Sam Hiser is still working on the New55 technology

[Fred L]

hold on...you're thinking of 8x10 instant film ? If there's a neg AND a positive, well...JUST. TAKE.MY. MONEY !

[EdSawyer]

Where does the money come from? Unless there is a whale investor somewhere along the lines, all the good ideas re: improvement will be for naught. and IMNSHO, kickstarter and the like are non-starters.

[swhiser]

Ed - Kickstarter in general is excellent, but not for purchasing big machines. Obviously, investors are needed but I am not at liberty to talk about what plans may or may not exist to sell Common Stock.

[Bob Salomon]

There are a few good thoughts here that I can take on-board. Some I'll leave alone ;-)

Some people talk as if New55 PN were just another product, and I wish they would be just a little more circumspect. The thing would be very different if there was even ONE competitor in instant 4x5 peel-apart. The fact that nobody popped up after the New55 Holdings, LLC, dissolution should tell you something about the difficulty and the deterrent and nothing about the level of market interest -- which is still off-the-hook.

Turns out I am working for Ed Sawyer after all, since he said he WOULD be a buyer if New55 PN's quality were to improve. You can be sure there is no point in continuing this format without a plan to fix the design and performance issues. We aren't trying to be as LAME as POSSIBLE. Improved performance is the beginning of the way to get the 90-plus-% of the market we left behind in the R&D proof-of-principle phase.

Pods are relevant to this. It took me far too long to recognize the number of ways pods can kill performance; so this pause, this chance to take stock and look at the thing from a number of different angles, has been productive. Some of you might recall how we had a bad paper coating experience during the Kickstarter fulfillment period. Either nobody was doing what we needed or we lacked the experience to articulate our needs (to this one particular vendor); but we had the engineering skills to take that process in-house and were successful at producing in a way that taught us how to manage a large job later, off-campus, if needed. We can do the same with pods upon bringing that part in house, too. With a very consistent no-bloat pod made under our QC, the New55 PN system will have a kind of ease and confidence in reliability that the 545 holder never, ever, saw. Some of this also depends upon a better quality print paper and new sleeve design which were inevitable all along and are now in progress. I think the Gen3 version of New55 PN should bring some wallflowers off the sidelines -- even at the same high price, which is not going to budge for a while.

This performance / value jump does that thing in micro-economics where the Demand Curve (Y-axis is PRICE, X-axis is QUANTITY; the DEMAND Curve looks like this \) gets pushed outward (to the right). So at the same high price our new Curve indicates 1.5X to 2.0X the previous Quantity. THEN, it's at the ensuing Price-Cut (which in my opinion ought to be an emphatic 30%-off) that gives us a new Quantity reading of something like 3.0X the original. Roll this out in North America, Europe and Asia and we have the kind of support that we need to grow the business (by, say, rolling out complementary products like COLOR and different speeds). We estimate there are 100K-200K 4x5 cameras in use in US & Europe taken together. We have no idea about Asia, but going forward with the business is the way to find that out.

I am encouraged by the number of new camera makers who have entered since our 2014 Kickstarter. We've lost Ebony, but Chamonix and Shen Hao are there; Toyo is there; Nagaoka is still there; Canham and Linhof of course; and we have added Intrepid, Walker, Gibellini, BOMM, Stenopeika, and VDS. That's a reflection of a healthy ecosystem -- particularly in a field where old cameras don't die and the new ones add cumulatively.

Yes, the market is different than in the golden age, but that is now receding further and further out of relevance. I am excited about the level of activity today in large format photography happening on its own terms among artists, portraitists, conceptualists and amateurs alike. We are trying to understand 4x5 workers, methods & motivations but the 8x10 market is even more exciting in some ways (not in terms of absolute number of participants but) because of what the 8x10 scale means to expression. So we will need to develop our Gen5 film-packet, holder and processing system from scratch for 8x10 and feed back the best aspects of that adventure to the Gen5 system for 4x5.

There's a lot to do and the enthusiasm I am witnessing in large-format is the sine qua non.

I hope that since Photokina is about to happen in Cologne that you will be attending and perhaps have a booth there. It is the largest show and audience in the photographic industry and it will be 2020 before there is another one.

[Degroto]

I hope that since Photokina is about to happen in Cologne that you will be attending and perhaps have a booth there. It is the largest show and audience in the photographic industry and it will be 2020 before there is another one.

Nope Photokina will take place next year in may. From this year on it will be a yearly event in the spring.
http://www.photokina.com/fair/photok...ina-2018-2.php

[Bob Salomon]

Nope Photokina will take place next year in may. From this year on it will be a yearly event in the spring.
http://www.photokina.com/fair/photok...ina-2018-2.php

Still no excuse for him not to be there next week! The contacts and information that he can gain there is invaluable!

[Degroto]

Still no excuse for him not to be there next week! The contacts and information that he can gain there is invaluable!

Well unless he has got more urgent matters to attend of course. Liken building a good and viable product. Just kidding. There is also such a thing as timing. Reading his article I would say now is not a good time to be at the Photokina.

[Bob Salomon]

Well unless he has got more urgent matters to attend of course. Liken building a good and viable product. Just kidding. There is also such a thing as timing. Reading his article I would say now is not a good time to be at the Photokina.

If he wants market input and support from manufacturers and the opportunity to make contact with the largest group of photo enthusiasts then this is the best use of his time in the next week!

[Degroto]

Market input was given the years New55 was available. And I think you can safely assume he has got his network already.

Since a lot of analog producers are not going to the photokina this year your expectation can be lowered a bit. I mean Foma will not be there this year. I cannot see that Polaroid Originals will be there this year. Also I am missing Linhof and Sinar from the line up at the Photokina to name a few. From the kind of film New55 is those would be parties worth talking to. They are not there. I suspect the Photokina 2019 will be much bigger than this one now. There are only 5 halls available whereas the previous years there were at least 8 to 10 halls of photofun during the Photokina. So again it is a question of timing and if I see the line up for this year it is less interesting than hopefully the line up for next years event. So time is better spent back home. There are more ways than going to a fair to network with people. :-)

[Bob Salomon]

Market input was given the years New55 was available. And I think you can safely assume he has got his network already.

Since a lot of analog producers are not going to the photokina this year your expectation can be lowered a bit. I mean Foma will not be there this year. I cannot see that Polaroid Originals will be there this year. Also I am missing Linhof and Sinar from the line up at the Photokina to name a few. From the kind of film New55 is those would be parties worth talking to. They are not there. I suspect the Photokina 2019 will be much bigger than this one now. There are only 5 halls available whereas the previous years there were at least 8 to 10 halls of photofun during the Photokina. So again it is a question of timing and if I see the line up for this year it is less interesting than hopefully the line up for next years event. So time is better spent back home. There are more ways than going to a fair to network with people. :-)

Since Sinar is part of Leica they probably are within their booth.

Having worked every
Photokina from 1984 to 2014 as well as every major US photo show since 1970 I might have a better feeling for what can be gained as a manufacturer and distributor of photo products.

For someone attempting what he is there is no one place that will give him more access to users, manufacturers and suppliers then Photokina, not to forget the world wide imaging press.

Yes, the show is much smaller then it had been in the past, especially since they redesigned the halls after the TV studio took over the lower halls. And yes, the show used to be much longer, but that is also a result in the downsizing of the entire industry.

And, if specific companies are not exhibiting they will still have management visiting. So an enterprising prospective manufacturer could always arrange meetings. Especially when their product they want to produce has failed in the recent past!