[filmscanners] Re: Filmscanners - is this about as good asitgets?

["Mats Petersson" <mats.petersson@btconnect.com>]

At 05:50 PM 1/27/2003, you wrote:
> > I don't think there is such a thing as a slowing down of
> > producing "better"
> > products in a market that is growing, and I believe film scanners
> > are still
> > a growing market in number of units sold, even if it's always going to be
> > small compared to flat-bed scanners (almost every other computer has a
> > flat-bed scanner, and I only know one or two other people who has a film
> > scanner).
>
>This was part of my point - I've no idea what the figures would be, but my
>sense is that filmscanners are probably coming close to not being a growing
>market anymore - at least not in a significant sense.
>
>When you see major, established film based pro labs closing down because
>their clientele has all gone digital (whether they should have diversified
>is another question...), one has to question where any major growth in
>filmscanner sales will continue to come from?

I'd say that all professionals and semi-professional users have one.
However, there are a large amount of happy snappers out there that could
probably buy one if the price was a bit lower. Ok, so it's not going to be
tens of millions of units like the flat-bed scanners, but until the Digital
cameras are available at a similar price to a film scanner (in similar
amount of megapixels), it would still be a good possibility of buying a
film scanner. Similarly, if you have a camera system that uses standard
film-size, but isn't a Nikon or Canon, then you'd probably have a fair
amount of money spent on lenses that would prevent you from changing to the
latest greatest Digital SLR, since it's going to cost a small fortune to
buy new lenses. Ok, so you may end up with a second Digital SLR for the
most popular scenes with a generic lens (or one of a special kind,
depending on what your popular motive is). Still need a film-scanner to
make good use of the negatives from the old camera, right?

I think another reason for pro-labs closing is the easy access to pretty
good one-hour labs available everywhere. It used to be that if you wanted
your film developed in less than a week, you'd have to get it developed in
a pro-lab. Then it reduced to a couple of days, but it was still a "send it
away and wait" job. So the pro's would take their 6 rolls from todays
news-shoot to the pro-lab, because it was the only way to get it into the
paper the same day. This is obviously completely useless if the corner shop
has a 1hr service that produces a similarly good result, and isn't 5 mile
drive away either.


>To simplify it - most of those who will use a filmscanner have got one by
>now... and the market of potential users is probably decreasing.

Yes, but there are still a large portion of possible users out there that
haven't got that far yet. And it's less investment, and less "conversion"
to change to using a film-scanner than it is to use a digital SLR. Not that
much, but sitll a bit different.

--
Mats


>tim
>
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