Another few stokes of this fire.....
Leica has always reveled in being an "uber" brand of sorts. O.K., that is a given. However, as Guy and others have mentioned, Leica went out of its way at the initial announcement of the S2 to declare that they were planning on moving into a market segment with a superior product at competitive prices. At the time, they were still sounding like they wanted to create a tweener market niche. So far, fine. Well, now they are trying to deliver into that tweener market niche, but at prices that exceed the MF niche. Hmmm, something seems amiss already, but most of us that have used Leica glass were prepared for some premium, just not what Leica is asking now. It remains to be proven that this new camera is able to produce everything it touts, all the time, every time without issues. But wait, we have yet to see anything beyond a few Webified images in a market pandering ad. We have heard a few folks that have handled it be impressed, etc., but none in the hands of testers, nobody really shaking it down, no images to display the boasted superiority of things, etc.
As others have stated more elegantly than me, the price of the body is almost insulting from several perspectives. First, it is single body design, just like the 35mm DSLRs it is really competing with. None of those competitors have every looked at their bodies as anything more than nearly obsolete in a few years. Leica is on that same track, regardless of what they say. It may have a 56% bigger sensor than a 35mm DSLR, but that hardly supports a 300% price differential in my mind, nor in the minds and pocketbooks of a lot of folks that seriously shoot for a living. It will need to be replaced at some point, and probably sooner than later, so the cost is hard to swallow.
Secondly, and the point I keep making that really galls me is the lens pricing. Leica had gone out of their way to brag about how their new design and manufacture would allow them to offer their great glass at more competitive prices than we see in MF. So far, that is not true, based on their price schedule and nothing more than a few MTF charts....again, where are the real images! Now, if you do not want to doubt the Leica lens capability, that is fine, but the premise of offering stellar optics at more competitive prices is pure B.S. Leica did prove that it could redesign lens construction with their M Elmarit line, and keep prices in check. So what happened with these S lenses? (Not looking to debate size of glass and stuff, as that is not as significant as some think. AF and internal shutters are bigger points, but again, that was the big claim Leica boasted early on about how they have made that entire process more streamlined and therefore less costly.) Guess they just figure all of that cost savings does not have to be passed on to consumers and they could ask uber-premiums for the new glass that everybody has to have to use this new system. If that is not last century arrogance in the new economy, I really am at a loss for a better example.
Start doing the math.....instead of calculating how much you need to save and spend, calculate the number of missteps in marketing....calculate the amount of overpricing against anything else in the market....calculate the number of promises broken or more than subtly changed....calculate the lack of evidence that this new tweener system will produce.
Sorry, but even if I were to keep drinking the Kool-Aid from Solms over the supposed greatness and capability of this unproven system, the pricing scheme is still way out of whack to the economy and to the veiled promises made from the start and throughout the entire ramp up. At this point, it is not even as much an issue of not being able to afford this system, as not wanting to afford this system after all the wait. Leica blew way past the mark on pricing this thing, regardless of whether you live in Europe, Asia, the US or anywhere else. That used to be just my "opinion", but now it is looking more and more like both a shared "opinion" with many others who would have been excellent candidates for it, as was as some "fact" about pricing out of reality compared to any of the competitor markets, 35mm DSLR or MF. I wish Leica well, I guess, but my interest in this has fallen deeper than that initial gut-kick feeling when I saw the prices.
LJ