WSJ: MIrrorless sales bad - but not as bad as DSLR sales :)

[brunerww]

"Shooting a Look at Mirrorless Cameras"

 

[bribrius]

I haven't even read it and im excited. I hope the prices drop like a rock.

 

[Greiver]

Again with the WSJ trying to talk down SLR's. lol Oh how they've fallen.

 

[brian_f2.8]

According to canonrumors, Canon is leaving the point n shoot business.

 

[runnah]

According to canonrumors, Canon is leaving the point n shoot business.

Point and shoots are way dead at this point. I haven't even seen one in the wild for a while.

 

[pixmedic]

everything shifted up a notch.
mirrorless is replacing P&S as the "compact" system, and cell phones are replacing P&S's as the "pocket" camera.

 

[Derrel]

According to canonrumors, Canon is leaving the point n shoot business.

Point and shoots are way dead at this point. I haven't even seen one in the wild for a while.

Speaking of NOT seeing point and shoot digital cameras in the wild, Majeed and I went over to the Oregon Coast the last weekend of December in 2012, on a gorgeous-weather day, most unusual for late December, and there were more people at Pacific City than I had seen in a long,long time. The surf was pretty big, and at one time, I counted 50 surfers, which is a HUGE winter-time crowd for that spot. Camera-wise, I was astounded at the number of iPhones in action among the 18-25 year-old crowd. I saw one young woman with a Nikon superzoom P&S, and a couple older women with TINY Canon micro-digicams, but it was about 80% smart phones, probably 5% Point & Shoots, and maybe 15 percent d-slr cameras,mostly enthusiasts with tripods. I also saw ONE medium format rollfilm shooter, but he also had a brand-new-that-week Canon 5D series and 24-70.

I stopped along the beach and talked to maybe 50 people over the course of about three hour, and looked at their cameras, and saw hundreds of people walking around too. MOST of them had smart phones. One, single d-slr user had a brand-new Sony d-slr. I was really surprised at how FEW digital P&S cameras I saw...almost none...it was like smartphone cams had just taken over, and then the enthusiasts with 'pods and d-slrs were a mix of Canon and Nikon shooters. I mention this incident because the Oregon coast is one of **the** bigger tourist spots for photography on the west coast. It is scenic as heck. People take "their cameras" when they go there.



After a few hours at Pacific City, I drove us up to Tillamook Bay, and stopped the car for about one minute,right in the middle of the road, and we both hopped out of the car with our 70-200's on, and shot this oyster boat, anchored at the upper end of Tillamook Bay, on the outgoing tide. It had snowed a couple days before, but only on the higher elevations of the Coast Range. This is my "simulated Ektachrome slide film" processing look.

 

[bribrius]

I use a point and shoot 42x ultrazoom 18mp. Compact enough to carry around reasonably. I mostly have it for the zoom aspect. At 42 zoom it basically covers the majority of dslr lenses. Granted, no where near as well in image quality but it covers them. No concern with changing lenses and cleaning sensors. Small investment. I like it. It works fine 95 percent of the time. I've recommended it to numerous people and for the average person it is a great camera. My problem is the way I use a camera the other five percent of the time you will see me on here bitching and shopping for a new camera. And if I bought a dslr I would probably still carry around the point and shoot except for that five percent. I dread the thought of carrying around a dslr however. I don't even want to deal with multiple lenses unless I have too.
For 85 percent of the photos people take, a camera phone is adequate. For 90 percent of the photos people take a standard point and shoot is accurate. For 95 percent of the photos people take a point and shoot superzoom is adequate. It is the other five percent of the market the dslr and mirrorless are fighting over.

 

[bribrius]

everything shifted up a notch.
mirrorless is replacing P&S as the "compact" system, and cell phones are replacing P&S's as the "pocket" camera.

The vast majority of consumers, do not want to change lenses or buy lenses.

