[LRFlex] Re: new zoom lens

  • From: Ted Grant <tedgrant@xxxxxxx>
  • To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 11:53:19 -0700

Steve said:

>>> Leica is to be credited as much for their business acumen in defining a
> market for their new camera and taking market share from earlier
technology
> vendors, as much as the technical development and innovation of the camera
> itself.  The appeal was to seize the 'decisive moment' as photographers
like
> Cartier-Bresson and others exemplified, for those frustrated with the
> artistic detachment of large format pictorialism and static portraiture of
> the previous century.<<<<<<<

Hi Steve,
An honourable comment on the brilliance of Leica in the ...." very good old
days". However, the past ten, twenty years, probably longer, they've been
absolutely clueless about marketing strategy. Today Leica's probably as
close as one can get to becoming a "TV History Channel" programme simply
because of their stupid marketing methods in this modern world of high tech
everything photographic.

I'm a Leica user as a professional photojournalist for over 45 years and use
Leica because it gave me a quality of film negs and slides other gear did
not. Also a method of shooting as unobtrusively as possible regardless of
subject or situation. And certainly with the light one sees the world around
them without flash.

I think most old time Leica shooters on this list and many others are aware
of the error in the Leica ways to marketing while not keeping abreast of the
sound barrier breaking advances in the digital world. Unfortunately they're
scrambling like crazy to catch-up while still thinking / living a hundred
years in the past when they were the only "photo kid on the block!"

Whether they crash and burn or reach unimagined digital successes it wont
change my gear as it'll always be the best.

ted Grant
http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant/


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