Interesting Bloomberg piece on the future of photography

[usayit]

Oh My God... The Sky Is Falling

:-/



The killing off of dedicated P&S is no different from the killing off of PDA's 10+ years ago. Remove the useless components and bulk, integrate, and bring more value in a single component. There will always be a need for high quality images BUT it doesn't mean the notion of creating such images are locked within our current definition or notion of high end equipment. It may take a while, but I believe the market for an integrated phone/camera with high end features you would expect out of the current high end P&S offerings will eventually appear.

I also believe the useless bulk of the age old mirror box will eventually come to an end.... you can quote all the stats and articles you want but it simply means that we are not there yet. There was a long period of time when film dominated digital in sales figures... but eventually technology caught up. It served to provide TTL viewing for a film plane that has long been replaced with technology that can eventually provide TTL viewing as well. If you consider mirrorless as a design concept that consists of simply a lens, sensor, display and controls with minimal mechanics, mirrorless dominates DSLR already... in the form of cellphones and P&S.

Again... remove bulk, integrate technology, and keep doing it until its offerings surpass the old.

Japan is a good indication of future direction future products as their culture seem to be more open minded to new ideas and innovative solutions to old problems and needs. Its a culture that manages to blend in the modern with the traditional without obsessing over conflicts there in. But again... to see where we are headed, you must not fixate over the current product offerings and solutions as they are often "a work or idea in progress". Try to identify the more abstract trends.

One such type of trend that continuously repeats is take two bits of technology in which a large market segment overlap and integrate, integrate, integrate!. Example. PDA w/ phone books generally carried by people who need a phone... smartphone! People who snap photos are generally carried by people who participate in online social sites.... camera smart phone! People with GPS generally drive a car... In dash GPS! etc. There are many people who carry both a camera and camcorder... Video Capable cameras.

Another trend that pops up a lot is accessibility to content... ie web content consumption etc...

 

[Overread]

From what I see a lot of people who are buying into the mirrorless m4/3rds market are;

1) those who have a DSLR and want a point and shoot for those times that the DSLR is too big or just not suitable. It's complimenting the market rather than replacing - often as not being an attractive investment for the DSLR owner who has most of what they want/can afford.

2) Those who have a DSLR, but who might be getting older or have medical factors that mean they have to downsize (or wish to) and are replacing their DSLR when they are really no longer going to be part of the DSLR buying market anyway (ergo its not eating into DSLR sales, and is more eating into high end point and shoot sales).

 

[hamlet]

Its inevitable that dslr's will finally go out of style with the mainstream market, because Convenience will always trump anything. its happened with cassettes, CD's, when you can just as easily download an MP3 from itunes. Almost nobody bothers to go back to film.

 

[Derrel]

from an August, 2013 Reuters article:Nikon cuts full-year profit target as camera sales slump | NDTV Gadgets

"Nikon Corp cut its full-year profit due to disappointing demand for mirrorless cameras that were once seen as a revolutionary invention that could save the industry from the threat of increasingly advanced smartphone cameras.Nikon executives said that sales were particularly disappointing in the United States and Europe for mirrorless cameras, which are lighter and cheaper than single-lens reflex (SLR) devices and offer higher image quality than other compact models."

"In Europe and the U.S. the ratio of mirrorless to SLRs hasn't grown at all, unlike in Asia, where it's quite popular with women because it's light. We had higher expectations for other regions," said Yasuyuki Okamoto, president of the imaging company. "But people who like cameras tend to just go for SLRs, even though they're very heavy."

"Japanese camera makers were hoping that mirrorless cameras, which work with a sensors, could pick up the slack as compact camera sales continue to slide as consumers are increasingly shifting to high-resolution smartphone cameras. But so far, they have only seen strong mirrorless sales at home, where shipments grew 16.8 percent in the six months to June, while dropping 18.5 percent globally, according to data from the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) of Japan. Compact camera shipments plummeted 48 percent."

---------so, yeah...Bloomberg is echoing what we've all known for a while now: the compact digital camera market has almost totally been killed off by better and better smart phones. Mirrorless cameras are selling well ONLY in Japan, and in the rest of the world, the sales of mirrorless systems are bad. In April of 2013, according to USA Today, about 2%, or around 38,000 cameras shipped to the Americas, out of 1.8 million cameras shipped, were mirrorless cameras. Bloomberg is probably right: there are going to be some camera companies that are forced to leave the camera business.

 

[Derrel]

I keep hearing this same tired prediction: that the mirror will soon be discarded. So, ya know, I typed in a short Google search string, "When was the single lens reflex camera invented?" and the first entry it returned was a Wikipedia article which began thusly:

"The history of the single-lens reflex camera predates the invention of photography in 1826/27 by one and a half centuries with the use of a reflex mirror in a camera obscura first described in 1676. Such SLR devices were popular as drawing aids throughout the 18th century, because an artist could trace over the ground glass image to produce a true-life realistic picture.A British patent was granted in 1861 for the first internal mirror SLR photographic camera, but the first production photographic SLR did not appear until 1884 in the U.S."

It's going to take a while before there's a paradigm shift. If one has ever studied paradigm shifts, there's one thing that underlies the majority of them, and that is that the shift is often caused by a new company or a new entrant to the field...that is to say, the shifts are often brought about by an entity that is utterly unfamiliar with the way things have been done, or how they "ought to be done". The problem we have in today's market is that the "established players" have long-lived legacies behind their companies. Decades, and lifetimes, of experience in "how things have been done." We keep hearing about how the mirror will be ditched, soon. But it's been around since the late 1600's in image-rendering devices...so..any day now, right, the mirror will just "disappear".

