New! A SONY with a wooden grip at 3x the price: Hasselblad Stellar

[Derrel]

Oh-my-gosh...Hasselblad, owned by a venture capital group, has done it again folks!!! This time, they have taken the Sony RX100, slapped a grip onto it, raised the price three-fold, and named it the "Stellar". Yes, you read that right--it's a SONY RX100, but with a grip made by the brilliant engineers at Hasselblad...and this sexy grip, well, it's affixed to the camera using high-tech screws! Screws people, screws!

Prices range from right around $2,000, up to $3,200 for the deluxe model...

Yeah...

Hasselblad announces distinctly RX100-esque 'Stellar' compact: Digital Photography Review

Additional laughs can be found here: http://www.gearophile.com/newsviews/how-to-pay-more-for-a-piece.html

 

[tirediron]

:shock:

 

[cgipson1]

I have no doubt the grip improved it 1000%!

 

[EDL]

I really, really get disgusted when companies known for high end gear start doing this sort of thing. To me it tarnishes their image and I can no longer trust that what they are producing is truly a quality item or just another turd wrapped in a shiny package.

I tend to frown at things that are "special editions" because some company changed the color, or added some bling to it and slapped their name on it and raised the price a ton. It amazes me how people will go nuts for stuff like that.

Ah well, to each their own I guess.

 

[Gavjenks]

Shrug. Prices are set by the market and people's willingness to pay.

This is no more greedy and immoral than it is for you to buy a refurbished lens that simply had a minor scratch on it or something and thus got returned, for a 75% discount, or whatever. Both consumers and producers will hardly bother to ever think twice about an opportunity to end up with more money in their pocket, even if it seems like a silly amount for a trivial difference, in either case.

And I don't see why ADDING a feature for more money would ever tarnish their reputation for making quality products. Unless that feature is broken and low quality. As far as I can see, it is not: It looks like a perfectly nice and useful grip. Would I pay for it? No. But nothing about this implies that their quality standards have gone down. ?

 

[Derrel]

Ummm,it's pretty clear that standards have gone down. This is last year's Sony...

This new camera is so pathetic that it spawned an article entitled Wretched Excess, by Michael Reichmann at The Luminous Landscape. As he wrote near the conclusion of that article, "The venerable company Hasselblad appears to be completely out of innovative ideas and technologies and so has turned to dressing up other company's discontinued products and pimping them up for the carriage trade market, likely mostly in Asia."

Wretched Excess

But there is a winner in all this: SONY! As Reichmann wrote, "Indeed the last laugh in this story likely belongs to the Sony Corporation, who get to pawn-off their two year old and soon to be end-of-line cameras to Hasselblad and its unsuspecting customers, without taking any heat themselves."

Pretty sweet deal!

 

[Tedski]

And I don't see why ADDING a feature for more money would ever tarnish their reputation for making quality products. But nothing about this implies that their quality standards have gone down. ?

This is a total embarrasment to the legacy of Hasselblad. They take someone else's obsolete model, add a wooden googaw and a "H" badge and declare it their NEW model? It is a complete desecration of Hasselblad's reputation. It is the new management throwing in the towel and abandoning any hope of surviving on its own merits.

All they can hope for is to exploit the brand recognition to a few collectors with more dollars than sense. It's only a matter of time before the new management joins Antonio Perez (the destroyer of Kodak) in photography's Hall of Shame.

Tedski


"Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."-- G. Marx

 

[jaomul]

I think your all overlooking the craft that is wood carving here

 

[amolitor]

Everyone knows that "gripped" is 1000x better.

 

[usayit]

What????

The Lunar was such a "success" (tongue in cheek) that it garnered another in the line?

:-/

 

[Ysarex]

 

[amolitor]

I've hinted at it before, but here it is. I actually own the prototype of the Hasselblad GALACTICON. Based on the tried and true Sinar F1 platform, with a variety of Hassy exclusive features added to enhance the photographing experience, including but not necessarily limited to a hand-crafted grip of the rarest woods, and a Swedish-engineered fastenation system, the GALACTICON promises a new level of photographic excellence.

 

[amolitor]

Sorry about the lack of rotation. This is literally SOOC, I plugged the SC card into this chromebook, on account of I am watching the baby right now, and she is grunting and squeaking irritably. Or, enjoy the appropriateness of a non-rotated image.

 

[Solarflare]

Even sarcasm seems like a waste for this.

I can understand why Hassleblad is in trouble. After all, the Leica S System is probably cutting painfully into their target market.

But with these new cameras, I have a very hard time believing anyone will ever bother to buy them.

 

[runnah]

It worked so well for 70's era station wagons...