Mamiya Calls it Quits?

[jon b]

Anyone know if this Cosmos is the same company that bailed out Mamiya in the early 80s?

[p_l_jensen]

I don't believe it is possible to survive a niche player in an industry where million dollar investment is needed for every major product upgrade. Medium format was protected by a slow upgrade cycle and lack of demand of expensive technology. This does not hold true for digital.

What we see now is the same trend as with the intruction of electronics into cameras in the mid 70's. More than 50% of the japanese manufacturers, all the smaller ones, called it the day. But now the trend is amplified.

Digital cameras cost typically about $20 000 000 to develop. I seriously doubt that any such venture can be undertaken with anyone with niche status.

[p_l_jensen]

"It is getting harder to justify medium format photography economically"

 

 

I think is wrong to consider digital with sensor larger than 35mm as medium format photography or indeed create any artificial distinction between such a camera and other DSLR's. The only difference between a 35mm based dSLR and a MF based DSLR is that the latter take lenses with larger image circle to accomodate the larger sensor. This is the way to think about it and the way for MF digital to succeed. When such digital solution scan be had at prices with a cost/hassle factor that is acceptable and within reach for the advanced amateur, then I see no reason why they should not live happy side by side like 35mm and MF did in the film days.

Of course there may be a point where larger sensors start to loose sense due to the law of diminishing returns, but i doubt this limit goes with 35mm. I think it fundamentally is a question of cost.

[p_l_jensen]

"Nikon may still be making money and I don't think they are in immediate danger of collapse but they have lost quite a bit of ground and you never know what may happen years down the road"

 

 

I keep reading variations of the theme that Nikon isn't what they used to be and are loosing ground rearding slr's. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is that Nikon is in a better state now than ever. When I strted with photography in the mid 70's Nikon might have been the cameramans camera but they were almsot a niche player and sold fewer cameras than Pentax, Canon, Minolta and Olympus. In additions, their cameras were old fashioned and technologically 2-5 years behind the competition.

According to brand specialists, Nikon is today the most valuable brand name in photography. No one else comes even close. They have increased the market share by several magnitudes and produce the worlds most sold SLR. They have turned form a conservative company mostly into sound mechanical engineering into a market leader in elctronics and dSLR development.

Due to Nikons brand strenght I believe that Canon is more vulnerable from the coming assault fron giants like Sony and Panasonic.

[pics]

Really? I'm under the impression that Canon has being running the table ever since switching to the EF mount. Currently the buying public has a fetish for megapixels and full frame sensors with Canon practically being a one man show and Nikon doesn't seem very interested in this which could be costing them followers. I'm not defending Canon (I don't even shoot digital) but I wouldn't exactly say Nikon is poised for the top spot anytime soon and there seem to be a number of people turning to Canon for high end digital and away from Nikon and other brands. Nikon certainly has value in its name brand and produces products of very high quality but considering the number of competent photo manufacturers in trouble right now it isn't the only recipe for success.

[sattler123]

I too believe that Nikon's best years are behind them! Many Pros switched long ago because of the long lenses Canon offered them - Nikon lost out gig time on that. Nikon's biggest problem right now is the lag of a FF sensor. I have used Nikon gear for the past 20 years (as an amateur) and just recently switched to Canon for the 5D. It is NOT about the pixel count, but rather the fact that a FF digital camera allows you to use true wide angle lenses and the viewfinder is a world apart from other DSLRs - just go to any dealer and handle the camera. I shoot mostly film (Mamiya 645, and LF 4x5 and 8x10, but I totally abandoned 35mm - the 5D's output goes way beyond anything 35mm film can do. I am concerned that Canon might become the only major player in the camera business and then we are all in trouble. I hope that Nikon can catch up, but the fact that they depend on others for their sensors makes them vulnerable.

[p_l_jensen]

Theres no contradiction in both Nikon and Canon doing well. Both Nikon and Canon have increased their market share in the last 20 years or so but they haven't done it at the expense of each other.

[dimartino]

It is obvious that digital is now the dominant force in photography and I don't see medium format film making a come back. If your average pro photographer can spend much less on a 35mm based dslr and produce a sellable product, then why would they spend money on film? Not to mention medium format based digital. Hassie, Phase one and Mamiya ZD amoung others may soon be on the verge of extiction if they can't make a more economic competitor to the Canon's and Nikon's that can produce a 20x24 portrait of a family who doesn't know the difference in tonality and just wants something to hang over the mantle. The pro-sumer market is all locked up with soccer mom's buying up D50's and Rebel xt's which make the higher end market even that much more removed. Medium format film like large format will only be left to the advanced ametures and the artists.

