THE Camera..

lam said:
The whole industry is going ape **** as far as i'm concerned.

Not all bad though!
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Probably going for the 'luxury' market. Bring out a full frame NEX-clone for the professional market, then we're talking.

Btw, I love your avatar... Those new Hasselsony's might very well be Gangnam Style :D
 
My first reaction was disappointment - how could such a brand sink to such a product. Then I felt grateful that Leica didn't go down this path, as it so nearly could have in the days of the special edition M6's.

Then I thought about it some more. The comparison I would make is with the Vertu mobile phone. These phones have no more capability than the mass-market offerings but are finished in exotic materials and cost thousands. It's a successful, niche product offering and nobody else seems to have followed this model in photography, until now.

For some people out there even Leica is a bit too "common" or workmanlike and these custom finishes on a decent base camera will attract that group.

I wonder if Leica might regret they didn't actually follow this luxury market too?

At least it's a way these days of keeping the Hasselblad name alive and we can only hope that this will lead onto better cameras from them in the future.
 
Old man Haselblad is rolling over in his grave because of the styling of that one. I somehow think he would have preferred the spare, functional design of the original 500 series.
 
Interesting article regarding this:

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...were-not-robbing-people-off-with-lunar-camera

Hasselblad goes on the defensive, Apple philosophy anyone?

Hasselblad unveiled, yesterday, Lunar, an interchangeable lens camera that is strongly reminiscent of the Sony NEX 7 and uses the Japanese firm's technology from its sensor, to its image processor and lens mount.

The launch, which coincided with Hasselblad's announcement of its strategic partnership with Sony, has since been heavily denigrated with critics condemning Lunar's retail price of €5000, forcing Hasselblad to go on the defensive.
"We realise it's difficult to explain what we're trying to do when we launch something for the first time," Hasselblad's new business development manager Luca Alessandrini tells BJP. "After a little while, when you come out with more products, than people will start to understand. But in the beginning, when a product is coming out of the blue, it's a hard one," he admits.
At the origins of the project, which will see Hasselblad release a series of compact, digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras, is the question: "What does Hasselblad mean to people?" and "Which have been the key values of the company that have been around for 40 or 50 years that have kept people coming back?" says Alessandrini. And the answer is quality and durability, he explains. "We decided to look at what we could do with the Hasselblad range, and one thing was to go back to our heritage, which is to develop cameras for more people, while keeping the same values that made our company famous. For example, that involves using the best material available. In the 1950s, it was stainless steel, nowadays it can be carbon fiber; it can be solid aluminum. In this camera we're embedding our titanium controls; we're embedding our core values that in the past 15 years we've put into the H system."
He adds: "I've heard a lot of crazy things about this camera. People are talking about ‘rebranding'. I think rebranding is something really different than what we've done. We have, in this industry, many examples of what rebranding actually is," he says, referring to Leica and Panasonic. "In their cases, it's not a partnership, it's an Original Equipment Manufacturer process, because their cameras aren't really different. They use a different logo, but the cameras are made of the same material, are sprayed with the same paint and are assembled in the same factory with the same low-cost labour forces. It's not a partnership. What we're doing is creating different cameras. What we are doing is buying different components from the best suppliers and applying our knowledge and expertise to create a different camera. This is not a NEX 7 camera, just because we are buying components from Sony. The hardware is just a small part of the whole. It's not because we're using a Sony sensor that it makes the Lunar a Sony camera."
In fact, says Alessandrini, Hasselblad has an entire R&D team in Sweden that is actively working on the development of the Lunar camera. "For example, the camera's body is made of aluminum. It takes five hours to machine this down. You can only produce three or four a day and it costs €300. The same part, but made of plastic, would cost 35 cents. So, you could go to Asia and do a similar product for a few hundred Euros, but you would be using cheap materials. Or you could use the right materials and the right processes, but it will have to be priced at €5000, €6000 or €7000."
When it designed the Lunar camera, Hasselblad was also mindful of keeping the look and feel of the firm's flagship cameras. "If you take Canon, for example, all of their DSLRs look the same, but their Powershot have a completely different look, and the same is true of its mirrorless model. So, the question is: ‘What is the Canon style?' What we're doing is designing three cameras - a compact camera, a DSLR and a mirrorless - with the same style," Alessandrini tells BJP.
But, Hasselblad doesn't rule out adding more of its DNA into the camera's internal components. "We believe the sensor we are using, made by Sony, is exactly what we want. This sensor is magnificent. For now, we don't see any reason to modify this sensor. We want to do things only when we know we can do them better," says Alessandrini. "But this is just the first model we've done. Maybe the second or third model will be different. We launched this one now because we know that what we've been able to achieve here is enough to guarantee that this is a Hasselblad camera. If we were not sure about that, we would not have launched it."
And if Sony were to release a NEX 9, Hasselblad would not automatically use the camera's technology to unveil its own version, warns Alessandrini.
In the end, Hasselblad, with this new initiative, is hoping to attract a larger, and younger audience, to its range of cameras, says Stig-Nielsen. "I've been longing to talk to a younger audience of potential professional. And I really believe that the Sony name is familiar to this audience - Sony is in the gaming industry, the music industry; things that relate to a young generation. I think that the Sony brand and the Lunar product is going to help spread the message about what Hasselblad is."
And, adds Alesssandrini, Hasselblad is not forcing anyone to buy the Lunar camera. "We want to be very honest: we have a tradition of choosing the best materials for our cameras. People have the choice - they can like or not like this concept. But we're not robbing people off by making a huge profit on the camera. Our profit margin is the same than everyone else; we're just using more expensive materials."


Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...ng-people-off-with-lunar-camera#ixzz26vxzsj8v
Subscribe to BJP and save money. Click here to save 29% today.
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Sounds like special-order Leicas or Rolleis -- except someone else (Sony) is actually manufacturing it for Hassy. Bananas in my book, but I'm sure the money'ed collectors around the world will buy them...
 
The Dream: The Lunar is what would happen if an Nex7 and an Alpa were to get married and had babies

The reality: ...the Alpa changed its mind at the altar and the Nex had to make do with the cheap embrace of some leader-clad lady of ill repute which spawned a progeny of abomination pox-marked with H symbols
 
Austerby said:
My first reaction was disappointment - how could such a brand sink to such a product. Then I felt grateful that Leica didn't go down this path, as it so nearly could have in the days of the special edition M6's.

Then I thought about it some more. The comparison I would make is with the Vertu mobile phone. These phones have no more capability than the mass-market offerings but are finished in exotic materials and cost thousands. It's a successful, niche product offering and nobody else seems to have followed this model in photography, until now.

For some people out there even Leica is a bit too "common" or workmanlike and these custom finishes on a decent base camera will attract that group.

I wonder if Leica might regret they didn't actually follow this luxury market too?

At least it's a way these days of keeping the Hasselblad name alive and we can only hope that this will lead onto better cameras from them in the future.
Click to expand...

You should take a look at the Pana(leica)sonic cameras, plus what Leica did with Minolta in the late 80's early 90s. Leica has paved the way for over priced rebranded luxury products. Hasselblad in this regard is very late to the game.
 
The Leica versions of the Panasonic compact cameras aren't as bad an abuse as this Sony-Blad. The Leica D-Lux 6 ($799 at B&H) is based on the Panasonic LX-7 ($499), but for that $300 extra, you get Lightroom (seems to be about $135 on the street), so you get some of your money's worth. I still bought an LX-5 instead of the D-Lux 5, of course.
 
They should have named it "The Loony" instead of the "Lunar".
Clearly the whole medium format digital market is about to change and they are trying to get ahead of the curve, before it collapses.
Instead of styling, I wish that they had concentrated on making the camera work with legacy lenses, and a full range of attachments, like lens adapters, bellows systems, etc.
It would have been nice if they had advertised this as a switch out for a V system and/or H system camera and back.

Has anyone tried the Leica R lenses on the Sony NEX 7? (which is what this camera is based on) I am thinking of getting a Sony NEX 7 so I can use all of my Leica R glass on the street and traveling again.
 
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