Upgradable electronics?

[Doug Richardson <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

Alastair Firkin suggested that it might to possible to design a camera
whose electronics could be upgraded. I don't think this is a viable
possibility.

He wrote " Some computers are now being designed to allow ongoing
upgrades." Well, I  my computer last summer with a new Intel baby-AT
motherboard, and got the job done just in time. Today, Intel's
motherboards are all ATX layout, so won't fit existing cases. For better
or for worse, the electronics industry is living in the age of the
"throw-away society".

Take the example of the Leica R3. I asked my local dealer why
R3s were so cheap compared with SL2s. He suggested that the problem was
because the electronics assembly in the R3 was getting toward the end of
its life. "If it keeps working, it's a cheap route into R photography - if
it fails, all you can do is bin it."

Here's a camera around 20 years old which needs an electronics retrofit,
but no-one seriously expects Leica to offer one. Less than 50,000 were
made. If we assume 10,000 have been scrapped, and another 10,000 are being
used as "hack" cameras and will be scrapped when they break down, then
around 30,000 are in the potential market for a retrofit. If we assume that
1/3 of users are prepared to consider an electronics retrofit, that brings
the potential market down to 10,000.  Faced with Leica service prices, how
many owners would decide to pay up and modernise their cameras. 5,000?
2,000?   1,000?  It would not be economic to design new electronics and
tool up for production for such a small market.

OK, so I've deliberately picked the worst case scenario to make my case,
but I wonder how large a production run would be needed to make a retrofit
worth while. Could such a retrofit exploit existing components such
as integrated circuits, or would most of the parts need to be
custom-designed? Perhaps a LUG member who works the the electronics
industry could enlighten us.

Someone made the observation that the military retrofit their electronic
systems. How here I'm on safe grounds, given that I'm the managing editor
of a magazine devoted to this very topic. Where its a matter of
adding a new "black box" or simple replacement of one "black box" with
another, modernisation takes place. But in photographic terms, that's the
equivalent of buying an additional lens or having your shutter curtains
replaced. When you start to talk about custom-designing an entire
subsystem to replace another, many users look at the potential costs and
rapidly loose interest.  


Doug Richardson