Is this why Leica and some other expensive cameras are REALLY so desirable?

[peterm1]

When I was shooting a Canon T90 (Glorious camera!) I had a 50/1.4 chrome nose. It was easily the finest basic double Gauss normal I ever owned is the biggest reason I personally got frustrated by the shift from FD to ES mount. The 35/2 chrome nose was equally great.

You are right................I have both lenses.

 

[Valkir1987]

I had both the AE-1 and the AL-1, but kept the AL-1 in the end for it's simplicity.

 

[Mos6502]

Perceived value is what sells SUVs and double cab pickups to buyers who'd get a better vehicle, and more value for their money, by buying a sedan.
In that arena, size is mostly what accounts for the perceived value. It's a big vehicle, so it must be worth a premium price. In that case, that's the trick because it doesn't cost the manufacturer much more (if anything more) to make the big vehicle than a smaller one, but they can sell it for more on the basis of that perceived value, and thus get a higher profit margin. Even when the sedan has better features, dollar for dollar, most people will still think the bigger vehicle is worth more simply because it is bigger.

That's a different thing than creating something of real quality, that may or may not be noticed by the consumer. For example, the door hinges on my 1969 Saab are over-engineered. It's a part most people will never see or pay attention to. But every time I've pointed them out to anybody with engineering or manufacturing experience they're amused that Saab thought it necessary to build them in the way they did, if not impressed that somebody put so much thought into it in the first place!

In camera terms, I think many of the qualities of Leica cameras are inherent in their design and construction, they're not superficial (or weren't anyway, until they made the M5 discovered people want a Leica that looks like a Leica, no matter how good the camera is). Will a beautifully smooth film advance help you take better pictures? No, just as a wonderfully complex door hinge won't make you a better driver. But it does instill confidence in the machine and its manufacturer.

 

[boojum]

I think a lot of the conjecture about Leica reflects the conjecturer. Inherent bias. A pro would talk about the merits of Leica differently than would the rank amateur. And the market is, I am informed, mostly rank amateurs. These are the folks you sell the sizzle to, the pros you sell the steak to.

 

[wlewisiii]

Yes, but an equal part of that statement is - "WHEN". Now? Mirrorless. 90's? Film SLR. 60's? Could be anything but probably SLR. 40's? RF. Etc.

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

Right and wrong here. My MacBook Airs are 2013 and 2015 respectively. Still functioning 90%+ as new. I've done two regular services every 4-5 years, nothing exceptional was wrong with either laptop, mostly to check the innards and clean out the cat hairs and one time, a small ant infestation (I'm in Indonesia in a household of five cats so such events are commonplace here). Where Apple shines for me is in their approach to software - they give it away free. Which goes a long way to make up for the lack of quite a few good basic software packages which makes me keep an old (ca 2012) Acer laptop so I can run my non-Apple programs.

As for the packaging, you are spot-on right. The late Steve Jobs and his cohorts were spot-on with their vision of how and why people buy products, looks and packaging aren't everything but they rank highly on the desirability list. When I bought my two MacBooks I was told there was a good market for selling the boxes and packaging (this in Australia). I posted them on Ebay and they sold. Ditto some early Apple software I found in a local charity shop, especially Aperture which apparently functions super well on the older machines and still has a cult following.

Apple is not without its faults but it does have its good points. Ease of use is on top of my list.

We are now looking at buying an Apple PC as my eyesight is no longer what it was (age-related) and I need a larger screen for my post-processing work. One basic problem with buying Apple anywhere in Asia is price. So much so that we will be looking at secondhand monitors, our local tech market has several shops specialising in good quality used gear and apparently a good stock of Apple and Ben (which all local photographers here use) monitors.

I agree with you with respect to Apple hardware. I'm typing this on a 2014 MacBook Air that has never been serviced and is still running like a champ--on Linux. Apple dropped support for this machine several years ago.

As far as Apple giving away the software for free, take a look at their end user licensing agreement. There is no charge for using Apple software, but they clearly are not giving it away for free.

 

[Godfrey]

I don't know what to make of this thread. Is the implication that Leica and Apple, and all other manufacturers of quality products that cost a fair bit, are "tricking" their customers by making the products a pleasure to use or own, by making products that "feel" good in use? Or is it that "sensible people shouldn't be fooled by high priced products just because they feel good to use" ...??

That seems a fallacious notion.

If you don't care that your car in use feels like a tin box rattling down the street, well, don't spend five times the amount for an expensive car that doesn't. Is that a "trick" perpetrated by the makers of expensive cars...? Ridiculous.

