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Author Topic: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?  (Read 42668 times)

ErikKaffehr

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #100 on: December 17, 2010, 12:45:29 am »

Hi,

We had at least two cases of what used to be called "Pilot Induced Oscillations" leading to two Swedish AJ39 Griffins crashes. The first was on a test aircraft and the other while on display flight over tightly populated areas. I'm not sure if those situations arose because of pilot error or FWB, but my guess is it was incompatibility between pilot and FWB.

Now, that plane has relaxed stability, like most modern fighters. That essentially means that it wont fly without computer controls, the computer essentially compensates for the relaxed stability. Sometimes a pilot's action can counteract with the computer, so the plane responds slow to pilot actions. The pilot involved in both PIO accidents was one of the most experienced test pilots at SAAB, the developer of the aircraft.

One additional Griffin was lost during an exercise when altitude radar misread reflections from the another plane and the computer made evasive action into the sea.

The last Griffin lost this far depended on unintended ejection of pilot during landing. It seems that inflation/deflation of the G-suit released the ejection handle. Pilot was ejected during approach. No one was killed in any of these accidents, although I have the impression that some people on ground got serious burns during the arial display over Stockholm Water Festival accident.

Best regards
Erik


Utter unadulterated nonsense. There is no such thing as "general acceptance amongs the pilots," or anyone other than clueless armchair pilots on anything you imply about FBW.

Last time I checked Boeing aircraft allowed pilots to override FBW in some circumstances, while Airbus doesn't. Guess which company's planes have better safety record? They're pretty much the same despite fundamentally different approach to FBW! Also, most recent military aircraft have FBW, including the F-16, F/A-18 and SU-27 which are widely considered some of the best military planes, ever. If there was acceptance among pilots about FBW being dangerous or even hindering their mad skills, do you really think countries and companies would spend billions upon billions to develop such systems?

Another data point is that pilot error accounts for almost half of airline accidents, so it is questionable whether we even want pilots to have more or less control in extreme, rare, fast-paced and potentially dangerous situations.

For every accident allegedly the fault of FBW we have one for pilot error, one for metal fatigue, one for neglected maintenance, and one for flock of birds in the engine.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2010, 12:01:42 am by ErikKaffehr »
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eronald

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #101 on: December 17, 2010, 05:17:50 am »


I see those younger generation, very creative, very enthousistic and productive. Then, I see my old boss and the way he does his shooting with lightning. Very little post prod and the kids are amazed.

I do also think that cameras are not designed for digital but following old patterns. I haven't stopped to put an emphasis on that. We are working with outdated tools in term of design. We need new stuff.

I would agree. The kids gain something, and they lose something. It's a bit like CGI animation compared to puppet and costume filming, each has its advantages. The kids often are not able to use the old stuff to its limits, although usually a few keep the "old tradition" alive.

But do tools matter?

I have a collection of Eric Rohmer films. The first ones are cheaply filmed on location eg. inside cafés in Paris, but the girls are really pretty. They are black and white, you can see the camera is cheap, auto-exposure changes as the camera pans, the operator is not expert. Dialogue is supplemented by heavy voice-over. The cutting is spare, to the point. These cheap films are really interesting in their exploration of simple relationships and the way they evolve.

Then Rohmer gets richer, one can see he now has "real" lighting, heavier equipment (camera lifts), professional cinematography, and color film. The work is visually more appealing, the cutting more indulgent then over-indulgent, unnecessary scenes and material intrude into the narratives, his work drifts.

Better tools do not mean better work, even when the same person is using them.

It is going to be very interesting to see whether fashion images improve when we can cut ONE frame from a motion capture instead of one frame per second with MF :)

Edmund
« Last Edit: December 17, 2010, 06:11:49 am by eronald »
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Fritzer

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #102 on: December 17, 2010, 08:30:52 am »

It is going to be very interesting to see whether fashion images improve when we can cut ONE frame from a motion capture instead of one frame per second with MF :)


That's an interesting point, albeit not a new one.
We had fashion photography, as well as portrait, even photo journalism go from large format to 35mm to digital and everything in between , with photographers using all sorts of equipment for any purpose till this day .

