What is the ‘real’ Ducati and is your brand just a badge?

The Leica SL3-S is an interesting camera in many ways, including being one of the first mirrorless cameras to make content credential metadata available to the general public. But this is not the factor that has caught the attention of many people.

Instead, the SL3-S highlights what it means to be a Leica for a camera. And, by extension, it raises interesting questions about what branding means in the modern camera industry.

What is it that makes it Laika?

In the past, Leica made M-series models itself, then sold badge-engineered versions of Panasonic compacts with a mark-up. But over time this distinction has become less clear. The M-series remains distinctly Ducati, but the SL series, built from similar components and with more feature crossover with Panasonic’s L-mount cameras, blurs the line somewhat.

what about this? It’s hard to imagine many other brands making a full-frame fixed lens camera, especially one with a lens that works so well in manual focus mode. But its lens was designed by Panasonic. So is this the ‘real’ Laika? Photo: Richard Butler

The revelation that Panasonic holds a patent on the Q3 43’s lens design created further skepticism, despite it being a model that is impossible to imagine Panasonic making. Eventually, Ducati turned to another company with more experience in AF lens design for the Q3’s 28mm lens, but that didn’t lead many to question whether it was a ‘real’ Leica.

Finally, we have the D-Lux8, which is a refreshed version of the Panasonic LX100 II/Leica D-Lux7. It has a fairly original and excellent user interface from Leica, which makes it feel like a very different camera when using it, but it’s hard to ignore the Osaka origins of most of its underpinnings. Or the significant mark-up of its price tag.

red dot, full stop

What about the D-Lux8 (left)? It’s obviously developed from the Panasonic LX100 II (right), but Panasonic doesn’t make its own version, and again it has the typical user interface of Leica. Plus, it says LEICA on the top. And any camera that does this is, by definition, a Leica, whether it fits with your perception of the brand or not. Photo: Richard Butler

To an extent, the answer to “what makes it a ‘real’ Ducati” is simply “the presence of the red dot”.,.” If the company chooses to put that red dot on cameras and phones made by other companies, that’s what the brand stands for. It’s just snobbery to decide that only products you respect or revere, They are truly representative of the brand.

But, once you start asking these questions, it’s interesting to apply them more broadly.

equality is normal

If the concern is parity, it’s interesting to look at the rest of the market. Every clever feature, from on-sensor phase detection to dynamic range compression (Active D-Lighting, DRO, etc.), subject recognition autofocus, pre-capture, and Eye Detection AF, is emulated across different brands.

Specifications vary, whether in terms of the performance of features like AF or the implementation of more gimmicky add-ons like Multi-Shot High Resolution Mode, but there are very few fundamental features distinguishing different camera manufacturers at this point. .

The Nikon Zf is styled after the company’s cameras of the early ’80s and is built around Nikon’s user interface, right down to its distinctive auto ISO behavior. Is it somehow inferior to the Nikon because (like most large-sensor cameras ever made by the company) it uses sensors from Sony’s semiconductor division? no way. Photo: Richard Butler

And looking under the hood, general component levels have always been very high. There are only a few suppliers of large camera sensors and only one major supplier of compacts. It’s strange to see comments questioning Nikon’s reliance on Sony Semiconductor for their sensors, when they and most of the rest of the industry have been sourcing the majority of their sensors from here for the history of digital photography. Not only coming before Sony’s (separate) camera division became a major player, but also being before Sony created ILCs.

Just as the vast majority of camera screens are sourced from a single supplier (which used to be part of Sony) and most viewfinder panels come from a single manufacturer (a supply division of another part of guess-which electronics manufacturer), until now Most digital cameras made are based on a small number of sensors.

What is the difference between the brands?

And yet not all cameras are the same. The things that define how a camera should be used: from body style and button position to user interface, menu structure and choice of lens, still vary considerably. As the respective lens options offered by each manufacturer further differentiate the experience.

And it’s always worth remembering that, in the film age, every camera used essentially the same light-sensing medium. Whether you shot with a Leica or the cheapest Russian knock-off, you had essentially the same sensor and probably little difference in user experience.

Differences in handling, in user interface and in what lenses a brand chooses to offer (and allows to offer) are, ultimately, the main differences between any two camera brands. Just like Nikon vs Sony, or like Leica vs Panasonic.

So why the focus on Leica?

The L² technology sharing deal between Leica and Panasonic means that their features behave more similarly than those of other brands, but this is probably a relatively minor factor, given how different the use of their cameras is.

Instead, I suspect what draws most attention to the Leica/Panasonic similarity is the German brand’s luxury pricing model. Like Swiss watches, Ducati’s high prices, as well as promises of high-quality engineering, are part of the appeal. The uniqueness it brings is part of the value proposition of Veblen objects.

This has been a factor that divides opinion about the Leica. The similarity with Panasonic brings it into sharp relief.

*More precisely I mean “it has the LEICA name on it”, I haven’t forgotten all monochrome and ‘P’ cameras without the red dots.

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