Voigtlaender rebadges Premier offering, dubs it Vito 65

Premier should just start reselling its designs to ho hum resellers rather than spending the loot to brand its own products, as it seems to be the object of desire for companies like Ricoh and Voigtlaender. Nevertheless, Germany's own has rebadged the DM6365 and slapped a Vito 65 logo on it, but didn't bother tweaking the specs. Touting a 3.48- x 2.17- x 0.75-inch enclosure, this compact features a played-out six-megapixel CCD sensor, 2.5-inch LCD monitor, 32MB of internal storage, SD slot, 30fps movie mode, 3x optical zoom, built-in red-eye reduction, USB 2.0 connectivity, and PictBridge compatibility. Per usual, Voigtlaender manages to pack a humdrum feature set into a fairly overpriced package, with the Vito 65 coming in at a less-than-attractive €199 ($265).

[Via LetsGoDigital]

[George K. @ Dec 11th 2006 8:47AM]

Voigtlaender sold their name quite a long time ago to a Japanese outfit. It's not a German company anymore.

[Geir E @ Dec 11th 2006 9:30AM]

I remember my mother used to tell me all the time she was sorry she dropped her Voigtlaender. She was so proud of the camera and the great Carl Zeiss lense. Since the camera she bought was a Kodak 110 film camera you can imagine the quality drop. My father had a Ricoh XR1, but the Ricoh name still is with them. But the Voiglaender is another story - here from Wikipedia:

Schering sold its share of the company to the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1956, and Zeiss and Voigtl�nder integrated in 1965. In 1972 Zeiss/Voigtl�nder stopped producing cameras, and a year later Zeiss sold Voigtl�nder to Rollei. On the collapse of Rollei in 1982, Plusfoto took over the name, selling it in 1997 to Ringfoto.

In the late 1990s, Cosina licensed the rights to use the Voigtl�nder name, and the names of Voigtl�nder lenses, for its own products. From 1999 it has used these brands for its lenses and camera bodies with Leica rangefinder thread and bayonet mounts, classic Nikon and Contax rangefinder bayonet mounts, as well as M42 (Praktica/Pentax) thread mount single-lens reflex (SLR) bodies, and lenses for M42, Nikon, and other SLR cameras. In Europe, Ringfoto markets these as well as cheaper film and digital cameras with the Voigtl�nder name.

[nilram @ Dec 11th 2006 3:39PM]

WOW! Another HO HUM, OVERPRICED camera! Thank you, Engadget!