The Flying Pig

[Gumby]

The Monochrome Sensor- kind of like Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, just make the BLT but leave the Dye out of the Mosaic Filter.

I think it would be even easier than that.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Other manufacturers made film cameras that cost less than a Leica, so why is it fantasy to wish for the same with digital? There are cameras equally as good as and with similar specs to the X1 available much more cheaply than that Leica.

Two words: market size.

Once, there were many fixed-lens RFs. They ceased to be profitable, and disappeared. As far as I know, not one remains, though someone will probably prove me wrong.

The market for digital RFs is now so tiny that (I suspect) the only way to meet it is by making a very expensive camera.

Are there that many cameras similar to the X1, notably with an APS-C sensor? The obvious competitor is the X100, and it may well be that the X100 is closer to what people want, and closer to what people can afford. We'll see when it actually comes out. But I can't really think of any others that are as compact and that are conventionally laid out. "Conventional layout" reduces the size of the market too, but some people want it -- enough people to make it worth while.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Gumby]

Another approach, of course, is for "someone" to 'build the market' rather than respond to the existing market. Risky... but that tactic has worked before.

Most people don't understand the complexities and cost, both engineering and manufacturing, of most "why don't they make..." questions.

What I don't understand with regard to mono digital is why "someone" doesn't put out a camera that has the software to acceptable output monochrome. Why don't they just set the software on an exisiting product to "monochrome" and sell it to people who want it?

 

[ferider]

Yep. Why doesn't anybody make a full frame digital titanium rangefinder for US 19k ? I want one. I guess the market size is too small, anything less than US 22k would be a pig in the wind ...

🙂

 

[sig]

Not a lot of development/progress would happen if nobody asked 'Why don't they make'.........

 

[Pablito]

Plastics.........

 

[Gumby]

Not a lot of development/progress would happen if nobody asked 'Why don't they make'.........

Very true!

But what tends to stymie new developments is when the requirements are stated so design or implementation specific that there is not enough solution space.

Inquisitive enqiries are a good thing, generally, otherwise nobody knows what the market might need.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Take a few giant steps backward and remember some great, if not legendary, photos made years ago with camera bodies, lenses and film that we would scoff at today. Many of us would simply believe we could not make a good photo if those old tools were all we had to work with.

Have all these technological advancements actually improved photographs? Or, just cameras?

 

[wgerrard]

The dream seems to be that technology will make the unaffordable, affordable. But, there is also the myopia that forums like this create, causing us to imagine that there is a large potential market for things that few really want. 🙂

Sometimes people seem to think "If I dream it, someone else can do it." Of course, that's not true. Little poodles might dream of being big Labradors, but it's not going to happen. It's fine to dream about a $2000 version of the M9. Few here, I suspect, would object to its arrival on the market. But, to blame that dream's lack of fulfillment on vendors who could, if only they would, make a $2000 M9 is a leap into unreason, for lack of a better word. If any of us know where to get full-frame sensors cheap enough to allow a camera to come in under $2000, maybe we ought to get into the camera-making business.

The myopia enabled by the net and other contemporary media is very real. Everyone is narrowcasting, and we can pick and choose sources that are in perfect and unchallenging accord with our own biases and proclivities. That creates a reality distortion field, to steal a phrase, because it is so easy to assume that the tiny slice of voices you listen to represent the rest of the people on the planet.

My own expectation? Digital technology in photography will continue to follow the same path as other digital products, albeit more slowly due to the smaller market. That is, we will see something like a bell curve, with very cheap products using older tech along the lower left side. Cutting edge high tech goodies at very steep prices will populate the lower right side. The top of the curve will be populated by products ordinary mortals will buy. The important thing is that prices will remain more or less steady at each point, while the technology available at those prices improves.

So, will we be able to buy a full-frame digital RF for less than $7000? Very probably, but who knows how much less. Will new technology, especially in sensors, EVF's, and autofocus, eventually make pining after a digital RF with a sensor as big as a 35mm frame just a bit passé? Almost certainly.

 

[damien.murphy]

The market for digital RFs is now so tiny that (I suspect) the only way to meet it is by making a very expensive camera.

Roger,

I think you underestimate the market for digital rf cameras.

As long as professional dslr's remain the size they do, I imagine there will always be a decent-sized portion of that market that wish for a smaller, but fully capable camera. This group is far larger than the typical rf-user market, and with the right price point (ie not M9 $9,000 price point), these people could all be digital rangefinder shooters, I suspect.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, pricing a product so highly that only a small portion of your potential market can afford it, and then claiming that there is no market for the product. That sort of thinking would have us all believing film is dead! 🙂

 

[damien.murphy]

If any of us know where to get full-frame sensors cheap enough to allow a camera to come in under $2000, maybe we ought to get into the camera-making business.

Why not ask Nikon - they sell full-frame D700's for less than $2400 (B&H)

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger,

I think you underestimate the market for digital rf cameras.

