Damien Demolder
Tharg the Mighty
Reged: 22/08/2001
Posts: 869
Loc: Essex born and badly-bred
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Samsung is one of those electronics brands that has only really entered the DSLR market in a big way recently - like Sony. Sony is only now making an impression as it widens its range of products, whereas before perhaps many people didn't take the company seriously. Samsung has also been a brand that has lacked credibility for some DSLR photographers, but do you think that will change now that the company is actually producing the sensor for the GX-20 and the Pentax K20D?
It's a kind of 'What does a company that is new to the DSLR market have to do to get respect from photographers used to the traditional photographic brands?' sort of question.
Go to the Home Page to let us know what you think.
Thanks for taking part.
damien
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fridge
addict
Reged: 14/06/2006
Posts: 476
Loc: Simon & Garfunkel
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Isn't it just that they are an electronics company, trying to move into new territory, where as the long established companies out there produce glass, lenses and a multitude of other items.
This is not in any way a bad thing, but it does strike me a little of the accountants seeing new avenues to explore, if the camera world were still using film and the digital revolution has evaded us, would they have been interested at all, or so quick to jump in. However it does add to competition and in theory better deals for us the consumer as they all fight for the all important market share.
Their perception by me hasn't changed, Sony makes sensors for other brands, as do numerous other companies, so going into camera production, especially in bed with a n other does seem a logical step, but doesn't mean they have suddenly usurped the old school with years of light proof box experience.
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Marc
If you notice this notice, you'll notice this notice isn't worth noticing.
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Roger_Provins
Made-it Man
Reged: 22/10/2005
Posts: 2559
Loc: Gloucester, UK
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Digital cameras are a box full of electronics (including a computer) with a lens stuck on the end. So who is best placed to make these modern marvels, long established electronic companies or long establish camera companies? My bet would be on the former with help from long established lens makers.
The likes on Samsung, Sony and other electronic giants will take an ever increasing market share of cameras we buy. Remember they’re not all new to this game, Sony made the very first digital still camera (Mavica) with CCD back in 1981, and they have dominated the professional video market for many years.
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Rog
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Tacitus
History
Reged: 17/01/2006
Posts: 871
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Quote:
'What does a company that is new to the DSLR market have to do to get respect from photographers used to the traditional photographic brands?'
On my list:
Produce a well-specified camera/camera range that equals (if not exceeds) the performance of its direct competition.
Ensure that the camera is well-made, reliable and durable; fix any problems quickly and efficiently.
Make the camera compatible with another system (eg via the lens mount) so that customers have a real choice in building a 'system'.
Nurture "product innovation", but keep it relevant (to customers' needs) and under control: avoid gimmickry.
Price the camera competitively, and do not overcharge for lenses and accessories.
Market the camera with style and confidence to the most relevant customer-base and find some strong, high profile product champions to 'carry' the marketing (a la David Bailey style c.1980s).
Make pre-sales and after-sales customer service tangible and user-accessible.
Even some established brands have failed to achieve some of those points from time to time most - notably for me Sigma and Leica. On paper, Samsung may not be far from achieving most of those 'aims': but any minor foul-up can be perceived by potential customers as a big setback.
.T.
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mark_jacobs
AP Art Editor
Reged: 07/08/2001
Posts: 1154
Loc: The Tropicana Motel, Santa Mon...
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Quote:
…Sony made the very first digital still camera… with CCD… in 1981…
<pedant mode> Consumer? Cough… Filmless… Mavica? MAgnetic VIdeo CAmera </pedant mode> 
Anyway the first 'digital' that I played around with was the '94 Apple QuickTake 100. No surprise… it was wubbish! Worryingly I believe that I did the layout for the first digital camera tested by AP, I'll have to look that up… 
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Wheelu
journeyman
Reged: 31/10/2007
Posts: 59
Loc: UK, up North
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I have recently bought a Samsung 35mm f2 lens, presumably the same as the Pentax equivalent. Although this is an auto focus lens I use it successfully on my Pentax ME Super and MX bodies and have been more than impressed with it.
The costs of developing a new product are enormous and the joint venture between Samsung and Pentax makes great commercial sense. Us consumers can only benefit from the real competition that now exists in the market place.
When (if) Samtax bring out a full frame DSLR camera I shall take a very close look at it
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My Flickr Site
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Footloose
Carpal \'Tunnel
Reged: 11/08/2005
Posts: 3133
Loc: Berkshire based.
