The SF may have taken three years to develop, but it's purely speculative how many people worked on it, how much their salaries were, and how many hours a week they dedicated to it. From reading what Gijs wrote, you get the impression that these Zeiss employees did nothing but work on the SF for three years, at least 40 hours per week, and this is the justification for the high price. I'm doubtful. Even if all his speculations turn out to be true, the R&D is only half the story.
What matters is R&D vs. profit. No matter much money you put into developing a product, if you can't sell enough units to recoup your R&D and make a healthy profit, then the project wasn't worth doing to begin with, and that's something that Zeiss won't know until the SF is in full production and competing with the SV EL, EDG and other top bananas.
On one hand, the SF is a late comer to the game, and those who already own premium bins they are satisfied with will probably stick with them, as we have already heard from some BF members. On the other hand, the SF is being touted as the "latest and greatest," and there are those deep pocketed birders, hunters and safari Msafiri who are going to eat 'em up like candy, just because...
And then there are the true optics aficionados who will beg, borrow or sell their bins to own truly world-class glass regardless of price.
As to the price, is it mere coincidence that Swaro is selling the SV EL now for precisely the same price? Not likely. The SF is priced at $2,600 not because that's the price it will take to recoup the R&D in whatever time frame the company wants to, which is implied by Gijs, but because the SF's closest competitor is priced at that point. Pretty obvious, I would think.
Either that, or the SV EL also took three years to develop, and teamwork of about six people earning 50.000 euro per person per year, with approx 1 million euros development costs of the SV EL. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?
No, whatever the actual R&D costs were, both Swaro and Zeiss are pushing the price envelop to see how far they can go. Swaro kept raising the price of the SV EL over the past few years since it was first introduced, starting with a modest $80 price hike after the first year, and it kept going up and up and Bingo! it ends up at the same price as the SF.
The bottom line is that consumer products sell for whatever people are willing to pay for them. If they don't buy, prices come down like they did on the Nikon LX, which initially broke a new price barrier @ $1400. That didn't last very long. Now, 14 years later, the renamed LXL (Premier) is selling for $1500. Finally inflation has caught up.
Another example is the SLC-HD, which was priced too close to the SV EL. A change in close focus and armoring, and the price dropped hundreds of dollars, but it's still pricier than the SLCneu series. Will hunters pony up? Sure, as long as their hunting guides are using them! The ones that won't will wait for a good price on a "demo," and others will stick with their Monarchs, Bushnells, etc. and put their money in their guns, ammo, riflescopes and rangefinders.
Every company wants to recoup their R&D, and sometimes it works out beyond expectations (plain vanilla Monarch, best selling bin of all time), and sometimes it doesn't (Monarch X, probably a contender for Nikon's worst selling bin).
Okay, Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" is coming on, gotta go. :smoke:
Brock
that steps to quantify the optical characteristics of the instrument are extremely valuable. Especially when attempted to a disclosed 'scientific' method that in essence should be repeatable, open to changes in assumptions and starting conditions, and able to be critiqued and improved upon.
