Image on top: The Kodak Park in Rochester (now sold!)
And here is the news we were waiting for many months now. Kodak finally sold his CCD Business to Platinum Equity. There is not info yet about the amount of cash paid by Platinum. Also the 263,000 square foot facility in Eastman Business Park in Rochester, N.Y has beens sold (Source: Image-Sensor-World). Platinum Equity is not a firm that has own plans to produce CCD sensors, they will proabbly split up the resoruces they bought and sell them to others. And it comes quite surprising that Kodak announced new CCD sensors exactly the same day! That includes a new 16 megapxiel FF and APS-H sensor (More at Image-Sensor-World).
Now I am wondering what Leica will do. Will they get in touch with Platinum Equity or will they use Sony/Panasonic sensors inside their next Leica products?
4 Responses
Whatever Kodak’s sensor business would become in the future, just hope the new sensors would inject more competition and choices to the market place. Whether Leica would use the new sensors is yet to be seen. It should provide more choices to niche players to develop cameras, imagine brands like Zeiss or Voigtlander. Hey…how about those old camera makers in China and Russia. Remember M mount is available for everyone, now you have the sensors, all you need is to develop a image processor which also could be outsourced to other specialist companies…The market place would be more exciting and interesting 🙂
Why not getting sensors from Samsung, or even Dalsa?
Sony, Panasonic and Kodak aren’t the only sensor makers. 😉
+1
That kind of news is more interesting and promising than all rumors and news about pseudo “new” cameras!
Actually the sensors are the root of the IQ :
No matter the Jpeg engines, only the raw files are important…
What I am waiting now is a M-Mount FF alternative to the too much expensive M9.
Yes the M9 alternative will be the… M10 !
These are CCD sensors, nearly only Leica uses them,
and the M9 sensor is also made by Kodak.