The problem that stopped the Contax and MZ-D in their tracks was that Phillips was unable to manufacture the sensor to spec, on time, and in sufficient volume at the agreed upon price. The camera manufacturers dropped the project rather than renegotiate the deal because the performance was so dismal and the price would have been so high; it was a "cut your losses and run" situation. Sad, both cameras had a lot of promise.
I ran into the Contax at a 2002 Photo Expo Tokyo while I was there, actually handled and made an exposure or two with the prototype. It was large but nicely balanced and not as heavy as it looked, beautifully finished even in prototype form. Kyocera decided to close up camera operations after that as it had been too expensive a loss and wasn't their main line of business. Pentax soldiered forth in a different direction with a smaller Sony sensor and a less ambitious body as the starting point, the *ist D. Godfrey > On Feb 13, 2015, at 11:53 AM, P.J. Alling <[email protected]> wrote: > > The previous FF Pentax the so called MZ-D was actually out for testing, not a > mockup, but hand assembled working prototypes, (there were supposedly 6 of > them almost released to the wild). I expect that Pentax dropped plans for > it's production because, it was only 6mp and would have cost an arm a leg and > an eye, and that Canon, and Kodak both were on the verge of releasing 10 and > 14mp FF cameras respectively that only cost an arm and a leg. There were > also rumors that the Philips sensor it was built around was a dog, and it > probably was, Contax rele3ased a similar camera using the same sensor, and it > killed the brand, at least the Yashica incarnation of Contax. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