As long as professional dslr's remain the size they do, I imagine there will always be a decent-sized portion of that market that wish for a smaller, but fully capable camera. This group is far larger than the typical rf-user market, and with the right price point (ie not M9 $9,000 price point), these people could all be digital rangefinder shooters, I suspect.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, pricing a product so highly that only a small portion of your potential market can afford it, and then claiming that there is no market for the product. That sort of thinking would have us all believing film is dead! 🙂

Dear Damien,

This is of course entirely possible, but equally, there must be quite widespread agreement among manufacturers or I suspect we'd have seen an M9 competitor by now. The fact that the X1 and X100 do go head-to-head, with the X100 currently looking better on paper, though not actually available, argues that this style of camera is much closer to the market among those 'that wish for a smaller, but fully capable camera'.

The probem is that we're dealing with unknowns, rather than with self-fulfilling prophecies. Leica couldn't make the M9 a lot cheaper: they'd need vastly more automation, a bigger work force, a totally different business model. No-one else does make an M9 competitor, which suggests to me that they don't see any money in it, at any price. It would have to be quite a lot cheaper than a Leica, or people would find the extra money to buy a camera from a manufacurer less likely to be 'here today, gone tomorrow' at least in the DRF market).

Along, presumably, with the manufacturers, I am far from convinced that it is financially feasible to bring a DRF in at the necessarily low price.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, I think your question must be rhetorical. You may hardly be blamed as you've spent a long time in a state of love and I suspect it has softened and opened your heart. These are good attributes.


A generalization: men (and perhaps women too) who struggle in endeavors where success is not clearly defined will sometimes retreat into competencies more easily measured. I do not confuse technical mastery with this form of retreat. But this form of mental retreat allows concepts to be developed as rationale. The rationale allows for excuse-making avoidance of the task at hand: producing work. In our case, photographs. It is distraction by fantasy or delusion and it is perhaps one of the ego's best-used techniques to avoid the hard work of producing photographs (or anything else for that matter). Absorption in the process, whether Tai Chi or photography or cooking, subsumes the ego. It doesn't like that.

Maybe.

Perhaps we might, just as an exercise, divide the user group into two camps. One uses the gear they have, doing the best the can while wishing they had better. The other, produces nothing because they "don't have the right tools". Or produces less than they are able under the same speciousness. The reality is most people fall somewhere in the spectrum rather than at the extremes, if you will.

Maybe.

Men love metrics. Another generalization, but of all the female photographers I know (I restrict this definition to those who are producing completed works), and their number is somewhat greater than a dozen, only one of them engages in the "why don't they make..." litany. Of the males in the same line of work, a significantly greater proportion of them can tell you not only about the cameras that they have but the one that they "really wish they had", existent or not. I leave the implication where it lies. It is hardly scientific but it's all I have.

One notable exception amongst the male photographers I know is perhaps the most successful - all he knows about is the cameras that he uses and he knows them inside out, fingers moving across the controls, eye rarely leaving the viewfinder. He shoots digital but if you have a discussion with him about photography the camera is never mentioned other than his dictum that you must understand the camera so completely that you can operate it unconsciously. You must understand the camera you have - not the one that "they really should make...". He too has been softened and opened by long association with his lover.

Lest that provoke other readers to the folly of derision, this particular photographer came in second place in the U.S. heavyweight karate championships held at Madison Square Garden. In his hometown. Mid 1960s. While working full time as a commercial photographer. He is now an éminence grise, and not solely as a photographer though his body of work keeps growing and he keeps improving. Perhaps it is because he was trained as an painter and, as far as I can tell, always maintained a fine art practice, that his focus is on light rather than the black box we push it through.

Maybe.

Or it could simply be the technological musings of the technologically adept.

Maybe.

Generalizations. But we are talking about a group of people.

Best,

Shane

Dear Shane,

Whew! A magnificent epistle -- but too much to answer. All that I can say is that I am sure you are right about 'concept as rationale'; about the absence of the 'ideal tool' as an excuse for not actually engaging in the job; and about the greater willingness of women to use what they have, or can afford, or merely is available (says he whose wife has four sewing machines).

As you say, they're all generalizations, but what else have we?

Cheers,

R.

 

[damien.murphy]

Dear Damien,

This is of course entirely possible, but equally, there must be quite widespread agreement among manufacturers or I suspect we'd have seen an M9 competitor by now. The fact that the X1 and X100 do go head-to-head, with the X100 currently looking better on paper, though not actually available, argues that this style of camera is much closer to the market among those 'that wish for a smaller, but fully capable camera'.

The probem is that we're dealing with unknowns, rather than with self-fulfilling prophecies. Leica couldn't make the M9 a lot cheaper: they'd need vastly more automation, a bigger work force, a totally different business model. No-one else does make an M9 competitor, which suggests to me that they don't see any money in it, at any price. It would have to be quite a lot cheaper than a Leica, or people would find the extra money to buy a camera from a manufacurer less likely to be 'here today, gone tomorrow' at least in the DRF market).

