Nikon is dying?

[daveo228i]

Minolta was always big in Europe. In the US it was up against Nikon and Canon. I think it was a question of money. At one time Nikon had a joint venture with Minolta. Minolta was producing the end product, but quality was poor.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[cgw]

Look at sony, they sell camera components to other camera companies, and even to cell phone companies. They've actually stretched market share by doing so.

Other companies are trying to have a finger in each part of the camera pie. While that looks ok on paper, you just over extend yourself.

If sony went to ONE mirrorless and one DSLR and built components for other companies, and made their little "compact" cameras theyd stay fine.

If canon and Nikon thinned their camera offerings to something like pentax has done, they would truly start saving money.

If Fujifilm built an actual website that showed their product, and sold it online from their own store they would increase sales. Why? Their website was created by rube Goldberg if your trying to find information on what they offer. And they have to many official dealers that DONT carry their cameras in store.

Leica simply needs to simplify their offerings. Sure like Nikon and sony they have other product divisions to use to keep overall company health and profit, but having so many different camera lines is a nightmare for the consumer. Some are still just a difference in how a dial is painted...

Voightlander CAN make a comeback if they kept to film cameras. There IS no competition in film cameras today. Nikon has the budget 600$ FM10, The F6 for 2K$. Leica hits 3000$ for a drool worthy 35mm camera.
If they come back with one of their late model 35mm's and price it between the Nikon D3400 and the Nikon FM10 they would see good market.

Hmmm. I'm guessing(but could, as always, be wrong) that you're not enjoying much of a career as a marketing/product placement consultant? Just asking...

 

[pocketshaver]

About 5 years ago the auto industry did research about re introducing the El Camino. Yeah the only American vehicle that came close to the Australian tray back. Anyway they did the research and all ideas were scrapped.

Why? They discovered that if it was reintroduced, the market demand would KILL truck production smaller then 3/4 ton. Truck companies didn't want to undercut their truck sales so it was cut out of planning.

It also would have hurt SUV sales horribly.

 

[WilliamK1974]

About 5 years ago the auto industry did research about re introducing the El Camino. Yeah the only American vehicle that came close to the Australian tray back. Anyway they did the research and all ideas were scrapped.

Why? They discovered that if it was reintroduced, the market demand would KILL truck production smaller then 3/4 ton. Truck companies didn't want to undercut their truck sales so it was cut out of planning.

It also would have hurt SUV sales horribly.

Maybe that's why that Chevrolet SS truck that came out a few years ago wasn't branded El Camino. It had that modern/retro styling, a Corvette engine, and a price point that put it close to new 'Vette territory. Then, GM was surprised that they didn't sell a million of them, and pulled the plug. Had they branded it El Camino and put one of their bulletproof pushrod V6 engines in it and priced it in the low to mid $20k's, they would have sold like hotcakes to the under-35 male demographic. But that would have stolen sales from the S10/Colorado segment, and maybe the low-level Silverado segment as well, even though it could have been more profitable.

 

[pocketshaver]

barra at GM only got the job because she was a woman and her father had been an employee. EVERY special project she has created has ended up getting trashed.

Having the CAMERA companies focused on NON camera things, like the action cameras, point and shoot, and compact cameras is only hurting them. Enough smaller companies are filling that use niche and doing it well. Attempting to compete with these companies, and all the little Asian companies making them is just whittling down profit and over all sales.

Putting movie capabilities into DSLRs does seem nice, but there are far to many companies like black magic that use the same DSLR body and lenses to make video cameras that kick regular cameras out of the market.

 

[Derrel]

Speaking of trucks and cars,did anyone watch Elon Musk unveil his new prototype electric truck , the one where they smashed the windows twice with large steel balls?

I think Nikon has a pretty good handle on what the demand is for brand new 35 mm film cameras. I do not think that there is anything they could do to change the demand level. It is not up to manufacturers to set demand levels, that is something the market does. There is now a glut of used camera equipment on the market, built up over basically two and a half decades or more of constant Manufacturing of film cameras which are of high quality. There are plenty of used film cameras on the market.