 

[runnah]

Speaking of NOT seeing point and shoot digital cameras in the wild, Majeed and I went over to the Oregon Coast the last weekend of December in 2012, on a gorgeous-weather day, most unusual for late December, and there were more people at Pacific City than I had seen in a long,long time. The surf was pretty big, and at one time, I counted 50 surfers, which is a HUGE winter-time crowd for that spot. Camera-wise, I was astounded at the number of iPhones in action among the 18-25 year-old crowd. I saw one young woman with a Nikon superzoom P&S, and a couple older women with TINY Canon micro-digicams, but it was about 80% smart phones, probably 5% Point & Shoots, and maybe 15 percent d-slr cameras,mostly enthusiasts with tripods. I also saw ONE medium format rollfilm shooter, but he also had a brand-new-that-week Canon 5D series and 24-70. I stopped along the beach and talked to maybe 50 people over the course of about three hour, and looked at their cameras, and saw hundreds of people walking around too. MOST of them had smart phones. One, single d-slr user had a brand-new Sony d-slr. I was really surprised at how FEW digital P&S cameras I saw...almost none...it was like smartphone cams had just taken over, and then the enthusiasts with 'pods and d-slrs were a mix of Canon and Nikon shooters. I mention this incident because the Oregon coast is one of **the** bigger tourist spots for photography on the west coast. It is scenic as heck. People take "their cameras" when they go there. <img src="http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=67534"/> After a few hours at Pacific City, I drove us up to Tillamook Bay, and stopped the car for about one minute,right in the middle of the road, and we both hopped out of the car with our 70-200's on, and shot this oyster boat, anchored at the upper end of Tillamook Bay, on the outgoing tide. It had snowed a couple days before, but only on the higher elevations of the Coast Range. This is my "simulated Ektachrome slide film" processing look.

We've talked but I say the next 5-10 years will be smart phones and pro grade mirror less cameras.

Same with video cameras the number of consumer grade video cameras had been halved and halved again in the last 10 years.

Smart phones have replaced the point and shoot and the home video camera. They won't every replace professional and rich amateur grade equipment but any bridge camera will be dead.

And I type this on my iPhone that had a camera as good as most 5 year old point and shoots.

 

[bribrius]

Speaking of NOT seeing point and shoot digital cameras in the wild, Majeed and I went over to the Oregon Coast the last weekend of December in 2012, on a gorgeous-weather day, most unusual for late December, and there were more people at Pacific City than I had seen in a long,long time. The surf was pretty big, and at one time, I counted 50 surfers, which is a HUGE winter-time crowd for that spot. Camera-wise, I was astounded at the number of iPhones in action among the 18-25 year-old crowd. I saw one young woman with a Nikon superzoom P&S, and a couple older women with TINY Canon micro-digicams, but it was about 80% smart phones, probably 5% Point & Shoots, and maybe 15 percent d-slr cameras,mostly enthusiasts with tripods. I also saw ONE medium format rollfilm shooter, but he also had a brand-new-that-week Canon 5D series and 24-70. I stopped along the beach and talked to maybe 50 people over the course of about three hour, and looked at their cameras, and saw hundreds of people walking around too. MOST of them had smart phones. One, single d-slr user had a brand-new Sony d-slr. I was really surprised at how FEW digital P&S cameras I saw...almost none...it was like smartphone cams had just taken over, and then the enthusiasts with 'pods and d-slrs were a mix of Canon and Nikon shooters. I mention this incident because the Oregon coast is one of **the** bigger tourist spots for photography on the west coast. It is scenic as heck. People take "their cameras" when they go there.

After a few hours at Pacific City, I drove us up to Tillamook Bay, and stopped the car for about one minute,right in the middle of the road, and we both hopped out of the car with our 70-200's on, and shot this oyster boat, anchored at the upper end of Tillamook Bay, on the outgoing tide. It had snowed a couple days before, but only on the higher elevations of the Coast Range. This is my "simulated Ektachrome slide film" processing look.

We've talked but I say the next 5-10 years will be smart phones and pro grade mirror less cameras.

Same with video cameras the number of consumer grade video cameras had been halved and halved again in the last 10 years.

Smart phones have replaced the point and shoot and the home video camera. They won't every replace professional and rich amateur grade equipment but any bridge camera will be dead.

And I type this on my iPhone that had a camera as good as most 5 year old point and shoots.

if it is a mirrorless camera with a fixed lense, doesn't that still make it a point and shoot?

 

[robbins.photo]

everything shifted up a notch.
mirrorless is replacing P&S as the "compact" system, and cell phones are replacing P&S's as the "pocket" camera.

The vast majority of consumers, do not want to change lenses or buy lenses.