I don't think improvement is the right term, it's just different.
Also I believe a greater variety of easier to use technologies makes it harder for newcomers to develop a personal approach, when the solutions are too readily available .

Or maybe I'm just envious because I had to spend all the time in the darkrooms . ;)
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Rob C

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #103 on: December 17, 2010, 12:18:20 pm »

Or maybe I'm just envious because I had to spend all the time in the darkrooms . ;)



Hmmm... no, I don't think you are being envious.

My own take is that anyone coming from the 'mid-level pro' old days (where the same guy did his processing as well a shooting and ran a strictly one-man show), had an excellent training for understanding how photography works. You learned how to expose as well as how to develop and print. All of those steps were essential, and only when exposure was understood could you know what the hell you were doing correctly or otherwise further along the production line.

Now with the wet mostly long gone, the old understanding of print contrast, exposure etc. is there as a very helpful base from which to move outwards into digital printing. One knows how a print could/should look. That's something based on experience, and I see several questions raised in LuLa on those points from people without the wet experience. They have little background on which to base expectation.

However, regarding camera exposures, I think digital and ETR has introduced a fresh breed of worm into the can. The certainty of incident light readings has been replaced by expose/check/expose/check and probably expose again!

However, all said and done, the value of immediacy of results can't be beaten, most of the time, as the paramount factor.

But, were I running a school, then I think I'd insist on the film path first, too. Hell, as most students never end up working as pros anyway, they may as well learn how to be 'art' photographers at the very least!

Rob C

feppe

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #104 on: December 17, 2010, 01:02:36 pm »

Feppe, your infinite wisdom is indeed above my understanding and before jumping pompous and arrogant on people with ready-made infos that you picked-up here or there in magazines and internet, you will probably be interested to know that I was a former pilot, the second younger plane pilot in France so far and that I served in the Air Force in the B.A 118 wich is a nuclear and testing air force base and that I still maintain contact with active pilots in France, in England and in Spain, oh and russia, some of wich are test pilots. But this is my past, my story that I wanted to keep private but the last think I like is been taken as a stupid ignorant when it's not the case.
So I'm pretty much aware of what I'm talking about, not from certain vague journalistic informations or unformal conversation you might have had this or there on a vacacional airport.
If you read my post carefully, you'd have notice that I do not condamned the FBW and I'm refering of a mixed training back in the training planifications after they studdied the FBW.
This precision made, to close this parentesis and forget about it, and as this as now nothing to do with photography, I just wish you a nice night.

I wasn't attacking you, I was attacking your viewpoints. And I wasn't referring to you when I said clueless armchair pilots - I'm not even in armchair pilot category myself, and your assessment is spot on. But I've read too many discussions on FBW safety which are based on hearsay and anecdotes, and don't rely on data. Data which is available to anyone interested in airline safety which is important to me as a frequent flyer. Too many "Boeing wins because they allow pilot overdrive of FBW" when there are literally millions of other factors in aircraft safety.

I did misread your post as being an attack on FBW in general, though :-[ I've deleted the part in my previous post which implied you did so, but kept the rest as I stand behind my points about FBW safety.

Just for the record, human pilots will be outmaneuvred by pilotless aircraft one day, just like human chess players are today. It'll take a while, though. The closer we get to that day, the more desirable FBW becomes.

Back to normal programming.

David Watson

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #105 on: December 17, 2010, 01:43:40 pm »



Hmmm... no, I don't think you are being envious.

My own take is that anyone coming from the 'mid-level pro' old days (where the same guy did his processing as well a shooting and ran a strictly one-man show), had an excellent training for understanding how photography works. You learned how to expose as well as how to develop and print. All of those steps were essential, and only when exposure was understood could you know what the hell you were doing correctly or otherwise further along the production line.

Now with the wet mostly long gone, the old understanding of print contrast, exposure etc. is there as a very helpful base from which to move outwards into digital printing. One knows how a print could/should look. That's something based on experience, and I see several questions raised in LuLa on those points from people without the wet experience. They have little background on which to base expectation.

However, regarding camera exposures, I think digital and ETR has introduced a fresh breed of worm into the can. The certainty of incident light readings has been replaced by expose/check/expose/check and probably expose again!

