A-cam dII 'High Definition RAW Format Motion Picture Camera

[Otis Grapsas]

And that is why you don't make promises and price a camera that won't be available for the next two years! It's bad marketing.
There is certainly harm to all people who did pre-order. First they claim back in 2008 if you did pre-order now you will get a camera within 6 months. They deleted that statement after a while on their website (coz they know they don't have a camera ready). So basically they tricked people into pre-ordering, making them believe the camera would be available in a not too distant future.
After two years of waiting and still no camera you cancel and they take 70 Euros from your pre-order... for what exactly?
I do international bank transfers which cost me 15 Euros, that may differ from bank to bank but nowhere is that going to be 70 Euros. It's highly unethical business practice. Why would I be enthusiastic about a company with such business practices?

You have to promise something to get some interest, then put the usual disclaimers about features and price. When you price so soon, you discover hidden costs as you go, every delay is actually increasing cost and making the pricing and the project less feasible.

If you take even 1 euro from a customer you do assume a responsibility to be accurate when communicating with the customer, that's how it should be anyway. The users put some trust in your effort which is a great compliment. In the case of Ikonoskop it was more complex. The project was underfunded when it started. They had to get some interest in order to get some funding so they presented the project as something that was ready to ship. They mentioned the number of preorders when they wanted to enter the stock market with this project as the calling card. That didn't work out but somehow the got some money later on. The next two years are just normal since it was some kind of sensor board test in 2008, not even a prototype. Jim Jannard just pulled the money out of his pocket for Red, the Ikonoskop guys didn't have it around so they had to get it from someone else, and I just decided to decrease the investment by using a technology that is more open and would make the project feasible at low unit sales without dropping 1M euro in it. Everyone has a method, the cool thing is that everything can work out.

70 euro must include some kind of penalty or administrative charge and a small charge for the currency conversion. In Greece it's about 15 euro for international and 0.30 euro of EU transactions when you use phone or web banking. Someone who paid 695 euro when the euro was 1.50 usd ($1042) will get back 625 euro now, which is only $825 due to the low exchange rate. A loss of $217. Good thing he didn't get the preorder back when euro was 1.20 USD! When the product gets released, the actual preorder might be worth something on the market though, I remember some people selling preorders for other cameras in the past. Not a good practice IMHO.

 

[Razz16mm]

Even the Scarlet fixed will not be very cheap with lots of memory and accessories and 2/3" CCD with interchangable lenses has many advantages over the Scarlet CMOS. Anything gets VAT when it is sold to consumers in europe, but to a semi pro, pro or anyone with a business registered for VAT, VAT is not an issue. Ikonoskop is not for everyone but with the small factor it could get its own niche.

Realistically Scarlet will $7k to $10k plus for a practical field package.
Sure you might get the most bare bones basic package for around $5k, but what do you do when the battery runs out after 40 minutes, and that price doesn't include any media either.

 

[AdrianF]

Yeah, the Scarlet ( even the Cinema ) will be in a very similar price bracket once it is kitted to be field ready, as opposed to just using a barebones system. At the moment it is still subject to change with no date, whereas Ikonoskop are gearing up to ship this camera.
It must have been frustrating for those who put their money down early, but it's hard not to admire what these guys have done.