563 I did not want to ruin the other generally optimistic and enthusiastic posts about the leica M8. this is an exploratory email, putting out there some intial thoughts i have had on this camera and with the hope that people will respond the correct me where i may have erred in my thinking. personally i, a regular leica user, can only express some skepticism about this camera. firstly i can't understand why leica would want to ruin a masterpiece line of cameras. The M line ending at the M6/M7 left us with one of the finest 35mm cameras in the world and that was that. the M8 will hardly be anywhere near the world's best digital camera, and leica wants it to be the worlds best digital rangefinder.....ho hum. rather than retrofiting a classic into modernity leica would have been better off designing a modern camera from scratch. but i think that the culture at the firm has now become a liability. the M8 is taking what was already a marginal market i.e rangefinders, to create what will now be another marginal market, digital rangefinders. what is worse is that i think that the digital rangefinder market will be even more marginal! i am curious how many professional photojournalists who are not existing leica users are excited about this new product? and that too at a time when canon and nikon are poised to introduced further improvements in their professional line of cameras. not that they have to at the moment. secondly, i fail to see what competitive advantage this camera will have over the competition? a better sensor? that is not even in leica's hands but in the hands of a third party designer and developer and hence clearly not a leica advantage. again, i don't quite get it. if i were leading leica today i would have put all my resources into designing a modern day digital SLR body - the R9 is now really old and still suffers from serious design flaws - and attacked the big guys head on. and i would have invested in updated my lenses i.e. matching autofocus with leica glass, on a professionally robust, leica quality digital SLR that modernized the company, the product line, and allowed it to play in the largest, and fastest growing market segment today i.e. near professional digital SLR market at 10+MP or more. people are asking for quality glass and leica would have excelled at this. first there was the the digital back, now the digital rangefinder - there seems an corporate culture that can't jettison the old and arrive at the new fresh and with new ideas. i can't see the advantage of attacking a small, perhaps diminishing market of products. oh, and there is the simple fact that the M8 sports a 1.33 multipication factor meanign that for most of us professionals using 28, 35, or 50mm lenses, we have to invest in the wider lenses, which also happen to be leicas most expensive ones. so the actual cost of moving to a leica M8 is in excess of euro 7000+! the body should cost about euro 4500, and then another 2500 at least for another lens! anyone have that kind of cash lying around for a rangefinder digital? i will admit that it is exciting to have this new toy. its cool, its sexy but i have to face the fact that it is not or ever going to be an essential digital tool. or am i wrong? 38 2006-09-15T15:15:03Z 0 2008-03-12T12:54:55Z true 8281 false 5827 2006-10-11T04:52:22Z stockholm true false the_leica_m8___a_mistake 1 2008-03-12T12:54:55Z 3333