[chaitanya_das_tamayo]

i guess this forum is on it's last leg then, huh?

[rjacksonphoto]

I have seen the future of medium format and it is... the Holga! ;-)

[glenbarrington]

"i guess this forum is on it's last leg then, huh?"

 

I think so, oh, it will be a slow decline, but a real decline. Forums like this require new developments to stay active. You can only discuss old equipment for so long before everything gets said. I just don't believe MF manufacturers (Hasselblad, Rollei,and let's pretend Pentax is still in the game) can sell enough units in the fuure to justify continued new development or even to pretend they are active via press releases.

[q.g._de_bakker]

Glen,<br><br>I think Pentax is still more 'in the game' than Rollei.<br><br>New developments will be towards smaller cameras. Medium format will never be used (though the current 35 mm format is a little bit too small), so there is no need for large and heavy, and pricy, cameras and lenses. That's not just a technical consideration, but also what 'the market' is signalling.<br><br>Whether the remaining manufacturers will manage to switch to something that will sell better is highly doubtful. Developing a new, competitive product costs too much, and the low sales of current, 'wrong', products do not provide the necessary funds.<br>Out-sourcing, and moving production to low income countries may help a bit (though that too costs money to begin with). But probably not enough.<br>What's left is the value of the trademark. 'Branding'. The thing investors like so much, and so the thing that will indeed attract money from that 'neck of the woods'. But that will not help much either: investors are not really interested in camera systems (see "Rollei").<br>So some trademarks will soon outlive the products that put the value in the trademark to begin with, and it will not be long again before people do not know the brands as anything but ones seen on imitation iPods etc. I think the trademarks will deflate very, very fast, and then disappear for ever.

[Andrew in Austin]

<p><i>"i guess this forum is on it's last leg then, huh?"</i></p>

 

<p>Last leg or a different leg ??? For an example of a different leg, take a look at the both the Classic Camera and the Large format forums.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

Well, larger cameras are needed for when quality requirements are high. It's as simple as that. At present large digital sensors are expensive but once that problem is solved, there will be a nice niche market for quality-concious photographers.

 

In any case medium format film is so much nicer than digital that at least I plan to use film in my Mamiya for close to as long as I live, hopefully another 40 years of active photography. I'm sure I will be able to find the equipment to work with.

[randall cherry]

Hmmmmm, my first urge on hearing this news is to dump film and finally go digital. But then, I check prices of digital outfits capable of image quality similar to a Mamiya 7II, and my jaw drops.

 

My next urge then becomes to buy another new Mamiya 7II to add to my rig before any possible tightening of the supply during the corporate transistion.

 

--Randall

[ilkka_nissila]

I'm really curious how people "dump" film and "go" digital, doesn't the difference in the way in the image is formed bother you at all? At least for me, I'll have to use both as they fit different subjects. It's not like one was a replacement for the other. For commercial work, where only money matters digital may indeed be a replacement but for personal work or fine art they are different arts which result in different images.

[paul_wilson2]

Ilkka, how? How does digital (or film) suit one subject but not another? I've heard that before but I'm not convinced I buy it. Now if you say you can get more resolution out of your 6x7 Mamiya and that's what you want, that makes sense. If someone likes the look of a particular B&W film, that makes sense too. Excepting those two situations, I can't see how digital doesn't beat film. The first situation is largely remedied by having lots of money.

[randall cherry]

Ilkka,

 

Except for my little Canon digital P&S (which works remarkable well, BTW), I have no experience in digital image capture.

 

But I have seen digital images (produced with very expensive digital cameras) which looked great to my eye. Thus, I assume that I too could produce technically good digital images with sufficient practice and $ expenditure.

 

Although digital and film may produce prints with a different look, I have no general preference for one look over the other. Admittedly, one look may be preferable over the other in certain situations, but that is a nuance which I choose not to control since I am a humble amature and simplicity and reduced costs are important factors to me.

 

--Randall

[lightminer]

Medium format needs a $3000 8 or 10 MP (say 80% coverage) digital back... Wouldn't that fundamentally change everything for MF? Why doens't someone do this?

 

Who cares about 39-MegaPixel-for-$39,000 dollars when the whole industry is dying?

