Leica rebates
I was a little surprised to see the aggressive price cut being offered by Leica on the M8: it has dropped by $1500 to $3995, almost certainly indicating a new model soon. (See my review of the M8 in infrared). Or perhaps it’s just that the original M8 pipeline needs to be flushed clean with the M8.2 looking slightly more appealing, but also at a $2000 premium.
We can hope for a full-frame M9 with Live View: one can carry in a small hip pack an M8 and six lenses in what would take a small backpack for a DSLR (and they need not be ultra expensive Leica lenses, what with some excellent Zeiss ZM and Voigtlander alternatives out there).
Leica 50mm f/1.0 Summilux-M Special Edition
There are US$300 mail-in rebates on many Leica M lenses, though a $300 rebate on the $14995 special edition 50/1.0 Noctilux-M kind of misses the mark. Darn, if only it was a $600 rebate maybe I’d have gone for it! Can’t Leica throw in a free BMW with it or something? Only 100 copies made of the special edition, but you do get a nice little wooden box and book with it. And B&H Photo does have it in stock! Then again, hard goods like this little M-gem may well prove as good as gold—the Fed can’t print them!
