Sony switchers face development limbo!

[fullstop]

let's try 1 more time to look at this:
1. Canon MILC will not come with IBIS, so I'd say true CanonFanBoyz should just disregard it.
But anyways, those tiny movements are a challenge, but in no way comparable to massive FF mirror- and submirror-slapping at 10+ fps
2. Chassis: MILC - can be made simpler, thinner, lighter, from less expensive materials than DSLR - as there is no mechanical stress from mirrorslapping. It should just be stable enough so that lens mount will not break out with a heavy lens attached (see Sony A7 1st gen, lol - Sony has improved it in following generations)
3. Outer shell: don't see major differences in difficulty or mfg cost at equivalent build quality
4. EVF/OVF: don't know what Sony/Canon bulk prices are for a good EVF - maybe 50 bucks? - but in all likelihood not more than a good viewfinder assembly including VF prism. prob not even more than a Rebel-class pentamirror OVF.
5. Mirror, Submirror unit: massive cost saving on MILC. Part and much more so all the calibration, alignment and QC measures needed. AH, and no lubrication needed ... OMG, no oil splatters on sensor! Almost forgot that. Lubrication is a problem with any moving parts. LOL .
6. Phase-AF unit: part, calibration, alignment, QC, human labor - not needed on MILC = less cost

Total savings potential MILC vs. functionally comparable DSLR? My wild guesstimate: 25% minimum, likely more towards 50% when fully automated and lot size sufficiently large for advantage in human labor cost to really kick in. In other words: make 10 DSLRs and 10 MILCs: cost differential almost zero, both will be "astronomically expensive". Produce a couple 100k units = MILC mfg. cost probably close to 50% of DSLR. My guesstimate. Nothing more, nothing less.

If anybody has real numbers for items 1-6 plus possible other factors, please weigh in, I am happy to learn.

 

[Mikehit]

let's try 1 more time to look at this:
1. Canon MILC will not come with IBIS, so I'd say true CanonFanBoyz should just disregard it.
But anyways, those tiny movements are a challenge, but in no way comparable to massive FF mirror- and submirror-slapping at 10+ fps
2. Chassis: MILC - can be made simpler, thinner, lighter, from less expensive materials than DSLR - as there is no mechanical stress from mirrorslapping. It should just be stable enough so that lens mount will not break out with a heavy lens attached (see Sony A7 1st gen, lol - Sony has improved it in following generations)
3. Outer shell: don't see major differences in difficulty or mfg cost at equivalent build quality
4. EVF/OVF: don't know what Sony/Canon bulk prices are for a good EVF - maybe 50 bucks? - but in all likelihood not more than a good viewfinder assembly including VF prism. prob not even more than a Rebel-class pentamirror OVF.
5. Mirror, Submirror unit: massive cost saving on MILC. Part and much more so all the calibration, alignment and QC measures needed. AH, and no lubrication needed ... OMG, no oil splatters on sensor! Almost forgot that. Lubrication is a problem with any moving parts. LOL .
6. Phase-AF unit: part, calibration, alignment, QC, human labor - not needed on MILC = less cost

Total savings potential MILC vs. functionally comparable DSLR? My wild guesstimate: 25% minimum, likely more towards 50% when fully automated and lot size sufficiently large for advantage in human labor cost to really kick in. In other words: make 10 DSLRs and 10 MILCs: cost differential almost zero, both will be "astronomically expensive". Produce a couple 100k units = MILC mfg. cost probably close to 50% of DSLR. My guesstimate. Nothing more, nothing less.

If anybody has real numbers for items 1-6 plus possible other factors, please weigh in, I am happy to learn.

1 - probably
2 - why?
3 - agreed
4 - cheaper? Highly likely. Cheap enough, and that saving a sufficiently high percentage of total manufacturing to permit a significant drop in purchase price...pure conjecture
5 - As for (4). And preventing oil platter does not make the camera cheaper
6 - at the moment, cost of the superior AF is what gives DSLR an edge over MILC. Again, is theis a $50 saving? $100? $500? YOu have no idea yet you seem to claim it will be significant (25% - 50% of the purchase cost)

50% saving 'when fully automated'. You have no idea how much automation is possible yet you invent numbers based on wild assumptions. Do you have any experience in manufacturing? I guess not yet you talk with authority on it.

If anybody has real numbers for items 1-6 plus possible other factors, please weigh in, I am happy to learn.

So why not simply ask the question instead of going through all this rigmarole of pretending you understand these things then adding a question to make it seem like you are being reasonable? It would be far easier

To quote CanonFanBoy

It isn't that you don't sometimes have valid point about some things. It's that you fantasize about other things and think they are reality. Then when it is pointed out how mistaken you are, you try to reframe your points.

 

[Talys]

My wild guesstimate: 25% minimum, likely more towards 50%

It's a good thing that you recognize that you don't have a clue.

