On Sep 13, 2013, at 7:02 AM, Aahz Maruch <[email protected]> wrote: > Sure, from the standpoint of, again, existing Leica owners.
There are a lot of them. And many new Leica lens owners who came in because the GXR made it accessible financially. Many of whom might eventually buy a Leica M body. > But Boris is > pushing the GXR for people who are not already in that group, that's > where the market is limited, and I don't understand why he's pushing it > so hard, especially in a thread where the OP (Marnie) specifically said > that a viewfinder is important to her. That's what doesn't make sense. I don't recall seeing Boris "pushing" the GXR. He's just enthusiastic about it. Just as I don't "push" it. ;-) > And also in the larger market sense, if the GXR is going to challenge > people's ideas of how a camera works, it probably needs modules for > existing AF lenses, Ricoh otherwise is in the awkward position of > needing to justify expensive lens/sensor combos (they must also be > expensive to develop). Essentially, the GXR fits in the buyer mindset > for ILCs, but Ricoh can't by itself develop a full range for it. > > This is not an argument that Ricoh should have abandoned the GXR, > obviously it fits a need for many people. Actually, I bet if Ricoh wanted to they could populate an entire lens line for the GXR—they have the resources as a corporation. What's difficult to determine is what they have in way of the will to do it. Their camera and lens efforts in recent years have been pretty narrowly focused—the GXR was the most expansive new project from Ricoh in a long while. Developing any digital camera is a pretty big deal, they're high-end technological devices. Building a camera unit to fit an existing body spec should actually cut costs compared to having to develop a whole camera. The P10, S10, A12 28, A12 50, and A16 camera units are less expensive each one than buying another fixed-lens camera of comparable quality, in their respective niches. What they're more expensive than is buying just a comparable lens to fit to some arbitrary body. It remains interesting to me to see where Ricoh goes with their camera products ... both Ricoh and Pentax branded. It would be nice to see a GXR follow-on. But the more valuable part of my Ricoh GXR kit is surely the lenses I bought to work with the A12 Camera Mount, which are easy to repurpose for use on other RF bodies and TTL-mirrorless cameras. They cost me more than the GXR, EVF, two extra batteries, and three camera/mount units combined, and they hold their value. G -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
