Leica knew

--Talk is that Zeiss is in the planning stages of marketing a new digital rangefinder body for 2007. I bet they went to school on this fiasco!

Tom
Deecy//



http://www.flickr.com/photos/provocative/

http://tomdeecy.blogspot.com/

I have not read his Sean Reid's review or statements, but if he did charge for information that he knew was faulty then I hope he offers to refund the subscription price for any who request it.

While we don't hold these reviewers to the same standards that we generally expect from the mass media, how would you feel if a reporter was asked to hold back important information just to make a company or government policy look good?

A most extreme scenario would be if a reporter in 2002 somehow discovered information that the CIA knew there were in fact no WMDs in Iraq. Yet that reporter was persuaded by the administration not to reveal it as it would adversly affect our national policy vis a vis invading Iraq.

On a certain level we assume we have a right to know.

If a company is selling a product and reviewers are aware of problems, we have a right to know. Products are supposed to live up to their claims.

I am not a lawyer and I don't know the consumer protection laws in Europe, but considering the statements from Leica and Phil along with the admission from Michael Reichman that he altered his review at Leica's request, I would bet that Leica may have a serious legal problem should Leica refuse to offer refunds and anyone sues them.

--
Alan Goldstein

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com

Hi There.

JAM said:

Yes, Jono, you are quite right. The exact quote is

"Customer feedback to us following the start of shipment of the
LEICA M8 points to a performance under certain conditions that does
not meet the expectations in the Leica brand."

I chose to use the word "only".

But if you choose to believe that this cleverly crafted, and well
spun statement really means that Leica and/or the reviewers were
not aware of the problem(s) before the camera was released, thats
fine with me.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean that they didn't know before - simply that they didn't SAY that they didn't know before - of course they knew.

but I'm not so sure that they did the wrong thing either - they've fessed up quickly, and for me (at least) I'd rather have a flawed M8 while they sort it than no M8 at all until they sort it.

It was just the 'only' word I took issue with, as it implied that they were lying . . . . . rather than being economical!

kind regards

--
Jono Slack
http://www.slack.co.uk

Hear Hear Melvin. It's time people realised that ALL (without exception) cameras fail in accurately representing reality and that camera makers have to make compromises in order to let photographers do some things rather than others.

In the case of the M8, we get a sensor arrangement that allows the lenses to do their edge to edge best - and the cost of this is aberations of one sort or another. I have a 5D with L lenses and they are soft in the corners and they vignette BUT the system offers low aberations and low noise. If a manufacturer could invent a camera that was small, light, high res and low noise with perfect lenses they would. We should not feel cheated because they can't. In my view Canon is far more culpable for de-deaturing the G7 by not including RAW mode because that was something they could have done but cynically decided not to.

No one is happy with Leica right now but my M8 is still on order because it will do certain things extremely well - if I use it correctly.

As for Michael R @ LL: he and the other internet photo gurus maintain a delicate balance of relationship with camera manufacturers and site readers. If he slags a camera off, maybe he doesn't get a pre-release review version of the next one. His choice of how to assess the balance in this case might or might not have been wrong, but I for one will continue to read and value his reviews.

Tim

melvin sokolsky said:

The M8 is not bad for a first out of the gate; and I'm sure Lieca
will solve IR and banding problem. I have a question for the
Leica film users. Does the M7 deliver negs that you print
straight in the enlarger... or do you burn and dodge. If you
don't burn and dodge how do you create a personal palette?
Vision will never come from a camera.

Photography is like climbing a dangerous mountain; always
surprises. Putting great images on a sheet of paper is against
nature... a great struggle; but when it happens it feels good.

I say we don't lynch Reichmann.

Best
--
jrisc

Click to expand...

--
http://web.mac.com/tashley1/iWeb/timashley.com/Home.html

Sounds like he is trying to throw Leica under the bus to cover his own butt.

He should have either

1. Hold off the review until Leica has a solution and he retested the camera.

or

2. Publish everything he found and Leica's poistion in this matter.

This is not "hindsight 20/20" as he put it. This is basic principle as an inpartial reviewer. I really don't know how can we trust MR as a reviewer from this point on.

tashley said:

...In my view Canon is far more culpable for de-deaturing the G7 by
not including RAW mode because that was something they could have
done but cynically decided not to.