 

[pocketshaver]

Speaking of trucks and cars,did anyone watch Elon Musk unveil his new prototype electric truck , the one where they smashed the windows twice with large steel balls?

I think Nikon has a pretty good handle on what the demand is for brand new 35 mm film cameras. I do not think that there is anything they could do to change the demand level. It is not up to manufacturers to set demand levels, that is something the market does. There is now a glut of used camera equipment on the market, built up over basically two and a half decades or more of constant Manufacturing of film cameras which are of high quality. There are plenty of used film cameras on the market.

there is a large glut of film cameras on Ebay.. However far to many do not work. And there are not many people left who can actually REPAIR the cameras. Factories don't. And the "simple repairs" like adjusting the shutter speed is going to hit you for 200$ sight unseen.

I think its why the FM10 sells. If a person has to decide between buying a used FM5 on ebay for 3-500 and risk having to put that much more into it for repairs, a brand new FM10 is a reasonable item to get instead.

 

[Derrel]

A person who wants to buy a used 35 mm single-lens reflex can do so from camera stores and web Outlets spread across the 50 United States and each province in Canada, and even in Mexico. The Nikon FM10 has been available for over 20 years. It satisfies the low-end market for new 35 millimeter cameras, and as I understand it, there are brand new Nikon F6 cameras available for purchase.

As I mentioned above camera quest.com sells a number of brand new rangefinder cameras that bear the Voigtlander "Bessa" brand. I bought a complete Bessa outfit back in the early 2000s with a 35mm f/1.7 aspherical, a 50 mm f/1.5 aspherical, and a 75 mm. the lenses were very good.

 

[vin88]

About 5 years ago the auto industry did research about re introducing the El Camino. Yeah the only American vehicle that came close to the Australian tray back. Anyway they did the research and all ideas were scrapped.

Why? They discovered that if it was reintroduced, the market demand would KILL truck production smaller then 3/4 ton. Truck companies didn't want to undercut their truck sales so it was cut out of planning.

It also would have hurt SUV sales horribly.

Maybe that's why that Chevrolet SS truck that came out a few years ago wasn't branded El Camino. It had that modern/retro styling, a Corvette engine, and a price point that put it close to new 'Vette territory. Then, GM was surprised that they didn't sell a million of them, and pulled the plug. Had they branded it El Camino and put one of their bulletproof pushrod V6 engines in it and priced it in the low to mid $20k's, they would have sold like hotcakes to the under-35 male demographic. But that would have stolen sales from the S10/Colorado segment, and maybe the low-level Silverado segment as well, even though it could have been more profitable.

GMC V 6 were not as popular as the V8. the first V 6 in a truck was trash and replaced by the old inline 6.

 

[cgw]

Prayers answered:

ILFORD Harman Reusable Camera with Kentmere Film

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

"I'll be back... "

 

[Solarflare]

I have read several articles in financial news pieces that Nikon is dying. How can this possibly be true. Nikon has been around a long time and is recognized as a leader in photography. The quality is excellent and the camera and lens choices are amazing. The articles seem to be based on the mirrorless cameras not selling as predicted and the quality of lens in cell phones. [...]

Nikon has done a lot of poor decisions lately.

They have put their name on a lot of poor recent products. The Nikon One system, the new Z system are NOT amazing. The Z system lenses are expensive and poorly built; while their cameras aint too great either (not in regards to build quality), at least those can be fixed in the second generation. Their planned 1 inch sensor compacts never actually got offered, despite production being ready; that cant have been cheap for Nikon, neither can the now failed One system.

They have ignored price competition from third party lens manufacturers for a long time, until those companies dominated the market, taking away large parts of Nikons profits. Why cant Nikon offer a 35mm f1.4 at an affordable price point when so many people want such a piece of glas ? And I dont like how Nikon is now effectively offering Sigma glas, like the AF-S 105mm f1.4, a lens optimized for fast autofocus and sharpness, but not for good bokeh or strong color saturation, like a good portrait lens should do.

They have ignored many other things other companies did. For example, they left IBIS with DSLR completely to Pentax, including pixel shift technology. And when they tried it, like with the Df, their attempt was halfhearted and halfassed and they never tried to fix it later either.

