I Have Absolutely No Interest In This Camera

 I've written before about Leica obsession.  It has many colors, including one of my favorite terms (somewhere just below "chimping"): "Leica Jewelry."  That's the dismissive term used by either working photographers or camera afficiandos (the two are not mutually exclusive -- I feel a Venn diagram coming on) for those who know just enough about Leicas ("They're the very best!") to want to carry one around for the prestige, but not enough about photography to truly make use of it.  Or perhaps know just enough about photography to think they deserve to use "the very best."

Anyway, one of the prestige factors is price.  I'm not revealing anything by saying that Leicas are very expensive.  At the last Leica Historical Society of America annual conference I was able to attend (that was 2009, before the game-changing M9 was released), I watched Director of Product Management Stefan Daniel field question after question about price.  Finally, he came up with what I thought was an impressive answer: the Leica M now costs less in relation to the average income than it did in the M3's heyday in the 1950s.

So now they've released the X Vario.

"Leica has always been known as the Mercedes-Benz of cameras," said FStoppers' posting on the announcement.  "With their unparalleled quality of build, and beautiful designs, they’ve been able make and sell cameras at the premium price tags exceeding $7000. With their latest creation, the X Vario, Leica looks to bridge the gap with Leica’s quality, zoom lenses, and a sub-$3K price tag."

 Oooooo-kay.

Even inside the cult of Leica, there have always been complaints with each digital product release, and not just about price.  They want live screens, electronic viewfinders (another favorite term of mine: the acronym EVIL, though I don't think I take it the way it's meant), video, etc.  Techno-geeks who want cameras that do the very coolest new things, or photographers that think this tool or that firmware is the most useful thing since the pan-tilt lens post in the Leica Users Forum, usually with paragraph of  careful reasoning supported with charts and statistics and sample photos.  I think the X Vario is the camera for those guys.

They can have it.

Not that I'm a Luddite.  Far from it; nobody's happier than me that the new M(240) shoots video.  I fantasize the way other guys do about the Playmate of the Month about what I could do with that video function.  But that's not why I use a Leica.  I like it for the M experience, if you will.

It's something I've tried to articulate before.  Put simply: there is a unique experience, a special feeling that comes when one handles a Leica M, when one brings that rangefinder to the eye.  When one becomes used to the controls, the camera falls naturally into place -- to the point where I catch myself pantomiming holding the camera while thinking about making a picture.  I'm fully confident that, should someone catch me at it, they could slip the M body into my hands without moving them, and everything would slide into place.

The ultra-smooth, almost cylindrical body of the M8 just didn't seem quite right to me, though I understood it as a valiant effort.  The M9 was, in my mind, the turning point.  As I said to friends, I think it is the digital camera that Cartier-Bresson would finally buy.

The EVIL system, I believe, is just that.  I know there are people who think it's wonderful, especially for something like street photography, where people are less likely to catch you at work as they would with the camera up to your face.  I just have a really hard time working with that screen.

And frankly the whole thing smacks of a point-and-shoot.  It's a really nice point-and-shoot.  (For just short of $3,000, I should hope so.)  It has, I have no doubt, a great lens and a great chip and a good, solid Leica construction, and I probably would be impressed by the pics made by an able photographer with it, but still ...

No, I'll stick with the M, while I wish Leica godspeed and massive profits with cameras like the X Vario, my main concern is that they be the support for my preferred system.

Dreaming of you...

So last November, I drove through the night to get to Louisville, Kentucky, for a single day. They were having the annual Leica Historical Society of America meeting there, and though I couldn't afford the entire outing (complete with hotel, event fees, meals and transportation -- the same reason I'm missing this year's gathering in Seattle), I wanted to get in as much as I could. Also, I have a continuing plan on a book project on the history of photojournalism through its equipment, and the Leica plays a towering part in that history.

I had arranged to cover it for News Photographer magazine, as part of that bigger, Leica work, and as a good writer, I tried to buttonhole (in the most amiable way possible, the way a fan does the manager of her favorite actor) the Leica officials there, particularly M Systems Manager Stefan Daniel.

