The M8 upgrade does not make sense at all!

[slm]

"their doing something that no other camera company offers."

For a reason. The other camera makers want to stay in business.

I would guess Leica want to stay in business too. Fact of the matter is, they can't use the prescribed Sony/Canon/Nikon/Electronics giant business formula. Their product is different and their target market is different, and as far as I know, they're not the same size company with the same deep pockets.

 

[Rob-F]

What do i do today, 20 years later, with my first 1200 bps modem ?
What do i do today, 15 years later, with my 2nd 14000 bps modem ?
What do i do today, 20 years later, with my first 105Mb hard drive ? (very big at that time)
What do i do today with my 10 years old Minolta RD-175 ?

What do i do today with my M8 ? Taking pictures and don't think about 2018 !

What do I do today with my Apple IIe? You really wanna know? I use it in the office, to make and print forms. It sits right alongside my 1998 Compaq laptop, which I use to do the billing. The Compaq has 64Meg of memory; the Apple, originally, had 64K! But that's OK; it's been upgraded to 128K.

In fact, I think I'll take a photo of that setup in the office, with my Leica II and its 1932 Nickel Elmar . . . Now, where did I leave my GE light meter? ;<)

 

[slm]

Yes. They have chosen to sell very high priced products to a very select group of people, a group that seems to be insensitive to price. Or those that think the M8 a "magic bullet" because HCB used one. Can they survive in that kind of market by offering upgrades to the same camera forever? It should only take a couple of years too have that answer.

So, they should make and sell cameras that would appeal to the mainstream crowd ?

 

[rsl]

Hey rsl, interesting, but I don't think all of those components require changing for the camera to be brought up to a more current state. I think people would be happy with sensor upgrades first and foremost, which would call for a firmware update and possibly the A/D converter (which I *think* is built into the sensor, like the new Sony Exmor, so might not even be an issue). The rest of the components you list are icing I think.

Anyhow, like I said in another post somewhere, I'm not an M8 owner. I've never owned a Leica. But from where I'm sitting, their idea doesn't make them look like they're living in the past, quite the contrary, their doing something that no other camera company offers.

As Sitemistic pointed out above, the other companies aren't doing this because they want to stay in business.

Probably not all of those components will need to be changed at once for the camera to be brought up to the state of the art as it exists six months from now, but when you look three years out, most will need to be changed. What's more, if a really big breakthrough comes along it may simply not be possible to bring the camera up to the new state of the art. Have any idea how much a sensor replacement will cost? I suspect it'll be pretty close to the original price of the camera. Besides that, though I'm not a camera designer, from what I read there are a number of things that need to be fine-tuned together to make the whole thing work well.

All in all I think a digital camera is like a microcomputer. It has a relatively short life on point. It wasn't all that many years ago that people were changing out motherboards and various other components to keep their microcomputers up to the state of the art. But that didn't work out too well. The art changed state a bit too fast.

On the other hand, if you have a really solid digital camera in your hands, even though the state of the art moves on, there's no reason you need to abandon it. My wife's still shooting with a Casio QV3000EX, which, if I remember correctly, was the first 3.3 megapixel consumer camera. It came out in 2000 and it still does fairly good work. This past year I occasionally fell back on my D100 for available light shots in fairly dark business establishments since the D2X doesn't do that very well. Neither the Casio nor any of my Nikons has ever so much as coughed, much less started throwing green bands down its frames, locking up, losing random frames, etc. The D3 appears to be the most solid of them all and I expect to go on using it for at least five years no matter what happens to the state of the art.

But a camera has to be pretty trouble free before that makes sense. Right now Leica's problem with the M8 isn't how to keep it up to the state of the art, but how to turn it into a reliable instrument. I'd be beating a dead horse if I commented further on that point.

 

[photogdave]

"that's an assumption jim, and an erroneous one at that."

So folks who will pay $5,000 for a digital rangefinder and $3,000 for a single lens are watching the budget?

They are if they don't upgrade the whole thing every two years!

 

[slm]

As Sitemistic pointed out above, the other companies aren't doing this because they want to stay in business.

That assumes there is only one business model that will allow you to stay in business.

And I agree, a digital camera is very similar to a micro computer. But they were and still are upgradeable (even user upgradeable !), and thats a good thing, as I'm sure you'll agree. Maybe cameras will catch up to micro computers, with user serviceable parts, upgradeable components, custom software, etc. A bit of innovation in that direction instead of impressing the impressionable with more megapixels would be welcome.

Cheers.

 

[chewbacca]

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!"

this chewbacca lives in Montreal-Canada make no sense what so ever!

 

[Wang Chung]

I'm glad I don't seem to be losing as much sleep over this as some forum members.

I shattered the screen protector I had on my M8 the other day, no harm to the screen but it did make me a little nervous.

cmogi10...where did you get the screen protector. I'd like to get one.

Wang'r