Ben Z
Veteran
Sailor Ted said:PS. I’m sure not having to wait for an M8 will be fertile ground for some who are always “early adaptors” in all things negative. Still this may be an interesting development to track over the next few months and quite telling as to Leica’s success or failure with this camera and as a company.
Making a pre-emptive strike against anyone who might draw a negative conclusion from a negative fact would be a good tactic if this weren't a forum of clearly logical thinkers 🙄 Back in November I was told by my dealer that the Leica rep told him Leica's planned production capacity was booked through late summer '07 with pre-orders. Recently the same dealer (the one some here who shall remain nameless called a b-s'er) told me the same rep said there were so many cancellations that the backorders would be done by late Feb or early March and after that the future sales of the M8 were anybody's guess. He also said the main reason was not the "teething troubles", but 99% the IR filters, and that the reps are putting pressure on Leica-US and they (hopefully) in turn on Solms, to redesign the sensor IR filter ASAP. So as you say, it will be interesting to see over the next few months what happens. If Leica were to say they had a redesigned sensor in the works and would upgrade current M8's under warranty, I would buy one. Those who prefer the front filters could of course just pass on the upgrade.
But another problem Leica will face is that Canon is almost sure to have a new full-frame in the works, and rumors have it at 22MP. Of course their problem will be offering lenses with commensurate quality, and it still won't be a rangefinder, and no doubt there will be a few people who will still swear the M8 has better IQ 😉 but if Leica has to replace the sensors anyway, a bump in pixel count and/or a reduction in the crop factor mightn't be a bad idea...while we're in dream-mode 😀
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