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Didn t David tell us that the S2 was good down to 10M ? After that you are on your own.
Nice photographs . You probably know this but sailboat photographs especially of woodies are highly sought by interior decorators .
Very nice shots . I can see you have been keeping busy in the off season . cool:
Not sure how they do this but if you down load the NYT iPad application and view the Olympics shots of the day …you will see the potential of the retina display . The photographs display more detail and have more depth than anything I ve ever seen on screen.
Day dreaming of course .
It appears the drop in S2 used product continues below what I speculated .
Al
Take all your assumptions ….doesn t look promising for the S3 . Retained value is an important factor in how many people will trade up to the S3. Leica controls all the levers in pricing,availability, special programs .
Marc s point is relevant ..if you have to take a unusual high loss on you S2 ….many will just not upgrade and equally important will not want to buy in the future .
roger
Marc
You are right…..let me start again(I screwed up my example). Lets assume that a new S3 base model is $25K . (there is plenty of margin in that number for Leica ). What would be a fair price for a used S2 sold by a dealer with a one year factory warranty . Say $14 to 15K ….so the dealer could pay you $11.5 to 12K or 50% of what was originally paid for the base model. . (there is no model that seems to work with a 1/3 -2/3 split because the used S2 can only sell for FMV) .
Since Leica sells the warranty at $1700 ( I think this is right ) . The dealer would have $13K invested the trade in . They would make a profit on both the resale of the S2 as well as the sale of the new S3 .
But use any numbers you want …the question is “how would a (subsidized ) trade in program hurt the fair market value of a used S2? “ .
As I stated before ..I don t think any of this will happen . Rather I expect that we (as S2 owners ) will get the short end of the stick . The S3 will be a transition to CMOS and will have some improvements …but may appear evolutionary . The S2 s will continue to drop in value and the difference (what we pay maybe hard to justify ). Maybe thats just the nature of the MF world.
Let me say up front Leica will not be offering a trade in program. Back when Leica provided better margins to the dealers ..it was the dealers that often supported the used prices. I had a dealer that called me as he was filling out his order to Leica …always got a very good trade in value . This dealer inturn always had great used gear available .
I don t understand how providing a good trade in value hurts used prices. The dealers need stuff to sell and S2 s at half of new with a factory warranty for a year sounds pretty good. Must be missing something ?
Unfortunately Leica s product decisions are being driven as much by “what can we deliver” than by customer requirements /desires . In the short term (before the new plant) Leica is capacity constrained especially on lenses . This will not change until at least this time next year .
We debated at some length whether Leica would introduce an S3 that would create demand for new S bodies . Favoring this strategy would be the boost to demand for the S line ,the ability to transition to CMOS (supplier driven) and the low investment required . The other point of view stressed the constraint on R&D resources . The “tell” could be keeping the same 37.5MP sensor size . This could mean a lot of things but points to an evolutionary product rather than a major model change . CMOS of course complicates the situation . Announcing a new camera with evolutionary specifications without the ability to deliver it …..would do little positive for Leica .
Transitioning to CMOS hardly seems a benefit to me or most MF shooting requirements . I am sure the fashion shooters want a larger and fast buffer ,maybe better AF etc and the landscape shooters want Live View . But this will not compel many existing S2 owners to trade up at what is certain to be a $10K + upgrade.
Personally I was hoping for an S2-70 so that the S2 would have two models a 40Mp and 70Mp + alternative .
Hope I am surprised and Leica learns from the Mono. A clever niche camera that maybe eclipsed by the M10 before any of us actually receive a camera .
Highly recommend this story ..it is both heart felt and well told . I met david burnett in Florida and he is a special person. I was an Army Intelligence group at the time of this photo and was due to be called up . We were next but the war ended before we were needed . I can remember the photograph from its first publishing and it was heavily utilized by the anti war movement .
It hard to generalize without some assumptions . If the scene has a fairly smooth distribution of tones ..without “hot” highlights or deep shadows ….then I favor getting it properly exposed in the camera . At higher ISO s you lose DR and may not be able to pull back even -1EV without creating too much noise in the shadows . The normal recommendation is don t underexpose at higher ISO s because you have less latitude to pull back the shadows.
This is a generalization ad I am sure there are examples that favor underexposure and pull back in post.
Last summer I took the S2 to the US Open Tennis. It is a wonderful event and place to fully understand your equipments strengths and weaknesses . I shot about 50% action and 50% the event/crowd(like street).
I found it frustrating to use AF in a tradition manner and went to a combination of manual and AF . I would pick the probably location of the key point of action and prefocus using the AF from the rear button . Then I would manually adjust .
I also shoot Polo in the winter and I know the shot of the horses coming directly at you . No chance the S2 AF can follow focus …..this a Pro DSLR challenge.
The S2 has a great viewfinder and I find it easy and quick to manually focus . The AF is a quick way to establish a specific location. Takes a while to learn to adjust for the geometry as if you focus on the ground the subject at eye level will be closer .
Great link and evaluation …thanks for sharing .
David
Thanks this makes perfect sense .
Mark ..still laughing about photographing fire flies
Pete
What a great photograph ! Could you tell us how you sized it for the web and what approach you used for downsizing and output sharpening .
The stitched file with 6 files must be huge . Yet you preserved the sharpness .
Must be amazing as a print .