Along, presumably, with the manufacturers, I am far from convinced that it is financially feasible to bring a DRF in at the necessarily low price.

Cheers,

R.

We agree on a few points, Roger. I don't think Leica are the ones that have the capability or desire to offer a lower cost digital rangefinder.

Likewise, amongst the market, many of the imaginative camera manufacturers are no longer around, and the likes of Canonikon have neither the desire nor imagination to bring a digital rf camera to market. If they did so, it might very well be counterproductive to their dslr sales.

The company that can make this happen actually, would be Sony. Eager to dine at the top table, Sony has both the clout and sensors to produce the low cost digital rangefinder many yearn for.

Surprised we haven't seen anything from them in this space, as something like a low cost digital rf to go after the dslr customer base, is the only way I can see them forcing their way to the top of the photographic market.

 

[wgerrard]

Roger,


As long as professional dslr's remain the size they do, I imagine there will always be a decent-sized portion of that market that wish for a smaller, but fully capable camera. This group is far larger than the typical rf-user market, and with the right price point (ie not M9 $9,000 price point), these people could all be digital rangefinder shooters, I suspect.

I'm not so sure. Rangefinders were readiily available in the heyday of the film SLR, yet we did not see a big swing away from them.

I think it is much more likely that we will see a "smaller, but fully capable camera" that steals customers away from both the DSLR and the RF markets. M4/3 and similar technology are steps along that road. Remember, too, "fully capable camera" does not have to mean a camera with a 35mm-sized sensor.

 

[Roger Hicks]

A general note: thanks very much to everyone who has posted. I just don't have tme reply to everyone, but from the last few posts I especially liked:

Pickett Wilson's The dream seems to be that technology will make the unaffordable, affordable. But, there is also the myopia that forums like this create, causing us to imagine that there is a large potential market for things that few really want

Shane's a lot of dreaming is on the order of "I don't want to pay what it's worth", or "I don't want to work that hard."

ed's what tends to stymie new developments is when the requirements are stated so design or implementation specific that there is not enough solution space

Bill's Sometimes people seem to think "If I dream it, someone else can do it." Of course, that's not true. Little poodles might dream of being big Labradors, but it's not going to happen. It's fine to dream about a $2000 version of the M9. Few here, I suspect, would object to its arrival on the market. But, to blame that dream's lack of fulfillment on vendors who could, if only they would, make a $2000 M9 is a leap into unreason, for lack of a better word. If any of us know where to get full-frame sensors cheap enough to allow a camera to come in under $2000, maybe we ought to get into the camera-making business.

The myopia enabled by the net and other contemporary media is very real. Everyone is narrowcasting, and we can pick and choose sources that are in perfect and unchallenging accord with our own biases and proclivities. That creates a reality distortion field, to steal a phrase, because it is so easy to assume that the tiny slice of voices you listen to represent the rest of the people on the planet

Cheers,

R.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Why? because it is fun. Why should the uninformed hopes and speculation of anyone be stoppered simply because of impossibility? I can't think of a reason.

 

[wgerrard]

Why not ask Nikon - they sell full-frame D700's for less than $2400 (B&H)

I take the lack of a digital RF from Nikon as pretty good evidence that they've decided they can get a better return on their money by not making one, no matter what the sensor might cost them.

That's not Nikon being hostile to RF fans. It's Nikon going where it thinks the profit is.

 

[antiquark]

One thing people often forget in their cost analysises (sp?) is the NRE, or non-recurring engineering cost of a product. It can add a lot to the final cost.

For example, the M9 might have needed 10 engineers developing it for a year, maybe the NRE cost was $2,000,000. That has to be factored into the product price. So if Leica hopes to recover the NRE after selling 1000 units, that's an additional $2000 per unit.

That's one reason mass sellers like DSLRs can go cheaper, because the NRE can be spread across a larger productoin run of cameras. There's more to a price than just the raw materials!

 

[damien.murphy]

I'm not so sure. Rangefinders were readiily available in the heyday of the film SLR, yet we did not see a big swing away from them.

I think it is much more likely that we will see a "smaller, but fully capable camera" that steals customers away from both the DSLR and the RF markets. M4/3 and similar technology are steps along that road. Remember, too, "fully capable camera" does not have to mean a camera with a 35mm-sized sensor.

There is a large difference between the size of slr's in the 60's vs the size of dslr's currently. Not so much of a difference between a Nikon F1/2/3 and a Leica M, but Leica M vs D700/D3/5D/1DS is quite a gulf in size.

Re: M4/3, I agree, fully capable does not have to mean a 35mm-sized sensor, but I think as good as sensor performance can get, there is an element of the DSLR pro market that are used to MF-like quality from their full-frame slr, and this is more likely to be met by a small full-frame camera than a best in class M4/3 camera. Just my opinion though.