I sort of feel like a few companies have dropped the ball here.
It's maybe as long as 10 years since we had the first news that Copal was coming to an end. Since then we've seen the, now defunct, Rodie/Sinar "eShutter" which was clearly doomed. I'm told by good sources that it was difficult to keep them operating in any sort of working environment.
So what are we left with? Schneider has gone, Rodie are trying, along with Alpa and others, to convince us that dog sh***t is good for our skin - that is that the lenses in aperture unit are a decent solution. Well they aren't! If you have a perfectly good MFDB that's even a generation old they aren't a solution. And in any event a "sensor-based shutter" will never be an all round solution for me. The places it can't do the job are more important than the places it can do the job.
Then we come to Phase One and the XT. Well the XT is OK if you have around AUD$75,000 for a dysfunctional IQ4150...and the cash for a few lenses...let's just round that out to AUD$100K. For the vast majority of photographers - whether they make money from their craft or not - it's not a solution. Even if the technology is licensed and someone cooks up an Alpa Silex-like controller it will still amount to a poisonously expensive solution.
For me and my tech cam with Copal shutters it's like having a very old and frail parent (which I also have): I go to bed hoping the shutter still works in the morning.
Not much of a solution in that lot for "every-man" or "every-woman".
So that brings us to the topic for another day. Whilst the GFX cameras are not in the same league as a thumping big MFDB...they are close enough that for the vast majority it doesn't matter. Movements are difficult, again for many it won't matter. If I was Phase One I'd be feeling a very chill Nordic breeze blowing around my ankles. The profit is in the marginal volume and someone in Japan is stealing the marginal volume.
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