OFFICIAL: Leica M9 and M9-P Markdown
Great news. The Leica M9 and M9-P are officially marked down in price. Last week I mentioned that Dale Photo had a $1000 markdown on the M9-P and $500 mark down on the M9. You can read about their specials HERE.
This week, B&H Photo joined the price slash bandwagon and I was told these are now official markdowns. M9-P goes from $7995 to $6995 and M9 from $6995 to $6495. This is a huge savings for a camera of this caliber. Never in the history of Leica do I remember anytime that they cleared out stock of cameras at a reduced price.
PopFlash.com also added the markdown and I am assuming Ken Hansen is also in on the action (his e-mail is khpny19@aol.com)
WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?
Well, I read this as Leica trying to clear out mass amounts of M9 and M9-P stock before the M10 is launched in 2013. I think Leica will announce and show an M10 at Photokina and deliver the M10 by March of 2013. Just a hunch really but between now and then they will need to sell off the M9 and M9-P’s sittin on dealers shelves and their own warehouse. It’s no secret that sales of the M9 have slowed down dramatically lately because many are realizing that an M10 is close.
This may also mean that the M10 could be priced in at $7995 or even $8495. Less than the $9500+ I had previously thought. Maybe Leica has finally decided to NOT up each release by a couple of thousand dollars. I really have no clue but we shall see soon enough as Photokina is right around the corner.
With the new price drops we should start seeing used prices of the M9 and M9-P drop a little more as well.
If you want to pick up an M9 at these prices check out the links below – You must add the cameras to your cart to see discount!
M9-P Chrome at B&H Photo $6995
and Dale Photo has their specials going as well HERE – You must add camera to cart to see discount! I am sure Ken Hansen has the specials and you can e-mail him here.
PopFlash.com has ’em too so you have MANY choices to get your M9 fix…or you can wait for the upcoming M10 🙂
I think this is only the beginning. The M9-P has now dropped down from “OBSCENELY OVERPRICED” to “EXTREMELY OVERPRICED”. Is that cause for celebration? No. Wait until they fall further to “VERY OVERPRICE”, “OVERPRICED”, “A LITTLE OVERPRICED”, and “REASONABLY PRICED”.
The prices of both used and new Leica S2 and S2-P dropped by OVER $5000 in the three months following Nikon’s announcement of the D800 and D800E. And they will drop lower. That shows how quickly overpriced Leica cameras deflate in price when met with head-to-head competition.
Very soon, there will be a full-frame EVF-based UCAM (universal camera), like an NEX-9 from Sony. That body will be more compact than an M9 or M10, and will sell for $2,000, give or take a few hundred bucks.
Such a camera will also not suffer from all the limitations of a rangefinder. Such as:
– It will let you compose first and focus on any part of the screen, even the bottom right corner.
– There will be no absurd frame lines to deal with.
– The bottom right corner (about 20% of the field) will not be blocked by f/2 or faster lenses
– You would have precise focus confirmation with highlighted edges
– You would have LiveView
– It will have a built in EVF, not something you’d need to buy for an extra $350
– It will have a grip built into its Mag alloy body, so you would not have to spend $250 on a Leica grip
– It will not need a $125 Thumbs Up that takes up the flash hot shoe slot
– It will let you see real DOF and perspective, as your lens sees the scene
– It will let you use GND or CPL filters
– It will be smaller, lighter and more discreet than an M9 or M10
– It will have a quieter shutter
– It will have a high-res, large LCD back
– It will not need a ridiculous EVF to use wide angle lenses
– It will never run into problems of misalignment of RF mechanism with the lens
– It will work with Leica M, Leica R, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony/Minolta, Pentax and Zeiss lenses.
– It could be used with long focal length lenses, even 600mm super teles, no sweat!
– It will cost 20-25% of what an M10 will cost, so you could buy four of them instead of one M10
So, despite this $1000 price “drop”, I would not rush to buy an M9-P.
If Leica prices the M10 at $8K to $8.5K, I expect they will sell a few THOUSANDS to die hard Leica fans, but a $2000 Sony NEX-9 would be selling in the MILLIONS.
This is great news for me. I intended to get one soon but thought I’d order a 50 summilux now given the notorious wait times. Went to the local dealer to ask and he said he couldn’t give me a date, that it was a high demand lens. I could pay a deposit but just wait aimlessly, it could come a week later or 6 months later. Bit the bullet and put a deposit and I got a call the next day say “ok you’re not going to believe this, but a brand new 50 just came in today!” I think its fate =)
Very smart move by Leica. They are clearing their shelves – given their limited production capacity I doubt there´s sitting so much on these shelves anyway – and due to currency effects they still make the same profit on each M9 / M9-P sold in the US as they do in Europe. You can´t do better than that.
The simple reason is that nobody is going to pay full freight right now for a status camera that is destined to be obsolete in a month’s time.
Apparently, Apple is having the same problem with the iPhone right now — they have hit an “Air Pocket” in which many people who would otherwise have bought an iPhone 4S decide to simply wait for the iPhone 5 to come out, so there’s a big lag in sales.
