Olympus, Panasonic, Leica overthrow Canon and Nikon

I apologize for being direct, but you, sir, are wasting your time. By the way, there is so much more to that market than just cameras- it is the availability of lenses, the wide range of rental and repair shops, and lots of exotic lenses for a one-time job that you can rent. Then there are patents on the AF, IS and everything else that goes into a true high-end camera. There are many ways to get around them on a consumer level, but on a pro level it is much harder. Also, many people have no idea how fast the phase detection AF is compared to the CD-AF, and how important it can be in some situations. It is a difference between every frame being in focus and every third frame.

All this bleating on this forum about how a m43 is replacing SLRs is, frankly, a bunch of bull. I love my m43 and it has almost replaced my SLR for casual shooting, but I understand that I am making a compromise, and would be a fool to take it along when I have a real job to do. An SLR camera is here to stay, and Canon and Nikon will be the professional choice for a long time to come. By the way, all the money is in the consumer market and point and shoots, so why should Panasonic even care for a pro market?

The factories aren't as generic as you think they are. If what you're trying to say is that FF cameras will never be affordable, please define what affordable is. They'll always be more than crop sensors, yes I agree but you'll keep seeing the price come down.

WA and normal fl range would be beautiful on such a camera.
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I refuse to wed myself to any of these vendors. I'm just having fun taking pictures,
and watching the technology develop.

Lens choices are critical in choosing a camera system for me. The abysmal lens choices in m4/3 is keeping me from buying in at this time. I like the concept and I believe P/O/L have it within their grasp to change the industry with this system. But without high speed lenses in lengths from from wide to tele I'm just not interested. The legacy lens uses are fun, but workarounds at best.

If they can't get more lenses to market for m4/3, how could they support a full frame camera or attract NiCan people...

FlyPenFly said:

The factories aren't as generic as you think they are. If what you're trying to say is that FF cameras will never be affordable, please define what affordable is. They'll always be more than crop sensors, yes I agree but you'll keep seeing the price come down.

Click to expand...

To some people, they're already affordable; but not to me.

There's more to the cost of building a camera than the sensor; but for FF cameras it's a sizable portion of the cost. Meanwhile, logic-type semiconductors continue to get cheaper (by making the transistor size smaller, and using larger silicon wafers), while FF sensors will take up same space on a silicon wafer (by definition). So the primary strategy that the semiconductor industry has used in the last 20 years to drive down cost and increase profitability - defined by Moore's Law - can't be applied to FF sensors.

I'm not suggesting FF cameras won't get any cheaper, but that you won't see them decrease in price to the same degree as other electronics that take advantage of the economics of shrinking logic transistor geometries.

Volume is one way to reduce cost; have a mega-factory that makes the same sensor for multiple manufacturers, like Sony does.

Still, it's more expensive than making sensors for point and shoot cameras, where the marketing has always been megapixel-based. There's a reason for this : a 10 megapixel sensor using "yesterday's" process technology takes up twice the silicon real estate of "today's" process technology. So a process "shrink" of a point and shoot sensor means they can fit twice as many on the same wafer, increasing yields and profitability. Pixel area shrinks, too; but low-light quality is not as important with these types of cameras. That's why the manufacturers make lots of money on high-volume point and shoot sensors; they're small, you can fit thousands on a 300mm silicon wafer. Converse that to a FF sensor, where only a hundred or so, at best, can be had per wafer.

Joe

I think you're making some faulty assumptions.

Shrunken process manufacturing doesn't mean it's necessarily cheaper. You get higher failure rates with the most advanced processes. So your $ sqinch formula varies a lot depending on processor design and rejection rates.

CMOS sensors though are always fixed sizes and the processes are very well understood and rudimentary compared to a modern cpu like an i7. Without a big revolution or new sophistication in camera sensor designs, they'll keep going down. Your full frame sensor from five years ago isn't radically different or much more complex compared to a top line CPU from five years ago to a topline CPU today.

Camera CMOS sensors are the engines in Honda Civics or Toyota Corollas, new GPU and CPU designs are the Ferrari and Lambo engines. The level of sophistication and progress is just much faster.

FF sensor cameras will probably hit a critical wall in the $800 range for body only would be my guess in the next five years.

Someone will make a ff mirror less, and it will require new lenses. Better to be innovative than to wait around and let your market get eaten by others.
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I refuse to wed myself to any of these vendors. I'm just having fun taking pictures,
and watching the technology develop.

Let's leave Leica out of this as they are not (really) a part of 4/3.

Neither Olympus nor Panasonic will enter FF territory (or APS) because that would be to admit that 4/3 and micro43 just do not cut the mustard.

If anything, it is 4/3 that is in under attack from micro43.

Both Canon and Nikon will enter the mirrorless market soon with microAPS cameras. There were rumors a year ago that Nikon had a microAPS camera they were testing and many expected to see it last year. It's only a matter of time.

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The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler