On 8/28/2010 6:57 AM, Nicholas Herndon wrote:
>> You're kidding, right? They make what they think will sell and make them a
>> profit. The ones who survive are fairly good at that.
> I had a really long reply typed up, but I sounded like a bitter 70 year old
> man so I deleted it.
Sounds like a useful choice. Bitter isn't any fun. I'm not that far from 70,
but very far from bitter. :-)
> You're right, camera companies are just looking to make a profit, and making
> digital cameras that fail or are replaced every 2 or 3 years is an easy path
> to profit.
I don't see how rapid technological advances leading people to replace cameras
with newer, more capable ones is some
sort of intentional act on the part of the camera companies. It's not like they
could have made their current, or the
even more capable models of the future 10 years ago, and just chose not to.
Just from a personal perspective, I am sort of poor at getting rid of things
promptly. And with digital cameras, that
means they have no value by the time I'm willing to get rid of them. Yeah, I've
passed a couple on to family - still ...
So, I still have my first digicam, a couple of later ones and my first DSLR.
All of them still work fine; just tried out
my first, a Canon S110. Out of curiosity, I checked availability of a
replacement for it's proprietary battery, and it
is still available from Canon and at least two third party vendors. Wouldn't
discontinuing the battery be a classic
planned obsolescence move? The relatively ancient Oly D-460 Zoom that a friend
gave me, rather than throw away, still
works fine, too.
The Canon is slow enough to be a little annoying, but only a bit in good light,
and takes perfectly usable images. The
Oly is so slow to respond as to be unusable for me, other than as an
experiment, and the image quality is ,uh, kinda
soft and noisy, "vintage", I guess one might call it. I assume the 1.3mp Oly is
older than the 1.9mp Canon.
But I digress. The point is that I've only had one failure of a digicam, which
was promptly repaired free under
warranty. I just don't see any planned obsolescence, just the usual symptoms of
a young technology in a rapid growth phase.
> I remain convinced that Nikon could release an excellent dedicated 135/120
> scanner for about $1000 and still turn a profit, yet choose not to.
The former, sure, probably. The latter, I really doubt it. I've gone on and on
here before about the economics of mass
production. The up front costs are so high that large sales are needed to make
low prices profitable. Leica is an
example of another business model, low sales volume at high prices. As I said
before, Nikon could easily have continued
making and selling their latest models, if there were a profit in doing so.
With design and tooling costs already paid
for, their marginal unit costs must have been quite low, compared to starting
up with a new design, yet they dropped
them anyway. that says to me there was no profit in them.
> Why? Because it would be counterproductive. They might risk losing some of
> their consumer base to
> the used film market. But like you said Moose, those few users wouldn't be
> enough to make selling $1000 scanners more profitable than selling those same
> users 3 DSLRs each in 6 years. That's reality, and that's the business model
> that the big boys have chosen to follow.
Yeah, you do sound just a bit like a bitter 70 year old. ;-) Is this based on
personal experience, or just general old
fart ranting about change and perceived greed? Not that I say there isn't greed
in business, I've sure seen enough of
it, but the evidence is that the camera business is competitive enough that
individual companies don't have the luxury
of exercising it very much or very often.
Ask Minolta, twice acquired, then dropped, or Pentax, alive only through
acquisition. I believe Oly's been on the edge
more than once in the digital era.
My own experience is two DSLRs over six years. The 300D was a cheap experiment
to see if a DSLR would work for me. It
still works fine, but only gets used for quick shots where I need on camera
flash and traveling about with me as a
back-up. The 5D was a carefully considered purchase over four years ago. It's
still a highly functional and capable
camera, still working like new almost 11,000 shots later. The only reason I'm
considering another DSLR (add-on, not
replacement) is new features/functions, like live view, HD video and
articulated screen, not any functional failure in
the 5D.
Some people simply enjoy rolling over their gear, and not just in photography.
Some make buying decisions based on
emotion and/or inadequate effort to match camera capabilities to their needs.
Some people's needs change. Surely you
know, especially as a member of this list, that those factors were at work long
before digital.
If people choose to buy cameras more often than otherwise necessary through
inappropriate choices, gear fetishes,
etc., I hardly see as the fault of the camera makers (or car makers, etc.)
Sure, they encourage us through advertising,
but we are responsible for our own purchasing decisions.
I really think you mis-estimate the relative sizes of the film and digital
markets. In photography, as in all mass
markets, you only can be a "big boy" if you follow the mass market/production
business model. You can be big and high
volume - or small and low volume. Film is now "spit in the ocean" size, and
simply not practical for the big boys.
It may not even be practical for the little guys. Leica has suspended
production of film cameras, due to too large an
inventory build-up, in favor of using limited resources to produce the better
selling digital models. They don't say how
big the inventory problem is, but that film production will be started up again
when needed. It's possible it never will
be needed, with NOS (new old stock) filling demand until demand is too low to
justify restarting production. All OM-3Ti
and 4Ti sale for years were NOS.
Many wise people over the millennia have said that a key to a long, happy life
is to become at least comfortable,
preferably happy, with what is, not being unhappy because what one would like
to be, is not.
Moose
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