Hi, Wednesday, February 5, 2003, 2:07:10 PM, you wrote:
> The M7 only works on two shutter speeds unless it has batteries. Very > un-Leica-like. Also, Leica requires just slightly less than the cost of an > MZ-S to add aperture-priority AE to their camera. This is not seen as a bad > thing by some Leica users, who would rather that the cameras cost even more > in order to keep the riffraff away. But it ensures that even fewer > photographers in the future will enjoy the "Leica rangefinder experience." towards the back end of last year I was talking to one of the major Leica dealers here in London, and being very cynical about Leica's claim that the M6 would continue and that the M6 and M7 were complementary to each other. He passed on a hush-hush nod-and-wink he'd had from one of the top brass (or is it aluminium nowadays?) at Solms that the M7 had seen a decline in sales of the M6, but that sales of used M3s were still extremely strong and unaffected by the M7, or anything else. To capitalise on this desire for a 'pure' Leica they intended to bring out a 'modern M3' within the year, which would be a no-electronics-at-all-not-even-a-light-meter M with the several different viewfinders (0.58, 0.72?, 0.85 and possibly a bigger one) that are now available. IOW, an M4-x with different finders. Personally I'm very skeptical about it, but I pass it on for what it's worth. --- Bob
