How many of you will buy the M8 or Digital M

How many of you will buy the M8 or Digital M

  • I have my unit pre-ordered already.

    Votes: 122 15.1%

  • Need more cash

    Votes: 141 17.5%

  • Will buy it for sure sooner or later

    Votes: 234 29.0%

  • Not interested or have no plans to get one.

    Votes: 311 38.5%
  • Total voters
    808
Iggy said:
I am, or is that was, considering getting an Ikon, M7 or MP + a fast 50 but could be easily tempted into getting the M8 + a fast 35 for the extra £££. If had the space for my own dark room I wouldn't consider the M8 at all but taking into account ongoing d&p costs (and pitfalls) and the price of a decent scanner the M8 looks good value.
:eek: What did I just say??
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I feel your 'pain'..I'm sitting here thinking the same thing.
I have a few thousand dollars tied up in film cameras...maybe it's time to... No... I can't even say it....
 
There, there Rich. There, there...

Except for the point & shoot slr I somehow managed to acquire:confused: I think I'll keep the rest (GR1, XA2, manual everything Fujica slr etc) so that once I've gone over to the dark side I can pretend I'm still one of the good guys. CUCKOO... CUCKOO!
 
don't sell your film cameras...

don't sell your film cameras...

sell any digital cameras you might have, as they really will only go down in value. i ebay'd my panasonic lc-1 while the value was still high and i really don't miss that digicam at all. that was about 25% of my M8 funding right there! my M7? i would never give that up to acquire a digital camera. pointless.

i had a friend that was going to sell some of his hassleblad stuff, so he got some estimates and quickly realized that the money he would make from the sale wasn't worth giving up the camera/lenses for.
 
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"I feel your 'pain'..I'm sitting here thinking the same thing.
I have a few thousand dollars tied up in film cameras...maybe it's time to... No... I can't even say it....
"

Spent this afternoon valuing and trying to work out an disposal/aquisition strategy that allows for an M8. There's $18,600 of kit in my collection includiing $6,200 of Leica gear.

I need to buy a digital outfit and am holding off placing an order to awaiting confirmation that the M8 will be a practical replacement for a Mamiya 7 and a Hasselblad for the wedding and commercial work I do, in addition to my personal photography. I am desparately trying to avoid the size and weight of a FF Canon outfit, but it maybe inevitable.

An M8 plus a 24mm lens wil cost a further circa $8,800. A Canon outfit will cost $12,500. Either will be funded by the sale of hard won equipment. Hence, the pain.
 
The lack of information about this small sensor M8 or MD may lead one into thinking it won't be for sale any time soon.
 
I find it a little odd that so far, throughout this thread, there hasn't been much discussion of the poll results. Here, in the world's leading Website of RF enthusiasts, with 6,211 "members" and an unknown number of other people who pop in from time to time, the poll reveals that a grand total of just 39 people have pre-ordered the M8 (which doesn't in fact obligate them to buy one) and another 172 people may at some point in the future buy one if they can scrape together enough cash or it meets their expectations or whatever. Am I the only person who thinks these are not very impressive numbers? Well, you may say, there are a lot more potential buyers waiting in the wings. Who, exactly? "Collectors"? I may be wrong, but I can't see collectors avidly snapping up this (or any other) digital camera. The proverbial doctors and lawyers with cash to burn? Maybe, but I have a feeling they'll impress their friends more with a Canon 5D or whatever other megapixel DSLR comes down the pike six months from now. And then there's the final poll result -- 159 respondents, 43% of the total, say they definitely have no interest in getting an M8. If such a high percentage of the M8's natural buyer pool is so unenthusiastic, how is Leica ever going to make a go of it? I hope the M8 is a giant leap forward and will generate a groundswell of enthusiasm that this poll hasn't captured. But if it isn't, I don't see a great future for it -- or for Leica itself.
 
Statistical polls are only as good as the questions asked, and even then you tend to get the answer 'you' want from the questions asked.

For example:

57.03% want an M8 according to the above poll.

Leica has no choice but to release this camera (sooner rather than later) or disappear into the history books. Sales figures will tell the true story.

Jon
 
Jon--

I was concentrating on the actual numbers of potential M8 buyers that the poll revealed, not the percentages. Even if all the 211 people who have pre-ordered an M8 or said they MIGHT some day buy one actually did, that's $1,000,000 in sales. Hardly enough to keep Leica afloat. Plus a lot of those people may then sell their film Leicas on the second-hand market, eating into Leica's already dwindling film camera revenues. And does Leica really believe that people who don't already own Leica lenses will be willing to shell out $5,000 for the M8 and then thousands more for new lenses to go with it? But as you say, this is all speculation until the actual sales figures start to come in.
 
