Hasselblad Acquired By DJI

[algrove]

Appears there is no horse in the stable right now.

[Paul2660]

Considering that the "horses mouth" has done a pretty poor job up till now,  I think the timing is fine.

I wish the new company all the best.

Paul Caldwell

[kers]

I only had the X1D in my hands, So i don't know about the actual image quality and usage, but i really like its clean straight forward uncluttered design.
It feels very solid as one piece of metal.
If i see the photos of the new Fujifilm GFX 50s; that camera looks a bit like the first bulky digital camera's.
I am sure it is a good camera but Hasselblads design is very elegant and modern, compared to fuji's.
I also wish Hasselblad the best and that DJI may contribute in better electronics and software...

[scyth]

I want to see Hasselblad to succeed.  If my article came off negative I suppose it is what you read into it. 

well, it is negative of course /and plays towards H's competition/, but then people shall know even rumors before investing into the system - and then everybody makes his/her decision themselves ... let us post some negative news/rumors about P1 to balance the score 

[mecrox]

I have in mind the whole DSLR cum mirrorless market.
I think a lot will have changed by this time next year - hopefully for the better.

Medium format is of interest to me but I claim absolutely no expertise or real knowledge in this market segment so Kevin's article was as big a surprise to me as I guess it was for everyone else.

With respect to the interchangeable lens camera market (DSLR/mirrorless) it is absolutely clear the market is very different from even just 2-3 years back.
Lots of factors at play here:
The pace of innovation as far as actual IQ and resolution has slowed. In percentage terms the improvements over the last few years has slowed. Cameras have actually become very good (I seem to recall that you shoot with a D800 series camera) and so the scramble to get the newest and shiniest is not like it once was. The same thing happened with PC type computers a number of years ago as far as both hardware components and OS goes. The market matured somewhat. Who knows, some us might actually wear a camera out before replacing it now!

The effect of Smartphones on the market cannot be underestimated. As a camera many mom and pop type shooters who just a few years ago might have been seduced into buying a DSLR instead of a compact camera will now just use their Smartphone instead.
Much more concerning, IMO anyway, is the effect the Smartphone will have on the future market for DSLR's. Simply put most current teenagers, those who are Smartphone smart anyway, look at current model DLSR as a piece of dinosaurware. From an image quality point-of-view for their purposes a Smartphone is plenty good enough and from a usability/convenience perspective there is no contest. Simply put, going forward, very, very few of those teenagers, once they reach an age where purchasing a DSLR becomes a realistic option financially, will have any incentive to switch even if they are really interested in image-making. From their perspective the Smartphone does what they want. Of course there will always be outliers - if one is really interested in bird photography attaching a 600mm f4.0 to a Smartphone is currently a bit of a challenge. But for a lot of different types of photography the Smartphone suffices.

I am very much interested to see how the various manufacturers and the larger photographic industry responds to the challenge  of not only maintaining, but increasing, their market share.
The interest in photography and image-making has never been higher yet the traditional vendors are losing market share hand over fist, most especially in market segments that were always their cash cow. The stuff that we shoot with might be the flagship that a manufacturer offers but it is rarely the big money-maker.
They will need to do something and time is not on their side.
Sony seems to be the only major player where both sides of the bread is buttered currently.

So, my view...
I think it will take a few weeks to ramp up but I expect plenty of announcements and perhaps even more rumours!

Tony Jay

Yes, that puts it all very neatly and concisely. I've been watching new camera announcements over the past few months for signs of change in the things you mention, but so far I have come up empty. Seems the crew on HMS Camera are just ploughing on, raising prices and hoping for the best, at the moment anyway. I hope the news with Hasselblad turns out to be good news for users and especially for staff and others who depend on the company doing well for their living. China is coming of age in a big way now and perhaps we all need to revise our attitudes to the way these things work.

[dchew]

... let us post some negative news/rumors about P1 to balance the score 

Been there done that. Should I queue the band?
Crazy pricing
Anyone who buys P1 products is just showing off
Ridiculous pricing
The end of MF
Insane pricing
Any perceived difference exists to justify the expense
Sales dropping off a cliff
They are deceiving everyone with their ISO/marketing trickery
Horrible and useless DR
Only for rich dentists
Useless because of the dark frame
Too expensive
Size and weight of a house
Did I mention price?
 

Dave

[Krug]

This article has generated a lot of hot air and some of it has not been in the best traditions of these forums.