I personally think the M10 is going to be a bit of a letdown sales-wise. The M8 and M9 were major step changes that created a lot of excitement that brought new users to the brand. I don’t see anything in this camera that will create that kind of excitement.
I hear you and somehow I have the same feeling. The M9 made many upgrade from the M8, brought others back from the dark sides to RFshooting and convinced quite a number of RF newbies to jump on the bandwagon. I assume that most who were seriously considering a digital RF camera already own one now and that the M10 market share will be mainly M8 or M9 upgraders. But the percentage of upgraders might be lower then what Leica expects as Rangefinder alike shooting experiences and excellent sensor and lens performance can be had these days at a fraction of the Leica prices, quite unlike as it was in 2009.
These discounts came quite soon – M10 will hit the shelves in March next year. To me it sounds like the M9 is not selling as well as hoped (just a guess, maybe a wrong one) – what else would be the reason? Or they realized that the price of next digital body should not be significantly higher that M9 (prior to discount). One way or another – good time for those buying a new one, bad times for selling a used M9.
The M9 isn’t selling well because the M10 is about to come out. Not really much to figure out there!
It’s the M glass, boys and girls. The body just needs to be full figured or is it full frame.
Full figured can be nice, but with cameras I stick to full frame. 😉
when the M9 was released in australia the AUS dollar was 81 cents to the US $1……..now the AUS dollar is at $1.05 to the US $1…….you think the australian dealers will pass on the “savings”…..nah, dont think so.
It seems strange that Leica is legendary for having all these production issues and being unable to meet demand on so many products, but now that they are “about to release” the next generation camera they suddenly have all this stock they need to dump. Doesn’t seem to make sense.
Leica ≠ Logic
I also guess this is exchange rate related:
– M9 have almost always been is short supply, I doubt Leica has now mass amounts of stock, even if sales slowed down.
– The rumored M10 may be announced at Photokina, but is unlikely to be widely available before several months.
– I would not be surprised if the M10 was significantly more expensive than the M9, and that the M9(-P) would remain in the range for a few more years (a bit like what happened with the M8(-2)).
Leica gives back some currency exchange gain potential on the M9, that’s all. As I said in another post, due to the depreciation of the Euro versus the USD we might see a M10 price below USD 10000 maybe something like USD 8500. As cameras and sensors have improved so significantly over the last 2-3 years, I’m not sure the pure RF experience is still worth the very steep premium price to me (it’s all subjective), which I was ready to pay when the M9 was released in 2009.
Yes, the convenient exchange rate development is giving Leica some leeway towards the end of the M9’s life cycle. They can afford lowering the price in US$ and make this look like a end-of-cycle price. As a matter of fact, the price of the M9 in Germany didn’t go down (it’s still 5495 Euro, 19% VAT included, for the M9, and 5995 Euro, also VAT included, for the M9-P at Meister Camera Berlin). ow take the US$ price for the M9 and convert to Euro, with the VAT of, say, Texas: 6495 * 1.086 / 1.25 = 5643 Euro. Even with the lowered price, the M9 in the US is still more expensive than in Europe…
That is true. Leica is adopting new technology slowly. Mirrorless camera utilize focus peaking, magnify assist, EVF,etc. can achieve perfect focus as RF can do.
With the RF mechanism, it needs to be calibrated when the focusing is off. When it’s old both lens and camera need to be adjusted to re-gain accuracy. Very inconvenient.
My French Leica dealer told me few days ago that M10 would be way more expensive than M9. I also think this is exchange rate related. Why ? First point, No Deal like this in Europe so far… second point, M9 is still a very good seller (probably because ccd to cmos switch). Wait and See
Probably more to do with the dollar/euro exchange rate. The Euro has lost over 20% on the dollar in the past few months and that doesn’t look like reversing anytime soon. Leica comes out of the factory with a Euro price. 20% on $7,000 is $1,400 so a $1000 is no big deal.
I think its crazy camera’s are going up in price, i.e 5d ark 3 and maybe for the m10. Electronics are doubling their speed every year etc and becoming so cheap to produce the same product with a quicker chip etc, prices should be the same or LESS in order to sell MORE. Agh, camera companies!
Yes, but it’s not like this across the board. I think the latest m4/3’s like the Olympus OM-D offer great value for money, as well as the Sony RX100. The best of the best pro cameras are a different matter though, yes. I have fortunately never felt the need of one.
Yes, existing technology gets cheaper, but don’t forget R&D costs, that does not get cheaper, it inceases year on year and has to be recovered by unit sales.
R&D cost is a reflective purchasing of intellectual resources (college grads) seeking opportunities to develop unspecified or unknown marketable products that produce wealth, alone or in a group environment. When product market saturation sets in for a specified product we witness huge markdowns. If the markdown sale remains profitable and levels out, it will continue, if not… it quickly becomes a discontinued product and a newer imposed model dominates our needs and desires to have the best of the best.
R&D costs? Hmmmm.
A 50-year-old body design. But with no wind-lever to hold on to, so other companies have to sell that.
An eighty-year-old rangefinder mechanism.
Another company’s years-old sensor.
Guess the R&D is in the red dot.