G

 

[Bolo Kukus]

I always liked the feel and sound of the Leica M3, M2 and M4 shutters, especially when fitted with one of Tom A's mini-softies. My M6 TTL doesn't feel/sound the same, and that's a shame.

The one camera that I've had for over thirty years, and rarely get's used, is a Nikon FM-2N, and the sole reason is I can't stand the sound and feel of that shutter. It clacks and clunks like a cheap camera that's about to die. Works perfectly, spot on shutter accuracy, FFD is perfect, but it just sounds and feels like crap to use. So yeah, I agree with the guy in the video. It's not just things need to work, they need to feel and sound good too, for consumers to desire them.

Best,
-Tim

The FM2N is by no means as loud as any Nikkormat. The telltale (some call it 'iconic' Nikkormat Kerplunk! is now one of Nikon's enduring legends.

The original Nikon F was also loud. But nothing like its little budget brother.

For all its noisiness, that has never stopped anyone from buying a 'mat. Or holding on to one for years after they have moved on to other cameras. As I've done.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

It's discoveries like this which make camera hoarding collecting fun! Years ago, when I had just gotten my first Leica M with 50/2 lens, a coworker loaned me her Canon AE1 with chrome-ring 50/1.8, and uh, the results were humbling 😆 Ever since, I've considered that lens a sort of five-buck Summicron. For all I know, the FDn version (which I have, a freebie!) is at least as good, but I haven't gotten around to doing much with mine, save for reassembling it correctly.

I am far from a typical Nifty Fifty lover - but I feel the same about the Nikkor 50/2.0 F or AI. And I have one of each.

The rough-as-guts Nikkor 35/2.0 'O' I bought in the '80s for AUD $85 fairly lives on one of my Nikkormats. It's the lens I've taken the most to my overseas travels, and got by far the best images with, either B&W or color neg or slide film. If I had to dispose of all my camera gear and finish my time in photography with (here I go again) only one camera and one lens, the 'mat and the 35/'O' would be it. As a second choice the 50/2.0 would be my next best.

Oddly, while I own two Nikon 50/1.4 D lenses, I've yet to use either. With digital, the 28/2.8 is my go to.

We lives and we learns. And, importantly, we enjoys. As I've long believed, diversity is divine...

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Perceived value is what sells SUVs and double cab pickups to buyers who'd get a better vehicle, and more value for their money, by buying a sedan.
In that arena, size is mostly what accounts for the perceived value. It's a big vehicle, so it must be worth a premium price. In that case, that's the trick because it doesn't cost the manufacturer much more (if anything more) to make the big vehicle than a smaller one, but they can sell it for more on the basis of that perceived value, and thus get a higher profit margin. Even when the sedan has better features, dollar for dollar, most people will still think the bigger vehicle is worth more simply because it is bigger.

That's a different thing than creating something of real quality, that may or may not be noticed by the consumer. For example, the door hinges on my 1969 Saab are over-engineered. It's a part most people will never see or pay attention to. But every time I've pointed them out to anybody with engineering or manufacturing experience they're amused that Saab thought it necessary to build them in the way they did, if not impressed that somebody put so much thought into it in the first place!

In camera terms, I think many of the qualities of Leica cameras are inherent in their design and construction, they're not superficial (or weren't anyway, until they made the M5 discovered people want a Leica that looks like a Leica, no matter how good the camera is). Will a beautifully smooth film advance help you take better pictures? No, just as a wonderfully complex door hinge won't make you a better driver. But it does instill confidence in the machine and its manufacturer.

Ah, the old 'mine is bigger than yours' theory in action. SUVs, well, let's not go there.

Now in Century 21, wiser heads buy smaller cars, or go to EV. Blockheads stay with the Road Tanks, especially in the cities where they are as useful as a cart horse. Apology to cart horses, even if they do require feeding and care and they do pollute in their own way.

This poster is spot-on with his ideas. Quality can be found by thinking laterally and looking sideways at two or several items from the same brand and/or manufacturing run. In my case, Nikons, rather Nikkormats. I've owned 'mats since the first FTN came out, then ELs, then FT2s (I still have two of the latter). I owned an FT for a brief time but a friend wanted it badly as her only camera and I sold it at a mate's rate. AFAIK she still has it and still uses it, if she can afford to buy film in Australia.

Oddly, or interestingly in my case, a Nikon F with a Photomic finder I bought and used for a year in the '90s was a camera I basically disliked from day 1. It was noisy and I thought, tinny, but in retrospect what I most hated about it was that Photomic. Eventually it went bust and a friend kindly gave me a non-metered prism finder which improved the cameras usage for me. Unfortunately, not long afterwards it disappeared, likely stolen or maybe borrowed and never returned. (Insurance made it good and I moved on to Contax Gs, which is entirely another saga.)