The vast majority of them wouldn't have too, it would be just like having a DSLR and nothing other than he kit lens, and I'm sure that's the way it is for a lot of folks. They get a D3200 or T5I from Walmart or best buy with the kit lens and never buy or use any other lens for the camera at all. So really I doubt for most of those folks mirrorless/DSLR would really matter and frankly neither would lens options or the ability to change a lens.

Not really a big deal though, I have a feeling that the entire premise of this article would have been blown out of the water completely had they just done a quick poll of the folks buying mirrorless cameras and asked them two simple questions. "Do you own a DSLR" and "Is this mirrorless camera going to be used to completely replace it?"

I have a feeling the majority of current mirrorless owners would answer the first question yes and the second question no - the assumption made by most of these incredibly poorly researched overhyped articles is that the consumer made a choice between owning either a DSLR or Mirrorless and went Mirrorless - but as it turns out that doesn't seem to be the case. From what I've seen the vast majority of mirrorless buyers already own a DSLR and they plan on keeping it and using it, they want a mirrorless not to replace the DSLR but rather to have something that is easier to carry around for times when the full blown DSLR would just be a bit too much.

Granted this isn't based on a scientific poll, but from what I've seen it does seem to be the most common profile of the mirrorless owners I've run into of late. Me I'd love to get a mirroless myself at some point, have something with some decent IQ that I could carry around with me when the DSLR just wouldn't be all the convenient to have on me. But you know even if I get one it won't replace my DSLR for serious shooting. It would just be a nice compliment to what I already have.

 

[bribrius]

everything shifted up a notch.
mirrorless is replacing P&S as the "compact" system, and cell phones are replacing P&S's as the "pocket" camera.

The vast majority of consumers, do not want to change lenses or buy lenses.

The vast majority of them wouldn't have too, it would be just like having a DSLR and nothing other than he kit lens, and I'm sure that's the way it is for a lot of folks. They get a D3200 or T5I from Walmart or best buy with the kit lens and never buy or use any other lens for the camera at all. So really I doubt for most of those folks mirrorless/DSLR would really matter and frankly neither would lens options or the ability to change a lens.

Not really a big deal though, I have a feeling that the entire premise of this article would have been blown out of the water completely had they just done a quick poll of the folks buying mirrorless cameras and asked them two simple questions. "Do you own a DSLR" and "Is this mirrorless camera going to be used to completely replace it?"

I have a feeling the majority of current mirrorless owners would answer the first question yes and the second question no - the assumption made by most of these incredibly poorly researched overhyped articles is that the consumer made a choice between owning either a DSLR or Mirrorless and went Mirrorless - but as it turns out that doesn't seem to be the case. From what I've seen the vast majority of mirrorless buyers already own a DSLR and they plan on keeping it and using it, they want a mirrorless not to replace the DSLR but rather to have something that is easier to carry around for times when the full blown DSLR would just be a bit too much.

Granted this isn't based on a scientific poll, but from what I've seen it does seem to be the most common profile of the mirrorless owners I've run into of late. Me I'd love to get a mirroless myself at some point, have something with some decent IQ that I could carry around with me when the DSLR just wouldn't be all the convenient to have on me. But you know even if I get one it won't replace my DSLR for serious shooting. It would just be a nice compliment to what I already have.

what if you rephrase the question? Why WOULDN'T mirrorless replace the dslr? Find the key reasons you think it wouldn't. The downfalls of mirrorless. And then decide if you believe that in time those restrictions wouldn't be overcome by technology. Things often don't change overnight, but big changes happen often in small unnoticeable increments over time. Each day the dslr is left on the shelf and the mirrorless or other camera is grabbed instead is a increment. At the moment it seems dslr has the advantage in action/sports shooting. Not sure how long that will be so.

 

[robbins.photo]

The vast majority of consumers, do not want to change lenses or buy lenses.

The vast majority of them wouldn't have too, it would be just like having a DSLR and nothing other than he kit lens, and I'm sure that's the way it is for a lot of folks. They get a D3200 or T5I from Walmart or best buy with the kit lens and never buy or use any other lens for the camera at all. So really I doubt for most of those folks mirrorless/DSLR would really matter and frankly neither would lens options or the ability to change a lens.