Their financial year runs to 31 March, so it will be interesting to see what impact 6 months of this thing has on their sales figures.
 
sircarl said:
Jon--

I was concentrating on the actual numbers of potential M8 buyers that the poll revealed, not the percentages. Even if all the 211 people who have pre-ordered an M8 or said they MIGHT some day buy one actually did, that's $1,000,000 in sales. Hardly enough to keep Leica afloat. Plus a lot of those people may then sell their film Leicas on the second-hand market, eating into Leica's already dwindling film camera revenues. And does Leica really believe that people who don't already own Leica lenses will be willing to shell out $5,000 for the M8 and then thousands more for new lenses to go with it? But as you say, this is all speculation until the actual sales figures start to come in.
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Lets face it, if Leica were basing projected sales figures from those poll results they would probably just give up. I think it is safe to say that we are only a very small part of their potential market. Either that or they're doomed! :D

Jon
 
Jon,

I guess that's where you and I differ. I would argue that the members of this Website are, at least potentially, a very large part of the total market for the M8. Only 6% of them have cared enough to participate in a poll on the M8 that has been going on for nearly 3 months -- and just 3% have expressed an interest, at this stage, in actually getting one, at some point in time. Doesn't sound like it's a Burning Issue to the vast majority of people who look at this Website on a regular basis. Maybe that will change when the camera is finally revealed -- for Leica's sake, it better. As I said earlier, I just don't think the M8 will be able to pull in buyers from outside the rangefinder enthusiast community in the same way Leica's film cameras did, because those buyers were attracted by their prestige value. You want to see the potential market for the M8? You're looking at it!
 
sircarl said:
Jon,

I guess that's where you and I differ. I would argue that the members of this Website are, at least potentially, a very large part of the total market for the M8. Only 6% of them have cared enough to participate in a poll on the M8 that has been going on for nearly 3 months -- and just 3% have expressed an interest, at this stage, in actually getting one, at some point in time. Doesn't sound like it's a Burning Issue to the vast majority of people who look at this Website on a regular basis. Maybe that will change when the camera is finally revealed -- for Leica's sake, it better. As I said earlier, I just don't think the M8 will be able to pull in buyers from outside the rangefinder enthusiast community in the same way Leica's film cameras did, because those buyers were attracted by their prestige value. You want to see the potential market for the M8? You're looking at it!
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Somehow I doubt that RFF members as a whole are a large part of the potential market. This site covers a wide range of interests in RF camera's from FSU camera's and large format through to Leica M and RD1., including a large number of film only entusiasts. Considering the relatively small number of participants on the relevant forums, I would say the proportion is rather small.
 
Magic with numbers

Magic with numbers

jaapv said:
Somehow I doubt that RFF members as a whole are a large part of the potential market.
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There are about 6600 registered members on RRF. There are about 7 times that number of quests at any given time. The few elgible to vote where split about 50-50. Extending that, there may be 25,000 potential buyers on this forum alone!
And when you consider that probably only a few persent of current Leica owners have even heard of this site that means that there are 25,000,000 potential serious buyers! So if only 1 in 25 buys the camera, that would be net sales of of 50 billion dollars,,,, or is that 5 billion dollars? Ah, let me figure that again.....mmmm.

Rex
 
My dealer has 25 M8 on order.
Only one dealer, only the first batch.
From a small city in the North of Italy.
I don't think the numbers shown here is even remotely representative to the potential M8 buyers all over the world.
 
I'll pass

I'll pass

I'll pass thank you. I have a pair of 5D's for digital .

I just got my first Leica Friday: M6 Wetzlar w/ 35 2.0 ASPH. Now why would I want to put a silly little cropped chip behind that glass when there are tons of great films out there?


.....Including my 800 rolls of Kodachrome..:D
 
Basic question - why this fever over the M8?

Basic question - why this fever over the M8?

To be clear, I am a rank amateur. Before joining the RFF barely 9 months ago, I was a happy owner of a Zorki 4K/J8 outfit and some prosumer digital gear. Since then, I've acquired (and have been using) an M7, an R-D1, an R2, bunch of Leica, Konica, and CV lenses, and a Contax G2 outfit, all thanks to the friendly and much appreciated advice I found here on this forum.

I'd developed the lust for the “M” over time based on RFF posts that exulted it's virtues as a quiet, extremely well-built, and well-designed shooter that may last me for a long, long time. The cloth shutter, the ergonomics, Leica's rich history of producing amazing b&w photos, all that stuff made a purchase of an "M" simply irresistible. And rightly so - I simply love using the M7.

From recent posts, it looks like Leica M8 will have a fairly loud shutter, no shutter advance lever, and will be larger than the M7. With the exception of the Leica “look”, it will be, effectively, an R-D2 (more megapixels than R-D1). So I wonder, if the M8 is just a slightly improved R-D1, why wasn’t the entire limited stock of R-D1 sold out as soon as it became available? Is it the aforementioned “Leica look” and prestige of owning a Leica that’s making the M8 so much more appealing then the R-D1? How much of this pent-up demand for the M8 is based on reason and how much of it is simply a trained response to anything new from Leica? Not that I mind, not in the least, but - just wondering…
 
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