> I think you are wrong. Of course there are way
Why am I not surprised?
> more than 10 potential buyers. There are MILLIONS
> of good and great M42 lenses actually owned by
> people. Not a few dozen. There are probably more
> m42 lenses in existance than ALL K mount lenses
> ever made and they have produced K mount DSLRS
> havent they?
>
... but are there more than a few dozen who would be willing to
pay significantly MORE (R&D costs) for a camera that can ONLY use 30+ year
old MF lenses as compared to a modern camera that can use the same lenses
with minor inconveniences? This is not the same argument as the aperture
coupler. That's a minor cost savings on a mount that could easily
facilitate it without removing modern features. A true M42 DSLR could NOT
use anything more modern than auto-aperture MF M42 lenses.
> Secondly, my comments in that post were made
> on relative cost to develop a M42 DSLR from an existing design,
> vs developing one from scratch. It would not
> be very complex. Its not like this M42 pin actuator mechanism
> change is a swiss watch or something, its fairly basic.
>
> jco
You confuse prototype costs with production costs. One could
certainly hack their K-mount DSLR to mount M42 lenses directly, operate
the aperture pin, and maybe even reverse engineer the software to have the
camera use it. In reality, you'd need to license the design for
modifying (hardware and software...costing big bucks), or build one from
the ground up (even bigger bucks). Both of which would require physical
production unless you're going to build them one-off in your basement.
Just hacking up a working prototype is a far cry from a marketable
product.
-Cory
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
> Cory Papenfuss
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 1:25 PM
> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List
> Subject: RE: 85mm f1.8 SMCT on ebay : $400+
>
>
>> I think you are seriously overestimating the
>> difficulty in producing/devloping a M42 DSLR, the only signifigant
>> difference from a K100D would be a screw thread flange instead of a K
>> flange and a M42 pin actuator instead of the k lens
>> lever actuator. Nearly all of the remaining
>> hardware would be the same and the software/firmware
>> would be mostly deleting existing features M42 couldnt
>> do.
>> jco
>>
>
> Sounds good on paper.
> Conceptually very simple.
> Minimal modifications required to an existing camera.
> Legal requirements and licensing modification of hardware and software
> on
> an existing camera very expensive.
> Very expensive to pay engineers to do it.
> Very expensive to produce at low volume.
>
> Let's see... a half-dozen engineers at $100K/year for at least 6 months
> is
> $300K. Ramping up production to produce 1000 units, probably $500K (I
> have no firm numbers to support this, but it seems reasonable).
> Licensing modifications from an existing camera.... a $mil or so. So,
> you've got 1000 cameras that cost $10M to produce. That's $10K each.
>
> OR, you can pay 20 engineers for a year, making custom ASICs or patching
>
> something together using off-the-shelf components to try to make them
> from
> scratch. Probably quite a bit more than the $10M to make 1000 units.
> Your choice.
>
> If you and the other 10 people on the planet buy theirs, then they'll
> have
> to charge $100K per unit to break even. Economies of scale will not
> allow
> it to happen. Not enough market.
>
> -Cory
>
>
--
*************************************************************************
* Cory Papenfuss, Ph.D., PPSEL-IA *
* Electrical Engineering *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
*************************************************************************
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