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Comment by franga2000 | Hacker News Reader

franga2000

Am I reading this correctly? "Anamorphic license", "full-frame license"... This is insane! The camera already costs 45k and they want to sell firmware feature unlocks?

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>This is insane! The camera already costs 45k

You say that as if it costs too much. In fact, given what it does, and what analogous cinema cameras cost, this is a bargain.

> You say that as if it costs too much That's not what I meant. I am fully aware that this is a great value. What I was saying is that, given the price (and IMO regardless of the price), that kind of "feature unlock" model is ridiculous. The profit margins on this level of gear tend to already be very high. They do not need to charge even more, especially for what I assume are fairly trivial firmware differences.

One non-obvious benefit of feature licenses is that it creates a strong incentive for Sony to add firmware features after release.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of buyers would prefer more available features (and a longer hardware lifetime) and having to pay for them instead of fewer features for free.

45k is cheap for a cinema camera. Since it’s generally large budget films that shoot anamorphic, this scheme allows the camera to be accessible to production companies that might never need anamorphic. Anamorphic tech costs money to develop, so it seems that having all users subsidize an advanced feature they might not want would result in the camera costing more for everyone.

Outside of the lenses used, where does this other cost come from? The lens itself squeezes the wider image into the same shape as the sensor. The NLE or other DI processes would then just stretch it back out into whatever frame size is needed. It's the same concept 16:9 DVDs used too fit the wider content into an SD frame.

A camera sensor doesn't care what shape the image is, as it only cares about if photons are hitting it or not. Yes, you can tell the camera you are shooting a certain aspect so that it doesn't energize parts of the sensor that's not needed. So some additional dev costs to add that feature.

What else am I missing?

This is standard MO for Sony. They make cameras capable of more features that must be purchased separately. However, Sony is not the only company to do this. It is much easier/cheaper to manufacture one thing that is capable of everything, but limit features based on locking them behind a software license.

This is actually more common on expensive gear. With that amount of capex spend I only want to pay for what I need.

Besides the lense is probably more expensive than this camera. It’s not really that expensive given the industry.

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