Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/11/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:04 PM 11/17/2006, G Hopkinson wrote: >DaveR, all that you say is true. From my perspective, market forces, >not lack of performance have driven medium format film cameras >to near extinction. Locally, Mamiyas, Bronicas and Blads can hardly be >given away for a fraction of their former value. Yet the >photos they produce of course, are superb. That's what I meant by crazy. Well, Hasselblad is effectively dead now, so there are damn few folks still standing up in the market: I guess Rollei and Kiev are pretty much the whole of the word, so to speak as of late 2006. Is Noblex still about? What about that "new" Alpa? Are any MF cameras still being made in the Orient? There was a LOT of buzz back around 1990 among MF manufacturers about down-sizing their cameras to make 127 the new standard. All of them declined to do so, though the thought of a 3/4 sized Hasselblad is interesting. The reason for this proposal was simple: by 1990, 4cm by 4cm films could provide greater detail and quality than 6cm by 6cm could deliver in 1939. But this was not to be as even the most conservative camera companies knew, by then, that digital was the wave of the future and that MF would soon become a niche market at best. MF will survive for years as there are just too many cameras in use out there (I own four Rolleiflex TLR's from an Automat Type III to a GX, two Super Ikonta B's, two Ikoflices, a Kiev 88, and three Hasselblads, along with a few other oddities, and I regularly use the Rolleiflex TLR's and the Super Ikonta B's, just by way of example). But new MF camera production is making a Great Sucking Sound as it disappears. Rollei will survive as the market for professional-grade MF gear will allow them to survive as a sidebar to the major companies but the handwriting is on the wall and, in another generation or less, as digital technology advances, they will probably restrict production to cameras for the hard-of-thinking such as myself, who insist on using old technology out of a respect to not wanting to learn new tricks. There are still Swiss concerns making mechanical watch movements, for that matter -- I wear a GP which I had overhauled at the factory a few years back. But these are now minor players. Film will remain available. You can still buy 127 and 620 film new and in-date, and 120 will survive as a specialty market but it will no longer interest the big players in imaging. Rolleiflex gear has held its value as user cameras. Hasselblad and Mamiya have done so, as well, but to a lesser degree. And there are collectibles -- Ikoflex III and Rolleiflex 2.8 and Microcords and Superbs and the like -- but few purchase these for use. Otherwise, I agree with Hoppy that the bottom has fallen out of the used MF market. It is a grand time to be a user. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!