Why have the Russians never made digital cameras?

rbiemer said:
You can have her back now. Please.

KMZ have looked at making digital cameras; a couple or three years ago there was talk of a digital Narciss, there is a thread around here somewhere about it.
And there is this page about a proposed digital Zenit:http://www.zenitcamera.com/qa/qa-digital.html
The google translation of it reads (in part):


Apparently there was a digital Horizon shown at Photokina in 2010--a joint venture with Silvestri according to the page linked to above.

Rob
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That was interesting reading ... according to what I can work out (Babel Fish translation) the last Zenit project they were working on that ended in 2004 was an 8 megapixel full frame DSLR!
 
As I was born and used to live on that part of iron curtain (in one of Baltic countries) I probably see things in a little bit different light... Yes, soviets used to have quite strong military industry as this was top priority during the cold war. All R&D results that were related to military engineering were used in other (consumer) areas where applicable. But when it comes to consumer products it was probably easier to copy from capitalist (intellectual property concept obviously was not heard of as we even did not have private property concept at that time!). When communist regime collapsed and free market came to town then it was all different... One can have all brightest and most intellectual minds in the world, but it's not about it, it's about having competitive business model. Which was not the case and it will not be the case for quite some time. R&D is expensive, it takes money and time to create something really innovative and market successfully. And money was (and is) used to buy top football clubs in England or villas in south France or yachts... Competitive business mentality is simply not there and Russians even not going that direction. It's natural resources dependent economy. There are plenty Nikons, Canons, Leicas so why bother?
 
Canada, hmmm, just off the top of my head, has given us actors Mary Pickford and Glenn Ford, many great musicians (Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, just to name a few) and many, many great hockey players, including The Great One, who played (ever so briefly) in my hometown of Indianapolis (look it up). And although one of my favorite detective fiction writers, Kenneth Millar (better known as Ross Macdonald) was born in the U.S. and lived most of his life in America, he spent his formative years in Canada.

I have no idea if or why Russia hasn't made any digital cameras.
 
What does the work "make" mean anyway in producing a digital camera? Is there any country in the world besides Japan that makes cameras with only locally produced components? Perhaps Kodak is an exception but their rubbish cameras are not worth talking about. Did I forget an important non Japanese brand or is the production of sensors already taken over by chinese manufacturers?
 
bobby_novatron said:
Ultimately, I think the Soviet Union's collapse was fueled by their desire to spend a huge amount of their GNP on the arms race, and also by the wide-spread inefficiency.
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As for why they never made digital cameras, I suspect it's because consumer digital cameras are gadgets par excellence, with a short life, and the Japanese are arguably the most gadget-addicted nation in the world. Who other than the Japanese has had any great success with mass-market digital cameras? (Not counting telephone cameras.) Why compete with established, successful manufacturers?

Cheers,

R.
 
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Maybe because they are like the US they are arguing about politics too much to produce anything.
The Chinese are making all of the digital cameras while buying up all the Leicas. It's a conspiracy I say.
 
The Russians never got started, no disrespect, but not many others apart from the Japanese and the Koreans did either. Even the US companies didn't really establish themselves in the market properly, they are all but out of business. How Kodak managed to squander away their head start is still a mystery to me. I'd say the only country capable of taking up competition with the two big ones is China, they have the necessary know-how and too much money to spend. Niche upmarket products may arise from the old world countries, the US and Canada, Oz and NZ, but there'd need to be another paradigm shift for any of these to be able to enter the consumer market in a big way.

I'd say the Russians did the right thing and not enter a business they were doomed to lose money on.
 
There is a nice story from the US-Russian race to the orbit. In the beginning of the space missions there was no ball-pen that was able to write in zero-gravity. US industry invested millions of dollars to build a ball-pen that solved this problem. The russians simply took a pencil up into space. Cost nothing. What is smarter engineering solution?
 
Keith, are you kidding us? Are you speaking about same country which hasn't managed to build their own car? I'm not speaking about LADA's originating from old FIAT design, nor GAZ models with implanted Japanese engines. Well, they have some domestic cars but you probably wouldn't call 'em cars, as you are used to know what is a car. But locals say their road conditions may be so rough that imported cars often can't cope with them, so simpler and cheaper local cars are better solution.

Country, building space stations, fighter jets and pumping gas, depends on car and electronics imports. Once USSR started to lag in civil fields, they lost their chances to recover. But after USSR collaped, I think there's no much reason to duplicate mass market electronics industry when it already exists.

But what is interesting - when BMW built assembling factory in Kaliningrad, they soon discovered engineers working on assembly lines give best quality among all their plants. It's approved fact Russians can be very good when they want. Issue is most of times they have their own mind.
 
tom.w.bn said:
There is a nice story from the US-Russian race to the orbit. In the beginning of the space missions there was no ball-pen that was able to write in zero-gravity. US industry invested millions of dollars to build a ball-pen that solved this problem. The russians simply took a pencil up into space. Cost nothing. What is smarter engineering solution?
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As much as I like it, the story is an urban legend. In the beginning, everybody used pencils. However in zero gravity pencils are a problem, because graphite is both flammable and conductive and you inevitably have small particles floating into your electronics. Pencils are therefore a rather bad engineering solution, and the Russians quite early switched to grease pencils. Fisher developed their Space Pen on their own initiative and then quite successfully sold it both to NASA and to the Soviet Union, because it was, in fact, the smarter engineering solution.
 
tom.w.bn said:
There is a nice story from the US-Russian race to the orbit. In the beginning of the space missions there was no ball-pen that was able to write in zero-gravity. US industry invested millions of dollars to build a ball-pen that solved this problem. The russians simply took a pencil up into space. Cost nothing. What is smarter engineering solution?
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We must all know that is a myth by now 😛

Both used to use pencils, the pen was developed indepentenly by a private company and sold to both the US and Soviet space agencies.

(But it is a nice story)
 
rxmd said:
As much as I like it, the story is an urban legend. In the beginning, everybody used pencils. However in zero gravity pencils are a problem, because graphite is both flammable and conductive and you inevitably have small particles floating into your electronics. Pencils are therefore a rather bad engineering solution, and the Russians quite early switched to grease pencils. Fisher developed their Space Pen on their own initiative and then quite successfully sold it both to NASA and to the Soviet Union, because it was, in fact, the smarter engineering solution.
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I hate it, when reality beats a nice story. 😱
 
Actually, there is an FSU digital camera in the pipeline. I saw it at photokina. It's a new Horizont (honestly!) designed in association with Silvestri and built at KMZ. Three 10-megapixel sensors, three lenses; and software to stitch the three together. There was only one working prototype at the show but Frances and I had our picture taken with it. It looks weird (the lenses are on the inside of the curve) but it's a wonderful idea. Dunno where they buy the sensors, though.

Cheers,

R.
 
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