AP: Olympus says mirrorless cameras are the future

[ashrafazlan]

Mirrorless? Yes

m4/3? God no.

 

[George S.]

Haven't we been using electronic viewfinders of one kind or another in video cameras for something like 30 years? I've had no trouble shooting sports with them. Seems to me the pros shooting video of NFL football games have no trouble either. Why can't it be done with a still camera?

 

[bmattock]

Yes, because a lot of wannabe sports photogs will buy them too. IMHO, the consumer camera doesn't have much of a future at all because most people will be happy with what their cellphone camera gives them. The camera in my iPhone is certainly better than the consumer digital p & s I bought a few years ago, and both produce very acceptable snapshots: why buy a camera at all if you aren't an enthusiast?

One can suppose, but the sales figures for cameras (from Japanese companies) are available:

http://www.cipa.jp/english/data/pdf/d_200909.pdf

September 2009 shipment of
cameras with built-in lens: 11,371,241
cameras with interchangeable lens: 1,020,239

One merely has to take the available data and plot the trend. No one can know the future, but you can guess some things pretty well based on sales history and trend analysis.

 

[emraphoto]

Mirrorless? Yes

m4/3? God no.

i am curious as why "God no"?

i have been on the fence about a pair of ep-1's and would like to know why you seem so anti micro 4/3's?

 

[Ade-oh]

One can suppose, but the sales figures for cameras (from Japanese companies) are available:

http://www.cipa.jp/english/data/pdf/d_200909.pdf

September 2009 shipment of
cameras with built-in lens: 11,371,241
cameras with interchangeable lens: 1,020,239

I'm not a business analyst of any sort but those appear to be production and export figures rather than sales figures; and they don't really have any long term context. They also don't say anything about comparative production of cellphones with built-in cameras, a comparison between sales of cellphone cameras and 'stand-alone' cameras or anything similar. So whilst I'm happy to accept that a lot of cameras were manufactured and exported by Japanese companies during the period described, I'm none the wiser as to whether my speculative remark about cellphone cameras undermining the future of consumer cameras has any validity.

 

[NickTrop]

Yes, because a lot of wannabe sports photogs will buy them too. IMHO, the consumer camera doesn't have much of a future at all because most people will be happy with what their cellphone camera gives them. The camera in my iPhone is certainly better than the consumer digital p & s I bought a few years ago, and both produce very acceptable snapshots: why buy a camera at all if you aren't an enthusiast?

Agree in full. Ceteris paribus - the conditions have changed in the consumer market for photography more than anyone bargained for - including the manufacturers. It's no longer how fast the lens is, resolution, or even megapixels. It's how fast can you take a snap and post that pic wirelessly on Facebook. Your cell can do that, your digicam can't. Why carry a camera around? "Film" and "film cameras" are now a thing of the past in the consumer market, "cameras" are in genera, and that means digitals will soon follow suit. Not yet, but it's heading rapidly in that direction, exacerbated with the release cycle of new phones and the verrry savvy marketing stratergies of cell phone makers that arguably carry more cache than any other item of conspicuous consumption these days - including cars, jewelry, clothes and er, cameras, with consumers. No other item has a buzz around it as "the next big thing..." Notice the lines at stores when the new iPhone is released, notice the buzz around this Droid thing. And they all have picture taking capabilities - sufficient for web posting, standard.

What's this all have to do with mirrorless cameras? While the camera manufactures are debating the fine point of whether - or not, to make cameras with mirrors in them, companies like Nokia, Motorola, AT&T and Google are about to render them obsolete. Give it 10 years. Oh - and in that time, film will still be around for the photographic hobbiest/enthusiast.
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[wgerrard]

I think production numbers can be taken as a reasonable stand-in for sales figures. Companies don't produce wildly hoping the market will absorb it.

Cellphones, and other devices that can take pictures, are interesting. Given the ubiquity of photo capability in phones, it is difficult to know how many sales of stand-alone cameras were lost because someone chose a cellphone specifically to take pictures. I've no doubt, though, that the quality of phone photos will continue to increase. That will satisfy many people who would otherwise have purchased a P&S. I'm not so sure that trend will also be seen in the market for cameras with interchangeable lenses. The majority of people who take pictures don't want to be encumbered by extra lenses, etc. if that was the only was to take pictures, they'd likely take no pictures at all.

 

[Al Patterson]

To follow up on Nick's post, I'm noticing that many new phones have 5 megapixel cameras in them. (I've been checking out the Android phone, as in iDont, Droid does). For many in the word a cell phone with a decent shutter lag and pixel count will end up as the photo appliance of choice. And I'm sure there will be a day where my phone becomes one of my photography appliances. Most likely as the backup to my backup camera, but I'm not going to say I'll never use one.

I still want an E2-1, EP-2 or something similar, but that's because I have a lot of lenses I could use on them.

 

[Ade-oh]

What's this all have to do with mirrorless cameras? While the camera manufactures are debating the fine point of whether - or not, to make cameras with mirrors in them, companies like Nokia, Motorola, AT&T and Google are about to render them obsolete. Give it 10 years. Oh - and in that time, film will still be around for the photographic hobbiest/enthusiast.
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My mother was a classic 'consumer' photographer. She took loads and loads of pictures - 2-3 rolls a week of 35mm and subsequently APS - but, despite the fact that she was the daughter of a well known photojournalist, she had absolutely zero interest in photographic technique or the aesthetics of the pictures she took. It was a joke in my family: if we had a birthday party, Mum would be snapping away with her camera but she would be taking pictures of the birthday cake, or one of the kids' party dresses that she liked, or an interesting looking toy. The pictures would be filled with half-faces, random intruding body parts, peoples backs, red-eye and every other 'fault' that you could imagine, but she didn't care in the slightest because she was simply using her camera, like many non-enthusiasts do, to record things she was interested in. Digital cameras were an absolute boon to her, but when she got a camera in her cellphone, it was nirvana.

What she wanted in a camera was absolute simplicity: she didn't want to have to focus it, change any settings, attach a flashgun or anything like that, she just wanted to point it at what she was interested in and take the picture. Of course, you can do that with a digital p&s but, let's face it, it's one extra thing to carry.

IMO, that reflects what the majority of camera users do. They aren't enthusiasts or hobbyists: they just want to record some things they've seen and events they've taken part in, as a set of visual cues and landmarks, and I think these people will generally feel that they can do that just as well with a decent cellphone camera as they can with a £150 consumer p&s camera.