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Q. Will digital backs ever become feasable?
Asked by Dave Kruse
(K=65) on 8/22/2007
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My dad is a little computer phobic and has given me his Bronica SQ A, body, 3 lenses and all the accessories to sell. They are beautiful and the digital backs out there give great results, but are ridiculously expensive for a non-pro. Would waiting 4 years be of use or should I just cash in and stick with my D200 and whatever comes next??? I am 100% digital now, so I don't think I could go back to film...
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 8/23/2007
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Digital backs aren't going to come down much in price.
The problems are twofold:
1) the very small market for them means high development and engineering cost per unit produced
2) (even more important) the cost of producing a chip (and especially a large array like a sensor or TFT screen) goes up exponentially as the surface area gets larger.
The second means that a chip that has twice the surface area can be 10, 20, maybe even 50 times as expensive to produce as its smaller cousin.
That's the reason P&S cameras have such teeny tiny chips, it keeps the cost down (as well as allowing for smaller optics which also keeps the cost down and makes the cameras smaller which makes for nice sales pitches to unsuspecting customers who think smaller is automatically better).
It's also the reason digital backs for 645 cameras (and larger) are so much more expensive than their cousins in DSLRs.
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Harry Brown
(K=817) - Comment Date 9/3/2007
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Depends on how old you are and how long you are willing to wait. The price of all this digital stuff goes down over time. But specialty items take longer. I'm sure that, at some point, a breakthrough will occur that will make sensors cheaper and easier to produce, but don't know when.
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Maris Rusis
(K=30) - Comment Date 9/5/2007
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Digital sensors have come down remarkably in price. Ten years ago they cost about $4000 per megabyte. Now it is easily possible to buy a camera that offers a price per megabyte of less than $100. Eventually (10 to 50 years?) the price may fall to $10 dollars or even $1 per megabyte.
The irony is that most camera users that are now lusting after 40 megabyte backs won't want them when they cost $40. They will want the latest 100 Gigabyte back which will cost $100,000. The fanciest gear is always too expensive unless you can get somebody else (paying client!) to fund it.
A deeper irony remains. Even if digital backs become vast and free they are not the slightest help in making platinotypes, cyanotypes, gelatin-silvers, or gum-bichromates. All you get is pictures.
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