few years and they survived.
But in a Nietze market.
The next one was AF. Automatic focusing.
Everyone said Leica R could not compete without AF.
It blew over.
I think they lost a quarter of their market to people who felt they had to
have this big innovation. Or not be able to respond to the "Oh it's not
AutoFocus" disappointment in peoples voices.
In a way I'm glad their gone.
Now it's a digital body. A way of making ones Leica R system digitally
enabled.
Again they underestimated just how much it digital photography would catch
on the thought being that it represented a lower non Leica form of shlock
ness. The schlock ness monster.
And I think this strain of arrogance was also part of their thinking in SLR
and AF. That these advances were not advances but a backslide. A deviation
from Leica perfection. And so on.
Leica screwed up by not working on a digital body but a digital back; a
thing which complicated this issue instead of it being some kind of an
elegant simplification. Which it could have been. Bad break.
The R8 did come out with those gold contacts already there.
And it was too hard to ignore them.
In hindsight the thing to do would be to just come out with a digital body.
And now consider the full 24x36 digital format to be the only one worthy of
Leica.
And that a crop would be shlock.
Again.
Which could have turned out to be true but in the end just wasn't.
Shooters got used to the smaller format real fast.
Now it's leading to smaller camera bodies i.e. the Pentax ist and the latest
Rebel which almost as small as the cute and handy Pentax.
Cut and handy but with no loss of quality to what 99.9999 percent of what
digital photography is done in.
The 1.5 crop factor.
Which calling it "APS-2" would be a mistake
As this was a disaster to the tune of disk film and 110 film.
23.7 x 15.6mm in the case of a D100
Which is close enough to half frame to me to call it that.
24x18mm
In terms of usability the comparison to the bulk of an DMR backed R8/9 to
the newer compact 23.7 x 15.6mm format digital bodies is a dismal one.
Their final tweak on the product could be to just junk it and quit while
their ahead.
But work double shifts on getting out a compact digital body to mount R
glass on.
And with it a lens DX or DC optimized to this smaller crop circle.
With advantages in the sharpness, compactness, price and heft departments.
I'm all for these new compact for smaller format lenses.
I say make a film camera for them.
Mark Rabiner
Photography
Portland Oregon
http://rabinergroup.com/
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