The article itself - without evidence which, even if available, in my experience lawyers would recommend strongly against publishing at this point - is personal history plus speculation.

What concerns me more is what I believe Bernard Lanquillier was concerned about in his original post. There is a subtle balance to be struck when commenting on developments such as Kevin Raber writes about in his article. Break "news" based on insider information too early and in the wrong way and "reliable" sources dry up and what you can offer readers in the future becomes just the run of the mill rumour that we all tend to disregard as serious. Keep your powder dry and get the timing right and you will be trusted with more and better information - from which we will all benefit in the long run and it is what makes a "magazine" great.

Michael Reichmann was a master judge of that balance and we all benefitted from that !

[mi-fu]

I don't usually make posts here. I just wanted to say that I was disappointed by the way this article was written. LULA should be better than this.

It is not about brands. It is about balance and fairness.

[Kevin Raber]

Trust me if Michael was still with us he wouldn't have waited as long as I did to publish the article. 

[Manoli]

Trust me if Michael was still with us he wouldn't have waited as long as I did to publish the article. 

Enlighten me, Kevin - after over 2,000 words and 3 pages of forum posts, the only 'news' is that Hasselblad has a new majority shareholder. Was there anything else other than pie-in-the-sky hearsay and innuendo ?

Edit:
... other than PhaseOne's net income dropping by 62.8% yoy in the last published accounts. (See #11)

[E.J. Peiker]

Edit:
... other than PhaseOne's net income dropping by 62.8% yoy in the last published accounts. (See #11)

Note that revenue was essentially flat which is something few camera companies can actually say.  The net income down is due to capacity charges which is likely due to the completion of the acquisition of the remaining Mamiya assets.

But even if it's something else, simply looking at a balance sheet without the associated commentary is almost meaningless because there could have been strategic expenditures and one time charges that effected the numbers.  It would be nice if somebody that was fluent in Danish could read the entire report, not just the table and let us know what the actual reasons for the main cause of the  capital expenditures increase (according to Google translation) were rather than drawing the conclusion that the ship is sinking.

[Peter McLennan]

Please, DJI make us a MFD drone. 

[NickT]

Please, DJI make us a MFD drone. 

I have already seen an X1D mounted on a DJI drone.

[BradSmith]

Kevin,
Thank you for the article.  I never have been interested in MF, so I have no skin in this arena.  I found the news to be a little sad, emblematic of the new world order, and to some degree, wryly humorous.  One of the two or three brightest shining names of highest quality photography over the past 50 years acquired by a drone manufacturer. 

It seems clear that based on info that you have received from numerous sources, you are confident that the info is real.  You are CEO and publisher of this site.  You've been more deeply involved in the MF arena than probably anyone posting here, except maybe Peterson.  You are CEO and publisher of this site.  You know there are a lot of MF fanboys, er, ah, afficianados here, and the PAST history of MF dominating the pro/highest quality end of photography, therefore, there would be great interest.  And it seems to me that you have the right to believe this MIGHT be a bad omen for the company.  Oh, and by the way, you are CEO and publisher of this site.

In case others can't tell, I was "shocked and disappointed" by the whining by numerous commenters.  What would ever happen if you published something that those same people viewed as being critical about, OH MY GOD, Leica?

Brad 

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Brad,

I guess we can see it two ways. One is the positive one, Hasselblad is owned by I company on the go with lots of money. I don't know about the negative on.

One thing i know that Perry Oosten was happy with the initial investment by DJI, it may have changed since, of course.

If you go back to the original Imacon deal, it could be seen as an ideal situation for Phase One and Hasselblad. Phase One made the backs and Hasselblad made the cameras.

But, it was very clear that it was in the backs the money was. The cost for a back was like a camera body with 5-10 lenses. Hasselblad decided that they would sell their own backs with their cameras. Phase needed to somewhere else to for bodies. I think that Phase One earned a lot of sympathies those days, but it was an entirely feasible decision by Hasselblad.

It may be that Hasselblad was not around today without that decision. We don't know…

At the time of the merger between Hasselblad and Imacon the owner of both companies was Shiro, a Hong Kong based venture capital firm. They may have been the best owners Hasselblad had for many years.

Now, it seems that Hasselblad may have been taken over by DJI. Why? Could be they feel that it is fun to own Hasselblad, but it could also be that they feel there is a market for large sensor aerial photography and they want to earn that money self instead of doing all the hard work and let Phase one walk off with the profits.

