Perhaps we can better ponder if the market will support the product at the new price?
My friend Igor will sell his M8 and feels they should have offered a more reasonable "fix" to the framing. By changing it in the new model, they are addressing a problem of their design, and he and I would have been well served had they offered what we consider a more reasonably priced swap of the finder. He is convinced Leica is being run by people who are out to finish it off either by design or incompetence.
I have gotten more used to the M8 with firmware upgrade, but not entirely, and will move along status quo until I desire the upgrade enough to shell out for it, or just live with it. If not, I can put film in my other Leicas and scan the results. I have enough variables to work on for now.
Neither Igor nor I are "dentists with cameras", and choosing Leica for me has been a bit of a wheel and deal process where I have come across stuff among the stuff I did not want, and sold off the duplicate bits, often gotten the bits I kept serviced through long developed associations at reasonable prices. I had an Olympus serviced by the factory service center in Prague for $16 and they apologized for charging so much, so gave it a complete CLA and six month warranty. Ah, the good old days, when we were not so old?
Takes longer than my Dentist, but the M8 I have is the first new Leica body I have bought since I bought a CL from the shop where I used to "work", well, I put in time, never took a check, and quit still owing them.
I own all the M's except the M5, and most of the LTM, but it has been a gradual process, I saved the second mortgage for dumber investments.
From what I have read in Roger's columns, he has been patient and fortunate enough to accumulate some rather exotic and desirable to him, kit, often at reasonable cost, and I see no reason to assume others have not done so likewise.
During my early years at the shop, there was a much more distinct bimodal distribution of expensive equipment as it was much harder for an average person to buy quality new.
At that time, we were among the very few "horse trading" operations. There was only one price elsewhere, whatever the manufacturer said, and there were fair trade laws essentially fixing prices on expensive things.
Leica, Linhof, Hasselblad, and Rollei were often "doctor's" and "executive's" trophy cameras, or the much smaller domain of serious pros. We would sometimes get them back ten years later, in the original box with the original receipt, and always needing a CLA.
If you examine the current price of Leica relative to say a contemporary month's pay, especially with some horse trading involved, and the fact that there are now fifty years of used M mount glass out there somewhere, it is much more of a probability that an average person who wants one can wrangle one.
"Pro-sumer" was not a word of the 60's, try to figure how many cameras people buy and replace on a regular basis now.
A used Rollei, Graflex, or a Pentax Spotmatic or H1a and perhaps one or two additional lenses were for the rest of us, if lucky. Amateurs used instamatics.
So, for those still awake, the new list price seems high, have no idea how much better the street price of a demo or slightly used one will be, but I would be far more likely to live with what I have or get it modified.
If I were shooting serious pro work with time constraints, I would consider the S2, is it a niche camera, they all are.
Roger, are you having yours modified? Do you think the market will support Leica's latest and greatest, or is this even a serious question, i.e. will they just keep doing Leica stuff?
John
