Mannn

got it from dpreview.com


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German website, Spiegel Online, has reported that Leica is in financial crisis after many banks cut its credit lines following an announcement last week which said it stood to lose half its operating capital. The company, which introduced the first 35mm still camera in 1924, is also expected to close the financial year with an operating loss of

s2ksimon

maybe they can get Celine Dion to endorse them by singing to get bankruptcy protection

climacus

It's amazing how fast this industry is changing. Even five years ago people were still skeptical about digital photography.

Triple-H

They have a little booth at PMA, I was just there...

Mannn

alot of ppl are still skeptical about digital photography...

I went backwards from digital for film... and can certainly see why ppl are skeptical

climacus

Well yeah there is still a place for medium/large format stuff. And in a sense that segment of the market won't be hit as hard since the economics have always been to support small niches of professionals for whom money is no object. But the 35mm stuff are just going to be marginalized and prices jacked up as the economy of scale falls away, and the only people left using the stuff are either grannies or die-hard shooters with deep knowledge of films. Not to mention a sizable chunk of camera equipment sales are generated by weekend amateurs looking for toys to play with. Right now these people are all having hard-ons over digital equipment and ditching their film-based 35mm stuff.

It's kind of a shame because knowing how to shoot correctly with a manual camera is like a perfectly-executed heel-n-toe downshift or driving into the apex, there is a zen-like quality to it. With a digital camera you just shoot randomly and hope the delay doesn't screw you up. Though I do like the viewfinder feature of the non-SLR digital camera. I don't think I can go back to seeing through a little peephole on the SLR anymore.

Terence

You do know that non-SLR cameras have messed up parallax (might have a typo) and less than 90% frame coverage right? That's where the EVF comes in but that also means you might get blackouts between shots which sucks when u're shooting sports. The most accurate viewfinder you could possibly get is from an SLR. Mirrors are used to reflect what the actual lense sees through the "peep hole".