US Camera Sales Dropped by 64% Last Month; Only Luggage is Doing Worse

They’re just small departments in bigger companies. They don’t really care, as they’ve been shrinking anyway.
 
That's a wrong Sedaka song!

(OK, he didn't actually write this one but it's on topic)

 
God, if Porn Hub went public tomorrow, I'd sink every penny into that IPO... And how many 1000%'s is alcohol and liquor up?
 
scorsesefan said:
"Rash Guards" at No. 8. WTF?
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Exercise apparel...when sports were around (or regular people played/exercised/were in the water more), athletes probably wore one for a game under jersey and threw it out after. Teams, franchises, companies may have purchased hundreds at a time.

Hockey, basketball, baseball would be going strong right now. Some Olympics stuff.

All water sports for those kind of rash guards. (I'd be surprised if the list only meant water rash guards.)
 
I think we all did our part last year, and likely many of us helped with years prior as well.

It is the great masses that are both the reason for cheap cameras and falling sales in the consumer end. I don't know that video professionals were ever the problem. We buy cameras... ...like our life depends on it.
 
Thomas Smet said:
I'm trying to contribute to the camera sales but my wife wants me to wait and see if the world goes to complete crap in a few months.
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James0b57 said:
I think we all did our part last year, and likely many of us helped with years prior as well.

It is the great masses that are both the reason for cheap cameras and falling sales in the consumer end. I don't know that video professionals were ever the problem. We buy cameras... ...like our life depends on it.
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I've kept my camera purchases to a minimum, lately. Last year, I believe, was a lone GoPro Hero 7 at the beginning of the year and a Pocket Osmo at the end. But I do feel like I've single handedly been keeping the lighting industry afloat the last few years.
 
Run&Gun said:
I've kept my camera purchases to a minimum, lately. Last year, I believe, was a lone GoPro Hero 7 at the beginning of the year and a Pocket Osmo at the end. But I do feel like I've single handedly been keeping the lighting industry afloat the last few years.
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Part of what I meant, is that the consumer market opened up volatile and cheap cameras that compete with professional ones in image quality, but do not service the professional video industry, except through hacking and modding.

When a professional buys a random flavour of the month camera, we almost feel we got it for free. And we kind of did. The prices are definitely held down because of the mass consumers, and not because we bought one.

As the sales fall, I think this is likely more the fault of the consumer moving on. And not because video professionals aren't helping enough.
 
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James0b57 said:
Part of what I meant, is that the consumer market opened up volatile and cheap cameras that compete with professional ones in image quality, but do not service the professional video industry, except through hacking and modding.

When a professional buys a random flavour of the month camera, we almost feel we got it for free. And we kind of did. The prices are definitely held down because of the mass consumers, and not because we bought one.

As the sales fall, I think this is likely more the fault of the consumer moving on. And not because video professionals aren't helping enough.
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I agree with a lot of that. The consumer equipment becoming "so good" hurt the professional side a few ways:
1) the equipment became "good enough" that the bean counters started to go for the consumer/prosumer gear instead of professional gear, forcing professionals to use sub-par equipment and lowering the bar, because of compromises that had to be made to use said equipment.
2) the consumer equipment becoming "good enough" made everyone feel like they were a professional and opening the floodgates to the industry and flooding it with sub-par talent(but it did open it up to very talented people, too), again lowering the bar.

Then the equipment continued to get better on the lower(consumer) end and becoming "good enough"(cell phones) and thus the higher-end and prosumer gear starts to get pushed out, because not enough people buy it, because the vast majority of the consumers think their cell phones are now enough, so eventually for the professionals, its gonna come down to a cell phone or six figure camera with nothing in-between. It's almost like a mirror of society. The middle has been squeezed out. All you are gonna have are the extreme ends.

In 2010, who here honestly thought that in 2020 broadcast/network television would be being done on consumer cell phones? I wouldn't have taken that bet. Just a few years earlier(2006), I HAD to buy a $45K HD camera for a client. I saw them tell another shooter he HAD to buy an HD lens for his HD camera, because they could see the deficiencies in the SD lens he had on his HD camera. And just a few years before that, they flew me in for an "HD meeting/seminar" that you HAD to attend before you could shoot on one of their signature shows that had gone HD, despite having shot on the SD version for several years. And now they do so much with cell phones, and not just because of CV, but it's been happening for several years now.
 
Run&Gun said:
eventually for the professionals, its gonna come down to a cell phone or six figure camera with nothing in-between. It's almost like a mirror of society. The middle has been squeezed out. All you are gonna have are the extreme ends.
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I think this is basically true. But I have a hard time imagining that outcome. Maybe rock-bottom priced Chinese hybrid cameras will occupy the middle ground.
 
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