Kodak chip in Pentax 645D

[BillOConnor]

With Kodak selling Leaf to Phase One and acting, as usual, as if making quality photographic equipment is such a chore, what does this mean
for Pentax. Leaf backs still have Kodak chips, as far as I know, but has Kodak found new resolve to continue producing these chips?

[LKaven]

I don't know about resolve, but maybe incentive.  If they sell 25,000 sensors to Pentax, they could gross in the range of $25 million.  I'm glad I don't otherwise bet on their motivations to excel in the new world.

[HarperPhotos]

Hello,

I am pretty sure that Leaf don’t use Kodak but Dalsa chips.

Cheers

Simon

[Doug Peterson]

Leaf backs still have Kodak chips, as far as I know, but has Kodak found new resolve to continue producing these chips?

All the recent Leaf backs have been Dalsa.

[hsmeets]

With Kodak selling Leaf to Phase One and acting, as usual, as if making quality photographic equipment is such a chore, what does this mean
for Pentax. Leaf backs still have Kodak chips, as far as I know, but has Kodak found new resolve to continue producing these chips?

Kodak sells to Leica and Hasselblad too.

I guess leica would not have choosen a kodak sensor if kodak would not have given them solid promises about staying in the sensor business.

To some extend having Pentax as a kodak customer is also good news for Leica and HB.

[BJL]

... has Kodak found new resolve to continue producing these chips?

Leaf has always used Dalsa sensors, despite the strange situation of being acquired by Kodak "incidentally" when Kodak bought Leaf's parent company (Creo?) for the sake of other assets.

No problem about Kodak continuing to make MF sensors; it has just launched its new 40MP 44x33mm sensor with microlenses used in the H4D-40 and Pentax 645D, following the 50MP 49x37mm sensor for the H4D-50 and some other backs.

More to the point, these MF sensors piggy-back on sensor technologies that Kodak (and Dalsa) continue to develop for other profitable sensor markets: scientific, industrial, medical and military customers.

[BillOConnor]

Wow guys, great info. It's just that of all companies, Kodak makes me the most nervous. They can build
the greatest equipment ever made, Bantam Special, Ektra, Medalist, Commercial Ektars, Enlarging Ektars,
their paper cutters, their slide viewers and then drop them one day like a smallpox-infected blanket.
I'd like to see the Pentax 645D succeed for a number of reasons and didn't want a company defined by its
fickle behavior towards its own excellence to be the reason it failed to thrive.
These are interesting times.