FYI
there was a press conference on Oct. 21st 2005, where CEO Christian Poulsen laid out his vision for the company’s future.
Main aspects IMO:
1. The V system will slowly die. The 503 will probably take time for this.
2. They intend to go all digital at some point in the not-too-distant future (nothing new IMO), but they now say all of their effort from here on out is going into the H-system
3. Future development will focus
a) on both backs and integrated digital cameras
b) on high-end scanners
c) on cameras with better ergonomics, compactness, (relative) affordability, improved wireless, bit depth and other quality improvements, and increased megapixels (around 45MP)
4. Focus on “professional look.” of the cameras
5. Committment for the DNG format also in the future. No proprietary format.
Original source:
http://digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000957064522/
And this is the full text (Quote):
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Hasselblad CEO Christian Poulsen looks into the future
Posted Oct 21, 2005, 4:05 PM ET by Jay Savage
I attended Hasselblad’s press conference this morning at PhotoPlus, where CEO Christian Poulsen laid out his vision for the company’s future—and the future of digital photography in general—for a small group of photographers and journalists. Some of it was surprising; some if it wasn’t; all of it was interesting. He started by laying out where the company has gone in the past year, since the merger with IMACON: The introduction of the first digital backs, cameras, and scanners. He showed some staggering sales graphs where film sales and digital sales made an almost perfect “X”, with a 1-year 30% drop in V-System sales and the H-series digital and hybrid sales replacing V-series medium format sales almost entirely. He also talked candidly about some mistakes he thought they’d made with marketing the new products: not selling the H1 as hard as they could because they were trying to protect the V503 and V905, and not making a bigger deal of how good their lenses are. Then he moved on to his vision for the future.
It’s corporate policy not to discuss specifics until they’re production-ready, so there were no mentions of future products, or even a general timeline, just the overall trajectory for the company. The big news is that they intend to go all digital at some point in the not-too-distant future. Of course, that isn’t really news; they’ve been saying it since the merger. But it’s a little bit different to read it in an anonymous press release, and then to hear the head or the world’s most storied camera company say the V-system has a limited future and all of their effort from here on out is going into the H-system. It gives you a little twinge. They will, however, continue to make film products as long there’s a market, and he made it sound like th V503’s death is likely to be long and slow.
So what does the future look like? First, interchangeable digital backs. Since, unlike film cartridges, digital backs are very expensive, pros want backs that can be used on more than one camea. You might products from both Hasselblad and Mamiya, but you’re probably not going to buy a Hasselblad body, a Mamiya body, a Hasselblad or Phase One back, and a Leaf back. It’s far too expensive. And while sales of backs have been fairly flat, the market seems to be picking up. Future development, then, will focus on both backs and integrated digital cameras. Second, scanners: sales of high-end scanners like the Flextight continue to be strong, if fairly flat.
And finally, cameras. The main goals are; ergonomics, compactness, (relative) affordability, improved wireless, bit depth and other quality improvements, and increased megapixels. Yes, you read that correctly: Hasselblad wants more megapixels, about 45. Poulsen isn’t out to resurrect the megapixel myth by any means; He’s satisfied with current image resolutions, and probably would interpolate out the added pixels to keep file sizes down—nobody wants a RAW images to move into the gigabyte range—but in his opinon higher pixel count is the only real solution to moire, and getting rid of moire completely will take about 45MP. The challenge won’t be just adding pixels, either, but keeping and adding color depth: if you squeeze to many pixels into a small space, the color quality degrades. In his opinion, this has already started to happen to some DSLRs.
He also reaffirmed Hasselblad’s commitment to Adobe’s DNG as a RAW format. Although they’re certainly capable of implementing a proprietary format like everyone else, he thinks standardization is important for the industry because competeing formats make life difficult for the consumer and they have a limited shelf life; as formats change people will lose access to their older pictures. It also makes it difficult to develop comprehensive workflow tools when every piece od software invloved has to support a constantly changing number of formats. I couldn’t agree more. His final though was on sensor size: he doesn’t think we’ll ever see a “full frame” 645 camera, at least not from Hasselblad, because the expense of manufacturing a sensor that large will probably never be justified by the minimal improvement in quality.
The other design goal he mentioned that I found interesting. Was a “professional look.” It is a goal of Hasselblad design to look different from DSLR and EVF cameras, even as the (what to call them D645?) bodies become increasingly smaller. Why? Because people expect it, especially the people who are paying for them. He tells the story of taking one of his H2D prototypes to wedding, and the bride kept smiling at his camera instead of the hired photographers’ Nikon. Slightly apocryphal, no doubt, but still a valid point: both the person behind the camera and the person in front of it really do expect a high end camera to look the part, and it’s interesting to think of “looks expensive” as a design feature.
