Why don't more camera manufacturers make film lights?

R

rob norton

Veteran
Arri makes film lighting with huge success.

Why don't sony, panasonic etc. get in the lighting game?

Film camera vs. HMI lighting for example doesn't really register as a comparison of similar technology.

Today's cameras and more sophisticated LEDs are MUCH closer in shared technology. While not next to each other on a spectrum, I don't think they're at opposite ends either.

Is it just too risky? Or are they waiting until a company like aputure blows up enough then they'll buy them out? Or there isn't much money in the mid range compared to their camera earnings?

I'm not saying an arri takeover would happen overnight but it seems like a company like sony could develop/release products that would claim most of the space shared by aputure, hive, rayzr, etc.

Mitch, I know you're dying to develop some Panasonic LEDs!
 
Maybe because it's like comparing Apples and freight ship propellers, very different businesses. At least with Arri, I know, the lighting division is, for most purposes, a different company within the master company, as is the camera group. Arri also has a long history of being in both businesses.
Without insider knowledge and analysis of each unit for profitability, long term strategy and market viability, it's impossible to say. I used to work for a high end business consulting firm and one of our clients was Sony, I knew their entire corporate business strtegy circa 2011-13, so I can hazard a few guesses.

Just as a guess, I would say one word, China. Go on B&H and look at how saturated the LED market already is, there are dozens of lighting companies that most of us have never even heard of. Prices, other than for a few select premium brands like Arri, have dropped a ton and continue to drop.
Innovation is very high, competition is ridiculous, copying and corporate espionage from ruthless competitors who will instantly rip off your intellectual property, we are in a trade war with the home of the LED, China, tariffs, etc. I can see dozens of reasons as a business person why I would never want to get into the lighting business. If there was a good profit versus risk ratio there, you can bet that huge organizations like Canon and Panasonic would already be in it. They are smart with their investments and strategies, that's why they will probably be in business long after small companies like RED, Atomos, etc. go under. They diversify but only for new tech that makes financial and market opportunity sense
and LED lighting obviously doesn't. In a few words, oversaturated, overly competitive, high end niche market that itself is struggling.
 
That's sort of like asking why more construction companies do not go into making automobiles, as Hyundai did. There's no one answer to that.
 
It's just another business, requiring a different set of engineers, factory, sales staff, support, etc. It's running another business entirely. Panasonic does lots of stuff. It's the biggest battery manufacturer in the world (the Tesla GigaFactory is a 50/50 partnership with Panasonic and most of the good batteries in V- and Gold-mount out there contain Panasonic cells). We may do some lighting for all I know, maybe industrial stuff in Japan only or something. It's a big company.

I think we make way more money in rice cookers than we do with all our professional and consumer cameras. We certainly do with Toughbook laptops -- those guys are huge.
 
Mitch Gross said:
It's just another business, requiring a different set of engineers, factory, sales staff, support, etc. It's running another business entirely. Panasonic does lots of stuff. It's the biggest battery manufacturer in the world (the Tesla GigaFactory is a 50/50 partnership with Panasonic and most of the good batteries in V- and Gold-mount out there contain Panasonic cells). We may do some lighting for all I know, maybe industrial stuff in Japan only or something. It's a big company.

I think we make way more money in rice cookers than we do with all our professional and consumer cameras. We certainly do with Toughbook laptops -- those guys are huge.
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Thanks Mitch. But it's not like Panasonic is thinking about getting into the shoe business. They obviously have a philosophy that draws a line somewhere, which lets them accept and reject ideas to expand their product line.

I'm sure it's just crunching numbers but was curious if there was anything more to it.

At some point arri decided to make electronic stabilizers too. Maybe more products let arri offer turnkey studio solutions e.g. 1000x s360 skypanels, handful of cameras/accessories and gimbal packages with significant savings as in incentive for those buying?
 
