10 000 units of 645D? Let's check our serial numbers!

[managger]

From time to time, I use little free program named "PhotoMe" to check the real shutter count of my cameras. This figure is situated in chapter named "Manufacturer notes". And in this chapter you can also find "Manufacture date" and "Internal serial number" of your cameras.

It was interesting for me - to find such data from public files (different reviews of Pentax 645D, with samples). Unfortunately, Jpeg do not contains needed data after processing in converters. But DNG, PEF and Jpeg directly from camera - gives all the information. Here you are some sequence:

Serial number / Date of manufacturing

10078 / 27-May-2011
9709 / 29-Apr-2011
7605 / 31-Jan-2011
7451 / 29-Jan-2011
7355 / 31-Jan-2011
7138 / 18-Jan-2011
6733 / 20-Dec-2010
6655 / 17-Dec-2010
6501 / 4-Dec-2010
5272 / 5-Jan-2011
4058 / 30-Aug-2010
3925 / 13-Sep-2010
3241 / 29-Jul-2010
3197 / 29-Jul-2010
2977 / 30-Jul-2010
2866 / 31-May-2010
2802 / 9-Jun-2010
2469 / 26-May-2010
1904 / 25-May-2010
1700 / 26-May-2010
1846 / 23-Apr-2010
1459 / 7-Apr-2010
1451 / 7-Apr-2010
846 / 7-Apr-2010
768 / 22-Jan-2010
756 / 27-Jan-2010

If I'm not mistaken with this idea,
it means that Pentax 645D is the most popular medium format camera.

Who has "lucky jubilee" 10 000 serial number?
When it was made by Pentax? When it was bought by end user?
Let's check our figures!

[Wayne Fox]

If I'm not mistaken with this idea,
it means that Pentax 645D is the most popular medium format camera.

Just curious how you extrapolated that conclusion from this data?

[SecondFocus]

What makes you think they didn't start numbering with 5 digits as in 10000...? And you have number 78... ?

[BernardLanguillier]

Frankly, how could it not be the most popular MF camera in terms of growth?

The Japanese market alone is able to absorb tens of thousands units based on the existing Pentax 645 film user base. This is a totally untouched market because to the insane pricing of companies like Phaseone and Leaf in Japan having resulted in close to zero penetration among the most important higher end amateur market. Most of the Pentax MF film owners around here are above 50 years old and 8000 US$ is literally peanuts for them once they are confident that the camera is the right one in terms of usability, perceived material quality and image quality. The 645D is obviously meeting all these criterias and has zero drawback (not even the lack of live view for those guys who mostly don't know what live view is).

Anyway you look at it, MF is saturated in the US and Europe because the few folks interested and able to purchase a Phaseone/Leaf at those stratospheric prices already have cameras. Upgrading existing users to the latest offering is the main income niche for Phasone/Hassy. Lowering their prices a bit did for sure expand that niche somewhat, but there are still very expensive once you think in terms of system ROI.

My view is that the only real possible large growth for MF is the replacement of the 1ds3s thanks to the decision of Canon not to try to compete with the D3x and that is exactly where Pentax has an offering that is very hard to beat.

My guess is that many 5DII users are also on the edge, waiting to see whether Canon will be able to release a 5DIII more focused on DR and physical robustness. If they disappoint then Pentax will have a real nice card to play and S/N are likely to go up in the high tens of thousands.
 
Cheers,
Bernard

[tsjanik]

+1 for Bernard's comments, but there's something wrong with the sequence of serial numbers e.g.
2469 / 26-May-2010
1904 / 25-May-2010
1700 / 26-May-2010

#1700 before #1904 and #2469; 769 units on the 26th of May? 

[ondebanks]

+1 for Bernard's comments, but there's something wrong with the sequence of serial numbers e.g.
2469 / 26-May-2010
1904 / 25-May-2010
1700 / 26-May-2010

#1700 before #1904 and #2469; 769 units on the 26th of May? 

I remember reading, I think it was in the context of Zeiss historic serial numbers, that they were allocated in batches to each of the workers assembling the items. They might have got, say, 50 each per week. So worker #1 is producing s/ns 4500-4550 while his buddy, worker #10, is simultaneously producing s/ns 4950-5000. Thus they do not increase exactly linearly with date of production. That might also be the case here. I'm just trying to rationalise the evidence - which was a nice piece of detective work, by the way, managger!

Ray

[feppe]

What makes you think they didn't start numbering with 5 digits as in 10000...? And you have number 78... ?

The fact that there's only one 5-digit serial number on the list?

[managger]

The fact that there's only one 5-digit serial number on the list?

Here you are another one from user fotojoh
Manufacturing date: 27-May-2011
Internal Serial Number: 10345

[feppe]

Here you are another one from user fotojoh
Manufacturing date: 27-May-2011
Internal Serial Number: 10345

You missed my point.

[tsjanik]

I remember reading, I think it was in the context of Zeiss historic serial numbers, that they were allocated in batches to each of the workers assembling the items. They might have got, say, 50 each per week. So worker #1 is producing s/ns 4500-4550 while his buddy, worker #10, is simultaneously producing s/ns 4950-5000. Thus they do not increase exactly linearly with date of production. That might also be the case here. I'm just trying to rationalise the evidence - which was a nice piece of detective work, by the way, managger!

Ray

Maybe you're right or some similar arrangement where serial number isn't 100% correlated with manufacture date.

Anyway here's mine:

6209, 2010-11-24 (delivered in mid December)

[jduncan]

Hi,
Not sure why some people have trouble believing this.  The pentax system has some strong points that no other have:

1. Price

2. Pentax brand, meaning access to all the sites, blogs and press that is related to the mainline. That imply that they will never be evaluated with the same lens that Hasselblad will be (blogers not wanting to hurt the relationship with Pentax) plus a bunch of guys and gals that will never review a MF camera will review a Pentax (or a Nikon or a Canon). As an example the camera has multi point focus but we know its super clustered. If Hasselblad have done that the forums /blogers will be talking of that all the time, even if the camera used a arc reactor and  had clean iso 51200

3. Weather sealing and a bunch of other DSLR (35mm) tech that make it practical and fast.


In other words is  an excellent product better in many ways than the competition. With better free marketing channels at a price that it half of the competency.  Of course it don't do some things that some pros demand, but it's not targeted to the needs of large format users.

Best regards,

James

4. Not super evident  flaw (as a DSLR complement).