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Author Topic: Let's talk about money: Upgrade prices, value depreciation, promotions for P1  (Read 124704 times)

ciccio

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 ;D ;D ;D not for long time the phase one model will survive.....wait and see....
i am very happy with my iq160
but very very disapointed with their tricky way to sell products !
and the future is on our side...
best.
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eronald

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i have a feeling that when you put a 645z at $6K next to an XF with IQ250C at $30K, the Pentax may be the camera with better focus, and very similar sensor quality :)

Some of the people on this forum may decide to try the Pentax before buying the Phase :)

Edmund



What was meant, I suppose, is that Phase One controls their dealers. They are not allowed to publish prices online. They are not allowed to compete on price. To me, it seems similar to the situation with car dealers 20 years ago: you could only get a new car at list price and the list price included a big margin so that the car dealer could give you a good price on your used old car. A friend of mine was a car dealer and explained it to me: let us say that the extra margin on new cars was 5000$, they would use that to offer a price for your used car which was 1000$ above what a private person would pay. They still pocketed 4000$, part of which went to finance used car sales, lending cars to prospective customers, some extra service, etc...

Price control is a necessity for that subvention system to work. If you have no price control, some dealers will lower their prices by 5000$ and not offer the extra services. Customers will complain about the more expensive dealer being more expensive but still require the extra service. When price fixing became illegal in the EU a few years ago, the practices were exposed but many car dealers went bankrupt.

It seems that this is the way Phase One markets their cameras and backs, since they are about 10,000$ more expensive than the equivalent Leaf or Hasselblad systems.



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BernardLanguillier

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i have a feeling that when you put a 645z at $6K next to an XF with IQ250C at $30K, the Pentax may be the camera with better focus, and very similar sensor quality :)

Some of the people on this forum may decide to try the Pentax before buying the Phase :)

It it is also easier to get. I can order a 645Z at amazon.co.jp before 18:35 today and have it delivered at my door tomorrow. I could in fact order 8 of the them and it would still work the same.

Who needs a back up? ;)

Cheers,
Bernard

Chris Livsey

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Let's step back some years, I have a feeling that when you put a Leica M7 at $? (but think a large number)  next to an Zorki at $? ( think a smaller (much) number), the Zorki can be fitted with the same  "sensor" quality.
Some of the people used to decide to try the Zorki before buying the Leica yet Leica prospered. When the end result was printed, those were the days, (and remember the glass was/is interchangeable) who could tell?

Just saying  ;)

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ErikKaffehr

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On the other hand, we don't discuss Leica and Zorki, and the lenses are not interchangable.

Interesting to see the Leica S-E going cheapo these days, BTW...

Best regards
Erik


Let's step back some years, I have a feeling that when you put a Leica M7 at $? (but think a large number)  next to an Zorki at $? ( think a smaller (much) number), the Zorki can be fitted with the same  "sensor" quality.
Some of the people used to decide to try the Zorki before buying the Leica yet Leica prospered. When the end result was printed, those were the days, (and remember the glass was/is interchangeable) who could tell?

Just saying  ;)


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landscapephoto

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Let's step back some years, I have a feeling that when you put a Leica M7 at $? (but think a large number)  next to an Zorki at $? ( think a smaller (much) number), the Zorki can be fitted with the same  "sensor" quality.
Some of the people used to decide to try the Zorki before buying the Leica yet Leica prospered. When the end result was printed, those were the days, (and remember the glass was/is interchangeable) who could tell?

At the time, the price of the "sensor" was not included in the price of the camera. Today, especially for MF formats, it is supposed to make a large percentage of the final product. Moreover, comparing to Zorki is not exactly fair, since the industry which produced it at the time was heavily subsidised.
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landscapephoto

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i have a feeling that when you put a 645z at $6K next to an XF with IQ250C at $30K, the Pentax may be the camera with better focus, and very similar sensor quality :)

According to dpreview, the list price for the XF with IQ350c is $40,990.00, not $30K.
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synn

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...and you can drive as fast (legally) in a Honda as you can in a Bugatti, you can play a Squier just as well as a PRS Custom, a pair of Eccos serve the same purpose as a pair of $1200 Graziano & Girling and so on.

Tell us something we don't already know.
No, really.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 03:50:18 am by synn »
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landscapephoto

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...and you can drive as fast (legally) in a Honda as you can in a Bugatti, you can play a Squier just as well as a PRS Custom, a pair of Eccos serve the same purpose as a pair of $1200 Graziano & Girling and so on.

