Why are Leica cameras so expensive? What is better than Nikon and other brands?

Well, it's hard to answer. I have used most Leica paraxial cameras, but also Nikon and Canon SLR. I am a professional photographer and photo editor myself, and I have taken many projects, both long-term and short-term. Let me share my personal experience with you:

First of all, the reason why Leica is expensive is not that it must be much better than Nikon and Canon. Whether this is good or bad actually depends on whether it suits your shooting habits! At the earliest, Nikon and Canon also produced paraxial cameras, which competed with Leica in Germany, and later lost to Leica in the paraxial field, specializing in SLR until now! After the large format camera and the medium format, can the small Leica be unattractive? Leica's body is very strong, but the current model will have some minor problems. Compared with the original camera, it costs more water. There is no doubt that Leica's lens is more personalized than Nikon Canon's. Leica is small in size, light in weight and relatively well-made, while Nikon and Canon have long shutter life.

However, Leica is a paraxial camera, such as sports and scenery. I think SLR is more affordable. SLR is much cheaper and has a huge lens group, which can adapt to a variety of shooting styles. You are a generalist, so it depends on what equipment you are suitable for. Leica is more suitable for street shooting and long-term documentary projects.

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Expensive things are not necessarily easy to use, and easy-to-use things are not necessarily expensive.

As a century-old enterprise in Germany, most of Leica's products are still produced rigorously by Germans. Leica cameras have been on the stage of history for a long time. If it weren't for the rapid rise of Japanese cameras, the development of cameras might not be as fast as it is now. During World War II, Leica cameras were the favorite of almost all war correspondents and journalists. Until now, Leica's most representative M-series still keeps manual focusing, which really can't be compared with Japanese manufacturers' products in terms of parameters.

Leica camera knows that its opponent is not actually Canon Nikon, but is producing at its own pace, and has entered the art field and fashion circle, becoming a luxury brand in the camera industry. Leica is basically slow-shooting, and even a micro-camera is huge, which fully guarantees optical imaging. Therefore, in the past, Leica was often given as a gift, which represented a status symbol to some extent, even if Leica was not easy to use at all.

Because Leica is an old-fashioned optical brand, and the German-made things are still relatively solid, the quality of Leica lenses is very good. Combined with the best optical design, the lens materials are sufficient. Therefore, using a Leica camera is a pleasure in itself, so even though many people know that Leica is not easy to use, they want to own a Leica camera, which is a symbol of their status. Huawei's mobile phone invited Leica just to highlight their high quality and borrowed the shell of Leica.

For example, you don't have to buy Armani clothes if you want to keep warm, and you don't have to buy LV bags if you just want to pack up.

This question, a little knowing perfectly well, why don't you ask LV bags why Hermes scarves are expensive? However, there are many people who really want to get to the bottom of it and see if Leica is really worth the money, and whether Leica is really better than Canon Nikon.

If you insist on telling me how good Lycra is, I feel a little closed-eyed and lying.

For this kind of camera, it is enough to appreciate Leica culture.

From the function and performance point of view, the Leica camera is really not worth the price, especially the Leica SL in the middle of the above picture. I basically regret buying it. It's a little trick. The point is that it has no collection value. At least, Leica M 10MP is still collectible!

As we all know, the prices of many things in China have soared once they are rated as intangible cultural heritage. Of course, Leica is not a dead and fixed intangible cultural heritage, but a living and changing intangible cultural heritage, right?

Besides the price, what are the features of Leica?

The essence of Leica lies in M series paraxial cameras, which once represented the latest trend in the world camera industry. However, it is also a historical fact that paraxial cameras are completely replaced by SLR cameras.

B, the essence of Leica lies in the photographic lens, and it is the lens of Leica's paraxial camera, not Leica's SLR lens. Well, Leica also produces SLR cameras.

Compared with SLR lens, Leica's paraxial lens does have some design advantages. At the same time, because Leica is uncompromising, or more precisely, Leica is not committed to manufacturing cameras and lenses for the poor, it has basically been eliminated by Japanese manufacturers who are determined to popularize cameras.

It must be admitted that Japanese manufacturers have really contributed to making cameras affordable for more people. However, while Japanese manufacturers are pursuing popularization, they can only constantly compromise. Leica adheres to high standards and will never compromise.

Therefore, from the lens point of view, Leica can really play more space.

C. From the practical point of view, in most cases, SLR is actually more practical, or cheap camera is more practical.

D, in terms of imaging quality, after all, the oak tree of Leica camera is not very high, and it can't be compared with Nikon D850 Sony A7R3 camera.

At best, you can only say that Leica lenses have a special taste. As for the imaging quality of the whole system, it is still not top-notch.

E. From the functional point of view, Leica's paraxial camera is also mainly focused manually. Small Leica all-in-one or Leica micro-single, although it can also focus automatically, its performance should be non-mainstream.

