Every year when attending PhotoPlus Expo in New York, in addition to walking the show floor, a lot of time is spent meeting with our partners from the manufacturing side. A wide range of topics are covered. This year’s meetings included Leaf, Schneider, DHW (formerly Rollei, formerly F&H), and Mamiya, among others. These four particular meetings were interesting in terms of where medium format is going (and where it has been). It was enlightening to get a sense of the symbiotic relationships of these companies and of their technologies.
One of the more fascinating meetings was with Ulrich Eilsberger of Schneider Optics. An 18 year veteran of the company, Uli kept us spellbound with tales of production processes involved with Schneider optics, painting a picture of how different things were in the 80’s and 90’s and how they are today. And how excruciatingly difficult it is to produce and bring a quality optical product to market. I came away with even more appreciation for the difficulty of producing excellent lenses, both from a purely design and manufacturing perspective as well as a financial one. The typical Schneider optic takes nearly 30 months to produce from design to end product. Imagine projecting out products 2.5 years in advance in an era of rapidly changing industry dynamics and technologies. Quite illuminating when one considers how they arrive at the price of a product.
Ulrich Eilsberger/Schneider Optics
Additionally we met with Bernd Francke of DHW, the re-organized company borne from Rollei/F&H. DHW is a dramatically (and necessarily) smaller company than F&H, with about 30 employees now. According to Bernd, production on most previous products is engaged. The big question remains what of the Hy6/AFi camera? Recently Leaf announced an 80MP AFi-II 12 will be available Q1/2011 for use on an AFi camera, while stressing they were not involved in any way regarding the future of the camera platform itself. From Leaf’s perspective, they are simply continuing to offer an upgrade path for Hy6/AFi users. Any Hy6/AFi camera, regardless of how it is branded, can be used with the Leaf AFi digital backs, though the camera may require a firmware change. Does the Hy6/AFi still have a future? Time will tell.
Bernd Francke/DHW
In the meantime, technological co-development continues to move forward with Schneider, Mamiya, Leaf, Phase One, and this is a long term, formalized arrangement. That is very positive. From the the standpoint of the Leaf/Phase One relationship, there has been speculation that Leaf technology would be folded into Phase One products and one brand would survive. Phase One sees sustained value in the Leaf brand, and Leaf customers are very loyal.
Phase One CEO Henrik Hakonson, on Leaf:
http://www.innovafoto.com/index.php/noticias/entrevista_henrik_o_h_konson_/
Google English Translation:
http://tinyurl.com/2e62fj3
While Leaf is now a division of Phase One, the management and development teams for Leaf are still in place, and Leaf continues to operate very much the way it did before, and differently in numerous respects than Phase One, in terms of technology, distribution, and marketing. While they remain quite separate and independent from a business standpoint in the manner in which they operate, form a technological standpoint, there is a great deal of sharing and cooperation going on, with Leaf engineers frequently in Copenhagen, and Phase One engineers frequently in Tel Aviv. This is also good, IMO.
So…the question remains…are the Schneider Leaf Shutter lenses for the Phase One system just re-badged Mamiya lenses? In a word no. And what we found from Uli is that the development of optics is not so simple as “well, whose glass is it”? It is a much more complex process from the standpoint of measurement and design, materials, and execution of the process of producing a final product. Suffice to say, Schneider’s involvement in the making of the Schneider Leaf Shutter Lenses is absolutely essential and as such, the lenses deserve to be labelled Schneider.
And so, we now look at Phase One and what has changed in the past 18 months. And in that time, they have invested a majority stake into Mamiya Corporation, acquired Leaf and Expressions Media, (a stand alone, robust, DAM software program), and have forged a long term developmental relationship with Schneider Optics (and kept their balance sheet in the black). All during a terrible economic period. This is impressive and bodes well for future development and investment into Phase One products.