Originally posted by mecrox What realities that users are refusing to see are different now from five years ago, say? If you read
this article in the NY Times, it would appear that it's the camera-makers who are having trouble with reality....
We are writing about different things obviously.
I know not why have you gone into this discussion, which is irrelevant regarding to my answer about the realities of Pentax
in particular, and their choice of 645D instead of FF.
However, in view of particular points from your reply, two emerge unaddressed. Firstly, users now, and five years ago do and did have unrealistic appetites, and they imagine an economy that cannot sustain their desires, or more concretely, cannot sustain crediting their desires. Global debt crisis is all about it.
Secondly, all camera manufacturers today in the digital age are doing far better than in best days of film.
Canon alone sells 5-8 times
more digital EOS cameras than film EOS cameras. What this graph doesn't show is the
level of actual production, which exceeds even that, an already big number, as largest camera manufacturers are facing involuntary inventory build-up.
Involuntary means they had unrealistic expectations and used inventory to artificially lower down the cost on production which they could write off in the next term to show better
current results.
That is something all analysts for some reason
fail to compare and are writing consumerist fairy tales as an explanation instead. Smartphones or not, when analysing in proportion, per capita, today we have more digital cameras than we had film cameras in film age. Where in the past a family had owned a camera, today it is more likely that each individual has a digital camera of some sort too — together with a smartphone and all other utilities. So the imaging itself is not in crisis.
The crisis is the result of various factors combined together, but especially ill-behaviour of some camera manufacturers. If camera manufacturers had more realistic appetites in particular, and were more about (1) adding a real value, (2) optimising lineups instead of expanding them with no real differentiating substance, and (3) slightly undersupplying instead of oversupplying the market (which means acting in accordance with realities of economy, not imagination of consumerism), the crisis in camera manufacture wouldn't be such an issue.
As for the FF itself, the consumerist fantasy is now at its most unrealistic heights, being fuelled with more groundless analysis of imaging tech pundits, which see a salvation in the FF. To them, FF shines like some kind of heavenly light above the dark valley, supposed to solve all imaging problems and make camera industry happy and healthy again.
But what they grossly fail to understand is that to sustain a production of FF imaging technologies
there must be a wide, strong and healthy basis of systems that allow an FF system to be plausibly financed and economised. New tech is first introduced in smaller chips, then scaled up to an FF size — if ever, pending to economic realities. So if one wants to finance the FF, all other systems must be well protected, well cared for and be very healthy.
And then not forget that 35mm film is
not same as 35mm FF digital; if 35mm film was one of the
smallest commercial film sizes (therefore its appeal), 35mm FF is one of the
largest sensor types, totally unnecessary bulk, expense and a false economy of geeky pretentiousness to obtain an image for everyday use.