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Affordable Medium Format Digital Cameras?

doug anderson

New member
When I bought my first medium format camera back in the nineties (Mamiya 645) is was just over a thousand. The lenses were also affordable, and I learned to love medium format cameras.

When I price digital medium format cameras I find that the cheapest one is $10,000. This puts them out of reach for me. I'm buying a new used car for $7,000. What is it about a digital medium format that makes them so much more expensive? They can't really be that much more expensive to manufacture.

For that reason, I'm continuing to shoot film in my 645 and 6-7.


I guess my question is, when do the prices come down?
 

Will Thompson

Well-known member
As soon as the competition goes down. This means there needs to be enough product cycles to have viable used product at dirt cheep prices. The best example of this is the fact that you can buy a used DSLR that is useable for $100-$200 when they first came out they were $3500! The only real competition for the MFDB is it's self used. The problem with this is that the product cycles are so long, they upgrade the old backs, and they take trade in's. This keeps the supply low and the used price high.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
I don't think new MFDB will come down in price anytime soon. There's just not enough demand and the regular release of newer and better backs means that the latest models continue to be priced at a premium.

The cost of research and production is very high making it necessary to amortize it and generate a profit on a small number of sales. I think that worldwide, to this date, there's been somewhere between 10 and 20, 000 digital backs sold. Compare to tens of millions of DSLRs and you have the answer about the relative retail cost of both.

Note that high end DSLRs are also priced relatively high also due to low demand, though their price is significantly lower than the latest MFDBs.
 
When I price digital medium format cameras I find that the cheapest one is $10,000. This puts them out of reach for me. I'm buying a new used car for $7,000. What is it about a digital medium format that makes them so much more expensive? They can't really be that much more expensive to manufacture.

Mixing low volume (requires more profit per unit to recoup research and development costs) mixed with the huge area of the silicon sensor (way larger than any CPU on the market) and the lower yield such large areas of silicon have (percentage of 100% functional units) A single error can ruin a sensor, so with 5 times as many pixels, you get 20% of the yield which could take a 98% yield for a APS-C sensor gives a 19.6% yield on a medium format sensor created on the same process.

At 5 times the area and 1/5 the yield, you get a 2500% increase in manufacturing costs for the sensor alone.

So, yes, they can theoretically cost that much to manufacture.

For instance the PhaseOne P40+ has a sensor area of 1444.31 mm square while an Intel Core i7 CPU (a huge CPU) has an area of 263 mm square. So the sensor has an area 5.49 times as large. Now it is very likely that these pieces of silicon were crafted on different process nodes (lithography sizes) so the yield on the sensor (likely to be the older process node) is likely to be higher than mentioned above. But they are still much more expensive to manufacture.

some thoughts,

Sean
 
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Jack_Flesher

New member
You can buy a Kodak DCS pro back for a Mamiya AFD body, used for around $3000. Sure it's about 4-generations old, but still capable of excellent images and significantly less than your $10K figure -- so in that sense they've already come down. As for the rest, it's basic economics 101, supply and demand.

What exactly is a new used car?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You can buy a Kodak DCS pro back for a Mamiya AFD body, used for around $3000. Sure it's about 4-generations old, but still capable of excellent images and significantly less than your $10K figure -- so in that sense they've already come down. As for the rest, it's basic economics 101, supply and demand.

What exactly is a new used car?
I always thought of this as a great possibility. (BTW, Kodak sensor in the 35 mm Eos and Nikon iterations are fabulous choices for studio work for beautiful skin colors).

Can the Kodak DCS Pro backs be serviced and what software is currently available?

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
I always thought of this as a great possibility. (BTW, Kodak sensor in the 35 mm Eos and Nikon iterations are fabulous choices for studio work for beautiful skin colors).

Can the Kodak DCS Pro backs be serviced and what software is currently available?

Asher

I am sure there is a way to make old Kodak pro backs work today.

The question is will image quality be better than that of a Canon 5D or equivalent since prices are comparable? I personally doubt it.
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
I believe Kodak is still supporting the backs. They have 37mm x 37mm square sensors, 16MP resolution, and the IQ is superior to a 11 - 16 MP DSLR, but I think if you start comparing to 20+ MP DSLRs it would probably be a different story -- it's been a few years since I've shot with one.

The other -- and better -- option is a Mamiya ZD back. These are 36mm x 48mm 22 MP backs and can be had for the mid $3k's. I've owned one, and can confirm the files are excellent if you stay at the lower ISO's, and exceed what even the best DSLR's produce currently -- or at least the file is superior to what my 1Ds3 can produce.

Cheers,
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Hi, Jack,



Perhaps it is one I didn't previously own.

"No, not my old truck. My new one."
"The 2003?"
"Yes"

Best regards,

Doug

Yes, quite, kind of like "who's on first?" I wasn't sure if he meant a newly acquired used vehicle, his most recently acquired used vehicle (which could have been several years ago as in your example), his latest model vehicle purchased new or used (your example), or a pre-owned but current model year "new" vehicle, (which I think was Alain's point)...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
There's a lively market in used Phase One backs from the Hasselblad v to contax and Mamiya. I wonder what's going to happen with the arrival of the Pentax 645 Z at $8500!

Asher
 
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