:-)
I am wondering what happened with the D3x in the commercial world. Is it just DOA because it's $7500 and the 5D is $2500? The dudes I know who work at Calumet say they are selling none of those D3xs.
I spoke earlier this March to a small dealer that said he had sold 23 d3x'. I asked how many to professionals and he said 0.
It seems the straw poll concensus was most people that needed higher megapixels had already invested in the 1ds3, and/or some type of medium format back and didn't see the need to start with whole new lenses and workflow.
Then of course the 5d2 came out for 1/2 price, shot video and in a somewhat down economy it just didn't make sense to keep upgrading for small incremental improvements. The 5d2 was the only new camera I bought this year, where previously I would have bought two or three much higher priced cameras.
I know this year for our studios we saw a lot of changes. The year started slow, picked up, though at first production numbers moved down, volume moved up.
For us it turned out to be a good year and ended with a bang, but with all the back and forth it just didn't seem that moving to any new system made sense or was worth the usual learning curve, or risk. This was a very risk adverse year.
I know what it allowed me to do was zone in one one camera system like I haven't done since the film days. The 1ds3, just covered a lot of territory from lifestyle to fashion, to beauty and once I got it down with eos utility and dpp (and Apple upped the speed of their usb drivers) I just kept on going and never looked back.
I felt the 1ds3 was/is as ground breaking a camera as the original 1ds1 and was everything the Mark II should have been.
I did go off track a little bit this year and used the medium format back for two small gigs that were somewhat static and slower paced but did so just because it was kind of fun, not out of any client or file quality demands.
Now had the d3x had video, maybe a few more features like a removable prism, or was a high iso king I might have looked at it in a different way.
Same with medium format. When I heard Phase was moving to a "new technology" and higher iso etc. I was really hoping for a cmos sensor, which might give live view and even video, but that wasn't the case and though I am sure the new phase backs are good, from the people I know they didn't see that huge of a difference between a p40+ to p30+, so for the expense it just made sense to invest in our business in a different direction.
I think all of this stuff is kind of leveling out. Already we're sending out files sizes that are larger than required and honestly I find no clients that demand anything in the way of file or camera preference, unless they have a deal with a digital tech company and even then all have been open to allowing the photographer his/her choice.
In fact this year when it came to investment, we put our money into facilities and in front of the lens.
BC
