In bad times it is a strong trend to paint many companies with the same brush. But despite the gloom and doom on this board I think there is every reason to believe the current and the future is very bright for Phase One. There will always be a market for those that want the absolute best and are willing to pay for it.
Doug,
Actually most of the doom and gloom I see comes from the recent press releases on Leaf, F+H, Sinar/Jeoptik, Mamiya.
It's not the customer that closed or allowed these brands to be absorbed into other companies, it's the medium format companies there own self that pulled out the red brushes and painted that picture.
Sinar had a good product, always waiting software and the worst marketing on the planet, Mamiya, well we've talked about that, Leaf ran off a lot of good customers with LC10 and reliability issues (your company knows that as well as anyone) and F+H is kind of like the Leica (I think that rhymes) in the fact they brought a very expensive camera to market without all the lenses in place and nothing in professional rental.
I find all of the screams about the Leica price interesting because if I add up the costs of my past medium format purchases of one Aptus 22, one Phase p21+ and comparable contax bodies, it would be equal to two Leicas, and a set of lenses. At least the Leica produces an in camera jpeg, shoots kind of semi fast (for a medium format camera) and (hold your breath on this one) has an LCD that you can see an image.
I don't think the bling factor means anything in our biz anymore, (except maybe the RED), but if it did Leica has a lot more bling than almost any still camera brand made.
I would find the Leica interesting if I was a still photography only type of guy, but times have changed.
No, the doom and gloom on medium format is their own doing and the small medium format industry has been telling us forever why we can't have certain features (see LCD) why backs have to be proprietary to one camera make by the mount (well most of them) and fights tooth and nail to take market share away from each other rather than expand the medium format market altogether.
Now as far as doom and gloom in the professional photography biz, that just comes from the way the numbers in advertising have been cut and as of today they are quite deep because the consumer world wide isn't buying anything that's not bargain basement and even then are buying less than a year ago, much less than two years ago. Add into the mix publishing is in a transition of traditional print to web display and today though I can buy a new system, even an expensive one I won't, for the simple reason none of my clients are asking for 1.2 fps imagery, so I won't spend any serious money on anything that doesn't shoot at least 60 fps.
My clients aren't talking megapixels/megabytes, their talking K.
2k, 4k, maybe someday 6k.
Now if what you say is true and Phase One has deep pockets and will be around for a long time, I strongly suggest they produce a press release stating so, because today the world has turned upside down and the customer is the one with the power and won't buy anything without some kind of assurance that a company will be around in the future with "real" innovative product beyond more megapixels.
I'll tell you how much things have changed. Last week after shooting a gig in LA, we did an exhaustive search for new studio lease space, but this time rather than me producing my credit report, I requested the Landlord produce theirs along with a letter from the bank, because the last thing I want is to see a new building go belly up and distract me from my business.
Think about that one for a moment.
Bottom line, it's a bottom line world and nobody is shy about asking anything, including how much, how long, how soon, how good and if not how do you return it?
Vague press releases and manufacturers talking through their dealers don't cut it anymore, because once again, nobody is shy about asking for the real facts before they write any check.
BC