Adding to what Mitch said, for huge conglomerates like Sony, Panasonic, and Canon, a new business has to be something that has to have a big, make that huge revenue opportunity. I suspect it just isn't that attractive a revenue opportunity.
If a company sees an opportunity, it does a business plan - does it make sense to get in this business?
1 Market size - mega companies like Panasonic need mega divisions. So if a market is small compared to their overall business, they won't consider it.
2 Competition - if the market is saturated and they don't see any way to carve out a good percentage of the business, they won't consider it.
3. Turn up costs - if the market size and competition check ok, then there is the cost of turning up all the things Mitch mentioned. If you make cameras, it has nothing to do with lights. There is nothing common. So an entire new company (division) has to be started. That is an enormous cost - figure 2-3 years to get it going. The bigger the company, the longer it will take. So they spend piles of money getting it started, it better make good on the promise.

That's why companies buy other companies. It's too risky to try to start a business on your own. Better to buy someone that has proven the market.
 
I wonder how much arri actually does.

Some of my Cstands/gripheads have Arri stickers and are Avenger or Manfrotto.

Im very unconvinced that my Arri sandbags are not a re-logoed product.

--

Sony make or sell various top lights.
 
Lighting fixtures have generally a fairly low barrier to entrance and most of the LED beads/COB themselves are outsourced anyway.

The technological development is done by the major LED manufacturers like Philips and Cree, who then make their product available to the fixture makers.

Back around 2013 or so, if one glanced at YouTube, there were plenty of clips on how to use Home Depot type lights for video. A year later, the LED panels became "affordable", where a 500 bead 1x1 (of dubious CRI to boot) was down to ~ $500. Now, they're about $50 with a higher CRI and a more powerful punch.

morgan_moore said:
Im very unconvinced that my Arri sandbags are not a re-logoed product...
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The sand is imported from China.
 
Arri doesn’t bother to make C-stands and sandbags. The only reason they would resell someone else’s product is because many customers want a 1-stop purchase. They want to issue a single PO with all the line items on it. This can be very important for a corporate or bid sale.
 
I know that few of you think about Hitachi as a camera manufacturer, but consider all the other things that Hitachi makes? Back in the 90's when I was out on Long Island for service training, the instructor joked that they were huge in other areas, everything from pencils to nuclear reactors and giant desalinization plants. The professional cameras market was less than 1% of their gross (may not be an accurate percentage).

Fujifilm photography cameras is a tiny portion of the giant Fuji empire. I want to say Nikon is similar but I'm not that familiar with them, I know they make a lot of industrial imaging equipment. Minolta used to be cameras and a lot of other things, sold it to Sony which is why their consumer camera division took such a huge leap in market share, the Maxxum/Dynax AF mount (Sony A mount) is almost still a living thing (being supplanted by E mount more every day).

Panasonic electronics components is probably far bigger than their professional camera division, and just about everyone making a camera has some of those Panasonic components in them, they make some of the best capacitors.

Right now, lighting for professional video/stills would be a hard market to get into. With several companies turning out really good product for low money, starting at the bottom is certainly a place to lose money. Shooting for the top is the only market, and going to be difficult to overthrow the leaders based on established customer loyalty (based on service life in the field). The new LED style has some benefits, but if a fixture goes bad, what do you do with it? You can't just pull a new socket out of a bin, and lamp out of a box and fix the thing during a 15 minute break like the old tungsten lights. You would need to have extra lights on hand kind of like you kept an extra ballast on hand for the HMI lights. This lack of field repair means that you need to be certain that the lights will work every time they are turned on.
 
Vinten used to make cameras in WW2, because they were an engineering company, who already had the machinery in the factory and critically, the staff who knew how to use it. As soon as it was no longer needed they went back to doing what they still do best. Camera supports. The old UK Strand Lighting company made lights from the 1920s - and when video lighting came to be a new market, they easily modified existing theatrical equipment to be great in the studio. When they needed lightweight, bright portable video lights they simply paired up with Ianiro and imported Italian kit and rebadged it as Strand Ianiro. Same with some of their TV designs. Panasonic make cameras, and over the years have dabbled in and out of other video products, but in the main, sales never warrant a production line, so the OEM other people's products. The microphones fitted to Sony and Panasonic ENG cameras were for years the exact same products, just brown packaging with branded stickers. This is normal practice. Vinten and Manfrotto have some identical products. Not surprising as the ownership of both companies has common parentage now. Some manfrotto products are unique to them, same with Vinten but others are the exact same product!

