I started this blog stating that I
wanted to talk more about photography than gear. For some flawed reason I
didn’t want to be viewed as a gear head. But I confess, I like cameras equally
as much as I like photography.So that brings me back to this
blog entry.
You may have noticed that most of
my posts in some way look back into photographic history. This is likely
because that’s where the idea of the Flipbac was born - medium format cameras,
the likes of Hasselblad, Rollei, Contax, etc.All very romantic.
But here’s a change of tack. What
happened to these fine European cameras? Where are they today?
Not one dominant European digital
camera comes to mind? It appears these leading companies were blind to the
digital change. What really surprises me is that there was plenty of warning
and this change did not happen quickly. As far as I can see, it was poor poor
leadership. Why did this lack of vision affect almost all of the European photo
industry?
I’m not sure I know the answer as
there are likely many reasons but I found this interesting link on DP Review:
Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, etc,
all made film cameras, yet they adapted and became leaders.
What kind of car are you
driving? This situation appears strikingly similar to
the American car industry. Death by a thousand cuts? A terrible way to die, even more
terrible when it is self-inflicted.
Posted by:
Flipbac
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
The fine European cameras are vanishing to the invisible high-end professional market. We have still at least Alpa, Arca, Cambo, Hasselblad, PhaseOne and Sinar! The 645 and bigger size digital cameras are in 20 - 100K price class and not so interesting to everyday photographers. Marketing and tests are targeted to professionals and located mostly on professional photography websites. So you must google something else than everyday photography terms....
