Arka Offline Upload & Sell: On
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pmeheut wrote:
For plenty of people, buying a digital Leica M is silly: no AF, no modern technology, imprecise framing and a very high price.
Even worse, some people are ready to pay the same amount of money to buy a B&W only Leica M when you can get excellent results already by converting the images from a color camera.
And some people even bought a Raw only, no screen at all Leica M digital camera.
And let's not get started on the lenses: I paid around 3500€ for a 50mm/1.4? Am I silly?
I will not buy the Thambar but I do not feel I'm in a position to judge those who will. And I wonder if others are....Show more →
It's certainly true that there are varying degrees of "silliness" associated with photography tools, and of course concerns that seem silly to one person are critically important to others. But I would say that the interest in cameras like the MM, M60, or Leica's expensive optics (I own three very pricey Leica lenses myself) is distinct from the type of interest that motivates people to buy some of those special editions - I think most purchasers of production M equipment (and even stuff like the Thambar) are motivated principally by the intent to actually take pictures and create images. Whether they actually do that is another story entirely, but I seriously doubt that most special edition purchasers have the same motivation. I'll bet most of them are speculators who won't even open the box, let alone use the equipment. And while everyone is entitled to do what they want with the stuff they can afford to buy, and Leica is more than entitled to cash in on its brand position in this way, the motivations creating this market (on the buyer and seller side) strike me as being a little odd since we are, at bottom, dealing with imaging equipment. I speak here not of particular lenses or cameras with a set of distinct capabilities (or lack thereof) - I speak entirely to the rebadged and cosmetically customized cameras that perform identically to their production-line cousins, but cost 1.5 to 4 times as much for being "limited edition."
I find the Lenny Kravitz correspondent edition to be particularly gauche in this respect, because it is basically a digital M that's been pre-brassed. While the lens that comes with it may have some unique features, I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to distinguish the output of a Kravitz M240 from a standard M240. And of course, no one would ever likely get the chance to compare output since most people snapping up the Lenny Kravitz "pre-torn jeans" edition of the Leica M would probably never take it out of the box, let alone release the shutter.
I'm not saying that such behavior should be made illegal. But I'm going to judge it as a bit weird (unless someone can show me evidence that these Leica special editions are particularly good investments). Of course, I'm no stranger to being weird myself - for example, I'm obsessed with hand-painted fountain pens in a world where a BIC pen would leak less and provide more reliable output.
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