[LRflex] Re: IMPORTANT: Re: DMR Support

Tim wrote:

>Colin,
>
>Before you do anything in software land you have a design spec. I am 
>not  asking for internal project status reports, but if Leica was 
>working on the bug-fix, they should be able to say what it will fix. 
>Bear in mind Mr. Eckhardt isn't giving any ETA or glimpse of the content
>
>The run around we are getting is indicative if you aren't actually 
>doing anything on it, which I suspect is the case:(

Good Morning, Tim!

You are right. Leica are not doing anything about it.  Imacon 
are.  And that is the reason that Leica cannot give an ETA. Now, it's 
true that Mr. Erhardt said that Imacon are "working very hard"  on 
it, and that's the bit that might, or might not be true.  Nobody 
outside Imacon knows exactly how hard they are working on it.

However, before you get your Toga in a knot, you might want to 
consider a couple of things.

[1] when v1.2 was first put out, it had been delivered to Leica, with 
Imacon assuring Leica that all was well.  All was not well.  Photos 
had an orange cast, and there were some other problems.  Leica 
withdrew the software within 24 hours, and sent it back to Imacon for 
a re-write.  Eventually, v1.2 was released and it is a big 
improvement over v1.1.

[2] v1.3 was delivered to Leica early last fall, with Imacon assuring 
Leica that all was well. Having learned a lesson, last time, Leica 
wisely put it out to a few, trusted testers  (I was not one of them. 
I was busy testing the pre-production M8.)  They found some problems 
and the software was returned to Imacon. That v1.3 exists, and has 
been tested, I know for a fact.  When it will be debugged, I do not know.

You say that Leica should be able to tell us when it's coming.  They 
did.  The end of '06, they said.  I was there when Steven Lee made a 
public pronouncement on that. And that deadline has been missed.  If 
you were Mr. Lee, or Leica, would you commit to a new date, with the 
risk of having egg on  your face, once more? Especially when another 
firm is in control of that date?  I think not.

Yet, you "suspect" that the lack of  an ETA to be  a "run around" and 
evidence that it does not exist.

Interesting.

On a related note... there are sound reasons why Leica is saying 
nothing about the R10.  They don't want you to wait for it. They want 
you to buy an R9+DMR, now.  That is not a devious thing... it is the 
way every company operates.  Their business will not survive if you 
wait.  Should they tell you about the R11, even before the R10 is 
out.  Would you want to buy and R10 or wait for the next, better, R11?

Do you hear Canon making public announcements about the cameras that 
will replace the 30D or the D1sMkII in a year or two?  Nope! Same reasons.

I have held mockups of the R10 (or at least of some of their ideas 
for it) in my hand. Never assume that because they didn't tell *you*, 
that it does not exist or is not coming.

>I have been looking at the DMR, but I am not committing my money 
>before I can rest assured that I am not going to be stuck  with a 
>white elephant.

Of course you'll be stuck with a white elephant. No matter what you 
buy! The R7 is a white elephant. So is the R8.  They're 
obsolete!  Long live the R9!    Just because a model is superceded, 
does not mean it is suddenly useless, despite what Bill Gates or 
Steve Jobs might like us to think!  I know a lot of guys and gals 
using R3s, through R8's  - even a few (myself included) who use 
SLs!  And those white elephants seem to work just fine!

The DMR is, for my money, the finest imaging device I've ever used. 
Like the M8, the DMR has no AA filter, which makes for inherently 
more detailed photos than any camera of comparable, or even 
significantly more pixels. It's true, it has it's foibles... no 
camera is perfect.  Not the ones from Canon, Nikon, Pentax or 
Leica.  But, so far, I've found nothing to beat the results I get 
from the DMR with v1.2 firmware, and so I use it and work around it's foibles.

The DMR has put a joy back in my photography that has not existed for 
many years.  If it's a "white elephant", that's just fine with me.

Cheers!
---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/
Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt




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