Yes, they also did some great things. The D500, the D850, the AF-S 24mm f1.8, the AF-S 200-500mm f5.6 VR are all recent and amazing pieces of gear. The AF-S 70-200mm f2.8 e fl vr, too, though that got almost immediately voided by the Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 vc g2.

So yeah, its sad but not too surprising Nikon is in trouble.

It doesnt help that Nikon depends a lot on the photography market alone and that market is shrinking.

 

[Derrel]

The 105 mm F / 1.4 has bad bokeh and poor color saturation? Is this on planet Earth? I think it looks like a simply amazing lens, and likening it to a Sigma is almost sacrilegious.

The 200 mm to 500 mm f/5.6 was a good example of Nikon recognizing a spot where they could make a fairly low priced lens that would snuff out offerings from two competing companies.

Low price is nice, but resale value is one area where Sigma and Tamron and other third-party lenses really take a huge hit. I bought a Nikon 70 to 200 VR the first model, the very week that it was made available, and I sold it 13 years later for about $1,000. With a Sigma or Tamron your resale value after a year is cut basically in half and after 5 years you are forced to sell it for a little bit of nothing on the used Market.

You are right about Nikon's basically Imaging- only status. They don't make those great photo copiers like Canon does, and they don't make alarm clocks or ghetto blaster radios and CD players like Sony does. In today's market I think they are at a real disadvantage when competing against larger and more Diversified corporations.

 

[Derrel]

Prayers answered:

ILFORD Harman Reusable Camera with Kentmere Film

It's reusable!

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

I was getting very jaded with these constant threads on *a rival site*. Armchair Executives repeating little more than rumor, hearsay, internet opinion (trash...), and a disregard for research, facts and objective opinion that would astonish even a harden conspiracy theorist.

Why do all these threads predict doom and gloom, none seem to predict anything else, glowing sales, market crushing wisdom...?

Why is there always a polarised black and white narrative or *hero or zero*, there is never a "likely to hold their market share with solid if predictable releases..." and as observed above, always zero never hero?

Why are they always based, (as everything is based) on the forum members understanding of the camera, such and such a model failed because it had a claimed marketing DR number that was just 0.1 of a marketing unit less than the opposition, was just the wrong shade of black, or in the search for greater reliability found a different card that you only needed one of...?

@Solarflare sorry to pull you up here, but your opinion is based on a technical understanding and personal rating of the *product* and not consumer or market awareness.

You don't have to look that far to realise that the part of the market that is generating all this noise isn't quite as representative of the *sane and stable* consumers as they presume. Witness a thread started on the rival site where it is claimed that many of the zoom lenses are *labelled incorrectly*! Yes, a 24-105 should be 105-24 if the zoom turns the other way to what the poster assumed was the correct way. It will make all the names logical and avoid confusion and turning the ring the wrong way by mistake. Such is the desire for all things to be labeled, logical that stems entirely from our own viewpoints that we fail to see just how abstract our thought often is.



We claim to look at things logically, create a logical narrative based on wants and needs, desires and dreams. Then moan and complain when the *new* cameras are too different and change our pre-conceptions and thinking habits. We refuse to let go of our logic or our process, we want cameras that change our photography but do it in the way we understand, fit into our rigid views, in short cameras that are game changing, astounding, revolutionary, but essentially allow us to carry on with the same habits and understandings as before. Cameras that are revolution-arily the same, a set of the same numbers that we can add up or subtract, compare and trash cameras we've never seen other than on a web page.

Quite an ask for the camera manufacturers...



I was beginning to believe that these wars were real and aggressive, that I really did need to duck the bullets on the way up to the local shops for the milk and bread. Skirt the craters on the pavement to get the paper, KABOOM! "Canon have taken another hit."

We've already got excellent cameras so what else exactly are we looking for? Must it also be an action movie, Arnie against all-comers? Are we so settled into those armchairs that we have to create a fantasy life or death, doom or gloom narrative over which camera brand we own?

If we put the same imagination into our photographs, understood how to contain it within a rectangle rather than making it about ourselves and what we do own/could own, photography would be in a better place, I think.