Click to expand...

Yes as you pointed out cameras aren't perfect and no camera accurately records the world. They are instruments used for interpretation. I don't even see how anyone could come up with a standard of accuracy, yet we as photographers have our standards and for some, it seems the M8 falls short.

The statement about the G7 is totally off base. What exactly are they culpable of? It isn't as if the camera promises to have raw files and them when you get it the raw doesn't work. Disappointing maybe, but features may come and go. I have no idea what Canon's reasons were. I guess if enough people complain and there is enough money to be made, Canon will add raw to more cameras.

Alan Goldstein

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com

We have to cut M.R. @ LL a bit of slack. The fact that he revealed Leica’s attempts to silence its reviewers in his statement on Luminous Landscape goes a long way in my book. I do think he made errors of judgement concerning disclosure—but without his courageous admission we would all be still in the dark about this. I use the word courageous because he must have known before hand what people would be saying after they found out.

I haven’t read anything from Sean Reid concerning all of this. I would like to hear what he has to say.

C.

--
http://www.mealey.com
http://myfourthirds.com/folder.php?id=1122
http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=334788

Alan, all I'm saying is that Leica wanted to make best use of their glass and in the process they had to engineer against other things and maybe didn't get the balance acceptably right. But the upside of all the magenta/banding/blob stuff is great resolution and in many ways great colour rendition.

What Canon appears to have done by contrast it not to push the envelope by giving us something new and better with a downside. They seem to have removed RAW (heck I even had it on my G3) because they knew that if they included it, people might buy a G7 instead of a DSLR. I thinks that's more cynical, and a bigger triumph of marketing over commitment to excellent product that tries to meet consumer needs.

AlanG said:

Yes as you pointed out cameras aren't perfect and no camera
accurately records the world. They are instruments used for
interpretation. I don't even see how anyone could come up with a
standard of accuracy, yet we as photographers have our standards
and for some, it seems the M8 falls short.

The statement about the G7 is totally off base. What exactly are
they culpable of? It isn't as if the camera promises to have raw
files and them when you get it the raw doesn't work. Disappointing
maybe, but features may come and go. I have no idea what Canon's
reasons were. I guess if enough people complain and there is
enough money to be made, Canon will add raw to more cameras.

Alan Goldstein

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com

Click to expand...

--
http://web.mac.com/tashley1/iWeb/timashley.com/Home.html

Canon designs its products based on R&D and market research. Canon thinks RAW is not important for a camera like G7. Manufacturer also frequently use feature set to differentiate their product lines. This is nothing new. If they did poor market research, they will pay the price with poorly selling products. Let's see how G7 will do in the market place and what G8 will have.

tashley said:

AlanG said:

Yes as you pointed out cameras aren't perfect and no camera
accurately records the world. They are instruments used for
interpretation. I don't even see how anyone could come up with a
standard of accuracy, yet we as photographers have our standards
and for some, it seems the M8 falls short.

The statement about the G7 is totally off base. What exactly are
they culpable of? It isn't as if the camera promises to have raw
files and them when you get it the raw doesn't work. Disappointing
maybe, but features may come and go. I have no idea what Canon's
reasons were. I guess if enough people complain and there is
enough money to be made, Canon will add raw to more cameras.

Alan Goldstein

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com

Click to expand...

--
http://web.mac.com/tashley1/iWeb/timashley.com/Home.html

Click to expand...

It's fine that you would have been happy to have the camera on false pretenses. A lot of people would have prefered to be warned in advance that they were spending $4800 on a defective camera.

We all knew it even before LL owned up. As soon as the news came out thanks to "real reviewers" (aka customers) we all thought Leica, LL, SR etc MUST have known.

The problem is that these people, just like motor journalists (an area which is plagued by this problem), need to play nice. If they don-t, they don't get the cameras early enough. And if that does not happen their sites became fairly useless.

