Konica Minolta is history

[jmilkins]

eeek - no new sibilings for my 8000i, 9000, 9xi, and 9 ! :bang:

I really hope that Sony will develop a quality digital body for M-AF lenses- I wonder how long it'll take 'em to develop a full frame ..and how expensive it'll be.

I was certainly considering a 7D...... but rangefinders got in the way!

 

[anselwannab]

OK, the upside for me is I have a credit card that earns Sony bucks, and I use it for my expense account. Maybe there will be a "Sony" medium format scanner in my future, or a follow on to the 7D?

I might see a "Sony" body with AS along with a Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 EX DC, or 20/1.8 for low light shots. Maybe for my wife, who hates all the red eye she gets with her P/S.

 

[JimDE]

Guys I own a 7D and the back focus and front focus issues were a nightmare to get rid of....a year ago just about everyone who bought one had to send it to the service center to get it and the 5600 flash issues resolved. KM had a great idea with the internal AS but it was also it's nightmare. If I wanted dependable image quality I grabbed my RF and the last 6 months my 7D outfit with a 17-35, 28-70, and 100-300 KM lenses has been a family and friends loaner camera. At over $3000.00 for this system (yeah I was one of the ones who paid $1700 for the 7D body) and being used for snapshots normally blah photography it will give you some idea of how little I think of this camera system. Truth be known after one photographic session I threw the whole camera bag with all the stuff in it in a garbage can because of all the BF and FF issues while shooting raw that were not visible till I uploaded the images in PS (7D will not zoom while viewing a RAW shot).

Will I miss KM? Not a bit.......

 

[jmilkins]

a cautionary tale thanks Jim.

and I have to say a 3 lens RFF kit is a lot easier to lug around the streets than a Dynax 9 with a bag of lenses.

I only really miss macro and fast AF in nature / sports with an SLR..

 

[wilt]

What Bertram said. Niche. Survival.

For one thing, black and white film must has been an enthusiast (and pro) niche in the film market for 40 years. I guess most of the film sold has been for family snapshots and it was a long time since those used b&w. Still b&w survived. The same thing might happen for film itself.

 

[stet]

aye, aye, Sockeyed -- I'll pour a little out for the makers of the Koni-Omega RF, too, and their most fantastic lenses.

As for corporate cheers for film, Fuji also had this nice announcement last week.

 

[Vagabond]

Man, the more I read of these things, like this and Nikon's quitting the film camera business . . . the more I fear that our optimisms are merely pleasant dreams.

Unfortunately, I think you are correct.

I'm going to shut down the computer and go out to buy some chemicals.

 

[Bertram2]

What Bertram said. Niche. Survival.

For one thing, black and white film must has been an enthusiast (and pro) niche in the film market for 40 years. I guess most of the film sold has been for family snapshots and it was a long time since those used b&w. Still b&w survived. The same thing might happen for film itself.

Wilt,
B&W film is a good example for the phenomenon of market niches ideed !
And it proves that there are still a lot of fans who like it and use it.
Obviously not enuff for ALL the players on this market . I bet that if some B&W films now are taken out of some manufacturers portfolios this has not much to do
with the impact of digital on this market .

bertram

 

[Bryan Lee]

Black and White images are more popular now than ever but most of the new ones I see have never touched film. Last may I bought the Black and White special of Practical Photography magazine and most of the information was about making digital B&W images. Trying to use Black and White film to measure the health of the film camera industry is not a valid hypothosis. Most of the new B&W image creaters will have never used a film camera to create Black & White images nor will they ever enter a darkroom. While Im writing this from my office darkroom and have been a huge fan of the mystery of turning on the red light and creating imagery there is no growing market with only a few hold outs and university students who even use darkrooms anymore. There is no apparant marketing by any black and White film company to get new users into darkrooms that Im aware of either.

 

[phototone]

It seems that marketing darkroom equipment to amateurs went away right at the start of the home video introduction. It was almost immediate in the late 1970's.

 

[KoNickon]

Konica and Minolta were, notwithstanding some of the comments above that they were not seriously competitive players in the market, quite innovative companies that made excellent products. Their contributions will be sorely missed. I'm a big Nikon fan myself, but I don't see it as a big deal that K and M were never regarded as "pro" lines. So what? At the same time, I have no problem with Sony, but it's just hard for me to take them, or any of the electronics makers, seriously as makers of cameras.

Wouldn't it be cool if some of the Konica and Minolta engineers and designers decided to set up their own niche company, concentrating on film cameras and lenses? There's a lot of talent there that Sony won't need, I'm sure, and I'd hate to see it wasted.

Hexanon, Rokkor, Hexar, SRT, CLE, Maxxum/Dynax, Autocord, Autoreflex, Koni-Omega -- a lot of honored names there.

 

[wilt]

Black and White images are more popular now than ever but most of the new ones I see have never touched film. Last may I bought the Black and White special of Practical Photography magazine and most of the information was about making digital B&W images. Trying to use Black and White film to measure the health of the film camera industry is not a valid hypothosis. Most of the new B&W image creaters will have never used a film camera to create Black & White images nor will they ever enter a darkroom. While Im writing this from my office darkroom and have been a huge fan of the mystery of turning on the red light and creating imagery there is no growing market with only a few hold outs and university students who even use darkrooms anymore. There is no apparant marketing by any black and White film company to get new users into darkrooms that Im aware of either.

Yes, many b&w pictures today start life as ccd readouts. But in the photoblog world (see, for example, this community), I see quite a lot of film-based b&w photography. If I read the signs correctly, some of these photographers are also rather young and recruited to film-based photography after beginning in the digital domain. The analog community is perhaps not a fixed and shrinking group of oldtimers

My main point, however, was to point at the survival of b&w during the 70's-90's, ie the analog epoch when the bulk of film consumption market-wide (family photography, snapshots) was colour film, as an example of niche survival of an older photographic technology. Maybe that gives some hope for the future of silver halide film in a digital epoch.