Here you are comparing standard products with luxury products. That is not quite relevant. It would be if we would compare, for example, the prices between a Sony A7 with a signed special edition Leica, the Leica camera being sold to collectors who will rarely use it to take pictures.

MF cameras are not marketed as luxury products, but as high-end professional gear.

Besides, Phase One cameras can be compared to Leaf cameras. The two system share a lot of DNA, yet Leaf is considerably cheaper.
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Primus

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...and you can drive as fast (legally) in a Honda as you can in a Bugatti, you can play a Squier just as well as a PRS Custom, a pair of Eccos serve the same purpose as a pair of $1200 Graziano & Girling and so on.

Tell us something we don't already know.
No, really.

Yes, but the Bugatti will instantly identify you as 'rich' and perhaps 'famous' and would be a huge chick magnet. Doubt the Phase could do that - just sayin.......... ;)

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ErikKaffehr

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Hi,

My take on the issue is that I don't have the slightest doubt that a lady driver, say Suzie Wolff, driving an Ariel Atom would be much faster than an ugly fat fellow like me driving a Bugatti on any road with a curve on it. The Atom is made for racing and Suzie knows how to drive...

Best regards
Erik


Yes, but the Bugatti will instantly identify you as 'rich' and perhaps 'famous' and would be a huge chick magnet. Doubt the Phase could do that - just sayin.......... ;)


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Primus

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What we are talking about are Brand Positioning Strategies.

To me it looks like Phase One has one strategy: exclusive & reassuringly expensive. Pentax has a different one: affordability, MF for the masses.
(Hasselblad seem to drift between the two....)
...................

Again, the concept of the 'exclusive club'. If you offer a product that does nothing more than the cheaper one but is priced at a point that only a few can afford it, it becomes desirable, even highly so, for some people with a need to belong to that rarified circle. That is obviously why luxury goods sell as they do.

On so many workshops I've seen amateurs with very poor photography or camera skills sporting Leicas and Phase systems simply because they believed that not only would it instantly improve their images but give them 'credibility' and access to that select group. On one such trip recently there was a person with an M240 and a Noctilux who thought he could clean his sensor with a lens brush and came running to me for help when he realized the sensor was now completely covered with dust!

That is a market that swallows Leicas and Phase. Guess who bought the most expensive Leica ever sold? And where all the luxury goods in the world are going?

Pradeep
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BernardLanguillier

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That is a market that swallows Leicas and Phase. Guess who bought the most expensive Leica ever sold? And where all the luxury goods in the world are going?

Yep. The place where I have seen the highest concentration of phase backs, in fact the only place where I saw more than one, was in Shichuan/Jyuzaighou.

I was stitching with my D800+Leica 180mm f2.8 APO next to a guy with a P45+ who gave me an hilarious condenscending look. He would cried had he seen the tack sharp 400 megapixel resulting file but he probably still feels good about owning the "best".. ;)

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 07:55:20 am by BernardLanguillier »
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ciccio

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 ;D

all this will be wiped out when all the real competitors will start shipping the cmos cameras .....and then the war start , and finally phase will have to change their business model to survive as leica with their s model have already started . or disappear...
no mercy.
best. ;)
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JoeKitchen

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Seems to me there are a lot of people here with buyer's remorse and looking for an excuse to bash P1.  That, or there are a lot a really smart MBA grads looking to show of their immense knowledge of marketing and price strategy, hoping to land a job with some of the companies lurking in the shadows on this site.  

Three years ago, for my P45+, RM3Di, three lenses and a handful of other misc. items, I spent north of $30K.  I consider it to be a great investment and I would do it again, even with all of the other cameras that have been released since then.  Why?  

Because I shoot architecture and interiors, and I wanted a camera specifically designed to shoot that subject.  However I had no allusions as to what I could do with this camera.  I knew it was a base ISO, or one stop higher, camera (at the time at least, with the current version of C1, I feel ISO400 would be good for certain types of images) that I had to always shoot on a tripod with.  It is slow moving, however I am a slow moving shooter.  The DR was great at the time, but lacking compared to the now almighty Sony, but to be honest, I'd rather have a better color field than DR, which CCDs have.  Also, the tech camera lenses are beyond anything I have seen with any other optics on any other platform (exception could be made for the new P1 35mm). 

