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Ndigital review at bthe luminous landscapeb website

I wrote it
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I am a regular reader of Luminous Landscape. And i have a bookmark to the "what's new" page of that site. Yesterday i was browsing between the archived reviews and i hardly could believe to my eyes: a review - a recent one - of the Contax ND. And the more is written from a person whose posts, opinions and most of all works i apreciated a lot.
Mr. Shanidze your review is very honest, very complete and it add a lot of "sorrow" to the lost of the ND. So it let me keeping asking:

"why they discontinued it???"

Really i can not understand the strategic marketing of Contax. Thei are really "the genius".

If you would like follow this link

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/pancam_techwed_040114.html

and then this one:

http://www.dalsa.com/

If i do not go wrong they are the maker of the Contax ND ccd......
I've learned a lot of what does matter really in a digital imager!

Best regards.
 
"Why did they discontinue it?"

Because they could not sell any. $6,000, or $7,000. is a lot of money for a camera of narrow utilitarian use. Not good for photojournalism or sports like the Nikon D1h or 1D. Not good for weddings like the 1Dx or 1Ds. Not good for product work like a 1Ds or various MF backs. Poor RAW performance, crappy software, incredibly small buffer, and the usual Contax power issues.

But mostly because of a stupendously poor marketing effort
that chose silence as it's primary communication strategy.

As Irakly points out, the camera can deliver, and those of us that slogged through the solutions with little help from Contax, have come to make some nice images with the ND.

But I will say that NEVER has the functional aspects of a camera been such a dominating part of the process as with this camera. And that put off a lot of people.
 
"As Irakly points out, the camera can deliver"

and if i am correct your are looking for a second ND body...

So again i am wandering!

In your opinion has the limited choice of N-mout lens aggravated the situation?

Off-topic: anybody know at how amount .... hmmm .... don't know the correct word .... the distance of the focal plane from the mount flange in a N body?

For what i am aware of is this value that render the avalaibility of lens adapter feasible without additional optical element in the adapter.

If i rememder in Canon is 42 mm
and C/Y manual body 46 or 46,5 mm ... not sure.

Best regards.
 
It seems suddenly that there are a ton of new in-box ND's for sale on EBay. This would seem someone is trying to blow out old inventory before a new product announcement is made. Seem reasonable, or just wishful thinking on my part?
 
Gianluca, yes, I am still looking for a 2nd body. But, I won't buy a hot one from anyone. If, indeed the flood of them on e-bay are from that break-in I reported a couple of weeks ago. But that seems like it would be a bit obvious don't you think? BTW, I couldn't find a single ND on e-bay this morning.

Not having more lenses isn't the best situation, but there are enough. As I've said many times: IMO, it's criminal not to have a 35/1.4 N prime in the system.
 
Gianluca,
That is fascinating stuff about Spirit's pancam. Only one megapixel but ultimate (so far) quality components and a large chip but with fewer but larger sensors. I wonder if there are any lessons here for consumer cameras. It points again to why we go for Zeiss lenses to try to get the best we can. I think that the need for good lens quality is often forgotten in sales of digicams. I have even read somewhere that it does not matter because imperfections can be corrected by the processor. Maybe it's true...
John
 
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