Doubtful Peter. The first batch sold out immediately. What I did notice is there was not as large of rush to get on this bandwagon, but I suspect a lot of that was for the same reason I paused -- wanting to make certain I was not a Beta-tester this time around... I will get one, and I'm sure once the pipeline fills it will be a strong seller both here and abroad. And the 4K video features may be responsible for well over half its market share...
What is sad is the condition of the institution of photography itself. --- Here I do believe the number of folks that actually carry -- nay, OWN -- any sort of dedicated camera has dwindled to almost nothing due to cell phones being "so darn good." Photography itself won't be a lost art anytime soon, but creating static images with a dedicated camera of any sort may soon be.
Moreover, as everything moves to a more and more digital world, paper (or glass or aluminum) printed with anything on it may be the actual lost art... I have not sold an actual print in over a year, and made only a handful of custom ones for people last year. In 10 more years, I suspect wall-sized lcd panels capable of holding millions of images and thousands or tens of thousands of video clips will sell for a few hundred dollars, and that will mark the end of the printed medium forever, at least other than for purely artistic purposes...
/cynical rant
Hi Jack,
I missed this post, but after reading it I had to add some thoughts as your comments are exactly the same as what I see daily. Photography IMO as an institution where I learned it, was all about the capture and the final print. Net, without a print, you really had nothing. I just finished a printing job for a customer who does a lot of local architecture work. The prints were all in the 24 x 36 range all taken with various Nikon/Canon cameras, but mainly the D810. The first thing that the VP reviewing the final prints stated was "Did you Photoshop that?" So many if not most just feel you hit a few buttons, plug the camera into the printer, and hit print! And all the contrast, color, shadow recovery, etc all of that was done with a simple quick "photoshop" button on the mac or PC. I have totally given up even getting into these types of discussions as they are pointless, but it does show just how powerful the internet is on totally changing a paradigm. Most of these same people can't even remember all the things we used to do in the darkroom to either push, or pull a negative, then the dodging and burning, or the use of different film and paper types to either pull out saturation, Fuji Process for example. End result can still be close but since it was film and not that many folks really ever worked in a darkroom especially with color which is worked in total darkness, thus they have nothing to compare it to.
A couple of years ago, I might have tried to explain to them what a raw file is, and how I find that the process of digital capture to final print, actually takes much more time than it did in my Darkroom days, Cibachrome and Kodak. Plus the fact that in those days, I was pretty limited to 16 x 20 max sized print as working with anything much larger, even 20 x 30 was a huge step up in both time and cost.
My main reason to move to MF Digital was the resolution. I like to print big, as big as I can go, as it's still a bit of differentiation between myself and competition. The years I spent working with various interpolation software to get an 6mp, then 11mp then 22, to work out in a large print made it clear for my workflow that the best solution is to use as much resolution as you can at the time of capture. Thus for years I stitched everything and it worked out fine, but this was before the advent of the modern software for stitching and all of mine was done with a Zork adapter so all the stitching was manual (just hit that photoshop button). Got the resolution I wanted but the time in post was extreme. The move to MF helped out a lot. And now the DSLRs are there, both Canon and Nikon at least to 50MP and IMO past 50MP for a 35mm sized sensor will really be a challenge due to diffraction, just as it is with the 100MP MF format and will worse on the 150MP MF.
The Photographer of today has changed. The toolset is the iPhone and the Print is the internet. The dpi is 72 or less. The images hit, are viewed and are gone, forgotten as fast as they are posted. Can these images get to a 30 x 40 or 40 x 60 or 40 x 96 inch print, no. Will they ever no. But the vast majority of these photographers could care less about a print, in fact printing is a foreign thing. But you can populate a flickr, or Smugmug or 500px site with these same images and many do again the thought of a print never entered their minds.
So for the folks who still make prints it just makes the process that much harder as these same photographers are the ones making the purchasing decisions for large corporate deals i.e. office buildings hospitals etc. That is the market I attempt to work in and so far I am doing OK, but every year the price points are hit as the folks making the decision base the decision on iPhone capture technology. The thought of color space, gamut, paper type. media, ink jet, or lightjet or solvent never comes into play.
I am very happy to hear that some on this site and others are able to still make it successfully in the art market (galleries). I also feel that a lot of that success is very dependent on the gallery and how they market your work and more importantly understand your workflow.
The D850 won't change any of this mindset. However it's clear based on the images I have seen it's going to start pressing on the already narrow band of MF backs as 50Mp is plenty for my work as stitching is just so easy now. The colors from the D850 do appear very impressive and DR similar to that of the D810. Nikon has really stepped up with their latest lenses, the new 24-70 and 70-200 are impressive, and I find them both vastly superior to the former versions.
Sorry, long rant, but just felt your point was well stated.
Paul Caldwell
