I said the public image of Leica Company is connected to the Leica M3 in Japan, but why do we feel so? The answer may lie in Leica Company's suffering history. They have experienced financial crises in at least two big waves: the first wave was the spread of SLR cameras and the second wave was the impetuous digitalization. And, after the second wave was gone, they headed to a thriving company. Their recent edgy but compelling cameras are, in a sense, quite unlike former Leica products. In this article, we will examine Leica models that symbolize modern Leica Company and pin down the reason that changed them drastically.
It wasn't until SLR cameras came to the fore when Leica Company, one of the top rangefinder providers at that time, joined hands with a foreign company, Minolta. This was a big news in Germany, the US, and Japan. My personal impression of famous German companies is the principle itself. Everything they do is directly linked to their principle and they don't seem to care about short-term and sporadic trends at all. For example, Porsche continues to employ the rear-engine (which is also air-cooled) / rear-wheel-drive layout, which is never the best sports car packaging. Another example is BMW who is still manufacturing the straight-six engines. I didn't see the joint venture between Leica Company and Minolta in real time, but I think Leica Company was standing by and watching the appearance of SLR cameras feeling confident of their rangefinder cameras. Or, they might have not even felt the confidence because it was their principle itself that they took for granted. I guess they were forced to join with Minolta rather than they chose to because it was too late to compete against other companies all by themselves when they realized the significance of SLR cameras. But, unfortunately, the joint venture didn't seem to have brought a dramatic success. As for the reasons they couldn't ride well on a second wave, it could also be their lack of confidence in the digital output: they were not satisfied with the quality generated by what they had at that time. At any rate, it must be true they experienced the crisis again in this second wave. And, to make matters even worse, the major shareholder Hermes withdrew from the business. However, since Dr. Kaufmann became the top shareholder, Leica Company has been growing until today.
Now, let's explore present Leica Company by examining their modern models. There was an event that made me believe they would shift to digital cameras. It was "Leica a la carte," which has still been continued since 2004. With this system, users can customize their Leica M7/MP. At that time, I used to feel that the M7/MP would be their last film cameras. In addition, I felt the service like that was quite new and line-crossing for the previous Leica Company. Of course, they had released many kinds of customized limited models, but they were not designed by the customers but by the company. So, this new service made me believe that there must have been a big change in their management. On this topic, I had a chance to speak with Dr. Kaufmann in 2009, but I'll talk about this later.
While their main products were still film M and R cameras, they finally released the LEICA Digital-Module-R (DMR) in 2005. It was a digital back for the Leica R8/R9 film cameras. By replacing the film back with the DMR, users could take digital photography with the same camera. And, they could always shoot films by attaching the film back again. At that time, in the 135 format, films still had advantages over digital in terms of resolution, tonality, and dynamic range (there were better digital equipment in the medium format). As a R-series user, I took courage to purchase the DMR because I could still use my R lenses and I was able to switch between films and digital. I remember like it was yesterday when I was knocked out by the sharp output. The DMR module didn't have the LPF (lowpass filter) and generated very sharp images that only medium format digital equipment could produce. Actually, Kodak and CONTAX had done the same thing before Leica Company did, but their models required many steps to shoot because they had some issues in total packaging. In this sense, the DMR was well tuned with the body and it made a reliable system although it had extreme corner color shifting and the battery life was short (and it required the "wild" manner to replace the backpack, too). The picture quality was way ahead of time and it peers recent mid-range cameras. Reputation of the R lenses was so great that some users said they could even excel the M lenses. They also matched mostly well with the DMR and helped excellent image production. I used to feel Leica Company's philosophy in this ability to switch between films and digital in one body. Now, while other companies simply provided different bodies for films and digital, why didn't Leica Company make a camera body exclusively for digital? I couldn't check on this in the interview, so I'm only guessing. If they had to start a new system, it must be an AF system. But, this requires a total reformation of cameras and lenses, and it was too risky for them. Therefore, they made the DMR to be plugged into their existing system. If they wanted to catch the wave of digitalization, they could have used different approaches. For example, they could have joined hands with a major company and started more "major" system, although I have no idea if such approach was possible. But anyway, they released the DMR and as a result, this model became the turning point for Leica Company. And, this DMR made a strong impression on my mind.