However, all said and done, the value of immediacy of results can't be beaten, most of the time, as the paramount factor.

But, were I running a school, then I think I'd insist on the film path first, too. Hell, as most students never end up working as pros anyway, they may as well learn how to be 'art' photographers at the very least!

Rob C

Interesting perspective Rob but I seem to remember hearing similar opinions when DTP first started to appear.  Suddenly every customer could be his or her own graphic designer.  What did happen is that the journeyman paste-up artists with no creative ability fell by the wayside and those with creative ability grabbed the new tools and flew!!  What technology, and in this instance digital imaging, has done for photography is to remove a barrier to entry that prevented those creative individuals with poor craft skills (and by that I mean the mechanistic details of darkroom processing rather than the creative aspects) from being able to use the photographic medium to express themselves.  It has also opened the door to a whole new raft of ideas and techniques which may be alien to many of those brought up, as I was, with b & w film and dark room chemicals.

I am also not sure what use the ability to make a traditional print in a dark room is to those of us grappling with the intricacies of photoshop, colour managed workflows and ICC profiles.

I think that if you have a good eye - you have a good eye - irrespective of whether that is a "digital" or "film" eye.

These cameras are just tools in the same way as MF film, 5x4, whole plate, wet plate, daguerrotype and so on.  they were a means to an end and that was to produce a representation or interpretation of what the artist/photographer saw.

In my view "the kids are all right" with their new technology and their new ideas. Let them get on with it and let's sit back and enjoy the show.  We might even learn something or a lot.

 
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ziocan

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #106 on: December 17, 2010, 09:19:59 pm »



I have a collection of Eric Rohmer films.

You woke up old memories.
I have to watch a few again.
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ndevlin

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #107 on: December 19, 2010, 02:35:34 pm »

You are never going to get someone that was born in 1984 and grew up with an I-mac in their room to understand that a ground glass offers a better experience than an led/lcd and actually I'm not sure if it really does.

So my view is if your going to continue with professional image creation you have two options.  Stick with the old ways and end up on the park bench, or embrace what the consumer market already understands.

I personally believe that cameras, (still and motion) have not gone future enough.    You can see it with consumer cameras, they're oh so close in features, fall down in image quality but I think most of us don't realize that for all the professional systems, (canon and nikon included) we're still working with cameras that have the shape, usability very close to film cameras.

A friend recently asked me whether I thought the MF camera companies had a future. The best answer I could come up with was that I thought it would be a very hard sell to get the next generation, reared on the Steve Jobsian vision of technological interface, to spend tens of thousands of dollars on camera technology that feels like it should be in a museum by comparison (ie: essentially everything in MF, and a lot of other cameras, too.).

I, too, am waiting for someone to come along and completely re-conceive the notion of the camera, rather than tinkering incrementally with a 1940s-1970s form-factor.  That'll shake things up in just the way you say.  However, that requires two things, together: (i) world-leading vision and (ii) about a billion dollars in capital to produce a consumer electronics product.   You and I could sit down over a bottle of wine (a enduring analog technology, if there ever was one) and design a 'next' camera. Voice, eye, touch controls, virtually wearable ergonomics, etc.  But who the hell will build it? It's like concept cars. Amazing minds have been creating a steady stream of amazing designs for decades. But somehow all that ever comes out of the production pipeline looks like a warmed-over Chevy Malibu.

- N.
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bcooter

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #108 on: December 19, 2010, 03:25:33 pm »

A friend recently asked me whether I thought the MF camera companies had a future. The best answer I could come up with was that I thought it would be a very hard sell to get the next generation, reared on the Steve Jobsian vision of technological interface, to spend tens of thousands of dollars on camera technology that feels like it should be in a museum by comparison (ie: essentially everything in MF, and a lot of other cameras, too.).

snip

But somehow all that ever comes out of the production pipeline looks like a warmed-over Chevy Malibu.

- N.

I don't disagree, except I'm not too sure about the billion dollar thing, as most of what is truly modern is already out there in consumer grade cameras.

Hell, an I phone has a touch screen focus, a few of the consumer cameras have touch screen everything, image stabilization, incredibly high iso, they just don't have the depth, range or robust build to use for full fledged professional production.

In the professional realm we seem just over the wall happy to get an lcd that let's us see the image in decent detail, or tethering software that doesn't crash "too much".

Consumers would never put up with the beta testing process professionals have to endure.  If they did there would be 2,000 class action lawsuits filed hourly.

Actually professionals of all pay grades put up with camera problems less and less.   I can count about a dozen ex medium format owners that now shoot some kind of dslr, shoot a lot and are still turning a good profit in this economically challenged world.  Some of them might go back to medium format if it was as usable as their Canons and Nikons, but not for the price, not for the problems, especially not for the slowdown in production.

Regardless, my point is the entry level photographers I've worked with in the last 10 years "want" to be a photographer and are slowly trying to embrace motion capture.

They might not know film but they "want" to use the best camera they can afford and where the medium format companies fall down in their marketing and sales efforts is they seem to have given up on this market to concentrate on the well heeled amateur.  Nothing wrong with being well heeled, or an amateur but I find it amazing that almost daily some mfd back maker sends out an e-mail selling some shoot the rocks seminar (once again nothing wrong with shooting rocks . . . I guess).

It probably doesn't matter, because by the time mfd back makers find a way to get their cameras in the professional entry level photographers hands, RED "might" have something called a Scarlet or Rouge or Super Duper Epic camera that has a larger sensor, a 5" lcd, touch screen that track autofocuses and will probably be around the same price as a p65+. 

To me that's when it is game over for traditional, professional cameras of all formats.

I think RED is the nightmare for every professional camera company, still and motion.  They're owner is #110 on the Forbes 400, so obviously he can't be bought off, or probably out spent and if you just run the numbers RED has probably already sold well over half a billion dollars in cameras and accessories.

Imagine what they would do if they got product out faster.

IMO

BC

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eronald

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #109 on: December 19, 2010, 06:27:37 pm »

It's not that RED are particularly bright - it's that they can afford to put products on the market which will obsolete existing pro video producers like Sony. Sony of course has all these products ready to go, but they cannot afford to let them loose. C'mon, James, look at the 5DII - d'you really think Canon or Sony couldn't put the thing in a square box with a remote focus and exposure and viewfinder connector, and have it write wavelet compressed Raw to a RAID of miniature SSD drives? Give us a break.

Edmund

I don't disagree, except I'm not too sure about the billion dollar thing, as most of what is truly modern is already out there in consumer grade cameras.

Hell, an I phone has a touch screen focus, a few of the consumer cameras have touch screen everything, image stabilization, incredibly high iso, they just don't have the depth, range or robust build to use for full fledged professional production.

In the professional realm we seem just over the wall happy to get an lcd that let's us see the image in decent detail, or tethering software that doesn't crash "too much".

Consumers would never put up with the beta testing process professionals have to endure.  If they did there would be 2,000 class action lawsuits filed hourly.

Actually professionals of all pay grades put up with camera problems less and less.   I can count about a dozen ex medium format owners that now shoot some kind of dslr, shoot a lot and are still turning a good profit in this economically challenged world.  Some of them might go back to medium format if it was as usable as their Canons and Nikons, but not for the price, not for the problems, especially not for the slowdown in production.

Regardless, my point is the entry level photographers I've worked with in the last 10 years "want" to be a photographer and are slowly trying to embrace motion capture.

They might not know film but they "want" to use the best camera they can afford and where the medium format companies fall down in their marketing and sales efforts is they seem to have given up on this market to concentrate on the well heeled amateur.  Nothing wrong with being well heeled, or an amateur but I find it amazing that almost daily some mfd back maker sends out an e-mail selling some shoot the rocks seminar (once again nothing wrong with shooting rocks . . . I guess).

It probably doesn't matter, because by the time mfd back makers find a way to get their cameras in the professional entry level photographers hands, RED "might" have something called a Scarlet or Rouge or Super Duper Epic camera that has a larger sensor, a 5" lcd, touch screen that track autofocuses and will probably be around the same price as a p65+.  

To me that's when it is game over for traditional, professional cameras of all formats.