Do you know what the materials costs of the Canon 5D Mark IV and M5 costs are, what labour costs are involved, and what fixed and one-time factory tooling costs are? Do you know what the support, repair, warranty, development and other costs associated with the product are?

If you don't know the answers to these types of questions, you should probably stop talking about this, because speaking without the basis of facts is unhelpful and does not make you sound knowledgeable about anything.

Yes, we can all agree that mirrorless cameras have fewer moving parts, and probably fewer physical parts; yet, the impact to cost is something that only camera manufacturers know. To take a modern parallel: the number of physical components to enthusiast and server motherboards for computers has decreased dramatically, including consolidation of functional units into fewer pieces of silicon, yet the price remains relatively steady. Are component manufacturers making more profit? You'll never know. At best, someone can do a breakdown and add up the costs of all the components (which on average don't go down), but at best you can only obtain public costing information, and you have no clue about factors like yield rates.

For example: for all we know, the cost to manufacture the next DIGIC chip used in Canon's first FF mirrorless is five times more than the processors in the 5D Mark IV (because it's a newer, more powerful processor). Perhaps the cost of RAM in the camera is ten times more, because there's a lot more memory of a faster type. Perhaps the cost of the EVF is ten times more than the cost of the OVF. Or perhaps one tenth of the price. Who knows?

So to say that an A9 is more or less expensive to produce than an A7 or a Canon 5D Mark IV is just wild speculation, unless you work for Canon or Sony, or one of their subcontractors, and are willing to break NDA.

 

[3kramd5]

Price more elastic? I don't know. 20% off is 20% off. It just looks bigger at the high end.

At the risk of the car analogy, Ferrari could decide to charge 15% more for its next supercar than it did for the last, and it would still sell every last one. Price is less related to demand on high end products than low end products, thus margins are often higher. This is true in most industries. But that doesn’t mean that companies derive most of their aggregate margin from high end products since, as you mentioned, they sell less of them.

 

[Talys]

Price more elastic? I don't know. 20% off is 20% off. It just looks bigger at the high end.

At the risk of the car analogy, Ferrari could decide to charge 15% more for its next V12 supercar than it did for the last, and it would still sell every last one. Price is less related to demand on high end products than low end products, thus margins often higher. This is true in most industries. But that doesn’t mean that companies derive most of their aggregate margin from high end products since, as you mentioned, they sell less of them.

For luxury goods, elasticity often works the other way. If Channel raised the price of their next handbag by 15%, they'll probably sell more not less. That's why Channel handbag prices have doubled in the last 5 years. The price of leather has not increased

With cameras, you have photography professionals and enthusiasts who want better tools at lower prices, but you also have rich people who want toys, and are attracted to more expensive products because they are more exclusive.

I would assert that an 5DIV/D850/A9/A7R3 is not the best camera for some people who buy them. I've seen them in camera shops. They're seriously better served with their cell phone, and will probably end up taking 99% of their photos from their iPhone or Galaxy anyways. But the $8,000 purchase was kind of fun and the ILC goes click-click-click really fast and that big lens looks impressive.

You also get some hobbyists who are unhappy with their photography (from ILCs or compacts or smartphones), and have been convinced that upgrading gear = better photographs. Price elasticity applies to them, but more from the perspective that they're looking for the most they can get out of what they can spend.

We camera buyers are a funny and mixed crowd

 

[Mikehit]

We camera buyers are a funny and mixed crowd

Try hifi....even more subjective with even more arcane comments. Wait till they try to tell you that using silver coated wire internally and to download the images improves image quality.

 

[Loswr]

But maybe CanonFanBoy-izm or NEURO-tic conditions make it hard to accept simple facts like these. ;D

Maybe when your claims are conjecture, there is nothing to 'accept'.

+1

If you don't know the answers to these types of questions, you should probably stop talking about this, because speaking without the basis of facts is unhelpful and does not make you sound knowledgeable about anything.

That ship sailed along time ago.

In any case, this discussion is irrelevant from a practical standpoint. Unless, of course, you assume that a lower cost to produce a MILC means a lower sales price...and that's the sort of assumption that makes you look like an ass.

 

[jayphotoworks]

We camera buyers are a funny and mixed crowd

Try hifi....even more subjective with even more arcane comments. Wait till they try to tell you that using silver coated wire internally and to download the images improves image quality.

With hifi, it gets much much worse than that. Some of the more arcane things you can buy are magic stones and diamonds to place near room corners to control resonance "scientifically". If photography got to that stage, I could see some people giving up the hobby in disgust. But I can imagine the hilarity that would ensue during internet discussions.

