Just popped over to your web site. You've got some great stuff in your book. That high-speed shot of the water-splash is sensational.
Maybe the world is much changed since the time I shot photos for a living (unsuccessfully ). But I don't recall camera manufacturers back then rolling out products that they knew perfectly well would be vaporware for a long time. A short time, maybe, but not a long time. Considering the advances in production, you'd think the turnaround time from concept to completion would have gone down quite a bit. But perhaps Minolta's strategy is simply to let all of those eager mouths water for a while...
If so it's a gamble. In the time between the first Trade-Show Salivation Experience to the actual release date, a lot of people might become frustrated enough, waiting, that they go off and buy themselves an E-10, get to like it...and decide not to bother switching. This would not exactly work in Minolta's favor. From the sound of it, Minolta has not been gushy with information since the initial buzz (their web site's "sneak preview" really is pathetic). Not a formula for making friends and influencing people.
But then, perhaps they are so confident that the Dimage 7 will take over the market that they don't care if a few potential customers are irritated at them right now. (They can hope that someone else doesn't come along with an equally or more impressive camera in the meantime...a new Olympus E-10-like model, or some kind of stripped-down D30...whatever.)
Are the camera manufacturers feeling insecure about all this? The digital market is
exploding . What the HELL are they waiting for? Permission from their mothers? An autographed copy of marching-orders from God? Canon, for instance...has that great RAW format and excellent algorithms for smoooooothing out the image...and what do they produce? The G1, a nice little camera with no grip and a
horrible "viewfinder". Are they afraid that if they made an E-10-like prosumer camera, they'd cut into their D30 sales? Ok, there's the Pro90, with a lens not designed (so I hear) for that CCD and a junky focus-by-wire mechanism. I'm sure it takes fine pictures. But what a weird combination of "sophisticated" and "cheesy."
Will there be seventeen new generations of digital cameras with the tripod sockets off the lens axis, no eyecups, no cable-release capability, and sometimes-it-works, sometimes-it-doesn't focusing mechanisms (when the auto-focus mechanisms in Nikon and Canon film cameras right now are superb?) What a bizarre business altogether.
Hello, Minolta. Are you listening? I will try to be content for a while with this C2100. And when 2.x mpx no longer interests me, and you haven't come forth with that Dimage at least for
review purposes, I might just find myself with an E-10. Get to market, folks. Time's a-wasting. (Or stop announcing vaporware...)
Thanks, Mike. I can't wait till somebody actually reviews this and
has full specs. Kinda funny how it won the innovation award when it
was under glass. Makes you wonder if you carved a camera shape out
of wood and let the people here on dpreview's forums loose on the
specs what kind of award you could win... ;-)