I think RED is the nightmare for every professional camera company, still and motion.  They're owner is #110 on the Forbes 400, so obviously he can't be bought off, or probably out spent and if you just run the numbers RED has probably already sold well over half a billion dollars in cameras and accessories.

Imagine what they would do if they got product out faster.

IMO

BC


« Last Edit: December 19, 2010, 06:31:25 pm by eronald »
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bcooter

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #110 on: December 19, 2010, 08:17:14 pm »

It's not that RED are particularly bright - it's that they can afford to put products on the market which will obsolete existing pro video producers like Sony. Sony of course has all these products ready to go, but they cannot afford to let them loose. C'mon, James, look at the 5DII - d'you really think Canon or Sony couldn't put the thing in a square box with a remote focus and exposure and viewfinder connector, and have it write wavelet compressed Raw to a RAID of miniature SSD drives? Give us a break.

Edmund


I'm not saying Canon or Sony can or can't make whatever they want.

The thing is they don't and at some point something has to wake them up.   RED killed them on a lot of ENG sales, cameras btw that we're small 2/3" chip with huge margins.

You know, we've heard all of this from the start of digital that the Japanese companies will produce a medium format back and kill off that segment.... buzzz.... wrong.

Next after the RED was introduced the thought was Sony and Canon would make a raw file/combo still and motion camera that would kill off the red......buzzz.....wrong.

Now we hear the next big Canon camera will be a 5d3 and the 1ds3 will be a year behind.  So as RED is on the high end, Canon is going after the low priced market.

I don't have any preference.  I bought a RED cause nothing else I could afford shot a raw motion file.  I also bought a RED because I believe that is the future for professional cameras.

If one of the Japanese companies makes something equal for 1/10th the price, then good I'm there. 

So far they haven't.

No in all honesty just like you need a dslr to back up a medium format camera, (for a lot of reasons), I believe you also need a 5d/7d to back up a RED if only for images i tight spots or lightweight car mounts.

Motion or stills.  Not one camera does it all.

IMO

BC
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ChristopherBarrett

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #111 on: December 19, 2010, 09:22:27 pm »

No in all honesty just like you need a dslr to back up a medium format camera, (for a lot of reasons), I believe you also need a 5d/7d to back up a RED if only for images i tight spots or lightweight car mounts.

Motion or stills.  Not one camera does it all.

IMO

BC


+1

My 5d2 doesn't get out of the case much, but I'm glad it's there because it's good enough to run second string for my P65+ AND my Red.  I look at my Phase One files and think "nothing else would give me such a beautiful image" look at the Red footage and see how gorgeous and flexible it is and then remember how many times the Canon saved my ass when I didn't have time to set up either of the others.  All tools in the box.

/word
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ndevlin

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Re: Pentax: "Amateur" product means more value, less dealer margins?
« Reply #112 on: December 19, 2010, 10:00:22 pm »


Lovely work Chris (and a very good point).

My point was that there are very few people like JJ willing to throw gazillions of dollars at a blue-sky project like RED. Even Sony, for all its trillions, produces pretty predictable product (and the world's worst UI on a lot of it). Pentax built the 645D because they knew it would sell to a particular market, and they needed to show positive sales growth to sex-up their company for sale.   Rumour I heard was that they bulk-bought 10K chips - an unheard of amount in the MF world - which made the price very attractive. But agai, it's the economics of the company, not any grand vision, driving the product.

The 'mass market' product (Nikon and Canon) is now so good for the price it makes no sense for pros not to own and use them. The economic sense of spending 3-10x as much for the last 15-20% of quality isn't there in most cases. This is why MF companies have turned heavily to the amateur market, where their customers are those for whom the backs are a discretionary spend, not a business case. I agree that this hardly drives pro-oriented innovation. But if it keeps these companies in business, that's preferably to a further narrowing of the market.

BC, I can't wait to see what you turn out with the RED, though I think you'll have trouble besting the stop-motion movies for raw creativity. I just love those. That's a new and untrodden art-form, whereas full motion is a mature one.

Me, I just want a stills camera that give me LF quality with 35mm ease of use  ;)

- N.   

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