So far only Leica has gone this route. And considering the price of the back is well over $5,000 for an an APS 10MP size chip, I would suspect that it is not cost competitive to produce for cameras that cost considerably less than a Leica R-8 or R-9. In other words it is really cheaper to make an entire digital camera body than a back for an existing 35mm SLR body.

a commodore 64 computer(thats 64KB of ram) costs $600 when it came out,without a monitor.

I think you missed the point. With Leica the cost of an essentially hand-made body is very significant, and much more than the cost of a sensor and its support, so a digital back makes sense.

With a mass producer like Canon the cost of a body less film transport is much less than the cost of the sensor and its support. So it makes sense to base the price primarily on the sensor and virtually throw the body in for free.

Is it likely anyone will pay for the cost of a high-end sensor back if it is several times the value of the body it will be installed on?

I agree that the "concept" of a digital back for a fine camera like the Leica makes sense....

BUT the reality might not be worth the price or the "pain in the butt" factor..

1. Leica went with a 1.4x cropping factor with their back. THAT might not be an issue with a standalone digital camera but it is an issue with a camera designed to shoot 35mm film AND digital. The fancy focus screen might allow for accurate cropping but you are still likely to have to change the lens and the back to make the transition...

2. changing the back is not a trivial thing. Shutterbug's own review mentioned that it was a 10 minute process for the uninitiated. Can you imagine the wear and tear on a camera back that is not really intended to be removed on a Nikon or a Canon SLR! It wouldnt be long before the doors would be falling off and leaking light. Most film doors on Nikon and Canon SLR's are less than perfectly made. We cannot know just how much a "pain in the butt" the transition is for the Leica back because Leica chose to send out the review samples of the R9/module R as permanantly attached units!!!... it makes one wonder if it would have turned off a lot of reviewers if the process was overly complicated or overly time consuming...perhaps Leica was hiding something when they made that decision?? Perhaps they also didn't want to have the reviewers have to mention the pain in the butt the sub-full-frame sensor made when making that transition......and then having to change the lens too..

3. the Leica solution costs more than the camera it is meant to "digitize".. I am confidant a standalone Leica DSLR would cost less or very similar in price to the digital back.....it would make more sense to shoot film with the film camera and digital with the digital camera.

while I do think the Leica back is very interesting....and even groundbreaking in many ways... the REALITY of the back is a lot less impressive than the concept.

Nikon and Canon Film SLR's would cost more to "digitize" than they are worth. I GUARANTEE that the cost of such a back would exceed the cost of a similar quality standalone DSLR. That reason alone would make a mass mark digital back a commercial failure.

Quote:
Is there a possibility that Canon or Nikon for that matter ever produce a digital back

I believe that Nikon will produce a modular digital camera that will be somewhere between a 35mm form factor and MF ff camera. But the digital back for it will not fit existing Nikon film bodies - which have been discontinued by Nikon.

Paul

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