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I'd agree with most of what has already been said, though I'd add that Samsung and Sony have both realised that before you put any product onto the shelves, you ensure that parts within it has been extensively tested beforehand. These last two points are things that Japanese manufacturers have invairably been 'better' at doing than companies in the UK and US, where in the past, one got the sneaking suspicion that customer loyalty to the brand name, was sometimes expected to 'make up' for compromises in the product. I base these observations on what happened to motorcycle manufacturers who seemed to hate investing in more modern production plants and processes, for the sake of the profits of shareholders.
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Trainee reprobate with a pronounced limp (spelt L .. I .. M .. P.)
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Roger_Provins
Made-it Man
Reged: 22/10/2005
Posts: 2559
Loc: Gloucester, UK
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Quote:
Quote:
…Sony made the very first digital still camera… with CCD… in 1981…
<pedant mode> Consumer? Cough… Filmless… Mavica? MAgnetic VIdeo CAmera </pedant mode>
Anyway the first 'digital' that I played around with was the '94 Apple QuickTake 100. No surprise… it was wubbish! Worryingly I believe that I did the layout for the first digital camera tested by AP, I'll have to look that up…
... just pointing out that Sony aren't the new boys - they started it all 
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AlexMonro
addict
Reged: 05/06/2006
Posts: 675
Loc: Exeter, Devon (and Somerset so...
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The sensor is as fundamental to digital photography as film is to film photography. As there have been a few major film camera companies who were also film manufacturers (Fuji, Kodak, Konica...) so there are digital camera companies who are sensor manufacturers - funnily enough, many of the same ones (Fuji, Kodak, Konica -> Konica-Minolta -> Sony and now Samsung.
Samsung's collaboration with Pentax (and their association with Hoya) give them the expertise in optics, which complements their experience in electronics and semiconductor fabrication to cover all the main systems of modern digital cameras.
All in all, I think it's a good thing for photographers to have another manufacturer that can innovate in all parts of the camera design.
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Hotblack
Dead Horse Flogger
Reged: 07/03/2006
Posts: 6984
Loc: Upstairs in the spare room.
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Quote:
It's a kind of 'What does a company that is new to the DSLR market have to do to get respect from photographers used to the traditional photographic brands?' sort of question.
Quality products with quality lenses producing high quality images and a good system to buy in to.
But even this may not be enough. Car manufacturers such as Skoda now produce excellently specified, well put together cars (admittedly not the most exciting cars) and are still looked down upon by many because of what they used to be. On the other hand Mercedes are currently producing cars that have appalling build quality but are still viewed as a prestige marque.
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Cheers
David
David J White Photography
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Zou
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/02/2007
Posts: 2004
Loc: Edinburgh
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To be 100% honest, the fact that Samsung is making the sensor for Pentax is likely to put me off Pentax, as my past experience of Samsung products has been that they are very poorly designed. Partnership is fine, but if the badge engineering position reverses (ie Pentaxs become rebadged Samsung, rather than the other way around) then I'd probably not buy one again. Which is a shame, as I do like Pentax a lot.
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Zou's Flickr Page
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Learning
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 26/09/2006
Posts: 1979
Loc: Nottingham
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There is a limited market. Too many brands will lead to too many commercial failures. I want the best electonics allied to the best cameras and optics. I hope that lasting and very sound partnerships are made by companies from both areas. In particular I hope that Nikon finds an electronic partner that is not itself in competion on the camera front.
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Benchista
Wich Tyler
Reged: 11/08/2000
Posts: 36162
Loc: Everywhere and nowhere, baby
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Anybody that used to own Rollei can't be all bad.
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Nick
www.nbrphoto.com
Light and Shade II - the new blog
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john_g
Pooh-bah Hoo-ha
Reged: 09/05/2007
Posts: 2079
Loc: Surrey
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I voted that producing their own sensor has increased my respect for Samsung - I own a Samsung GX-10 and have been mightily impressed with it, but this new move shows their commitment to the photography market and their move away from just being a clone producer (even if they did have a big hand in the product development).
I regret that we are, in all likelihood, going through the kind of cataclysmic shift that the (Swiss) watch industry went through when digital watches swept through the market like a forest fire. So many well-respected names disappeared simply because they failed to adapt quickly enough and, most crucially, failed to foster the skills and talents necessary to embrace electronic, rather than mechanical, engineering.
