Cameras and Relationships

[Lynne Whelden]

Very funny, Steve!!!

Shaun, I don't have any background in economics. You may be right.
I find myself prefacing most of my comments here with "I wish...I wish..."

1-Well, I wish someone from the manufacturer's side would comment on pricing and profits.
2-I wish someone from the government would look into planned obsolescence issues or the suggestion that electronic cartels conspire to dribble technological improvements like water torture over agonizingly long time interval.
3-I wish the video expos would hold a seminar on "the one" that meets the criteria aforementioned.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

I suspect exactly the opposite is true: the consumer/prosumer markets probably foster the finances and the high end fosters the technological innovation that trickles down into the consumer/prosumer.

Just like Honda's racing involvement probably doesn't make them a ton of cash but the lessons they learn and the innovations they develop are probably what makes for a bulletproof Honda Accord that sells millions every year.

Again, I could EASILY be wrong but I don't buy into the suggestion that companies are raking in the cash from sales of a handful of high end tech devices that they will never sell more than a virtual "handful" of.

That might be true for some companies but for JVC it's the opposite, at least in recent memory. The professional division was the profitable one and the consumer division was losing money. R & D is part of both divisions but each division has different goals for their direct market.

Why is difficult to use AVCHD the format of choice now in the consumer market? It's great for clips but terrible for editing. That's because the consumer division feels that their market is not that interested in editing but really interested in uploading to YouTube or going straight to DVD. That's also the same executive reasoning in why you can hardly find a consumer camera with an external mike input. The manufacturers found that such a small percentage used it that you could easily save money by not including it and the result was, maybe, a few thousand inconvenienced people who either stepped up to a more expensive possibly prosumer model, switched to a competitor's model (if there is one) or just not buy anything. The money lost in sales is way less then the savings of removing the external mike input from the manufacturing process.

The RCA TK-76?!?!?!? That was a heavy camera! Used it twice, fortunately the place I worked at used an Ikegami HL79 for most shoots.