Daniel is a jolly fellow, with a round, youthful face and German accent -- as you'd expect. After all, he had flown in to the US just for that weekend from Leica headquarters in Solms, Germany. He had the misfortune of finding himself in the lunch buffet line behind me, and thus became subject to the inquisition. It was amiable conversation (surprisingly so, you might think, as I stood between him and lunch after a long morning), culminating in the question everyone asked: "Where is my full-frame digital M?"

He smiled wanly and rolled his eyes, leaving me with the impression that he'd heard it a hundred times before ... and there was nothing to be done. As Leica explained when the released the 3/4-sized chip on the M8, the physics of light made it impossible. I left feeling it was a game we all played, like high school kids flirting at the dance. I wanted a date, and it was out of my league.

Then the rumors began towards summer's end. The fabled M9 was coming. Camera shops in Paris were taking pre-orders. A Brit on the Leica Forum actually disassembled his M8 and proved there was room to put in a full-sized chip. (I tried to locate the post -- complete with pictures -- but it may be too old.) Chatter on Facebook and emails with my Leica-loving friends. But no, we couldn't believe it. They had disappointed us with the M8, then just teased us with the S2. This would be some modification on the M8, not the final, full-frame M dream.

I was one of the people who actually watched the web feed on 9/09/09. (The date did give me hope, and by then there had been leaks of web pages and manual uploads and photos. I was telling my friends that this was it, but had that fear in my deepest heart that I'd be jilted at the Prom ballroom door.) There was a speech from the new CEO -- a history of Leica that would not have been tedious had, a: I not known it all already, and b: the technical aspects of the webcast been a bit better -- then my old friend Stefan Daniel stepped to the lecturn with an M body. And the moment came: the full-frame M9.

The rest was anti-climactic and thus unimportant to me. (Though, I must say, I find a rising interest in the model III-like X1.) The true Leica was here, and only $7,000 (more or less).

A short aside on that last number. That's a lot of money. I'm not buying one anytime soon, not for lack of interest, as this now overlong (and nowhere near finished) post amply demonstrates, but for simple economics. It's a place I found myself in for 20 years until I awoke one morning to find I had, by way of luck, true friendship and delicate longterm spending, acquired a IIIc, three M3s and an old, chrome M4, along with a range of lenses, from 28 to 90. (It never stops, either. My wife generously found me a Zeiss 21 -- about which I had done nothing but whine for most of the year -- for Christmas last year.) I guess there's hope, if that history is anything to judge by.

But that's not the aside. What I meant to say was that $7,000 is also about what the top-of-the-line, full-frame digital Canon and Nikons cost, and even if it didn't, I would think of Stefan Daniel at the LHSA meeting again. He was doing the dog-and-pony show, showing all the new products that had come out at Photokina shortly before, when he opened the floor to questions. I soon saw that resigned look I was treated to in close up at lunch, because the subject of cost came up again and again. Much of it was driven by the S2, which had no cost associated with it then, but it also went to the product line in general. Why, people asked again and again, in ever-varying form, are Leicas so expensive?

"Leica has never been a very cheap product," Daniel finally explained. Statistically , he said (by measuring against monthly income) Leicas today are actually cheaper than in their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember thinking that a pretty impressive answer, but the questions kept on coming ... and that as when the M8.2 came in at around $5,500. So how is it that $7,000 is better?

Well, for one, see above: Nikon and Canon ran ahead to the mark with their full-frame cameras. But for another, look at the product. This is the digital camera Cartier-Bresson would have bought. That was honestly my thought as I learned more about it. And finally, I was afraid they'd run it up to $10,000 because ... well, because they were Leica and could. (Also, I have constantly argued that the S2 should be priced to undersell the Hasselblads as an economic measure for big studios: All the good parts of DSLRs and digital medium format, but cheaper than the big cameras; trade all your old crap in for one, great, easy-to-use system -- but they seem to come in for more than Hasselblad. Why?)

Secondly, I think this shows the new regime in Solms has finally got it straightened out. I hate to hack on the American, brought in by new owner Dr. Andreas Kaufmann to turn the place around only to clash with the artisnal German Kultur of Solms, but after years of stumbles, someone seems to be playing the products right. I have real hope: the right camera at the right price with what seems the right attitude.

Now I just have to figure out how to get one. Maybe I can do T-shirts, like this guy...