Gene Kochanowsky wrote:That is my point. You build a camera today, using higher capacity parts that are usually in the upper tier of performance ratings, and those parts tend to be more expensive and in some cases harder to get. But you put them in a camera you are building today, with a sensor you are buying today, that doesn't need the higher specified parts.
The flaw with your point is that the cost of the extra computing power and data bandwidth to provide for an upgraded sensor with higher frame rates or resolution or some combination thereof is trivial compared to the effort of writing the new firmware and implementing updated color science.
The color science and image processing take engineering talent and imaging knowledge, plus the effort of making the necessary measurements and then write the code.
Making a camera with a sensor that the user an upgrade adds a significant manufacturing and design cost compared to an all-in-one design.
It would be one thing if sensor technology had plateaued out, but that doesn't appear to be happening. Predicting the future in the form of a camera body is a crazy thing to do. Just look at cameras as little as five years ago as compared today.
Sorry guys, this is the computer industry all over again. If you think you can buy a professional camera and use it for ten, twenty years, those days are gone. They went away when film went away. You are now in the tech world, not the film world.
To your point though, Red is actually a perfect example. It pushed the "Obsolescence obsolete" mantra for a long time. And for a while, it actually worked; Red was able to take a customers camera, replace some internal parts along with the sensor, and send back an upgraded camera. So if you had an Epic-X you could send it in to have it converted to an Epic Dragon for the difference in price. So the customer saved money by upgrading instead of buying new, and everyone thought it was great...
... until Red introduced the DSMC2, which has an entirely new body, new electronics, new I/O buses both internal and external, and even updated ventilation.
So for a period, Red took DSMC cameras in trade toward DSMC2 cameras at a relatively high value given how old some of the DSMC cameras being traded in were.
It cost Red a lot of money to do this; obviously this is part of why a Scarlet-W costs so much more than an Ursa Mini 4.6K.