Mamiya folding it's tent.
Here's a question for you - what camera companies will be left ten years from now?
The two obvious ones of course: Canon, Nikon.
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Okay - I'm going to start a list of defunct camera companies. I'm still a little groggy from yesterday so let me know who I forgot so far. What about Fuji? Does Kodak still make cameras?
DEAD CAMERA COMPANY LIST
5 comments:
Fuji will still exist as they are the only company trying to further sensor technology as is stands. Sony will become a big player with its next digital slr. Nikon's sensors will be thrown into the dustbin where they belong. Canon? who knows, they have the public's attention at the moment, but they need to sort that 'Canon' look to their digital camera images.
My money is on Sony. As a long shot of course:)
Canon, Sony....and Leica, of course ;-)
My money's still on Zorki, Comrades!
That is fascinating so far - do you mean that you all can see the day when Nikon will stop making cameras? Couldn't they buy their chips from Canon or Sony? (Just kidding). I suppose it makes sense. You have to be an "electronic" chipmaster company in order to be in the digital camera business.
Who'll be left? Probably Canon, Sony, Fuji, and possibly Nikon (but I wouldn't put money on them).
Nikon gets its sensors from Sony. Sony's DSC-R1 all-in-one zoom digiwunder uses a sensor almost identical to the one they sell to Nikon for its topof the line D2X. And they also supply the chips for the D50, D70s, D200 and many digis Nikon sells. Pentax and others too. If Sony is serious about competing in the DSLR business, they could help themselves at the expense of future chip sales by reserving all new advanced sensor chips for themselves. Nikon could go elsewhere but the choices are quite limited.
Like Sony and Canon, Fuji makes its own chips, and their chips have advantages in dynamic range over typical sensor chips. Something like 2-3 stops according to tests of the (soon to be replaced) S3, for example. And Fuji essentially makes Hasselblad gear (DSLR, XPan) now too.
Pentax is allied with Samsung and, like Mamiya, is extremely late in coming out with a medium format digital camera. Expect a merger, or a Minolta/Mamiya-like bow-out.
As long as medium format film, especially b&w, offers superior dynamic range and tonality, it will remain in (comparatively limited) use by artists. And as film withers away, the snob appeal for it will linger, don't discount that. But we're likely to see more use of hard-to-kill decades-old film gear being used for those purposes, and most film-based cameras will disappear, by public indifference.
- Jerry
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