"Me too" cameras

[mfunnell]

Roger (and anyone else who cares to chime in):

I picked up on a comment of yours in another thread, on another RFF forum (Bill Pierce's, I think) in another context:No, no, no. What the world needs is yet another me-too camera.Haven't most cameras, most of the time, been "me-too" cameras?

I mean, how many variations on the 1980s SLR did we have? Except at the margins, how many differences were there between different models and different manufacturers? How many differences were there between different-model 1990s 35mm P&S zooms?

Looking back, I'm sure we can all identify a few stand-outs. But how much of that is 20/20 hindsight? How much is it that we can now actually afford them (since "film is dead")?

I assume the vast majority of RFFers like oddball cameras (I mean, an M is pretty oddball by current trends). But weren't "Leica copies" or "Contax copies" all the rage back in the day? Sure, we may be oddballs for still liking them, but many of the cameras we love weren't that odd at all when produced.

So (if you'll excuse the expression), how bad, really, is me-tooism in the long haul?

I'd be interested to hear what you or anyone else thinks.

...Mike

[Brian Sweeney]

Jet Graphic 35.

Just Wait- CO2 film advance is going to be all the rage and plants thrive on it!

There are exceptions, but Camera gear has always been technology driven and a cost/performance compromise. Technology advances go into the trade-off space to raise the bar of performance and keep the cost at some level. Sometimes old technology gets more expensive, as is the case with processes that are labor intensive. The Nikon F2 was hand-built, as are the S3-2000 and SP-2005. The F2 was ~$500 in 1978 and the SP-2005 was $5,000 in 2005. Put that in your inflation calculator.

So given all the companies have access to about the same level of technology, some individual innovations, shoot at the same customer base, you will get a lot of "me Too" cameras.

[dmr]

Wouldn't just about every coupled RF camera in the world be a "me too" camera then? :)