There's always perception too - a company that are well known for one product might really struggle. Strand Lighting in the UK in the early 80s tried to sell Strand Sound equipment - a total disaster, and it died very quickly and without any fuss. Most of the Japanese camera companies tried to market things like mixer/switchers, but sales again just didn't support the expansion, and many were quietly dropped from their ranges. The Chinese market also means a new player would need to be either exceptionally brilliant with a product, or it just wouldn't sell.

Other products are territory specific. Strand sold lighting in the US, but in tiny quantities compares to people like Mole and Leko, and perhaps in previous decades, Berkey Colortran. Berkey tried to sell lighting controls here and they soon vanished. Leko never even bothered, and while there were a few Moles in film and TV, they weren't strong, sales wise. Lighting is also a problem item. Is it electronics? or hardware? Both really - so which division claims it? It's not video, or audio, but it certainly isn't something their mechanical products would mix with? Any electronics company can make lighting, so why would Panasonic want to enter a new, and already pretty full sales area?
 
Mitch Gross said:
I think we make way more money in rice cookers than we do with all our professional and consumer cameras.
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My "National" (a Matsus*%ta brand just like Panasonic) rice cooker, which was my father's before me, is my most prized possession. Given a choice, I'd take it over all the cameras I've ever owned.

As far as cultural impact, Matsus*%ta's rice cookers will never be touched by their cameras, not even close - these devices loom larger in Asian-American culture than just about anything they could ever produce. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwfq7



edit: LOL I'm not trying to say poop here, Matsus*%ta is a different word. Moron bots drive me f'n crazy.

edit2: Wow, these moron bots even try to censor a URL! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! :( If any admins are still here at all, please turn off the kindergarten filter!
 
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nothing said:
My "National" (a Matsus*%ta brand just like Panasonic) rice cooker, which was my father's before me, is my most prized possession. Given a choice, I'd take it over all the cameras I've ever owned.

As far as cultural impact, Matsus*%ta's rice cookers will never be touched by their cameras, not even close - these devices loom larger in Asian-American culture than just about anything they could ever produce. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwfq7



edit: LOL I'm not trying to say poop here, Matsus*%ta is a different word. Moron bots drive me f'n crazy.

edit2: Wow, these moron bots even try to censor a URL! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! :( If any admins are still here at all, please turn off the kindergarten filter!
Click to expand...

Yes. DVXUser is like network TV in the 50's vs. REDUser(same owner with some of the same mods) which is HBO and Showtime today(ANYTHING goes). Very annoying when this is largely made-up of adult working professionals, who basically communicate with nothing but profanity. Kind of ironic... Raise your hand if you didn't utter, or at least think, the F-word at least one or two dozen times before lunch today.
 
It's the new TV industry, we aren't allowed to say those things anymore.

But I agree, turn the filter off, normally a single check box.
 
If you spell it Matshus-hita, the spell checker blinks.

Side note, private tutors used to make huge money in the former USSR (if they were any good) due to the college entrance system, requiring the actual knowledge of the subject rather than a standardized SAT type test. So, if someone wanted to become an engineer, he had to pass a written and verbal math on top of verbal physics. One of our neighbors was a 'star" physics teacher in town and was making close to 1000R/mo in private and off the books, compared to 150R-200R/mo for a typical high school teacher. He couldn't drive due to a disability and thus spent money - or his wife spent money - on home comforts and alike. One of his prized possessions was a National reel-to-reel deck. IIRC, he paid 900R for it used. We had a Soviet made reel-to-reel, which my dad bought for 100R in the early 1970's and which I used with great success for playback of a borrowed "Machine Head" in 1974.
 
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