"Demand for film cameras is greater than the production capacity" - Leica

[Pál_K]

Tonight I browsed the KEH website, genuinely interested in whatever film cameras they had.

At first, upon seeing counts like "67" next to a particular brand, I thought they had quite a good selection - only to discover quickly they were all marked "out of stock".

Soon, I realized "out of stock" cameras comprised the majority of their film camera categories.

Perhaps I did something wrong in searching. But if not, then I've not seen this situation before.

 

[splitimageview]

Here's an idea -

- Leica and Cosina should do joint development on an entry level film M mount rangefinder. Leica markets it as the new entry level M - or modern CL, and Cosina as the bessa R5. Put some higher quality magnesium top and bottom plates on the Leica and charge 1.5x the price.

- Co-develop a new set of entry level primes with cheaper aluminium construction in 28 f2.8/40 f2/75 f2.5 to suit it.

This could be done fairly cheaply if development costs were shared, and would sell like hotcakes if the bodies were placed in the ballpark of $1200-1800usd. This would make it cheaper than any of the popular metered M's on the used market.

Cosina could do this themselves, no need to collaborate, which Leica would not likely do anyway.

But they discontinued all their cameras already...if there were indeed real demand, they could just start building them again...

 

[David Murphy]

Yup, both of them could do it with ease, I'm sure. Some sort of version of the M-A at somewhat reduced cost would be appreciated from Leica. The M-A, desirable as it is, is just a little out there price wise.

From Cosina, any re-issue or re-working of their Bessa line would be fantastic - preferably with a least one good full featured M mount model.

We can hope!

 

[Archlich]

Hardly possible for Leica today. Otherwise it wouldn’t have killed the Summarit line not so long ago. Absolutely no way of them saying "OK, now you've bought our sub-$2000 but perfectly functional film camera, now go get some CV lenses for it".

 

[David Hughes]

With a bit of luck the Chinese will start production of something looking very much like a model 4 to go with some of the lenses. "Model 4" is a bit much to type, perhaps "M4" would be snappier.


Regards, David

 

[santino]

I hate those Ridicoulously priced film cameras. Just today I saw a beater Eos 5D for 99 Euros! Stupid Mju 1s go for 150 these days. I think I‘ll go fully digital, out of protest 😀

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

Suddenly every Chinese manufacturer capable of making a manual focus m-mount lens is jumping on the wagon. Many people claim that these lenses are a good deal. If the Chinese can make such good economical lenses why can’t they make a good and cheap (relative to Leica) m-mount camera? What's the big difference between manufacturing a lens and a camera?

All the best,
Mike

 

[Archlich]

Suddenly every Chinese manufacturer capable of making a manual focus m-mount lens is jumping on the wagon. Many people claim that these lenses are a good deal. If the Chinese can make such good economical lenses why can’t they make a good and cheap (relative to Leica) m-mount camera? What's the big difference between manufacturing a lens and a camera?

All the best,
Mike

Manufacturing wise any maker today is capable of making a M mount camera if they really push for it. But as had been repeated numerous times in the past decade, it's not worth it.

The "big difference" between making M lens and M camera is you can adapt the lens to almost any mirrorless cameras, which means it has market many folds of of the size of just M users. M cameras meanwhile is a tiny tiny niche in comparison, and would require much expertise that's not present on the existing supply chain to realize. Plus that anything non-Leica here would come under huge scrutiny - even more so if it's Chinese. It will then have to compete with the sea of used M out there.

Against all the odds, if we'd ever get one M camera from China, it'll be from hobbyists like LLL (I wouldn't even call them a cottage maker since the project would have very dim profit margin). With huge lead time, of course.

 

[loquax ludens]

As for the recent film M's problems - it seems leica have done some incremental modifications to the MA's and MP's that had issues, and have sorted them.

I'm out of touch. I don't want to derail this thread, but I'd like to know what the issues were. Can you summarize or link to something that discusses it?

My MP was built in 2012. I haven't experienced any problems so far.

 

[HHPhoto]

Thanks for the inside info - that's good news!!

No problem, you're welcome.

But it isn't so much "new news", as the film resurgence is going on for several years now, and the facts about it have been reported by film manufacturers and film related materials / equipment manufacturers and film distributors and labs for quite some time now.
Rff is just not the right place to get this info, as there are much better places out there where all this is published and discussed. Places with companies getting in direct contact with customers and offering first-hand information.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

Except that’s not really inside info, it’s just anecdotal.

It is of course not at all anecdotical. The increase in film demand has been published by the film manufacturers themselves over the last years.
Confirmed by the film distributors and labs.

Ditto with stores running out of film stock; that’s bound to happen since they carry little to none as it is...

No. It is happening regularly with the biggest online film distributors like Fotoimpex, ars-imago, Nordfoto, Maco etc., which are selling millions of films.

Isn’t the Sofort discontinued?

No, of course not:
https://us.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-SOFORT/Leica-SOFORT
Why should Leica discontinue their best selling product? A product, which is part of the best increasing market segment - instax instant film.

The market for instax instant cameras is meanwhile even bigger in unit sales than the market for digital ILC cameras.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

Kodak and Ilford have both reported film sales steadily increasing each year for the last 5 years. Shouldn't be a problem...

Correct.
The same is valid for Foma and Adox. And Fujifilm has meanwhile also increasing sales again (for 2-3 years now).

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

So, when will we see new professional level 35mm and 120 cameras introduced?

