Chuck Jones
Subscriber Member
I'm not sure what I feel would be called resentment. More disappointment. A professional photographer's income is generated from the tools he or she uses. The work produced and delivered to clients based upon the capability of those tools. As I'm sure most of the other pro's posting here can attest to, we have to choose our gear based upon the needs of our business as much as the esthetic qualities of the images they help us produce. You don't stay in photography as a business based upon how nice your photographs look if they don't sell.
Leica glass has never been cheap. It costs far more to hand build lenses of the R quality than it costs Canon, Nikon, or Sony to mass produce similar focal lengths. The fact that your buying and using R lenses now clearly shows what a difference that made in the end results. There is no question that when Leica made each of these R lenses, they were designed and built to be the best quality possible - not necessarily the least expensive to produce.
Those of us investing in the R glass, at the time, got past the difficult decision to invest the amount of money required to initially acquire our working lens selections based in great part on the fact that we would use those lenses for a considerable number of years. Leica encouraged us by the promise of future body upgrades to their line. First with film, the R8 then R9, and later with the DMR when it became clear the days of using film professionally were clearly numbered.
I made the trip myself to Photokina to discuss the R10 with Leica's corporate management, not willing to trust only the marketing hype. At the time, I had to make the tough business decision of whether to continue supporting Leica with my business by waiting until they could deliver R10 bodies, or should I instead sell off my R glass and invest into a new multi-shot MF back my business also could have used. Based upon those discussions, I chose to wait. My mistake, a bad choice, and a costly business decision.
It's clear our circumstances are very different. Your making your own decisions based upon very different needs, and as you said, with a substantially smaller cash investment made with your eyes wide open and no future expectations. Very wise Jono.
I hope that everyone else considering buying used Leica R glass comes to their decision based upon the same facts and considerations you are. Even at the "bottom of the market" as you judge it, your still paying a premium price today knowing your getting great lenses, some of the very best 35mm glass made at the time, but also knowing that in all likelihood there will never be another body from the Leica factory that can use them.
Let's not forget that today, there are also quite a number of excellent lenses produced that are optimized for use on digital platforms, from companies with a clear future path which I don't personally believe Leica has, the money to execute those plans, even lower and therefore more competitive prices, better current service history, and a new product warranty when inevitably something does go wrong or simply needs an adjustment. Service rates on that old Leica glass have gone up. As the title of this thread says, Focus Peaking can be expensive... not only in the initial investment.
