As both a Leica enthusiast since the early 1970’s, and a corporate turnaround specialist, I’ve followed Leica’s various responses to the evolution of the photography market with keen interest.

It was easier to understand Leica’s strategy while it was a public company since its financial statements and notes to shareholders were readily accessible. Since being rescued by Dr. Kaufmann a few years ago, that’s no longer the case. Private companies in trouble do have some distinct advantages, one of them being the ability to exercise the wonderful entrepreneurial privilege of “before you can make it, you have to fake it”, i.e. they can spin all kinds of great stories to inspire customer confidence while they’re getting their act together. And I’m not being facetious here; customer confidence is a crucial driver of success in any rescue (just look at what is happening to the US auto industry if you have any doubts).

Nevertheless, we can still understand even a private company’s strategy from the outside, by looking at what it is doing in the market. One thing that’s clear is that Leica has decided to reposition itself as a luxury-goods player à la Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Zegna, among many others. You will have surely noticed the rather astronomical rise in prices for its cameras and lenses. The repatriation of its manufacturing of the X1 POS to Germany is another nail in the coffin of the understandable, if misguided, partnership with Panasonic that was an effort to play both sides of the market: The traditional Leica enthusiast, and the new digital POS user. The release of painful (to traditional Leicaphiles) cameras like the white M8.2 and the new Hermes M7 are further nods to the purposeful collectors and fashionistas.

My original reaction to all this was one of anger and disappointment as I saw Leica “speaking” less and less to traditional users like myself. But stepping away from my personal interests and looking at it professionally, it’s fairly clear that this is the right strategy for Leica – simply because there are few other options left. And ultimately, it is also the right strategy for users like me, who must swallow the bitter pill that in a market of disposable cameras, we will all have to pay a lot more for brilliant design and superb craftsmanship.

But there’s a potential fly in this therapeutic ointment. There are few (I can only think of one) luxury goods makers in the high technology market. In many ways Leica brings Danish audio and video maker Bang & Olufsen to mind. With superb design and aesthetics, wonderful sound and images, and an astronomical price, B&O is de-rigeur in the homes of the rich and famous. But a sound system isn’t a digital camera, and a Leica in particular demands photographic skill as well as the money and aesthetic sensibilities to own one. The “S” function on the M8.2 was an effort to make the camera more accessible to a less experienced segment of the market. It failed and is nowhere to be seen on the M9 (rightfully so).

The M9 will be an unqualified success because it is the Holy Grail for Leicaphiles. I bought an M8.2 new in May 2009 and already have an M9 on order. But would I buy an M9.2 or an M10 within the next 5 years? I don’t think so. The S2 is still not available and Leica’s competitors aren’t standing still. How long before Canon and Nikon have technologically competitive products for the professional, at a fraction of the price? Short product life-cycles are now the norm for technology companies. Products are generally built so well that they can last forever; the key is to keep innovating and make them technologically obsolete while bringing new stuff to market fast, in order to keep revenues flowing.

The nagging question is: Is there a sufficient upscale market for the M, the S, possibly a new R, and point-and-shoots like the X1 to sustain a company like Leica in the medium term? And will buyers shelling out thousands of dollars be interested in continuing to fork out for products that become obsolete every couple of years? An authentic Louis Vuitton bag will last a lifetime with some care. A B&O will provide pleasure for 10-20 years (I finally sold mine a couple years ago after 20 years of use). A Rolex will last several lifetimes, passed down from one generation to the next. A digital Leica? Two to four years…maybe.

One possible answer is that Leica must build upgradeability into its cameras. I would have been happy to pay a couple of thousand dollars to upgrade my M8.2 to an M9. But for the time being, I appreciate the efforts and moneys that are being invested to save a beloved company that represents values so dear to the many serious photographers that grew up with its iconic brand.

Today I attended the awards ceremony for the Carl Zeiss-George Zimbel Friendship Photo Contest co-sponsored with Camtec Photo in Montreal.  I am pleased to report that Mr. Italo took 3rd Prize with one of his amazing “people” shots. Mr. Italo is perhaps one of the best photographers of people in candid situations, a talent that comes from his natural ease in gaining his subject’s confidence without seeming to intrude. No massive telephoto here. In classical Leica fashion he gets in close, establishes rapport and trust, and is invited to shoot. Amazing! Here is the announcement and a look at all the winning entries.

First Prize was a large print, hand done by George Zimbel himself, of his famous image of the Kennedys in 1960 (see below).

Mr. Italo and I were having an email chat about the launch of Leica’s Hermes M7. For those unfamiliar with this camera, it is one of an ongoing series of commemorative and special edition Leicas intended to fleece the collector or status seeker with tons more money than good sense. While these cameras are a travesty, Leicaphiles have tended to turn an embarrassed blind-eye on them, acknowledging that a company like Leica can only keep doing all the good stuff it does by an occasional venture into high-end prostitution. But the M7 Hermes is a weird camera from the get-go because  it’s a film camera. Yes, you heard me right, a film camera! Clearly intended as an instant collectible rather than a “user” since, let’s face it, film is dead (kept on life-support by a handful of “crsftsmen” and dinosaurs). The camera will retail for $14,400 USD including one lens (oh, yeah, they’re also throwing in the light hood for that price).

It was however, Mr. Italo’s last response that piqued my fightsomeness. He wrote:

“It’s all about vintage fashion not technology. Similar to some of your 10 essential items from today’s blog [italics mine]“.

