[monochrome]

No just cut out all the junk and improve QC on the smaller volumes. Consolidate to high quality.

If the market's shrinking it's shrinking to pro's and extremely keen amateurs.

People are expensive. Industry has changed to machine productivity, leaving people and skill and expertise and learned-by-experience wisdom in the dustbin of history. Ricoh is bringing Pentax into the modern manufacturing world, next to all the other makers.

The benefit of machines is they never have a bad day. The don't get health benefits or a pension. They don't drink the night before, or get divorced or steal or just get resentful and wreck your product. They don't have a Union. Once properly configured they just churn out identical widgets until they break. They have a fixed cost and a known return over time.

The detriment of machines is you can't lay them off them when volume declines. An HD coating evaporator costs the same whether 10,000 pieces of glass or 10,000,000 pieces of glass are coated. Upsets the 'known return over time' rationale.

At high-end-only volumes, no one could afford to pay a pro at what a pro would need to charge to recover gesr cost + time + profit.

[Winder]

I agree 1" sensor cannot compete with the DOF obtainable from a 4X5 camera - however that also works in reverse. There is also the simple fact that the smaller a format gets the bigger the strain on lens quality and bokeh.

I agree that there are some advantages to smaller sensors. I shot with an Olympus E-3 for 3 years. But the smaller sensors require much better glass than larger sensors since they have to be enlarged so much more for the same final output. They have to be sharper at wider apertures to compete with larger sensors when it comes to DoF.

[Parry]

People are expensive. Industry has changed to machine productivity, leaving people and skill and expertise and learned-by-experience wisdom in the dustbin of history. Ricoh is bringing Pentax into the modern manufacturing world, next to all the other makers.

The benefit of machines is they never have a bad day. The don't get health benefits or a pension. They don't drink the night before, or get divorced or steal or just get resentful and wreck your product. They don't have a Union. Once properly configured they just churn out identical widgets until they break. They have a fixed cost and a known return over time.

The detriment of machines is you can't lay them off them when volume declines. An HD coating evaporator costs the same whether 10,000 pieces of glass or 10,000,000 pieces of glass are coated. Upsets the 'known return over time' rationale.

At high-end-only volumes, no one could afford to pay a pro at what a pro would need to charge to recover gesr cost + time + profit.

Good post old boy, it's this awful McWorld we now inhabit.

[Winder]

People are expensive. Industry has changed to machine productivity, leaving people and skill and expertise and learned-by-experience wisdom in the dustbin of history.

The benefit of machines is they never have a bad day. The don't get health benefits or a pension. They don't drink the night before, or get divorced or steal or just get resentful and wreck your product. They don't have a Union. Once properly configured they just churn out identical widgets until they break. They have a fixed cost and a known return over time.

The detriment of machines is you can't lay them off them when volume declines. An HD coating evaporator costs the same whether 10,000 pieces of glass or 10,000,000 pieces of glass are coated. Upsets the 'known return over time' rationale.

The machines are getting faster, cheaper, more reliable while human labor is becoming more expensive to employ. Humans tend to fight change and end up being their own worst enemy.

Machines mainly destroy the simple low skilled jobs. The create new higher paying jobs. Someone has to design these machines. Someone has to build them. Someone has to sell and market them. Someone has to install and maintain them. Machines allow people to be more efficient with their time and resources. How much time does a digital camera/computer/printer save you over rolls of film and a darkroom?

[jogiba]

I agree 1" sensor cannot compete with the DOF obtainable from a 4X5 camera - however that also works in reverse. There is also the simple fact that the smaller a format gets the bigger the strain on lens quality and bokeh.

That is like saying a Piper Cub cannot compete with the passenger capacity obtainable of an Airbus A380. The Pentax 645D cannot compete with the DOF obtainable from a 4x5 camera but that is not a problem in 2014 like it was in the film days since there are no 4x5 digital cameras and the amount of people using a 4x5 film camera today is dropping like a rock.

[monochrome]

The machines are getting faster, cheaper, more reliable while human labor is becoming more expensive to employ. Humans tend to fight change and end up being their own worst enemy.

Machines mainly destroy the simple low skilled jobs. The create new higher paying jobs. Someone has to design these machines. Someone has to build them. Someone has to sell and market them. Someone has to install and maintain them. Machines allow people to be more efficient with their time and resources. How much time does a digital camera/computer/printer save you over rolls of film and a darkroom?

Those are all true points. One highly paid designer can create a machine that replaces hundreds of lower paid assemblers (who are collectively more expensive than the machine). That formula is expecially true for simpler, low-cost products such as cheaper lenses and less sophisticated cameras (or camera-phones).

But I'm writing about the effect dramatically reducing the volume of lower quality product also run through the machines (such as HD coating on all Pentax lenses) will have on the high-end, high-quality dSLR's and lenses. What effect will that have on the price of those cameras and lenses for the professionals and high-end enthusiasts who will be their remaining buyers? Should we stop making K-50's? 18~55's?