So for me it was, 'mats yes, Nikon Fs no. With the Nikkormats, over the decades and after using so many of those, I found the manufacturing quality to be remarkably consistent. They were built like Sherman tanks. There was an old joke that they were made from cast iron and held together with ocean liner rivets.

Digital Nikons,well. I held out until the D90 came out, and bought one We still have it and it gets used a lot. Then D700s. Then D800s. Recently, a Z6. in terms of build quality they seem to have declined in small but significant ways from the D90 onwards. I've yet to properly test my still-new Z6, but it hope it will be the one for me to recapture the old Nikon DSLR magic.

So there's Quality and there's also quality. Same but different. Different but same. Equations can be reversible, after all.

 

[JeffS7444]

Cheap 50mm lenses from all the big brands are pretty much great for photography.

Pentax had some hiccups: The 55/1.8 Super-Takumar was lovely; the 50/2 SMC Pentax-A and 40/2.8 pancake, not so much.

 

[Godfrey]

Hmm. A pair of Nikon FM2n cameras, with motors, were my chosen tools of the trade for much of the photography I did for pay between 1981 and 1999. I had an F3+motor, and an F plain prism, as well, but they got nowhere near the use of the FM2n cameras.

No one ever said anything to me about them being noisy or loud. And I never really noticed ... I was too busy making photos.

G

 

[JeffS7444]

The Leica rangefinder camera has somehow survived from the 1920s to the present day, like a living fossil. This heritage lends a sort of gravitas to a product which can't be created overnight, except by linking a new product to a legendary but extinct marque, like Bugatti or Hispano Suiza automobiles. Although the L-mount cameras are more representative of Leica in the 21st century, it remains to be seen whether their appeal is as enduring.

 

[Godfrey]

The Leica rangefinder camera has somehow survived from the 1920s to the present day, like a living fossil. This heritage lends a sort of gravitas to a product which can't be created overnight, except by linking a new product to a legendary but extinct marque, like Bugatti or Hispano Suiza automobiles. Although the L-mount cameras are more representative of Leica in the 21st century, it remains to be seen whether their appeal is as enduring.

Part of why the Leica RF cameras have been so enduring is that they entered an empty field near the beginning, did their job well, and kept on being made and supplied. There were few to compete with them for a dozen years, and still few for another dozen years again.

Any new mount or camera entering the market today is in a very different position: the field of competition is extensive, expectations of the users are very very broad, there are literally orders of magnitude more users and more image making equipment to compete against. The basic technology of the original RF camera is long overshadowed by dozens of features catering (pandering?) to the whims of the vast population of users, the marketing weenies, and the engineers being driven to offer "more, more, better, cheaper, more... and more!" in ways that simply could not exist between 1922 and 1960.

Will the Leica L-mount cameras' appeal be enduring on any scale like the LTM and M-Mount cameras before them? I don't think they have a fair chance at that, not on the same scale: the environment in which they're being offered is so utterly different.

G

 

[x-ray]

When I got into professional photography full time in 1968, if you’d asked another professional and amateur these questions you would have gotten totally different answers.

Professionals didn’t care about aesthetics, they wanted a camera that that was fast, reliable, versatile and delivered quality images under adverse conditions.

Amateurs were more concerned with features like TTL metering, auto aperture, bayoneted vs screw mount lenses, selection of manufacturers and 3rd party lenses and cost. Aesthetics certainly played a part but not like today.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

I agree with you with respect to Apple hardware. I'm typing this on a 2014 MacBook Air that has never been serviced and is still running like a champ--on Linux. Apple dropped support for this machine several years ago.

As far as Apple giving away the software for free, take a look at their end user licensing agreement. There is no charge for using Apple software, but they clearly are not giving it away for free.

Thanks for the idea about Linux software. My two MacBook Airs are 2015 and 2016 and starting to show their age. They still function well but the day may soon come when I will have to consider other alternatives to Apple, and being of a frugal nature I'm not keen to invest thousands more in new hardware. As long as I can keep my laptops going, I'll go on using them.

I have at home a 2007 Dell, now taken off all internet - I download the odd bits of software upgrades I need for my few antiquated programs, and copy those to a USB stick which I then stick into the Dell and do the deed. I still happily use that now-ancient Dell for scanning and post-processing. It has a truly wonderful screen and still shows no sign of wanting to give up its electrical-electronic functions. Long may they all go...

