Few digital camera manufacturers? Besides Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, Panasonic and virtually every smartphone manufacturer in the world?

Leica glass is top notch, the real Leica glass, not the branded smartphone crap lenses. And Leicas are, and always have been, incredibly over priced for what they are, a little bit like Apple and Tesla. They are great cameras to use so, I had one for a project 20 years (too scared to actually count) ago. Great camera, even greater lenses. But now way near as much better as Canon or Nikon as the price would suggest.

It's strange you didn't mention Konica, Pentax, Minolta, Olympus, Hasselblad oh right that's because they are dead or a virtual brand only. And the rest are pale shadows of themselves 10 years ago. The market is dead, dedicated digital cameras are at these point feel more obsolete than film.

Come again? Hasselblad still is, and always has been, a photographers dream. A niche product, desired and out of reach for most. That didn't change. Olympus is one of the current mirrorless brands, an isn't doing to bad, at least their cameras seem to be good from what I hear.

The entry level and point-and-shoot camera market is more or less dead so. That segment was completely taken over by smartphones, for valid reasons.

Olympus sold off their digital camera business to a private equity firm. It's now a shadow of it's former self with no expectation of growth.

Late day SLR makers, full-frame that is, was basically a duopoly between Nikon and Canon. As was early DSLRs, so you had some more brands then. If anything with mirrorless there seem to be more camera makers around than before, and being on par with each other. As opposed to SLRs or the early DSLR market were it was basically just Canon and Nikon.

Sony had a pretty solid hold on a chunk of that DSLR prosumer/enthusiast market as well. Fuji and some others started making headway right before mirrorless started taking off.

Hasselblad’s current digital offering is only really interesting in the commercial space where you only really need one if you’re getting paid enough to rent one on the first place. Plenty of alternatives exist as well when it comes to digital backs. The old film cameras are of niche interest, but Hassleblad isn’t making money off that.

With medium format like Hasselblad, the back are anyway seperate from the body. Hasselblads are great cameras, Leicas as well. Objects of desire both.

I did some middleformat work as a teenager, not with Hasselblad so. But this whole looking down into the view finder to see a mirrored picture makes you think a lot more about composition and so on. I liked it, but film is just to much work for me at the moment. And digital backs for medium format way too expensive. I loved medium format in black and white so. Damn, now I have to find time to go through my dad's archive with him!

Leica is doing interesting things with prosumer digital too, though. The rangefinder ergonomics of the Leica Q allow for completely different use cases and feel even though it is hilariously overpriced compared to a competing Sony fixed-lens (RX1R or something like that.) Last I looked, it was at least a $1000 differential and the Sony beat the Leica handily on features and potential quality. I’d still never trade my Q for one.

Leica makes great cameras, unfortunately as you said over priced... I never touched one of their digital ones, but I was furtunate enough to have a film one for a school project before going to university. The camera was loaned to my dad, who was generous enough to allow me to use it. It was great, really was. It kind of felt better than the Nikon F4 I usually got, but not that much better to justify the price.

One thing I kind of dream about so is some Zeiss glass. Not that I'll ever be able to justify it so! Besides, I have developed a weakness for old Nikkor manual focus lenses.

If I had a Leica so, I'd never trade it in for something else neither! Some things you just don't do!

Minolta didn't die - they sold their camera business to SONY. SONY still makes cameras.

Minolta cameras almost changed names to Sony cameras, one can say.