One interesting aspect of all this is that Leica is still in business. Anytime a particular company goes out of business or stops making camera equipment, the ability to repair starts to diminish. That is the achilles heel of any older equipment. It certainly remains to be seen if/how Leica pulls through this digital revolution and what the long term impact is on their cameras.
This scenario is not unique to Leica - any maker has a similar problem. The long term on Contax at this time is very cloudy. Just some thoughts I had... -- Best regards, Bruce Wednesday, August 3, 2005, 4:58:30 PM, you wrote: SB> Hi Bill ... there's probably a great deal of truth to that. Here's an SB> interesting example: SB> http://homepages.iol.ie/~corkflor/blackleica1.html SB> and while unusual in some respects, it mirrors in some ways my experience SB> with a 1934 Leica, which I foolishly sold. SB> My current bodies are from around 1959-60 and are still going strong. Each SB> has had a major CLA (one a couple of years ago, the other a few months ago) SB> and they're good to go another thirty years or so. Paul's Leica is older SB> than mine, and is still operating smoothly, and is still repairable. SB> Shel >> [Original Message] >> From: William Robb >> > I've droned on long enough. Bottom line is that the gear doesn't have SB> to >> > be expensive, and prices for good, used Leicas and Leica lenses have >> > dropped substantially since the digital revolution. >> >> I read somewhere, probably one of MJ's articles that Leica Ms are among SB> the >> least expensive cameras to own per picture taken, based on longevity and >> durability. >> There aren't many cameras out there that will go the distance the way a >> Leica rangefinder will.