I assume in 4-5 years.
Because in 2-3 years the digital camera manufacturers will have realized that
- the market for digital ILC cameras will stay very low in the 3-4 million units range
- the digital compact camera market will be even much lower than that figure
- the mirrorless market will continue its decrease which it is doing since 2012 now.
So they will need additional business to survive.
And Fujifilm is now demonstrating for years with their extremely successful mass market product instax (more than 10 million units sold in 2019) that there is an attractive market for traditional film products.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

Whenever Hasselblad H and Rollei Hy6 get upgrades.

That has already happened:
You can use the Hasselblad H6 with the H film back as a normal medium format film camera.

And the Rolleiflex Hy6 has already been updated to the Hy6 Mod.2.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

As far as the overall trend goes when it comes to the rising interest in film photography, I personally am reminded of this every time I visit my local film lab. Just last week in the time it took me to drop off my film I discovered five other individuals had arrived that were waiting behind me, all quite a bit younger than myself (58). ....
The lab is overwhelmed with business right now (my choice of wording). The reality is that they are busier now than they have been for many decades (the owner's choice of wording).

About the same here with my local lab: Strongly increasing business for about five years now. And lots of new, young customers.

I am in disagreement with those who feel that this renewed interest in film is a fad that will by dying down soon. As others have mentioned, there is a growing interest in all things "analog" amongst younger people and film photography is just one facet of this behavior that more and more young folks are finding to be rewarding.

+1.
Just some days ago there was the news that in the US the sales revenue of vinyl records has surpassed (!) the revenue of compact discs (CD).

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

Suddenly every Chinese manufacturer capable of making a manual focus m-mount lens is jumping on the wagon.

All the best,
Mike

Yes, they are making lenses. But these lenses are far away from the quality standards of Japanese manufacturers like Cosina and even much more far away from Leica quality.
You get what you pay for.
On another forum a lens designer has recently explained that the glass quality alone used in that cheap lenses is far away from the quality level of the established manufacturers.

Cheers, Jan

 

[zuiko85]

Somewhere, sometime ago (drat, my foggy memory).
Anyway, it was an interview with Y. Maitani, of Olympus Pen and OM fame. This interview was probably late 1990’s.
One of the questions was why couldn’t Olympus put the OM-1 back into, at least, limited production. His answer was that the production of the OM bodies and lenses was on specialized machines, with the idea of very large volume of cameras. Each machine turned out thousands of parts to be assembled into completed cameras. Once set up this allowed for relatively low unit cost per camera, at least for so high a quality product.
Quite a few fans of the OM system (who, for the most part are now, naturally, ‘old timers’) would probably be interested in a brand new OM-1n. But Would we, or really, almost anyone, be willing to pay the kilo dollar amount such a low volume, 5-10k max unit volume, world wide plus the extra expense of a few basic lenses for such?
Even if some young folks were interested in bringing back a OM or Nikon F2, or Canon F1, or........, well, each of us has some favorite MMM (metal, manual, mechanical) camera.
The price would probably have to be so high as to kill the market before it got off the ground

 

[HHPhoto]

Hardly possible for Leica today. Otherwise it wouldn’t have killed the Summarit line not so long ago.

The Summarit line is not discontinued. Just look at the Leica homepage, all Summarit lenses are listed there in the current M lens programe.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

I hate those Ridicoulously priced film cameras. Just today I saw a beater Eos 5D for 99 Euros! Stupid Mju 1s go for 150 these days. I think I‘ll go fully digital, out of protest 😀

It is no problem at all to get an excellent film SLR for only 30 - 60€.
No one is forced to buy one of the recently "hyped" cameras.

Cheers, Jan

 

[HHPhoto]

Somewhere, sometime ago (drat, my foggy memory).
Anyway, it was an interview with Y. Maitani, of Olympus Pen and OM fame. This interview was probably late 1990’s.
One of the questions was why couldn’t Olympus put the OM-1 back into, at least, limited production. His answer was that the production of the OM bodies and lenses was on specialized machines, with the idea of very large volume of cameras. Each machine turned out thousands of parts to be assembled into completed cameras. Once set up this allowed for relatively low unit cost per camera, at least for so high a quality product.
Quite a few fans of the OM system (who, for the most part are now, naturally, ‘old timers’) would probably be interested in a brand new OM-1n. But Would we, or really, almost anyone, be willing to pay the kilo dollar amount such a low volume, 5-10k max unit volume, world wide plus the extra expense of a few basic lenses for such?
Even if some young folks were interested in bringing back a OM or Nikon F2, or Canon F1, or........, well, each of us has some favorite MMM (metal, manual, mechanical) camera.
The price would probably have to be so high as to kill the market before it got off the ground

Olympus has failed in the digital camera market. Their days are numbered. In 9 years (!) of the last decade they made losses with their M4/3 cameras.
The recently published intention of sale of the camera production is just the first step in a "fading out process" in the coming years.
Olympus camera production will be a part of history in some years. That's just the reality.

New film cameras will be based on 35mm DSLRs: You can use a "same parts strategy":
- same prism
- same mirror mechanics
- same AF system
- fine tuned exposure system
- same shutter release
- some other identical parts as knobs or the AF focus selector.
By using this strategy costs can be significantly reduced. Both for the film based and digital model. And at the same time the customers get the most sophisticated and current technology.
That this strategy works was already demonstrated by Nikon with the F6, which was developed simultanously and shared some parts / technology with the D2X and D2h.

Cheers, Jan