Quote:
Originally Posted by RickS
I'd say that most of them have been barely surviving for years knowing a bit about the economics of building hardware products. That's borne out by the acquisitions of Apogee and SBIG and also the data that FLI shared on their market sizes at the AAIC conference a couple of years back. If it wasn't for the life sciences we'd never have advanced past adapting DSLRs.
Hopefully, we'll continue to see advancement in sensor technology and adoption of it by a range of vendors from low cost/minimal features to more spendy/high quality. That will give us a spectrum of products that match the diversity of imagers and their needs.
Cheers,
Rick.
|
Unfortunately there may be a problem for the top end makers. It used to be that a top end maker (FLI eg) made CCD cameras with significantly better specs than second tier makers, since they invested in low noise amplifier techniques, deep cooling, hermetic CCD chambers, high quality shutters, IR flooding etc. With the availability of mono DSLR CMOS chips, even very small outfits can get access to a lot of very high quality engineering at no major cost - they buy it built into the chip. Plus, much of the ancillary stuff that used to set the premium makers apart is no longer necessary.
Up till now, it was worth spending more on a top end camera, because it would work better. That may no longer be the case, since all CMOS cameras will have essentially the same technology - that will make it more difficult to justify a premium price for the top end makers. I hope that they have the ability to adapt to a higher volume, lower margin environment, since the end result of the current trend could well be the consolidation of the market into a couple of high volume makers with a consequent loss of competition to keep prices down. There may also be a reduction in the variety of camera specs, since we will have to make do with whatever suits the primary needs of the DSLR world. Neither outcome is appealing, but it may the route that we are beginning to head down.