But. There is a limit. And LL, SR etc went beyond this limit. If product x from the company you are in bed with (and they are in bed with all of them) has issues you either:
a)hold on to the review (what Phil did)

b)publish and say there are unresolved issues (which is no real option cause as soon as you do that you get swamped by readers who wanna know what the hell these issues are)

The practice of letting the manufacturer read your story before you publish is common. Still absolutely disgusting though.

I would not be so irated about the fact that one is a pay-site. After all magazines do this too, and you pay for them. The thing is more emotional because its on the web, its run by one guy who keeps saying he tells it like it is, so the public is drawn in.

I think in the end Phil acted in a (fairly) correct journalistic way (by today's standards). A real journalist would of course publish what he knows when he knows it. There are some of those still around.

I work for a travel magazine in europe. We do not accept freebies. We only put hotels/restaurants etc we have visited in person and WE like. This practice is so rare now that all over the world the owners of these establishments cannot believe it. I have actually been refused entry in some places cause even though i have told them there is no catch, no one from advertising dept will follow up and so on, the managers did not believe it could be true. This is how corrupt the travel journalism industry is. Honest pros not allowed to work honestly cause the companies cannot believe a honest pro exists! That tells you something or what!

Back to the issue at hand. The MAJOR culprit here is Leica, not the more or less professional/ethical reviewers. Leica knew and went ahead, possibly under pressure from management. Still, considering that we had waited patiently for the M8 for yers, more waiting would have been acceptable (if the reasons were communicated efficiently). The Co. is lucky to have an absurdly loyal customer-base (so much sometimes it feels like a religious sect), it is unbelievable they would chose to treat them like this. Add to this the lack of candid comunication after the xxxx it the fan...and you've got what we have got now.

I've been saying Reichmann is incompetent for months. I've pointed out serious flaws in his supposed "tests", and have gotten roundly criticized for doing so.

Well, now you all know that he's both incompetent, and dishonest. Welcome to the club. ;-)

I was (am) no where near publishing a review, I haven't even really started it, I was simply shooting normal 'everyday' test shots when I first observed the phenomenon and very quickly communicated it to Leica, who were (are) aware and do have a solution. Obviously it's not worth me continuing with the review until I get the solution too (especially considering I'm nowhere near publication for my article).

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

Well, perhaps the end result of this is that we are all a bit wiser regarding the relation of these reviewers and the camera companies. We've learned to take their reviews with a grain of salt, and also that camera companies may request that a reviewer not talk about certain "problems". Other reviews might "hold off" until things are OK, (while you are going ahead and ordering a hot camera).

The very unfortunate thing is that some of you paid for the lesson by getting an expensive camera you are not happy with. I hope that all of you get this issue resolved to your satisfaction, and don't have to "settle" for anything, as you shouldn't have to with a $5k camera.

Peter, I think this is WAY harsh: Reichmann is a highly flavoured and highly opinionated chap and you either like him or you don't (I do) but he makes it clear that he doesn't 'test' in the conventional sense. We get reviews from the likes of him, Phil and Sean usually a while before we see anything in print but we always have to be aware of 'caveat emptor.'

Can you honestly say that if MR was to review a hot bit of kit in which you were interested, before anyone else did, you wouldn't read it?

Tim

Peter White said:

I've been saying Reichmann is incompetent for months. I've pointed
out serious flaws in his supposed "tests", and have gotten roundly
criticized for doing so.

Well, now you all know that he's both incompetent, and dishonest.
Welcome to the club. ;-)

Click to expand...

--
http://web.mac.com/tashley1/iWeb/timashley.com/Home.html

I've just done a batch of photos at 1250 ISO in halogen light
converting using the ACR 3.6 profile.
the colours are spot on, the definition is breathtaking.

I do a lot of high contrast work - banding is obvious - and really easy to fix.

Look Peter - I know it needs sorting - but I can hardly think of any cameras that didn't need some kind of a fix when they came out, with the furore being in direct proportion to the anticipation.