It could be that Kevin has more info that he did not disclose. But I wouldn't say that Hasselblad changing ownership from a German VC to the company dominating the drone business is not necessarily a bad thing.

Difficult to predict the future is…

Best regards
Erik

Kevin,
Thank you for the article.  I never have been interested in MF, so I have no skin in this arena.  I found the news to be a little sad, emblematic of the new world order, and to some degree, wryly humorous.  One of the two or three brightest shining names of highest quality photography over the past 50 years acquired by a drone manufacturer. 

It seems clear that based on info that you have received from numerous sources, you are confident that the info is real.  You are CEO and publisher of this site.  You've been more deeply involved in the MF arena than probably anyone posting here, except maybe Peterson.  You are CEO and publisher of this site.  You know there are a lot of MF fanboys, er, ah, afficianados here, and the PAST history of MF dominating the pro/highest quality end of photography, therefore, there would be great interest.  And it seems to me that you have the right to believe this MIGHT be a bad omen for the company.  Oh, and by the way, you are CEO and publisher of this site.

In case others can't tell, I was "shocked and disappointed" by the whining by numerous commenters.  What would ever happen if you published something that those same people viewed as being critical about, OH MY GOD, Leica?

Brad

[Alan Smallbone]

I have already seen an X1D mounted on a DJI drone.

Hasselblad already has a camera that is MF and designed to be carried on drones I posted the link earlier, here it is again,

http://www.hasselblad.com/special-applications/a5d-aerial

There are already gimbals to carry it and you could mount it on one of the larger 8 rotor drones.

Alan

[Alan Smallbone]

I poked around on the Hasselblad site and there is already a DJI drone with the medium format camera and gimbal

http://www.hasselblad.com/special-applications/a5d-m600-bundle

So there you go, DJI just wants to expand the technology. I am sure. When they reduce costs then sales will go up, at least in theory.
Alan

[E.J. Peiker]

After having thought about this quite a bit and having read every post on every forum that is discussing this, and being a 27 year veteran (retired) of the tech industry, I have come to the conclusion that this is likely to be a very good thing for Hasselblad beyond the much needed cash infusion to deal with the additional up-front production tooling and costs to meet unanticipated demand.  I think anybody that has worked in the tech industry that has followed the saga of the X1D has come to the realization that Hasselblad came up with a great hardware design but that they greatly underestimated the difficulty and the time scope, given their reportedly limited resources, of the software side of bringing this camera to market.  All signs point to firmware development as being the major bottleneck in bringing this camera to market.  DJI on the other hand excels at the software side of the business and as majority financial investor in Hasselblad (note that what's been reported is that they are taking or took a majority shareholder position which is different from a straight-up acquisition), they have the financial and technical capability to bring both the financial and computer engineering/programming resources to bear to make not only the X1D great but also to give the company some more solid financial footing. 

What does DJI get out of it, this is pure speculation on my part, but for one an iconic brand name which has significant value, exceptional aesthetic engineering capabilities, expertise in large sensor hardware integration and deep partnerships with world class optics manufacturers.  And then there's drones which are going to be regulated into oblivion in the EU as the EU has done to anything that flies except airlines (and that's debatable) but if there is now an EU drone company, DJI or Hasselblad Drones in the EU will likely make the overzealous EU regulators look at drones a bit differently - again pure speculation...

[BernardLanguillier]

Exactly, the most reasonnable take on this is to expect this to be good news for Hasselblad. Not as another change of ownership in a long list of events in the life of a company lacking stability and future, but on the contrary as a decisive step forward cementing the great momentum Hasselblad currently has.

Any view differing from this default reasonnable view would have to be backed up by facts not to read as an unexpectedely negative take.

Kevin, I am not questioning your neutrality, I am just stressing that the way you have phrased the last part of your article doesn't reflect your positive intent. So it may be good to rework that part a bit?

Cheers,
Bernard

[gilstill]

Having made a healthy living specializing in the selling  and servicing Hasselblad equipment for the past thirty years I was saddened to see the direction the company moved towards.  Equally discouraging was the demise of Kodak.  Who could have imagined the the iPhone would be the camera of choice for so many a dozen years ago?
Friends who have purchased DJI drones marvel at the company's talent and marketing skills.  I don't think they are a two-bit Chinese junk operation and frankly I'm optimistic about Hasselblad's future.