Originally posted by Scissors Analogue looks like it is here to stay. There must come a point when the market for a new camera is big enough to justify making one, I reckon it is getting close. As costs rise and supply diminishes it will become viable. An MX / OM1 / FM2 style camera but how much could it sell for? How much would we pay? Cosina are probably the people who would make it but I wonder whose name would be on the front?
If Cosina makes it, it could have all of those names on the front... they've certainly done that in the past...
But I can't see Minolta/Sony, Olympus, Nikon, or Canon putting energy into a film camera that doesn't take their new mirrorless lenses.
Nikon and Canon might be brave enough to do that with some weird film rangefinder (with an electronic viewfinder?), or maybe a half-frame Olympus, but I can't see Sony doing it -- they don't have the nostalgia.
Ricoh is really the only company left that is interested in selling SLR lenses, and that would be the only real way forward.
That basically rules out an all-mechanical camera, since it wouldn't work with the new lenses.
At the end of that, you would still end up with $1,000 or more for a ZX-M or ZX-L equivalent (depending if you wanted to keep AF). More if you wanted a MZ-S equivalent.
All that said, there would be an interesting opportunity for Ricoh with the older FF Limiteds and their aperture rings, but the 21 suggests they aren't taking that road forward.
Even if they wanted to just "build a couple hundred LX bodies", could they source the bits?
And they aren't exactly rolling in cash to develop such a thing right now...
-Eric