Any samples with this exorbitantly dear Leica camera will be appreciated!

Hi friends:

I happened to read http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index.php?lang=3 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18050363 just a while ago. Also watched the relevant video at youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSFy6yebMJ4

I am just curious why this tiny little camera is so exorbitantly expensive? Is that because of features, technical merits, rarity or antiquity value?

I would love to see the outcomes of this peculiar camera if any of the forum members have any. Appreciate it if you can post!

Thanks!

/z

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its because some dumba$$ with too much loose money wants to put it in their safe.

think of how many starving people around the world could be fed with the money spent in this auction. To me, its sickening. But they have the money, I don't. I can't tell them what to do with it, just like they can't tell me how to spend my dough...

-Dan

Oh... c'mon, Dan. Surely the buyer intends to donate that camera to a homeless photographer.

well 90% of the great photojournalist pictures you've ever seen were taken with a Leica. They are pretty awesome little cameras, and somehow a bit more artful in appearance and always have been. They seem to inspire a certain method of working, similar to LF (I mean, both types of cameras force the photographer to operate in different ways). So, there is and always has been some cache attached to them.

Mike Johnsons's article "A Leica Year" is pretty interesting.

Paul - who's selling all his Leica stuff to buy LF stuff - McEvoy

A large format Leica is kind of a contradiction, ain't it?

I'd call em a useful LF accessory. You see, the tripod I use for my 8x10 has a little hook
below the platform. You hang a mesh bag from this and load it up with either rocks or Leicas to help stabilize the tripod in the wind.

I can't speak to the price—which seems silly to me—but this is a significant camera. It is a prototype, 1 of only 12 (about 2 dozen were made) thought to still exist which Oscar Barnack convinced the Leitz Company to produce in 1923. The design was shortly afterwards introduced as the Leica I, and the rest is history.

Drew,

Do you think M9s will work OK, or should I wait for Photokina when the M10 might be announced and buy a bag of those? My tripod needs more weight......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

I'd call em a useful LF accessory. You see, the tripod I use for my 8x10 has a little hook
below the platform. You hang a mesh bag from this and load it up with either rocks or Leicas to help stabilize the tripod in the wind.

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What? No, wait! I thought he asked who had to use the bathroom!

My wife is going to kill me...

;) Mike

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Perhaps they aren't the most practical cameras but for $500 you can get a nice 1930s vintage Leica screw mount that is only a few model generations away from this prototype. Not only can you appreciate how hard some of the early 35mm photographers had to work to get a successful shot (with ISO 18 film for example) but the images have a different sort of quality. Seems as least as valid as all the posers shooting plastic Holgas . Operating - even fondling - the old Leicas is quite pleasurable if you know what you're doing.