So, at the end of it, I had very specific needs for the way I shoot a very specific subject, and I bought accordingly.  If you just decided to buy because you thought the camera could perform miracles, well then I have to agree with Keith.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 10:07:16 am by JoeKitchen »
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eronald

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...and you can drive as fast (legally) in a Honda as you can in a Bugatti, you can play a Squier just as well as a PRS Custom, a pair of Eccos serve the same purpose as a pair of $1200 Graziano & Girling and so on.

Tell us something we don't already know.
No, really.

Actually, I needed to go and try both the Pentax and the new XF to realize that if you don't need a leaf shutter or tether, THE PENTAX IS BETTER.
The Pentax is ugly and boxy, but feels faster, more interactive, and has better focus.

The Pentax is NOT EQUIVALENT to the Phase, IMHO The Pentax IS SUBSTANTIALLY BETTER .

Of course, if you already have a Phase IQ back and a Phamiya, the XF is a solid improvement on what you have.

Now, YOU may have already known this, but I'm willing to bet that most members of this forum have not held both a Pentax  Z and and XF in their very own hands.

The new Pentax may be a "downgrade" from Phase in price, but it sure feels like like moving from a venerable Rolls Royce limo to a Porsche, an upgrade in performance at a quarter the price. At $8K or so with a lens, the Pentax also isn't exactly a cheap camera, and it doesn't feel cheap, in case you haven't held one it is ugly, chunky,  weather-sealed and SOLID and has two tripod mounts one for vertical shots which makes it even more solid in real-world use. Of course, at current prices the low end Hassies and the Leica S are competitors and in many ways superior to the Pentax body but they don't offer that killer 50MP Sony sensor at that price point.

Edmund

PS. The Japanese Pentax/Ricoh have three advantages over Phase: a VERY fast dev pipeline with UI, ergonomics, electronics and screen supplied by the K line, a deep pool of engineering talent that can be conscripted, and a rich parent company for whom MF is a prestige loss-leader.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 10:48:44 am by eronald »
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Jeffery Salter

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Please.  Go buy any camera.  If a Phase is calling you buy one.  If a Yashica Mat tlr is calling you buy one.  If a Pentax 645D/Z is calling you buy one.

Then get up early, when the light is right and take that camera for a walk. Shoot lots of pictures.  Sorry gentleman it’s a cop out if you only shoot 900 pictures on a perfectly fine operating camera and decide "it" doesn't take good pictures. I would wager to say it’s more about learning the tool and understanding what’s it capable of doing then applying it to one’s vision.  Its a rare frame indeed for me that a picture is “bad” because of the camera.  I wish it was other wise…

I have made many images which just don’t work because of my choices…. bad composition, poor understanding of lighting, improper camera technique and simply having nothing to say in the image, i.e. poor content.  And all that is okay.  Because the only way to become a great (either technically or artistically)image maker  is to shoot thousands of images and learn from your mistakes. Rinse and repeat.

Excuses don’t take pictures.

If you don’t have any passion for your art.  Spending all your time bitching about camera prices is not going to put a print on your wall.  

If you don’t know:

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hopper, Peder Balke,

Bill Brandt, Sebastian Selgado, Eugene Smith, Mary Ellen Mark,

Akira Kurasawa, Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nyvist

then perhaps you should.  

Learn what makes a great image.  Study how artists who inspire you create.  Find out what you want your images to say.  Study your craft.  All these will help you determine which “black box” or camera will be your partner on the path.

Wake up your passion for the image.

Thank you,
Jeffery

P.S. I realize my list of artists is highly western sensitive.  Others from around the world can share their sources of inspiration.

P.S. Sorry for the typo in my earlier post of Akira Kurosawa last name.

« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 01:19:45 pm by Jeffery Salter »
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JoeKitchen

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Then get up early, when the light is right and take that camera for a walk. Shoot lots of pictures.  Sorry gentleman it’s a cop out if you only shoot 900 pictures on a perfectly fine operating camera and decide "it" doesn't take good pictures. I would wager to say it’s more about learning the tool and understanding what’s it capable of doing then applying it to one’s vision.  Its a rare frame indeed for me that a picture is “bad” because of the camera.  I wish it was other wise…



+1

I was once told be a photo professor that you don't really know your film until you can take all the rolls you shot, lay them out flat and on top of each other, and get a stack at least 6 inches thick.  I doubt 900 shots would get you there.  
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buckshot

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Cheap shot.
I'm not criticising anyone for sharing detailed, honest & first hand information, but rather I'm criticising those who spend a fortune without making sure the system can do what they want it to do.