 

[usayit]

I keep hearing this same tired prediction: that the mirror will soon be discarded.

Derrel,

You keep pointing out to people how short sighted the question of "Why would anyone need 41 mp in a cell phone?"

But yet

You keep missing how short sighted saying that an decades old mirrorbox design is in no way replaceable?



IMO, when it comes to technology... people who say absolutes in terms of specifics are almost 100% wrong at some point in time. Recall the film guys a while back that analog film will never be replaced by digital? You sound just like them. Again.. look towards the Japanese culture for a hint of things to come.

 

[manaheim]

As I've said before it's reasonbly rare that one thing outright replaces another. It does happen but it's uncommon. Meanwhile media outlets get a lot of press fanning the flames of controversy.

 

[Derrel]

I keep hearing this same tired prediction: that the mirror will soon be discarded.

Derrel,

You keep pointing out to people how short sighted the question of "Why would anyone need 41 mp in a cell phone?"

But yet

You keep missing how short sighted saying that an decades old mirrorbox design is in no way replaceable?



IMO, when it comes to technology... people who say absolutes in terms of specifics are almost 100% wrong at some point in time. Recall the film guys a while back that analog film will never be replaced by digital? You sound just like them. Again.. look towards the Japanese culture for a hint of things to come.

Every single time somebody starts pontificating about how "this will happen in the future," I think back to my boyhood some 40 years ago, reading Popular Science back issues that were already 10 to 15 years old (1950's issues), predicting "flying cars of the future".

I'm laughing. It's always the mirrorless camera aficionados, like yourself, that try to convince everybody that ,"That God-awful mirror" will disappear!" Yeah...the mirror that began in 1676, and appeared here in 1884...and reached new heights in 1954, then 1959, and is now the defacto standard for high-end cameras...

Please, pull my flying car around to the air-garage, Mr. Jetson.

Did you happen to notice that out of 1.8 MILLION cameras shipped to the Americas earlier this year, only 38,000 units were mirrorless cameras? As in every two out of every 100 units were mirrorless cameras? Oh, yeah...a virtual wave of demand.

Sign me up for my flying automobile, please. Nikon corp's own executives cannot seem to figure out WHY people prefer d-slr cameras, and why the Nikon 1 series is their WORST performer!!! Look to the Japanese culture as what, did you say? As the only market in the world where mirrorless cameras, which are tiny and cute, are selling,mostly to women, seem like a cute novelty item? Look to the Japanese culture as what? As an isolated culture that refuses to accept western influence, and cannot seem to figure out that the majority of the world want d-slr cameras OR cellphone cameras?

 

[usayit]

I'm not a mirrorless aficionado. If you actually read my posts, I am the first to say its not for everyone NOR have I ever said it is a replacement for the DSLR system. I have ALWAYS said that the current mirror-less systems are a good alternative or complimentary system of the DSLR. I have always said that its a decent system for the professional photographer looking for something to shoot on personal time while not on the clock.

For each case you bring up (you do pick and choose) I can also show another case in which progress was made (PDA for example). You ignore stuff I post but continue to hold your cases like its some sort of end all. Its not. Just like many debates in which a blank statement like yours is made, it only takes one case to prove the ground you stand on as shaky.

Why don't you do some research as to why we don't fly around in cars that fly.... it has nothing to do with technology.. the technology EXISTS... It has more to do with logistical issues that have yet to be solved.

Again..... if you study technology achievements we have made in recent years.. the clear trend is... remove bulk, remove the useless or obsolete, integrate, integrate, integrate, integrate. The smart phone is a clear indication of that trend.... camera+cell phone+PDA all rendered obsolete via integration into a single unit the smart phone.

(fyi: each decade you can pin-point a unique trend in technology. Ads hint towards it. "Electro"- this "Electro" that. "Auto" this "Auto" that... etc)

Too short sighted to see the trend because you are too busy googling around for specific cases that you think back you up. THINK for yourself! Stop regurgitation of links.

What issues did the mirrorbox solve back before the SLR design was popular?
Are those issues still exist?
Are the newer designs solving the same issues?
Are they solving it with less bulk and complexity?
Can those new technologies be integrated?

Common! you are intelligent enough to see past the superficial present. You think "mirrorless cameras" Heck you are stuck on it... you name specifics Micro43, NIkon J, etc.. When I think "mirrorless".. I see a design concept. This is why you are stuck on sales figures... I'm not.... I am saying as a concept even cell phones are mirrorless in design... a design far more popular in use today than any P&S, DSLR, or ILC.

 

[usayit]

For those interested, we are in a wonderful time of change in terms of design and technology. We have begun to take a similar path that industrial design already went through decades prior. We started out with a pure focus on function in which form to secondary... moved into the other end of the spectrum when cheap superficial ornamentals were used to hide distract from the pure function underneath... and now transitioning in which we produce beautiful design concepts that form and function are celebrated in harmony... albeit digital

We no longer look for digital versions of the familiar.... we are moving to achieve new designs that celebrate and leverage what digital has to offer.

Authentic Design | Smashing Magazine

A camera doesn't have to look like the camera of the past... a DSLR doesn't have to be simply a SLR design with a digital film plane. Think out of the box... that's the differentiator in innovation today. Everything else is simply a continuation of what someone else has already done. Its ok to start with the concepts behind a SLR but its very important were you take that design.

""Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to." - Jim Jarmusch"


Oh and Derrel, my posts are in no way intended to pick or start arguments with you. This thread simply peaks my interests.... one that is rooted in DESIGN (past, present and future). Love it even though I am better as an implementation side of the equation.

More importantly... Don't let "winning the debate" or "argument" get in the way of opening your mind and learning.