Not really a big deal though, I have a feeling that the entire premise of this article would have been blown out of the water completely had they just done a quick poll of the folks buying mirrorless cameras and asked them two simple questions. "Do you own a DSLR" and "Is this mirrorless camera going to be used to completely replace it?"

I have a feeling the majority of current mirrorless owners would answer the first question yes and the second question no - the assumption made by most of these incredibly poorly researched overhyped articles is that the consumer made a choice between owning either a DSLR or Mirrorless and went Mirrorless - but as it turns out that doesn't seem to be the case. From what I've seen the vast majority of mirrorless buyers already own a DSLR and they plan on keeping it and using it, they want a mirrorless not to replace the DSLR but rather to have something that is easier to carry around for times when the full blown DSLR would just be a bit too much.

Granted this isn't based on a scientific poll, but from what I've seen it does seem to be the most common profile of the mirrorless owners I've run into of late. Me I'd love to get a mirroless myself at some point, have something with some decent IQ that I could carry around with me when the DSLR just wouldn't be all the convenient to have on me. But you know even if I get one it won't replace my DSLR for serious shooting. It would just be a nice compliment to what I already have.

what if you rephrase the question? Why WOULDN'T mirrorless replace the dslr? Find the key reasons you think it wouldn't. The downfalls of mirrorless. And then decide if you believe that in time those restrictions wouldn't be overcome by technology. Things often don't change overnight, but big changes happen often in small unnoticeable increments over time. Each day the dslr is left on the shelf and the mirrorless or other camera is grabbed instead is a increment. At the moment it seems dslr has the advantage in action/sports shooting. Not sure how long that will be so.

Will they be overcome? Maybe, at some point. Will that still mean that mirroless will replace DSLR, not necessarily. It's possible, but not inevitable. Much like Beta max never caught on and VHS did - there is a lot more in play than which technology is better, your looking at intrinsic market forces that will have far more long term impact on that question. I have no problem with a mirrorless system, I can see certain advantages to them that I rather like - but there are some disadvantages that will have to be overcome before they are really ready to be considered a replacment for the DSLR, and even if they do eventually get to that point that is no guarantee that they will replace the DSLR.

For me though it's about features vrs price - not about the internal workings of the camera itself. I could care less if there is a little mirror inside the thing flipping up and down or not, what matters to me is how it performs in the real world. Right now I haven't seen a mirrorless system that could replace my DSLR, at least not effectively for the way I use it. Will that change someday? Sure, probably. Does that mean the mirrorless will completely replace the DSLR at some point? Maybe, but then again maybe not.

As for these articles, for the most part they are poorly researched and they don't really give you a clear picture of the market as a result. They all start out with the same ridiculous premise, that the buyer is choosing to only have a cell phone/mirrorless/DSLR etc - and by starting from that bad premise they all fail miserably from there - because the truth is a good portion of the mirroless market does own more than just a mirrorless.

So my issue here is with a badly written article based on a false premise, not with mirrorless technology itself.

 

[TreeofLifeStairs]

Will they be overcome? Maybe, at some point. Will that still mean that mirroless will replace DSLR, not necessarily. It's possible, but not inevitable. Much like Beta max never caught on and VHS did - there is a lot more in play than which technology is better, your looking at intrinsic market forces that will have far more long term impact on that question. I have no problem with a mirrorless system, I can see certain advantages to them that I rather like - but there are some disadvantages that will have to be overcome before they are really ready to be considered a replacment for the DSLR, and even if they do eventually get to that point that is no guarantee that they will replace the DSLR. For me though it's about features vrs price - not about the internal workings of the camera itself. I could care less if there is a little mirror inside the thing flipping up and down or not, what matters to me is how it performs in the real world. Right now I haven't seen a mirrorless system that could replace my DSLR, at least not effectively for the way I use it. Will that change someday? Sure, probably. Does that mean the mirrorless will completely replace the DSLR at some point? Maybe, but then again maybe not. As for these articles, for the most part they are poorly researched and they don't really give you a clear picture of the market as a result. They all start out with the same ridiculous premise, that the buyer is choosing to only have a cell phone/mirrorless/DSLR etc - and by starting from that bad premise they all fail miserably from there - because the truth is a good portion of the mirroless market does own more than just a mirrorless. So my issue here is with a badly written article based on a false premise, not with mirrorless technology itself.

I'm just surprised to hear some serious feedback from you. Usually it's just a comical one liner.