...Now in regards to price, from a professional point of view, everything is too expensive unless you need it for commerce, then the price becomes less relevant.
I thought our original Canon 1ds' were expensive until we bought medium format backs, which I thought was expensive until we bought cinema video cameras, which I thought was expensive until we bought cinema lenses, which I thought was expensive until we bought cinema lighting, which I thought was expensive until we bought cinema supports, monitors, post production computers, software.............................
I think it's the chicken and egg thing. I don't know if the specialty camera market is small because the equipment is specialized, somewhat limited and more expensive, or is the market small because the equipment is specialized, somewhat limited and more expensive?
IMO
BC
I'd like to keep going with this idea because I'm very much into those thoughts recently.
I really think that the cost of the specialized equipments is in general totally overpriced and ultimatly scandalous.
You where talking about cine lightning. There is no refine high-tech in those if we think about it, it's a very old well known and rather simple circuitery. They are built to military standarts nothing more, but it's nothing much more than a brutal peice of metal. And it's priced a fortune.
But then, in my block, every month they film a silly tv show for the Canal + chanel (Jay Leno type, sorry for Jay...) that has absolutly nothing special and the medium displayed are simply huge. It costs a fortune per hour just to do something "crap" that target the sheep asleep masses. In the scandalous budgets and corruption that is the norm in a big part of this industry, 10.000, 100.000 is a joke. They would light your cigarette with a 1000 euros lighter it would not shock anybody and it will enter into the prod budget that nobody would notice it. Those costs are admited and there is no doubt for me that manufacturers are taking a great advantage of the situation.
But those days are numbered...
I'd really like the know the real cost of an average Arri HMI fresnel, and I would like to know for how much they sell those to our military forces by the way. The prices shouldn't be exactly the same than the ones we can access.
In the still world, to see the differences in print between a 5D2 and a muscled MF, a part from the maniacs because the clients-viewers aren't concern by those criterium but by the emotional response, you'd need to reach sizes that very few people are actually using-needing. But the cost of such an "excelence" is enormous.
In fact, we don't really pay for what we get, we pay for a spirit, a way to do things, a brand and a social status (expensive equipment).
Look at the softwares. What a strange situation indeed how suddenly suites that costed a fortuned and reserved to this industry's elite have, "just like that", gone down drastically and now accessible to almost eveybody. How strange...
Where the price then "real" ?
And I'm not sure that the very few who still are working with expensive Nucoda for ex are doing things that can't be done today with a much much cheaper equipment.
And the MF body designs. What have they done ? Nothing. Absolutly nothing! It's all about sensors and megapixels and even, they haven't been able to make a great lcd and significant progress in high isos. They use a body technology that is 50, 60 years old and looks adapted in a hurry to digital requirements. Nothing new, no great features, no designs improvements, almost no RAD in this. How much costs a new Mamiya-Phase without the back? Is it really serious, or are they really serious? I'd like to know.
Red comes into the scene ans started to put the mess in the cine world...it was refreshing indeed.
It's been the chicken with the golden eggs in the high-end.
I got the sensation that now they are going to eat stone eggs because the pushing generation is simply saying no (to stay polite) to those abuses (they build their own equipment, they pirat softwares, they hack cameras and they are much less asleep than their parents).