There are few people who are prepared to pull back the curtain on the cloak-and-dagger world of the numbers game we are asked to play to get into MF through the dealer route, so when someone does, it doesn't help anyone (other than the dealers) when someone else tries to publicly pull them down a peg or two. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but it came across like that.

I for one have found Pradeep's contribution to this thread - which admittedly has wobbled around more than a drunk on an escalator (how on earth did it degenerate into a CCD vs CMOS debacle at one time) - hugely informative.
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Primus

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Please.  Go buy any camera.  If a Phase is calling you buy one.  If a Yashica Mat tlr is calling you buy one.  If a Pentax 645D/Z is calling you buy one.

Then get up early, when the light is right and take that camera for a walk. Shoot lots of pictures.  Sorry gentleman it’s a cop out if you only shoot 900 pictures on a perfectly fine operating camera and decide "it" doesn't take good pictures. I would wager to say it’s more about learning the tool and understanding what’s it capable of doing then applying it to one’s vision.  Its a rare frame indeed for me that a picture is “bad” because of the camera.  I wish it was other wise…

I have made many images which just don’t work because of my choices…. bad composition, poor understanding of lighting, improper camera technique and simply having nothing to say in the image, i.e. poor content.  And all that is okay.  Because the only way to become a great (either technically or artistically)image maker  is to shoot thousands of images and learn from your mistakes. Rinse and repeat.

Excuses don’t take pictures.

If you don’t have any passion for your art.  Spending all your time bitching about camera prices is not going to put a print on your wall.  

If you don’t know:

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hopper, Peder Balke,

Bill Brandt, Sebastian Selgado, Eugene Smith, Mary Ellen Mark,

Akira Kurasawo, Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nyvist

then perhaps you should.  

Learn what makes a great image.  Study how artists who inspire you create.  Find out what you want your images to say.  Study your craft.  All these will help you determine which “black box” or camera will be your partner on the path.

Wake up your passion for the image.

Thank you,
Jeffery

P.S. I realize my list of artists is highly western sensitive.  Others from around the world can share their sources of inspiration.



Thank you, very helpful post indeed!

Perhaps it is not a good idea to be honest here. It has suddenly become all about my own experience and how foolish I was etc etc. Most have drunk the Koolaid and are happy in their 'new clothes' without having the courage to admit that just maybe, maybe they are indeed naked!

If you cared to read my post fully, you would see that I was never complaining about the price, I happily paid what I did for the camera, just as I did more than twice that for my car. I am very happy with the latter, but the camera never delivered on what was assumed it would (yes, my fault for making the assumptions in the first place). I was complaining about the upgrade policy and depreciation, specifically of P-1 system, which is what this thread is supposed to be about. I also came in on page 8 because nobody had talked about their experience in all that time.

And yes, FYI, I did do all the things you suggest I should. I've done them perhaps for at least as long as you have (I don't know your story since you've not shared your experience on this thread). My first camera was a rangefinder in the 60s and my first DSLR was the Canon D60 in 2002. And yes, I've been to the museums, seen the Masters' work, learnt how to paint in order to understand how light paints an image in a camera, was a beta tester for Photoshop etc etc. That should give you an idea that I am not exactly a foolish amateur with too much money.

Perhaps it would be good once in a while for Professionals to accept the fact that there may be amateurs out there who do not make money from photography but are equally, if not more so, passionate about the art. That we too are eager to learn and improve ourselves and are constantly striving to do so, that we are, some of us, capable of spending the kind of money that keeps the industry going, that keeps the workshops of the professionals full. We learn from you, you earn from us (at least some of you do). It is a symbiotic relationship. We are amateurs ONLY because we do not make money from photography. Do not assume that every amateur is by definition a poor photographer or is clueless about the craft.

BTW, since you've made this personal, your work (at least from what I see on your website) is hardly inspiring, perhaps you need to go see the Masters again. And it is obvious your choice of artists is western, since you cannot spell Kurosawa correctly - BTW, I do have all his work in my collection.

It does not help when on a supposedly 'pro' forum such as this, those who have mastered the craft are quick to jump on the new guy on the forum because he/she has not yet paid his dues in the number  of use(less) posts and pontification.

Pradeep

Just for the record, I've taken over 4000 images with the Pentax in the past three months since I've owned it. Here is one taken in Africa after sunset at ISO1600. Now please tell me how I could have taken this with the Phase IQ180.
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