[lightminer]

I think I'll actually start a new thread with that question as it seems quite important at this juncture...

[ilkka_nissila]

I have not shot medium format digital but have looked at many published portraits done with MF and 35 mm digital and personally I feel much of the liveliness of film photos is gone, it's just clinical, "dead", copy of the subject, or a mannequin like replica. That's just me? I've talked to many photographers about it and some agree (after seeing my film and digital work over a period of time, many of my non-photographer friends also agree with me).

 

Now the question is: how much of this is sentimental attachment to the way a film-based photograph looks, and how much is simply that film-based imaging has evolved over a longer time and is in some ways more sophisiticated. I believe it's a bit of both. Also, I like to see some texture in images, which is not from the subject but somehow characterises the work as a photograph.

 

In addition to these, there are some objective advantages. Film has no long-exposure noise (although there is some color shift) unlike digital. Film allows you to choose different spectral sensitivities for the different colors by choosing a different film (this affects how certain wavelengths of light are rendered). For example, when I take a night photo of the Boston skyline, with my digital camera (Nikon D200 or D70) all the light sources seem to have similar colour. So the images look monotonous or close to that. When I pick E100G in my film camera, different light sources seem to produce much more separate colors in the final slide. I assume this has to do with different spectral sensitivities. Also, you can choose films such as Infrared Ektachrome which produces false-color infrared images. These things can be emulated with digital but you need a separate Bayer filter array for each set of spectral sensitivities you want to achieve. Not economically feasible unless you work in research for a sensor manufacturer.

 

What is important to me personally is that film allows me to decouple the imaging from the lenses and cameras. These are separate and I can pick and mix them as I like (though some lenses won't fit some cameras, obviously but film and lens can be mixed independently). With digital because of the cost of DSLRs let alone MF backs, you practically can not do this. All that you can do is use software algorithms to produce different looks, which doesn't give as much freedom in some respects as using different films and processing the scans digitally before printing.

 

Other things: film always gives you a hard copy original which you don't need to remember to backup constantly (this I find quite stressful although I haven't lost many images yet). Slides are much faster to sort on a light table and select the good ones from than digital RAW files on a computer (given reasonably high res files). The raw conversion business takes me just as much time as scanning although because low-ISO digital files have no noise to speak of, there is more freedom for adjustments - you don't get grain in the shadows unlike with film.

 

Also, film cameras exist in greater variety and viewfinders as a rule are better, especially assuming I'm not super rich. Wide angles of the Mamiya 7 stopped down a bit give comparable image quality to teles, which is phenomenal. On my digital (D200) wide angles are in general much worse than teles in terms of image quality. Perhaps this will change, but I am seeing a trend that people do more tele work and I've seen very little high quality wide angle work on digital. I'm not surprised by that, what surprises me to no end is that people accept this as the new state of the art.

 

Believe me, I have tried to like my digital SLRs, and I use them a lot (I've shot 4200 shots on my D200 in a month which is a lot for an amateur like me). I love them for some pics, like nature close-ups, tele landscapes, etc. while I much prefer film for people photography (apart from very long lenses where digital is more convenient and higher quality), night shots, fireworks, all black and white work (a conventional glossy black and white print from a 6x7 negative is a thing of beauty which is IMO unapproached by anything digital), and all wide angle work. I have worked hard to optimize my images for printing and yet the prints from digital capture often are left behind, unemotional, uninteresting, clinical. Obviously I recognize the ease of digital (no need to carry different film types for every picture, or worry about dust, adjust difficult out-of-gamut colors in slide scans etc.) but ... the end result is just unsatisfactory to me. Now before you criticize my printing skills, I feel the same way about digitally captured images in magazines, fine art books and some people who really know the technical side of photography have said that my print quality is excellent (don't mean to brag, just to point out that I'm not a beginner in digital printing).

 

Obviously I have no experience with $30000 digital backs or the like nor will I ever have. That's one of the advantages of film: you can scale the size of the film by paying just for the area of film (professional film is generally priced linearly to the area within the same film type), while digital sensor size grows only with unbelievable amounts of money which is fine for commercial studios but not so fine for a regular amateur. If I wanted to I could do 8x10 landscapes and contact print them. I don't do it because of wind. With digital you get an infinite number of tries without additional cost but in practice I don't really get any more good shots using digital than film, and there are more things I can do well with film than digital. YMMV

 

What I don't understand is that people can just "switch" to digital, with all the changes in how the image looks and ignore these changes, just as it didn't matter how the image looks, as long as it can be processed quickly. IMO it's like substituting apple juice in place of wine. They're quite different things and both have their place in photography.