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John
The best things in life are not things.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_gass
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nspur
enthusiast
Reged: 20/07/2005
Posts: 258
Loc: Derbyshire
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With so much outsourcing these days I wonder than any established brand can be relied on to make the product themselves. My two Ricoh compacts probably have Sony CCDs and who knows the rest of them could be made by Casio. Pentax has had a history of farming out production - Cosina and Centon in film days and now Samsung. Who knows who made a Rollei since it went bust originally? Sigma used to make lenses called all sorts of things. Who makes the current inexpensive(!!) Zeiss and Leica lenses? I would guess Cosina which also makes the Zeiss Ikon rangefinder and the lamented Epson digi-rf along with its own fine Voigtlander range. The existence of a Samsung CMOS in its own GX20 and the Pentax K20D should give confidence. Sony make fine sensors but why can't Panasonic do the same? How many well-branded lenses are actually made by Tamron and Tokina? Who actually cares so long as whatever it is works well?
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beejaybee
Marvin
Reged: 18/07/2007
Posts: 4117
Loc: Really Here In Name Only
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Quote:
How many well-branded lenses are actually made by Tamron and Tokina? Who actually cares so long as whatever it is works well?
So long as there isn't a hidden monopoly ... that would act against our interests.
I don't care who makes anything so long as there is a clear and accurate statement of the manufacturing plant.
I do find it strange that the "own brand" lens lineups of the "big two" DSLR brands have so many lenses which have the same focal length and aperture ...
There is history here. Some of the later Olympus OM lenses were made by Cosina to Cosina designs. I don't object to this on principle, just that the name Cosina does not appear anywhere on the product, its documentation or its packaging. Whatever the merits of these lenses (some of them were perfectly OK) I feel that describing them as "Olympus Zuiko" was (at the very least) misrepresentation. They should have been prominently labelled "Designed and manufactured by Cosina for Olympus".
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Burgy
Grateful not to have one
Reged: 13/04/2001
Posts: 5184
Loc: This far, from beating 7 shade...
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Nikon also have outsourced manufacture of bodies and glass historically, as have many others, indeed Vivitar have never manufactured anything of substance themselves, like ever!
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Cheers
Burgy BSRIPN, BSc, DSO and Bar (now open 24/7).
it's not what you've got, its who you do it to
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alanS
Dr Dust
Reged: 30/09/2005
Posts: 3377
Loc: Up North, England.
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The companies I work for produce components and product for other manufacturers. The fact is that many things are manufactured by companies who's name never appears on the final product, documentation or packaging. Some manufacturers are merely assemblers of other peoples product and others simply pay other people to produce product (product, documentation and packaging, the whole complete thing) for them. Such are the commercial realities of the world.
One company I work for is a minor production partner helping to produce a product which is branded by many companies. The product has a 70% share of the global market and yet is sold under many names at many prices. This is just how it is.
A old respected name branded product sometimes isn't all it seems. So for me badge snobbery is often rather silly, as is looking down on the new boy who's probably been making the thing for others for decades anyway.
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Alan's defence lawyer claimed that "Booze played no part in his typo's."
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Tacitus
History
Reged: 17/01/2006
Posts: 871
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Quote:
... badge snobbery is often rather silly ...
And with some brand-devotees it's an obsession.
As an example, I have an 'old' Breitling chronograph wristwatch with a classic Swiss high-grade mechanical movement. I also have less traditional, quite funky Avia chronograph, of the same age, with the all same functions, but a different dial and case design. Of course, Breitling is a highly valued 'collectable' brand; Avia is not.
The watches are constructed to the same high standards and perform identically. Inside, they have exactly the same expensive Valjoux 7740 movement (which is a small engineering wonder), made in the same factory by the same work-force but with final watch assembly done in different places for the respective brands.
Obsessive collectors would have me believe that the Avia watch was wrought out rocks and assembled by ham-fisted dwarves in a dank candle-lit cavern, while the Breitling was made from crystallised angels' tears and assembled by fairies in a magic grotto. Of course, they must be right, otherwise why would there be hundreds of pounds difference in the value of these watches?
Such is the power of marketing - and such is the gullibility, nay self-delusion, of many consumers.
.T.
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