I contend the cost of the machines necessary to make the components, when allocated over the lower volume of infal product, will drive the price of the final product so high that the price of professionals' work will also rise dramatically to recover the cost of prefessional gear. In that scenario Parry's thesis (get rid of the junk) creates a self-destructive price loop.

[Nesster]

I contend the cost of the machines necessary to make the components, when allocated over the lower volume of infal product, will drive the price of the final product so high that the price of professionals' work will also rise dramatically to recover the cost of prefessional gear. In that scenario Parry's thesis (get rid of the junk) creates a self-destructive price loop.

There seems to be a good market for Leica; anyone else in that niche is very much a niche player in a niche... if what you say comes about, how many Leica competitors can the world market sustain?

[monochrome]

There seems to be a good market for Leica; anyone else in that niche is very much a niche player in a niche... if what you say comes about, how many Leica competitors can the world market sustain?

Well, I think it unlikely that camera makers will voluntarily 'get rid of the junk,' though market consolidation remains a possibility. Do we see Oly, Panny, Fuji, Samsung and Pentax remaining as competitive brands dividing 75% or 80% of the (possibly smaller) market profitably, next to Canon, Nikon and Sony with the remainder, in five years?

[jon404]

@Jogiba -- well, why not a 20" x 24" Polaroid for all the rest of us? Doesn't some company in China own the brand these days? Hey, if you want to be part of the New World Order, there are some... basics... that you have to deliver at your China price. Could be a wonderfully small market niche for Ricoh, and call it medical imaging or something for tax-loss writeoffs.

@monochrome -- if the rate -of-change in the camera industry is becoming more software-based than hardware-based, watch out... in five years, you won't recognize the landscape. It's like a snowball rolling down a steep hill.

[Rondec]

I guess one question I have, is whether smaller sensored cameras will eventually be able to fake narrow depth of field through software tricks. I have seen these sorts of things done, both with in camera and with stand alone software and to this point, it leaves me unimpressed, but certainly if you could have fake Leica bokeh with a click of button, that would be worth something, I guess.

[Winder]

But I'm writing about the effect dramatically reducing the volume of lower quality product also run through the machines (such as HD coating on all Pentax lenses) will have on the high-end, high-quality dSLR's and lenses. What effect will that have on the price of those cameras and lenses for the professionals and high-end enthusiasts who will be their remaining buyers? Should we stop making K-50's? 18~55's?

I contend the cost of the machines necessary to make the components, when allocated over the lower volume of infal product, will drive the price of the final product so high that the price of professionals' work will also rise dramatically to recover the cost of prefessional gear. In that scenario Parry's thesis (get rid of the junk) creates a self-destructive price loop.

Correct me if I am reading this wrong.

1. Camera phones are eating into the entry level market so we have falling demand for DSLR's in this segment.
2. The loss in volume of the commodity grade DSLRs means that investment/capital costs can't be spread out over as many products so economies of scale has been lost.
3. This leads to the R&D and manufacturing costs being concentrated on the enthusiast and pro-grade products and higher prices.

I don't think we have seen that happen in other industries. We see the same cannibalism in the desktop/laptop/tablet/smart phone market and we don't see spiraling prices. The desktop market has been shrinking as smaller devices erode that market. The competition forces companies to adjust and some companies will go out of business because they can't compete. As the market gets smaller companies get out of the market and this keeps prices from rising. The companies who remain absorb the volume of the companies who have abandoned the market and this allows economies of scale to still work.

Optics is a pretty mature industry when it comes to cameras. I'm not sure how many revolutionary breakthroughs we will see in the near future. Prices in mature industries don't generally rise for goods currently in production. If volume falls to the point that Pentax can't justify the cost of their own machines for fabrication then they will turn to a 3rd party supplier. Pentax doesn't have the volume to justify manufacturing and the R&D to make their own sensors. So what do they do? They go to a company that specializes in sensor production, and that has worked out very well. If Pentax gets to the point that they don't have the volume to justify the cost of equipment for the HD coatings one of two things will happen. Pentax will out source the process to a 3rd party, OR Pentax will use its extra capacity to provide HD coatings for other lens manufacturers.

[monochrome]

Clearly phones have decimated the conmpact cmaera market - but how much of that technology also yields volume benefits to dSLR's?

I was responding to Parry's suggestion that the industry voluntarily concentrate its DSLR bodies and lenses around the pros and high end enthusiasts - much higher quality at significantly lower volume. My response to that idea is, I think the fixed costs of existing machine installations would drive proces of cameras so high (costs spread over lower volume) for pros that, in order to pay for their gear, their prices would be too high for anyone to buy their work. It is thus a self-defeating recommendation.

Your thesis implies forced consolidation of the marginal dSLR makers. Canon, Nikon, maybe Sony, maybe not - then some amalgam of Oly, Fuji, Samsung, Pentax, etc. Leica is as Leica does.

Pentax doesn't make shutters or Milbeaut Imaging engines, either, and who knows what else they source. I suspect they produce more of the finishing of their lenses but I don';t really know. I've always imagined without any knowlege that SMC patents have either expired or technology has moved beyond SMC. HD coatings, if good enough, may ne marketable as licenses or as finished parts. Who knows?

