Camera Industry In Crisis

[DLD]

The market changed drastically with Kodak's exit in 2012. And then with Samsung's in 2016-17.

[Peter C.]

You bring up a good point about the product cycles. We always think, I wish they'd come out with a new camera. But its a dual edge sword the shorter the product cycle the more often you have to spend money to upgrade your equipment. Case in point, I do legal work where they are decades behind the standard is still SD. That means I've gotten so much return on my investment of an 6 year old camera. In the wedding field would have had to upgrade my equipment a few times to keep up.

I used think the amount of time it took to release a new model was dictated by the engineering limitations, while I think this is partly true, I also think they hold back releasing new models based on how well the current model is doing and their internal strategy. I'm guessing the A7III could have been replaced earlier, with an new cpu, evf, and flipout touch screen. These aren't ground breaking technologies, but why replace a camera that's still selling and the competition hasn't caught up yet.

[combatentropy]

Could there be a tapering?

[Peter C.]

Could there be a tapering?

No the technological possibilities of the camera hasn't plateaued but since the market for them has decreased, lower R&D should yield slower developments. Could also mean lower end cameras won't get new tech because it won't be worth return on investment. It's hard to predict because Canon and Sony could use it to their advantage to continue the pace of improvement in the short term to completely eliminate the competition that can't keep up.

[DLD]

Two notes on the general market. Plus one on A-10's. Kind of.

1) Canon is selling its sensors to third parties now. They are not photo-video camera sensors per se - more like the industrial use - but they can probably be repurposed. Canon would not want the third parties to compete with its ecosystem but the significance here is that this is a direct move against Sony, albeit not in the smartphone/photo/video spheres. But it is a sign of a discord in an alliance that seems to have gone abruptly haywire with the release of R5 and its subsequent firmware upgrades.

2) The LiDAR based auto focus systems are coming on the market fast and furiously, bringing manual lenses back from ill repute. The latest contrast/phase/AI/DP detect is still superior but the LiDAR enables a pretty decent AF on cameras made by smaller manufacturers like BMD, ZCam, Kinefinity, etc. And now inexpensive manual Chinese lenses - mostly likely the reverse engineered classic Zeiss and Contax - can become quite fashionable. And that drives the profit margins of the cartel way, way down.

3) As to the tapering, not yet. And the A-10's have been replaced by the attack drones.

[Samuel Dilworth]

"Camera Industry In Crisis"? Does anyone remember in high school English, where you were taught to start with a topic sentence and follow it with supporting sentences?

The pressure to make clickbait headlines is real, and most news sites have given in. It is all the more obvious when you see that the full headline includes the phrase, "what happens next".

Clickbait is everywhere, but I don’t especially see it here. Crisis is a time of great difficulty but doesn’t have to lead to extinction – although the crisis in the camera industry has already claimed the proud old Olympus brand, so for that camera maker it was a legitimate existential crisis.

I'm old enough to remember the "crisis" when film was replaced by digital.

And yet film still hangs on. I watched Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks the other day. Shot on film:

https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog-post/on-the-rocks

[stewhem]

Off the top of my head, some more brands that have departed since the arrival of digital: Mamiya, Bronica, Contax, all making great cameras and lenses. And probably in existential trouble - Hasselbald (again) and Rollei (again). I owned several examples of each of these and formed an (irrational) emotional attachment to each of them. Just can't feel the same about any of the many digital still and video cameras I have owned.

[Paul F]

... Hasselbald (again) and Rollei (again). I owned several examples of each of these and formed an (irrational) emotional attachment to each of them. Just can't feel the same about any of the many digital still and video cameras I have owned.

I get it. There's something about holding a mechanical device in your hands compared to an electronic device. It's a work of art. It has distinction, craftsmanship. You can see every mechanical bit and how it works; the feel and sound of the film advance and the shutter, and all the other little bits. You really feel like you have something substantial in your hands. Electronics ... meh. Some soft buttons with 1's and 0's wandering about inside a bit of plastic. There's nothing interesting about it.

[puredrifting]

I get it. There's something about holding a mechanical device in your hands compared to an electronic device. It's a work of art. It has distinction, craftsmanship. You can see every mechanical bit and how it works; the feel and sound of the film advance and the shutter, and all the other little bits. You really feel like you have something substantial in your hands. Electronics ... meh. Some soft buttons with 1's and 0's wandering about inside a bit of plastic. There's nothing interesting about it.

Using a nice Hasselblad or Mamiya, yes, a tactile delight. Or my Arri SR2 was too. The soft whirring on the magazine in your right ear, the subtle flicker of the shutter. The sounds of cash register dinging in your head every time you did a long take as your mind calculated how much the stock, lab and transfer would cost for that. ;-)

Film cameras were just a whole other league of craftsmanship compared to the electronic shoeboxes we use today. I think that's why a lot of people own the Fuji X-T3. For a digital camera, it has a very nice tactile/mechanical quality to it, the knobs, body, the aesthetics where it looks like a rangefinder film camera from 10'.

[DLD]

FWIW, these are sensors that Canon is making available to third parties. None of them is being currently used by Canon for own cameras. But someone else may have other ideas.

https://asia.canon/en/business/web/cmos-image-sensors