Thank goodness for Leica.

Sure they make good cameras, but I think the real blessing they give the photography world is the way they function as a sponge, soaking up a lot of money so it's not going around and inflating the price of the other vintage camera stuff I want to buy.

I've owned a Leica Q2 and Q3 and the former was what finally got me to ditch my phone's camera and get back into photography. Leica's color science is some of the best out there, even if their technology stance is a bit like Apple's in that they're not the first to do anything but often the first to do it right.

That said, I outgrew the Q3, sold it for pretty much what I'd paid for it and bought two Sony cameras and some lenses. I got tired of "zooming with my feet" and the Sony 70-200mm GM II shoots like it's from the future.

Photography has never been a cheap hobby, and there have always been a few manufacturers at the top end of engineering able to reach higher and higher.

Regarding digital, Leica made several false starts - its M8 and M9 were excreble - and it finally understood that you couldn't spend all the money on machining brass to protect the innards made of cheese.

The Q2 is/was/whatever in a league of its own and the closest thing I have yet found to my old G2. The lens is pretty much too good, it resolves everything, and everything is there, always, and you want for nothing. The rest of the camera is a joy to use, I've had it for five years and they have nailed the usability. It is constrained, of course, but as an everyday camera that is a joy to use, it's amazing. Couple that with brand cachet and awareness, and no wonder they're finally doing brilliantly. The new digital strategy also shed some of the duller old-school gatekeepers like the late Erwin Puts with his whining about the "soul of Leica products being eradicated" (see https://photo.imx.nl/blog/files/75caecf5a21140ab6c9b46f825ef...).

And many of the comments about the Q-series talk about rediscovered the joy of photography and shooting. I lent my Q2 to a friend for an extended play and they were in love with in and what it let them do.

Joy-to-use. Wins the oh-I-like-your-camera-competition. Superlative image quality and colour. Luxury brand that reminds you how awesome you are when you look it, which, let's face it, is the only reason you look at a Rolex or Omega on your wrist too.

DSLR quality has been a buzzword for phone cameras for a while now. And in some cases it is. But when comparing photos across a range of conditions from my phone to a full frame DSLR with a good lens one is clearly better. As one example, simulated bokeh isn't as nice looking at the real thing. The resulting photo difference is more pronounced in long telephoto portraits.

The software, convenience, and always with you aspect ensure phones will probably always be dominant. But as Leica is showing there is still a hunger for photos that look better.

With photography, optimizing hardware (sensor, glass) is going to yield more results than optimizing software. Sensor size has an impact on the resulting photo.

I'm in a position where I could get a Leica camera, but I'd much rather stick to Fujifilm who make great optics, have great in-camera film simulation, and require very little editing work outside the camera. Leica's revenue seems to me like people just wanting the luxury version of something? I just haven't seen the results to justify the cost.

Pretty amazing... the market overall for consumer digital cameras has crashed over the last decade due of course to smartphones making a dedicated camera kind of redundant for the majority of consumers. But Leica shows that even in a crashing market there is room for some to succeed! Btw., it was Leica that popularized the 35mm format for photographic film.

Maybe it’s better I’ve never held a Leica because maybe if I did, I’d have spent $6000 on one by now. Oh well. I’ll stick to my ignorance & Fujifilm

How much did Xiaomi pay for Leica tech/branding.

isn't that basically a given for any company when comparing numbers that have not been adjusted for inflation?