I'll give this a shot...

My guess is that the SPOT jr was designed for a particular price point. When
the original SPOT was released, most of us in the industry were astounded
that a scientific grade CCD camera with LC filter could be sold for as
little as the SPOT was. In this case, they were (probably) trying to compete
with conventional 3-chip color cameras, which sold in the $5k-$10k price
range.

Manufacturers have to make difficult decisions about where to add options
and where to leave them out. Anything requiring machining and moving parts
adds to the manufacturing cost, often significantly. Even with the advent of
computerized milling machines, it is still more work to make a camera with a
sliding filter holder than one in which it is fixed in place. Adding such an
option to the original probably would have driven it out of the target price
range.

Now, you may say that it couldn't cost much to do so, after all, one can
manufacture a motorcycle, with numerous complicated moving parts for less
than the cost of this camera. But making something that might sell a couple
of hundred units is significantly more expensive, per unit, than something
which sells a few hundred thousand units.

-Ted

> -----Original Message-----

> But this does not explain why the color version of the SPOT Jr does
> not have a slidable filter, since the filter and its optics are already
> there.
>