We know that Pentax have lost one sale, so far. Not a lot, really. And
all they have lost is the sale of a body. It is quite clear that the
person in question won't buy another lens if he lives for four hundred
years. I'd love to know what car /cart he drives, and I'm surprised his
old Apple II can manage to access the Internet. His clothes must look a
bit ragged as well.
But he's absolutely right to insist that things work for ever. Change is
such a difficult thing to handle.
He makes the Amish look positively groovy.
John
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:27:22 +0100, Mark Erickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
J. C. O'Connell wrote:
see my last post, engineering dollars?
that cam sensor was engineered 35 years
ago dude. Do you even know what we are
talking about here? Its ONE pot with
three wires on it read by a single A./D channel?
That's freakin' childs play.
Yes, the actual part is insignificant $, and most of the R&D is already
paid for. I say most because each camera has pretty much its own unique
firmware, so there is a piece of firmware (and R&D) that has to be added
to every camera mode in order to support this. But this small delta
cascades in many directions, i.e. in the user manual, it has to be
documented, I already mentioned the firmware, the chip has to have that
extra A/D channel you are talking about or you need a different more
powerful (more expensive) chip, the support of that extra A/D channel
plus voltage to the pot requires more power, hence reduced battery life,
more wiring, a place on the circuit board to accept the wiring, hence
requiring more space, more testing to make sure the firmware works in
all the different modes, more testing to make sure the aperture
simulator works, etc., etc. the list goes on I'm sure.
Exactly. In addition, you can divide the costs into two parts: NRE
(non-recurring engineering, which is done once per model type and not
once
per unit manufactured), and per-unit costs due to parts, assembly, and
testing.
Even if the per-unit costs are zero (i.e., the additional parts and
manufacturing are free), it may not be worthwhile to add a feature if the
development costs cannot be recovered via additional sales. My guess is
that the number of people who refuse to buy a Pentax DSLR because of
their
lack of support for K/M lenses is not that big. What are the NRE costs
involved in including full K/M compatibility in a camera? I don't know.
I'm not a high-volume digital camera engineer.
Anyone here with manufacturing engineering background care to actually
make
some estimates? Say in the number of engineering hours, broken down into
design, development, integration, and test? Anyone care to estimate the
number of lost sales of *istD and *istDs cameras due to limited K/M
support?
100 cameras? 1000? 1 million?
--Mark
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