Nikon F7: Digital Convergence?

[photos from various genres]

boy long thread with tangents..

 

A company in Irvine California called Irvine Sensors (or one of it's subsidiary or sister companies) was working on a sensor for 35mm cameras that would be put in the film cannister and take-up reel recesses or similarly with the sensor in the place of the film on the film plane. Effectively digital film. For some reason and I don't know if it was technical or business, they did not pull it off...and may have entered Chapter 11...they are still there and working on other interesting stuff so maybe someone will find out...but a lesser known fact is that the histograms on digital cameras, even top of the line, are not as accurate as those in photoshop and that is with a know sensor with known characteristics and responses...I can't imagine how a histogram would adapt to all the variations of film out there...but you never know..

 

Allan

[grodis]

I think a modular D/SLR will be an expected evolution. Hasselblad, Mamiya and Bronica does film and digital. The first DSLR company the does a film / digital SLR well certainly be eating the Medium Format industry lunch.

I'd love a digital back for any of my MF cameras but $9,000 for the cheapest one is out of my league.

 

So. lets hope for a Nikon FD-7?

[ellis_vener_photography]

"I think a modular D/SLR will be an expected evolution. "

 

Contax tried that, and failed.

 

More recently, Leica tried it too with the R8/R9 SLR + DMR digital back combination. I had the opportunity to

work with the Leica for amount 2 months. It made really superior quality digital to any other 35mm SLR based

D-SLRs cameras back in 2006 -- including the Canon EOS 1Ds MArk 2 which had 60% more pixels (approx 10mp vs.

16.7mp respectively). I shot the two side by side with equivalent lenses so I am speaking from personal experience.

 

But it also failed. Of course it was a Leica and had L eica sized price tags -- and a badly run company behind

it. those things didn't help. But it was a great camera.

 

And don't think for a moment that Canon and Nikon have not tried to make it work as well. That you never saw

those camera reach the street doesn't mean that there were not prototypes made and tested. I know this to be the

case with the Nikon F6 /D2 cameras.

 

So while I know that there are hundreds , maybe a few thousand people who would like such a camera, it is very

unlikely that it would be a commercially viable product. Why?

 

Money.

 

As a manufactured product 35mm film is dying. The marketplace, us, is making that happen. We are voting, or more

precisely NOT voting, with our cash, checkbooks and credit cards by not buying enough film and processing.

Colelctively we have come to the realization that the entire film based photographic industry is based on a now

untenable basis: that people are willing to pay for pictures they don't want in order to get the few they do

want. That business model is dead, and the everyone involved on the manufacturing, distribution, retail and

processing side knows it.

 

Which is not to say that film is a dead medium. I don't think it is, and while I really hope that I am right

about that, every day it becomes more and more of a niche market and at some point in the not to distant (not

not near term) future , that niche will be so small that Kodak and Fuji will make a dreaded announcement.

 

So if all of you film only guys want to keep it alive there is only one thing to do: Start buying film in massive

quantities (like 300 - 1000 rolls a year), shoot it and get it processed in local labs. Talking about how "film

has soul" and writing internet whines about the evils of digital just won't do it. Neither will writing letters

to CEOs. What those companies need to see is people spending money. It is just that simple.