3 ms·

The Rise of Digital imaging and the Fall of the Old Camera industry

2 points by davesailer 17y ago

The rise of digital imaging put an end to the camera industry as we knew it. Many established players have gone out of business or balanced at the brink of bankruptcy for several years. The main reasons for this seem to be the explosive nature of digital technology, along with the fact that many firms had a position and a competence base that was rendered obsolete. While digital imaging has both popularized photography and taken it to new heights, this has been accomplished through the destruction of thousands of jobs and entire companies. Chairman Mao once said that “A revolution is not a tea party”. Those people who have worked at Kodak, Polaroid, Hasselblad, Contax, Pentax, Agfa, Leica, Fujifilm, Mamiya, Bronica and Ilford are very well aware of this.

russell 17y ago
Hasselblad had a near death experience because it fumbled the transition to digital photography. This a good article about an industry where major players failed to make the transition because "core competence = core incompetence." Hasselblad developed a digital system early on but dropped it because they felt it was so inferior that it would damage the brand. As a consequence they missed out on the learning experience. They should have read and deeply understood Clayton Christensen's "Inventors Dilemma." My SO is an artist who uses digital photography to make studies for her paintings. She started out with a 6 megapixel Nikon D70, but the resolution was inadequate for her needs. Last year she moved up to a 12 megapixel D300 for around $1500 with a new lense. At the time I looked at the new new Hasselblad, 52 megapixels at $35,000. Needless to say out of out budget. The thing is a Hasseblad is not worth it for nearly anyone. With the Nikon software and Photoshop, the can take 6 overlapping images and stitch them together and get a 50-70 megapixel image. May be Hasselblad will last a few more years, but by then your under $5000 Nikon or Canon will have surpassed it. Also the HP z3200 printer produces superb prints. So much for phot finishing labs and print shops.
- bcaulf 17y ago
  35mm digital gets better every year but medium format digital will continue to offer better resolution and dynamic range simply because the chips and lenses are bigger. More light falls on the larger chip, which has more photosites. The same size vs. image quality tradeoffs exist in the digital world as with film.

2 points by davesailer 17y ago

russell 17y ago

Hasselblad had a near death experience because it fumbled the transition to digital photography. This a good article about an industry where major players failed to make the transition because "core competence = core incompetence." Hasselblad developed a digital system early on but dropped it because they felt it was so inferior that it would damage the brand. As a consequence they missed out on the learning experience. They should have read and deeply understood Clayton Christensen's "Inventors Dilemma." My SO is an artist who uses digital photography to make studies for her paintings. She started out with a 6 megapixel Nikon D70, but the resolution was inadequate for her needs. Last year she moved up to a 12 megapixel D300 for around $1500 with a new lense. At the time I looked at the new new Hasselblad, 52 megapixels at $35,000. Needless to say out of out budget. The thing is a Hasseblad is not worth it for nearly anyone. With the Nikon software and Photoshop, the can take 6 overlapping images and stitch them together and get a 50-70 megapixel image. May be Hasselblad will last a few more years, but by then your under $5000 Nikon or Canon will have surpassed it. Also the HP z3200 printer produces superb prints. So much for phot finishing labs and print shops.

bcaulf 17y ago
35mm digital gets better every year but medium format digital will continue to offer better resolution and dynamic range simply because the chips and lenses are bigger. More light falls on the larger chip, which has more photosites. The same size vs. image quality tradeoffs exist in the digital world as with film.