I use Leica to feel the image of Leica. In order to make you see more intuitively, some of them are made directly, and some are simply colored with a film color matching software called k22. It's no use talking, as long as you make such a film with Japanese cameras and lenses, I have nothing to say.

Leica is a famous German optical brand with a history of 100 years. The earliest production of 35 mm side-looking film cameras, and later also produced film SLR cameras, fixed-focus pocket cameras, and fool cameras. In the digital age, Leica also produces Quan Huafu M series digital cameras, medium format digital SLR cameras and APS-C format digital cameras. Leica products have always been known for their high quality and low price, which are much more expensive than Japanese products of the same type and grade, such as Nikon and Canon. There are several reasons for this:

1. The main reason is brand value. When people who know photography hear the name Leica, they feel awe. This is the accumulation of more than 100 classic products, representing excellent quality, good durability and elegant artistic taste. It has been separated from photographic tools and has become a work of art;

Leica's products do have top quality, especially mechanical quality and optical quality. Its concept is completely different from Japanese products, and it pursues an extreme at all costs. In terms of materials and workmanship, top quality is a standard that exists everywhere, rather than the pursuit of quality and cost performance by Japanese manufacturers. For example, some digital camera bodies of Leica are cut from a whole piece of aluminum alloy, and half a brick-sized aluminum alloy finally leaves only a thin fuselage shell, 90% of which has been cut off. This is just for the sake of lightness, firmness and beauty. Therefore, its cost is also higher than that of Japanese products, resulting in high prices;

3. In recent 20 years, the degree of camera automation has become higher and higher, and autofocus and automatic metering have become more and more complicated. Especially for digital cameras, the core is electronic image processing. These are not the strengths of traditional Leica cameras, so we can only cooperate with Japanese manufacturers to buy components or technologies such as photosensitive components, autofocus components and fuselage anti-shake systems. This also increases the cost of the camera.

In short, Leica cameras are expensive, but they are expensive.

I won't say much about the history of Leica's birth and development. All kinds of legendary materials can be found on the Internet. Now let's talk about the problem.

From the beginning, Leica made a 35mm camera and insisted on making a compact and high-quality lens to match it. In particular, its M series paraxial camera can be said to be the spokesperson of Leica camera. M series lenses all adopted the most advanced optical design and the best lenses at that time. In order to further improve the imaging quality, aspheric lens is added to improve the plane image field, floating focusing design corrects the focusing criterion, apo color difference correction design and self-made coating. These four factors are the biggest reason why Leica lenses are unique in the world. Therefore, Leica cameras that people in Jianghu talk about are basically good at Leica. In fact, this is one-sided. Personally, I think Leica's paraxial M series camera is the most traditional successor of Leica.

As for Japanese manufacturers such as Nikon, Canon, Sony (Minolta), Pentax and Ricoh, anyone who knows a little about the history of camera development knows that the manufacturers headed by Canon and Nikon all imitated the development of Leica's fuselage at the beginning. It coincides with the rapid development of Japan after the war, but it can only imitate the fuselage, optical design and lens material, but it is not as profound as Leica. Until today, Japanese factories have occupied the market on a large scale because of the pursuit of mass production and standardization. If we only look at the image quality, volume, design and materials, Leica can still maintain a high standard-at the cost of low output and high price.

German camera industry has disappeared in the era of electronic focusing.

Leica camera M series is a Panasonic camera. Just change the logo directly Most of the others are made in Japan.

What are the advantages of Leica? It's the same as the Japanese machine, but the LOGO is different. Of course, because of the high price, sometimes some parameters will be higher.

Why is Leica expensive? It's feelings. But it is no exaggeration to say that it must be a certain machine of Nikon or Canon or Fuji or Pentax, just with a different LOGO. Of course, small sales volume is also the main reason for your high price.

Germany can't make CCD photosensitive devices, automatic metering systems and electronic shutters, leaving only manual lenses for you to experience German colors. In fact, most of the German lenses in the 1960s were made in Japan.

Now Japanese manufacturers such as Panasonic, Sony and Kyocera often release German labelers and best-selling machines. CONTEX is simply kyocera.

In particular, Panasonic and Sony, rising stars in the digital age, will have German-certified lenses. Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Fuji no longer need the gimmicks of German lenses.

Lycra in the movie era is expensive because of cost and commercial operation, while Lycra in the digital era is expensive because it is purely a commercial gimmick.

Fortunately, Lycra film camera has excellent quality, few faults and its use function is not as good as that of SLR.

By the way, another topic, the so-called "Gao Fancha's strong German flavor", was also blown out in recent years after Leica's digitization, but it is not true at all. In the era of black-and-white movies, there was no color. After Akfa introduced the water-soluble color film in 1936, the German color style is low contrast, low saturation and warm tone, which is very popular in Europe and completely different from Kodak's color tone in the United States. The style of the photo below is the real "German flavor".