This camera takes great photos 90% right now - that's not an excuse for the 10%, simply a reality check.

i don't give a toss about 'false pretences' - I think that the worst Leica has been guilty of is underestimating the problem. On your logic, I was sold every camera I've ever owned on false pretences (in that none were perfect, and none came with a 'faults' warning).

I realise that I sound like I'm saying it's all okay - but the truth is there are other things to get high blood pressure about - if the camera is no good to you - then TAKE IT BACK they can't possibly refuse to give you a refund. If you haven't got one, then you've nothing to complain about.

Thinking about it, I can't think of many things I've bought that didn't have some kind of a fault - from computers to cars to whatever - I can't remember a single company that warned me in advance that they were sending me defective product.

I can't see what good it can possibly do throwing one's weight about - if Leica don't fix it - fair enough, I'll ask for my money back (or not, depending on how much I like what it already does).

kind regards
jono slack

Peter White said:

It's fine that you would have been happy to have the camera on
false pretenses. A lot of people would have prefered to be warned
in advance that they were spending $4800 on a defective camera.

Click to expand...

--
Jono Slack
http://www.slack.co.uk

I sometimes read comic strips. But not in the same way I would read a scientific journal. Reichmann makes unfounded statements about the performance of cameras and lenses. It's true that he then says he doesn't do tests. But then, what's the point?

If he wants to say, "I like lens A better than lens B", fine, that's not a test, it's a stated opinion. But when he posts images claiming that those images back up his claim that one lens behaves a certain way relative to another lens, and when those images haven't been properly produced, there's a problem. People read these "reports" or whatever they are, without thinking critically about how the "comparison" was conducted, and use them to make buying decisions. But Reichmann's methods are faulty, making his conclusions worthless. People need to know that Reichmann's methods are sloppy, so they won't make expensive buying decisions based on his opinions.

Now we know, from his own keyboard, that he deliberately left out of his review information that might have caused potential buyers of the M8 to rethink their decision to buy, all based on Reichmann's good feelings about Leica. So there are people who, today, based on Reichmann's review, own a defective camera that they paid $4800 for, and who wouldn't have made the purchase if Reichmann hadn't published his deliberately misleading review.

We all now know that Reichmann lied about the M8. Hopefully, lots of people will no longer pay much attention when Reichmann gives the thumbs up or down on a piece of photo gear.

Would you have been punished by Leica had you commented on the problems you saw with the camera? It seems to me that you were put between a rock and a hard place since you were asked not to talk about image quality, presumably because the production camera would be different than the test camera you had. But you must have assumed that those issues would be corrected in the production camera.

So here's my question. Did you know that the camera being delivered to stores would have the same problem you saw in your test camera? Or did Leica lead you to believe that those issues would be corrected in the production camera, the camera being shipped to stores?

If you did know that the production camera would have the problem, what would your exposure have been had you published a statement to the effect that the production camera had defects? I'm guessing that Leica would have cut you off from further test gear. I'm not suggesting you ought to have violated any contractual agreement you had with Leica, just wondering what the ground rules were, and how you felt about it.

I can say that had I been put in the position I'm guessing you were put in, I'd be spitting nails.

It is never my perception that he is conducting scientific 'tests' - I wait for reviews like Phil's for that. And I would never buy a camera on the basis of just one review unless I had that terrible urge to have something, sensible or not, and was looking for an excuse.

Those who jump in early (and that includes me) are lying to themselves if they think that:

a) Manufacturers always get it right first time
b) Early reviews taken in isolation will be a 100% guide

It may be unfair or unreasonable that 'round one' buyers are so often beta testers, in effect. But it is true. And I think it absolutely outrageous to suggest that MR is in some way responsible for people holding $5000 'pups.'

Tim
--
http://web.mac.com/tashley1/iWeb/timashley.com/Home.html

Once the camera was available for sale, were you under any obligation to remain quiet about the issues you had seen with the camera? I ask this, given that the camera you saw was pre-production, and you presumably had not seen the production model. But if Leica hadn't made clear to you that the issues you saw had been addressed, it's perhaps reasonable to wonder if you suspected that those issues were going to be there in the production camera. And if so, why not publish something about that?

Thanks,