Vintage fashion? While that’s a pretty cool term, I really can’t agree that the items in my list qualify (well, maybe a couple). Vintage fashion would be a gold slide-rule. Perhaps a buggy-whip made from silk. You get my drift…vintage fashion is something technologically obsolete that one uses and clings to because it connects them with a real or imagined past. Maybe the Parker ‘51. I’ll grant you that one (although it still writes better than most modern pens…it does tend to leak in an airplane).

But every item in my list represents products that while certainly traditional in some elements of their design or construction, are completely capable of competing with their more modern counterparts on a variety of dimensions including, design, style, build-quality, durability, and even, yes, performance. The Aeron chair for example, remains the benchmark of modern office comfort. The Leica M9 is the world’s smallest full-frame digital camera. Look under any corporate boardroom table and I’ll bet you that 80% of the shoes will be “old men shoes”.  And Rolex watches….what can I say…..vintage style, Bah!

And oh, yes, I agree with Mr. Italo…the Leica Hermes M7 is a great example of “vintage fashion”.

I’ve been a serious photographer since the age of 16, which would mean that I could celebrate my 40 years in this amazing pursuit, were I so inclined. For most of those 40 years, I’ve owned a Leica (or two, or three, at various times!). The actual inventory is quite impressive when I come to think about it:

• IIIf (which I sold in 1974 so that I could take a new girlfriend on a date…a true waste that I regret to this day!)
• IIf converted to a IIIIf
• M4P (stolen from my home with all its lenses during a break-in)
• M2
• M3 (bought “new” in 2005 from the estate of a collector who had bought it and died before he could actually use it. I was so afraid to scratch it that I couldn’t bring myself to use it! Finally sold it in 2007 for a very tidy profit)
• M6
• M6TTL
• MP
• M8.2 (a painful story. Bought new three months before the release of the M9 earlier this Summer)
• 10-12 lenses of varying focal lengths

This inventory does not include a couple of digital point-and-shoot models, which really don’t count because they were made by Panasonic leveraging the Leica name in a sad example of brand-marketing.

I was brought to these musings by the arrival a couple of days ago of Mr. Dario, our intrepid New York City correspondent and veteran maestro of the camera. Mr. Dario came bearing gifts…two boxes of astonishing cigars….and the latest Leica family-tree poster (including the M8) showing the evolutionary chronology of the brand since the first camera ever rolled off the craftsman’s bench. The poster is an incredible find, a result of Mr. Dario’s recent pilgrimage to the New York Camera Show.

I’m off to Costco this morning to get it laminated before putting it up on my office wall.

A few images from the seaside.

You’d think that photographing B&W in a lush swamp is pretty tough because of the tonal blending, but here’s proof positive from my wife’s cousin Dick that it can be done quite successfully. Evocative of a somewhat eerie feeling IMHO. Almost expect Hanzel and Gretel to be seen walking on the boardwalk. Taken at Big Cypress Bend in the Everglades.

The biggest challenge in picturesque places is to avoid being picturesque:

“Leave the gun..take the canolli” is one of the most famous quips from The Godfather.  I thought I’d take my inspiration from it in describing my approach to photography: “Leave the color….take the shadows” .

It is no secret that I’ve been struggling with my photography ever since I made the switch to digital a year ago. I haven’t been happy with the results, nor with my own lack of enthusiasm. Somehow, the passion was gone, or at least suppressed.

Yesterday, we visited the Audubon sanctuary at Corkscrew about an hour outside of Naples, Florida. This is an amazing swamp, through which they have built a 2.5 mile long nature boardwalk that takes you through some of the lushest landscape imaginable. I took a few shots but there was such a choking greenery that all I could see was a mass of flora…very uninteresting for a “street” photographer.

About halfway through, I got bored of dawdling through at a snail’s pace with our friends, and picked up the pace, winding up at the main pavilion balcony about an hour ahead of their return. As I sat there schwitzing from my brisk walk, I thought about how lousy my work had become and why. I realized that in moving to the new digital medium, I had been trying to work up to its potential rather than within my own limitations.

Digital offers so much that it is easy to get wrapped up in the technology and the opportunity rather than stay true to what you can and like to do. For example, digital offers you the ability to shoot in B&W or color, virtually from one shot to the next. And, in order to get the best possible rendition, one is encouraged to shoot in RAW format (color) and then simply convert to B&W later in Photoshop, if desired. Now, many photographers do this very well and have little difficulty in moving seamlessly from one to the other. But not me. Growing up with film, I learned to see in one or the other, and it takes me ages to make the transition, if at all. I remember someone commenting that my color images looked like “black and white…in color”….and he was right. I’ve never mastered color.  I like it for tourist and travel shots, but not for what I consider more personally interesting work.

So as I sat there on the balcony, I decided to break with conventional wisdom and just go back to what I always liked to do. I shifted the M8.2 into B&W mode even though it now only produces lower quality jpegs, and started to just look at what was around me. And I was back! In an hour, my heart was pumping with excitement at all the new discoveries right in front of my face. Here are a few:

Just putting out the recycling this afternoon, my eye caught this interesting pattern on the patio. Fall is here and my nine 100 year-old maples are getting ready for the “big dump”. When our kids were little we organized a leaf party with our friends; they all brought their little ones and we managed to pick up 70 garden-size bags of leaves!