Sony Fan "Hey.. my Sony can AF faster than your Canon as I have a magic rock tucked in my hotshoe that reduces EMI interference that makes it 0.0002% faster during AF tracking "

Canon Fan "Yeah, but mine are higher quality so my camera can out AF yours. You should buy yours where I got mine.. It's a great company, I also bought the Brooklyn bridge from them last week.."

 

[NancyP]

Y'all are pikers. Come on over to the medium format world.

 

[stevelee]

Conventional wisdom used to be that stringing a bunch of wires across a room up near the ceiling would somehow improve acoustics. I have no idea why they thought that; maybe something relating to aeolian harps.

I'm surprised that audiophiles have not proposed that for listening areas, so far as I've seen or heard, anyway.

BTW, the University of Illinois in 1948 made 78 RPM recordings of the singing by a neighbor of mine. For her upcoming ninetieth birthday present, I am trying to digitize the recordings and plan to make CDs as keepsakes for her and her children, and maybe other family members if requested. I bought a stylus to fit that size groove to minimize distortion and groove damage. I am using Amadeus Pro, Audacity, and Adobe Audition to process different things. I did her a couple of sample CDs as a kind of progress report of my work so far. She is really disappointed in the result. I am ecstatic that I can find any signal at all. One record, after I cleared off about 1/8" of dirt, looks like it has a severe case of acne. It's a wonder the needle stays in the groove. Side 2 of one recording has a completely flat area about an inch long and five grooves deep, no groove at all, so it gets off to a rough, but surprisingly audible, start. I wish I were as experienced at this stuff as I am with Photoshop. Some of the concepts and tradeoffs between getting rid of noise and losing signal are very similar.

 

[Mikehit]

Conventional wisdom used to be that stringing a bunch of wires across a room up near the ceiling would somehow improve acoustics. I have no idea why they thought that; maybe something relating to aeolian harps.

I'm surprised that audiophiles have not proposed that for listening areas, so far as I've seen or heard, anyway.

BTW, the University of Illinois in 1948 made 78 RPM recordings of the singing by a neighbor of mine. For her upcoming ninetieth birthday present, I am trying to digitize the recordings and plan to make CDs as keepsakes for her and her children, and maybe other family members if requested. I bought a stylus to fit that size groove to minimize distortion and groove damage. I am using Amadeus Pro, Audacity, and Adobe Audition to process different things. I did her a couple of sample CDs as a kind of progress report of my work so far. She is really disappointed in the result. I am ecstatic that I can find any signal at all. One record, after I cleared off about 1/8" of dirt, looks like it has a severe case of acne. It's a wonder the needle stays in the groove. Side 2 of one recording has a completely flat area about an inch long and five grooves deep, no groove at all, so it gets off to a rough, but surprisingly audible, start. I wish I were as experienced at this stuff as I am with Photoshop. Some of the concepts and tradeoffs between getting rid of noise and losing signal are very similar.

I have read several comments over the years that with old, well-used recordings a good set up risks showing up all sorts of problems with the source material and it can be better in some cases to use older style cartridges that have relatively large radii on the stylus so they don't dig as deep. Maybe worth trying.

 

[stevelee]

I have read several comments over the years that with old, well-used recordings a good set up risks showing up all sorts of problems with the source material and it can be better in some cases to use older style cartridges that have relatively large radii on the stylus so they don't dig as deep. Maybe worth trying.

Perhaps so. I'm trying not to spend hundreds of dollars on the project. I did get the large radius stylus for that very reason. Given the condition of the records, I think the stylus is tracking quite well. It probably helps that I'm recording at 45 rpm, so the needle is probably less likely to bounce around. I see that as making a virtue of necessity, since my turntable doesn't spin at 78 rpm. I'm not using DSP directly on the samples to correct speed and pitch, just changing the stated sampling rate. Of course when I've finished editing, I do a sample rate and bit depth conversion for the files to burn to CDs. I'm using the system's native 32-bit floating point to start with. Similarly, I have my ACR output to 16-bit color and edit with that in Photoshop until making JPEG output.

I've made an early start to see what I can do. Her birthday is not until late September. Maybe I could rent some pro equipment for a week later in the summer if I decide to go all out.

 

[Talys]

If you don't know the answers to these types of questions, you should probably stop talking about this, because speaking without the basis of facts is unhelpful and does not make you sound knowledgeable about anything.

That ship sailed along time ago.

In any case, this discussion is irrelevant from a practical standpoint. Unless, of course, you assume that a lower cost to produce a MILC means a lower sales price...and that's the sort of assumption that makes you look like an ass.

I'm pretty sure most of those who have conjectured that full frame mirrorless cameras are cheaper to make also leap to the conclusion that eventually, they'll get really spectacular full frame mirrorless cameras for less money, too.

But anyways, back to reality. You're absolutely right: practically, I can't see the cameras that everyone wants in these forums -- higher end, enthusiast and professional models -- getting cheaper any time soon.