 

[JeffS7444]

Any new mount or camera entering the market today is in a very different position: the field of competition is extensive, expectations of the users are very very broad, there are literally orders of magnitude more users and more image making equipment to compete against. The basic technology of the original RF camera is long overshadowed by dozens of features catering (pandering?) to the whims of the vast population of users, the marketing weenies, and the engineers being driven to offer "more, more, better, cheaper, more... and more!" in ways that simply could not exist between 1922 and 1960.

Historically, Canon has done better job at figuring out what the majority of people actually want in a camera, but Leica's "failure" does make for unique products today. But IMO, when companies find themselves in a "nothing to lose" situation, interesting stuff can happen! For example, Olympus/Sony -> Mirrorless, and Pentax -> Film camera.

 

[boojum]

Thanks for the idea about Linux software. My two MacBook Airs are 2015 and 2016 and starting to show their age. They still function well but the day may soon come when I will have to consider other alternatives to Apple, and being of a frugal nature I'm not keen to invest thousands more in new hardware. As long as I can keep my laptops going, I'll go on using them.

I have at home a 2007 Dell, now taken off all internet - I download the odd bits of software upgrades I need for my few antiquated programs, and copy those to a USB stick which I then stick into the Dell and do the deed. I still happily use that now-ancient Dell for scanning and post-processing. It has a truly wonderful screen and still shows no sign of wanting to give up its electrical-electronic functions. Long may they all go...

Re Linux. I dual boot my machines, one side Linux the other Windows. Linux runs well on meager resources. My Dell box has been choking on Windows for years. MS downloads are a slow joke and performance is bad. I use it only for proprietary photo editing software and then only rarely/ Linux on the other hand is nimble and has some good photo editing software: GIMP and ART, both free. That's the other nice thing, almost all the software is free. If you want to breathe new life into old machines consider Linux. It, too, is free. I run Linux Mint which is popular and works well and is well supported. As always, YMMV.

 

[Godfrey]

To me, the complexities and management needs of running two or even three different operating systems, and dedicated software discrete and independent on all three, add a level of "do nothing useful, no substantive gain" effort to the process of doing my needed activities that I'd rather not bother with. For this reason, all of my computing systems are Apple, all are kept up to date, and all work together in a coordinated way, as they were designed to.

When stuff ages out and no longer works, I either keep an older generation of hardware/OS/etc running to support it or I retire the now legacy bits ... One example is my Light L16 camera and its dedicated processing app, Lumen: It stopped being supported about six years ago on current macOS software/hardware, so I keep my 2012 Mac mini on a 2017 version macOS (Maverick) with nothing but Lumen installed, which I pull out once in the Blue Moon when I want to use the L16 and need to process its photos to a DNG state, at which point I transfer them into the current archives and image processing system. When the L16's battery finally deteriorates to a point where the camera is unusable, I'll retire the L16 as an interesting Camera Curio, and retire the 2012 Mac mini. Someone else will enjoy the 2012 Mac mini at that point, so it will become a gift or donation...

I just don't see the point of changing all of my image processing and workflow to fit different OS and hardware systems, and fracturing my well-developed workflow into several different workflows. Never mind the complexities of maintaining multiple separate and incompatible backup systems. To me, the time involved is FAR more valuable than the savings in money. I want to spend my time doing photography, not maintaining different/incompatible computer systems and learning different apps and workflows.

I figure I have, at the outside, another twenty years of active photographic endeavor left. While I'm always fascinated with new equipment and capabilities, there are an infinite number of possibilities to be explored with the equipment I already have, so that there's little need to spend money to upgrade or update unless I just want to explore something different as opposed to new. In a sense, I could just stop changing things right now and never worry about not having new things to explore, photographically, for the rest of my life.

This is a good place to be, because it means I get to choose rather than feel forced to change and adapt. 🙂

G

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

Re Linux. I dual boot my machines, one side Linux the other Windows. Linux runs well on meager resources. My Dell box has been choking on Windows for years. MS downloads are a slow joke and performance is bad. I use it only for proprietary photo editing software and then only rarely/ Linux on the other hand is nimble and has some good photo editing software: GIMP and ART, both free. That's the other nice thing, almost all the software is free. If you want to breathe new life into old machines consider Linux. It, too, is free. I run Linux Mint which is popular and works well and is well supported. As always, YMMV.

I'm running elementaryos on my MacBook Air. I really like it. It reminds me of Snow Leopard and has been very reliable for me so far. I'm delighted that I'm able to keep using my old MacBook Air after Apple abandoned it.