Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/06/24

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Subject: [Leica] Bring Out the Negative Scanner
From: tim at KairosPhoto.com (Timothy Atherton)
Date: Fri Jun 24 15:37:57 2005

> Which reopens a question: why doesn't one of the major camera
> outfits market
> a high quality yet reasonable 35mm negative scanner? Kodak and
> Fuji and Leica
> should be in the lead. Nikon and Polaroid featured film scanners
> a few years
> ago, but the market seemed to have lost its drive. That may be
> due to the low
> cost transfer of negatives to CD positives now.
>

Konica Minolta make exactly two such scanners (and the Nikon ones are still
good) and Microtek's are the former Polaroid ones.

So how many more do you need?

Their quality reached the zenith of what is needed for 35mm at about the
time demand probably dropped pretty quickly due to the huge number of pros
going digital.

> Kodak and
> Fuji and Leica
> should be in the lead.

None of whom are going to re-invent the wheel (and the first two have
previously sold scanners - Leica would take 10 years to develop it by which
time it would be 8 years out of date). I doubt they see any point to being
"in the lead" in what would be the dwindling market for a specialist
product. Maybe in 2025 (by which time we may have those high power DNA
computers anyway...), but not now.

tim


In reply to: Message from Afterswift at aol.com (Afterswift@aol.com) ([Leica] Bring Out the Negative Scanner)