 

I don't wish digital capture to go away, I recognize that probably 50% of what I do can be done better with digital. The color accuracy and flexibility in contrast adjustments etc. is really great. But it's not best for every imaginable photograph. And that's why I find it unacceptable to lose film as a viable medium. I might even stop doing photography if that happens, just out of annoyment.

[ilkka_nissila]

Light Miner, the cost of a digital sensor increases really fast as a function of sensor size. The pixel count has only a minor effect on the cost of the equipment. So as long as it is medium format, even close to the 645 sensor size (which very few devices are) the cost is enormous, even if it were just 10 MP.

 

Of course, technology is likely to change, but there is no great incentive to develop large sensors - the majority of photographers don't seem to care about tonality, dynamic range etc. as long as there is no grain and the colors are bright. Those of us who want large sensors will have to pay for it - or use film.

 

Also note that there are many countries in the world where even a working studio pro could never buy a medium format digital back - but can easily buy a 2nd hand 503CW and lenses.

[ilkka_nissila]

Before someone points out how expensive medium format film is, think about it this way: a $10000 digital SLR - how long is it going to be at the top of the field? 1-2 years? Then there is an advancement which blows the results from the previous model into oblivion - you couldn't publish the results on the same page spread without thinking it's obvious (given high quality printing). Again another $10000. Then comes a new sensor technology which requires a new set of lenses optimized for it, so you pay $5000-$10000 for a new set of lenses. All of this to just stay with the development. Files get bigger? Buy a new computer with two processors and more memory to be able to process them without going crazy with the slowness. Add $3000. Buy more hard drives to store the files on and spend time writing DVDs to back them up. Look up an image on a DVD? Go through 300 DVDs and browse the large RAW files? Takes a bit of time, eh?

 

With film all you have to do to stay along and enjoy technical improvements and new aesthetic choices is buy new film and/or developer and try it out which costs so much less than those digital systems. And it takes less time too.

[randall cherry]

Ilkka,

 

Those are all good points in comparing film to digital. I don't have much experience with digitally imaged prints and can't really comment on whether such digital prints have a "clinical" look. (I can say, however, that the Chromira prints on Fuji Crystal Archive from my scanned 6x7 velvia chromes look fantastic to my eye).

 

My feeling is that at this stage in the development of digital and film imaging, film produces a far superior image when costs are held equal. I don't think that will be changing in the near future, either . . .

 

However, us medium format film shooters are dependant on a good supply of film and access to film developers (either a film lab or the chemicals themselves), and the near complete elimination of new medium format camera sales by the exit of one of the big makers is another unfortunate milestone towards a substantial reduction (notice I didn't say complete end) in film type availability and affordability. (I know there are plenty of used cameras out there, but I am talking about new camera sales as a gauge of interest in and support for the medium).

 

At some point, film will become such a nich product, that it will be too much work for an amature like me, and I will be forced to make digital work for me. I just hope that when that time comes, I will be able to afford the digital gear necessary to continue making (at least technically if not aestheticaly) satisfying images.

 

--Randall

[tariq_gibran]

Ilkka, All very good points particularly about having an Analog physical hard copy. At

some point, technology and software will overcome the "look" issues you mention. Skillful

use of editing software such as photoshop can acheive a lot if not all of this right now, at

least for color work. I shoot Digital for all my commercial jobs and have been doing so for

the past 6 years. For personal, fine art work though, there are many more considerations

an artist should consider. Paramount among these for me is the process and how that

influences the final image. Film forces one to slow down as it does not offer immidiate

gratification. This can lead to more thought on what your doing, a closer examination of

your subject. For me, my mind and imagination continues working on the image as it lays

latent on the film and that incubation period has a major influence on, for instance,

choices made later on when I edit and print the images. I"m also not going to be hiting

"delete" while shooting with film. Thats a big deal as its not uncommon to see something

later on that you might not have noticed while shooting. When I shoot digitally and view

the results instantly, that tends to stop the creative process. So, the process of how we

create our images bears a strong relation to how and what we see. I mentioned elsewhere

that shooting digitally was like eating at McDonalds. It satisfies temporarily but really

gives no enduring sustenance. Its also like taking the train or traveling on land versus

flying. You might end up at the same place but the experience is vastly different. Thats

my take anyway.