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...End of quote
there was a press conference on Oct. 21st 2005, where CEO Christian Poulsen laid out his vision for the company’s future.
Main aspects IMO:
1. The V system will slowly die. The 503 will probably take time for this.
2. They intend to go all digital at some point in the not-too-distant future (nothing new IMO), but they now say all of their effort from here on out is going into the H-system
3. Future development will focus
a) on both backs and integrated digital cameras
b) on high-end scanners
c) on cameras with better ergonomics, compactness, (relative) affordability, improved wireless, bit depth and other quality improvements, and increased megapixels (around 45MP)
4. Focus on “professional look.” of the cameras
5. Committment for the DNG format also in the future. No proprietary format.
Original source:
http://digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000957064522/
And this is the full text (Quote):
------
Hasselblad CEO Christian Poulsen looks into the future
Posted Oct 21, 2005, 4:05 PM ET by Jay Savage
I attended Hasselblad’s press conference this morning at PhotoPlus, where CEO Christian Poulsen laid out his vision for the company’s future—and the future of digital photography in general—for a small group of photographers and journalists. Some of it was surprising; some if it wasn’t; all of it was interesting. He started by laying out where the company has gone in the past year, since the merger with IMACON: The introduction of the first digital backs, cameras, and scanners. He showed some staggering sales graphs where film sales and digital sales made an almost perfect “X”, with a 1-year 30% drop in V-System sales and the H-series digital and hybrid sales replacing V-series medium format sales almost entirely. He also talked candidly about some mistakes he thought they’d made with marketing the new products: not selling the H1 as hard as they could because they were trying to protect the V503 and V905, and not making a bigger deal of how good their lenses are. Then he moved on to his vision for the future.
It’s corporate policy not to discuss specifics until they’re production-ready, so there were no mentions of future products, or even a general timeline, just the overall trajectory for the company. The big news is that they intend to go all digital at some point in the not-too-distant future. Of course, that isn’t really news; they’ve been saying it since the merger. But it’s a little bit different to read it in an anonymous press release, and then to hear the head or the world’s most storied camera company say the V-system has a limited future and all of their effort from here on out is going into the H-system. It gives you a little twinge. They will, however, continue to make film products as long there’s a market, and he made it sound like th V503’s death is likely to be long and slow.
So what does the future look like? First, interchangeable digital backs. Since, unlike film cartridges, digital backs are very expensive, pros want backs that can be used on more than one camea. You might products from both Hasselblad and Mamiya, but you’re probably not going to buy a Hasselblad body, a Mamiya body, a Hasselblad or Phase One back, and a Leaf back. It’s far too expensive. And while sales of backs have been fairly flat, the market seems to be picking up. Future development, then, will focus on both backs and integrated digital cameras. Second, scanners: sales of high-end scanners like the Flextight continue to be strong, if fairly flat.
And finally, cameras. The main goals are; ergonomics, compactness, (relative) affordability, improved wireless, bit depth and other quality improvements, and increased megapixels. Yes, you read that correctly: Hasselblad wants more megapixels, about 45. Poulsen isn’t out to resurrect the megapixel myth by any means; He’s satisfied with current image resolutions, and probably would interpolate out the added pixels to keep file sizes down—nobody wants a RAW images to move into the gigabyte range—but in his opinon higher pixel count is the only real solution to moire, and getting rid of moire completely will take about 45MP. The challenge won’t be just adding pixels, either, but keeping and adding color depth: if you squeeze to many pixels into a small space, the color quality degrades. In his opinion, this has already started to happen to some DSLRs.
He also reaffirmed Hasselblad’s commitment to Adobe’s DNG as a RAW format. Although they’re certainly capable of implementing a proprietary format like everyone else, he thinks standardization is important for the industry because competeing formats make life difficult for the consumer and they have a limited shelf life; as formats change people will lose access to their older pictures. It also makes it difficult to develop comprehensive workflow tools when every piece od software invloved has to support a constantly changing number of formats. I couldn’t agree more. His final though was on sensor size: he doesn’t think we’ll ever see a “full frame” 645 camera, at least not from Hasselblad, because the expense of manufacturing a sensor that large will probably never be justified by the minimal improvement in quality.
The other design goal he mentioned that I found interesting. Was a “professional look.” It is a goal of Hasselblad design to look different from DSLR and EVF cameras, even as the (what to call them D645?) bodies become increasingly smaller. Why? Because people expect it, especially the people who are paying for them. He tells the story of taking one of his H2D prototypes to wedding, and the bride kept smiling at his camera instead of the hired photographers’ Nikon. Slightly apocryphal, no doubt, but still a valid point: both the person behind the camera and the person in front of it really do expect a high end camera to look the part, and it’s interesting to think of “looks expensive” as a design feature.
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...End of quote