As likely as anything else, I guess.

[Winder]

Your thesis implies forced consolidation of the marginal dSLR makers. Canon, Nikon, maybe Sony, maybe not - then some amalgam of Oly, Fuji, Samsung, Pentax, etc. Leica is as Leica does.

Not necessarily. Consolidation will occur but it may or may not be the marginal manufacturers. Nikon's parent company might decide to sell the brand to Sony, Panasonic, or Fuji. Samsung is big enough to buy it. Sony might abandon A-mount all together and focus on E-mount. Fuji, Olympus, Samsung, & Panasonic have already abandoned the DSLR market to focus on mirrorless technology. Sony has all but abandoned it. Unless I am forgetting someone, Canon, Nikon, & Pentax are the only 3 still making true DSLRs. We are already seeing manufacturer's leaving the market. We are already seeing consolidation and partnerships.

Its not always the marginal players who go down. Often it is the bloated and inefficient giant who can't move and change fast enough to survive. We can go down the list of industry leaders who died because they were too big, too slow, too bloated. Sears & Roebuck was at one time the worlds largest retailer. They even sold houses. Today Sears is barely relevant, but it has managed to survive unlike Montgomery Wards or Woolworths. Research In Motion went from industry leader to irrelevant in a very short time frame. MySpace? AOL? Netscape? Yahoo is trying to be relevant again.

[monochrome]

I tihnk you and I are on the same path - we might diverge at the point whether dSLR's are a specific surviving technology or can be supplanted by MILC (I don't think so, but many people see dSLR's as outmoded and unecessarily complex). I firmly believe Pentax is on a survivor path under Ricoh but it is quite challenging to see Ricoh's vision for Pentax and to align our desires with Ricoh's long-term time horizon. I also do not see a decline in dSLR sales from all-time record highs back to 2011 level as a disaster. Rather it is a normal correction as excesses are wrung out of the system.

I used a K10D quite happily from 2007 - 2013 with a K-01 in the middle (totally an irresitible impulse) and I'll be hard-pressed to see the need for another dSLR for several years. Lenses are another matter entirely.

One problem Pentax has is the small installed base of K-mounts. Pentax needs to fight the overall downtred and continue to keep people buying their K-mounts (a Pentax dSLR is a K-mount with a wrapper around it), and Q and 645 and eventually FF and eventually some kind of MILC and Ricoh products.

Though part of the Mitsubishi Group, Nikon doesn't really have a parent company (Mirsubishi) as we understand that in the west. The old keiretsu system has blurred as banks have merged in both duress and strategically. I think the system is now more a bank holding company system. Bank of Tokyo - Mitsubishi Bank - Mitsui Bank Group owns a significant but not controlling percentage of Nikon shares (publicly traded in USA as NINOY) which is reported to be <5%.

It was suggested the Pentax sale to Hoya (even the Konica sale to Sony) might have had to do with merged banks trying to rationalize their portfolios of competing company share interests.

[Winder]

I don't think MILC can fully replace the DSLR for all fields of photography, but they can for many if not most of them. Once the resolution, color, DR, & refresh rates of the EVF surpass what the human eye can perceive then the EVF has won. Until the the OVF will hold the advantage. Spending most of my time with my Contax 645, I love the OVF and the sound of a smooth shutter and mirror, but I also realize that there are a lot of advantages to removing the mirror.

I was reading a book on the Japanese economic problems of the 1990's and the "lost decade". Mitsubishi Bank is one of the focal points of the book and how the industries of the group are layered and all heavily interconnected. Like Hoya where the board members of Hoya were the same as Tokina. They are technically different and independent companies, but they are all controlled by the same small group of people.

---------- Post added 03-21-14 at 07:45 PM ----------

I guess one question I have, is whether smaller sensored cameras will eventually be able to fake narrow depth of field through software tricks. I have seen these sorts of things done, both with in camera and with stand alone software and to this point, it leaves me unimpressed, but certainly if you could have fake Leica bokeh with a click of button, that would be worth something, I guess.

Eventually light field technology will dominate small sensors and you will select focus after you take the picture and you can change focus at anytime with software. You can duplicate the bokeh, but you can't change the physics of the magnification required for final out put. Smaller sensors will always require greater magnification for a 8x10 print than say APS-C. The magnification has a compression effect that I'm not sure we can solve with software in the immediate future. For shooting people 75mm to 135mm is considered by many to be the best focal length. It generates the most flattering rendering and it doesn't matter what the sensor size is. Olympus produced the 75mm F/1.8 for M4/3 portraits. Pentax has the 77mm. Canon goes with 85mm. My 80mm F/2 is my main lens on my Contax 645. The 105MM on the Pentax 67. Sony has the 135mm STF.

When it comes to shooting really good pictures of people, small sensors have a problem. If you put an 85mm lens on an iPhone you end up shooting head shots from 100 meters away. I don't think small sensors are going to take over for anyone who actually makes a living photographing people.