Reuters on the travails of camera makers

I think that many of us worry too much about the future (of photo equipment). Truth is that we will adapt to whatever comes along and we will do just fine.
Second thought: whatever happens, there will always be our favorite cameras on the used market 🙂
 
Mackinaw said:
So Panasonic's camera division has two years to turn things around before the parent company pulls the plug. And even mirror-less cameras have been a bust. Just amazing. I really wonder what the industry will look like in five years.

Jim B.
Click to expand...

Smaller and very very different I expect. Even the big players are feeling the pinch lately. I know for a fact that Nik*n has started drastically cutting employees, because I am one of them.
 
I want a Leica M7bis, that will develop and scan Tri X by itself, flip through the photos, crop and edit them, and decide which ones are going to make it into my next Steidl coffe table album. That would just satisfy my consumer requirement.
 
As regards the article in general, I think it's because the mirrorless genre is sort of pointless. Or at least is perceived that way by consumers. At the very least DSLRs look the business.

Does the lack of enthusiasm for mirrorless cameras reflect on the state of camera buying in general though?
 
In a word, connectivity. Take it with your smartphone and post it immediately. You can even manipulate it in-camera. Photography has become part of the communications stream with those around you. Take a picture instead of trying to describe it in a text.
 
tunalegs said:
Does the lack of enthusiasm for mirrorless cameras reflect on the state of camera buying in general though?
Click to expand...

Probably. I am convinced that mirrorless will take over pretty soon - but attempts to slip it in between compacts and DSLRs are futile, when compacts and entry level DSLRs both are struggling as well.

But it is just two camera generations down the line until press cameras will replace the mirror with a EVF. The current pro Nikons and Canons already are so fast that Live View is required to retain control over the composition when shooting them at the bottom end of their low light range - making a much better electronic viewfinder the default mode (whether as a dual-mode finder or as a FullHD rear panel) is the obvious next step, and one model after that they'll remove the mirror which nobody has been using any more.
 
So, we will have cellphones, film and whatever technology supersedes the DSLR. Another couple of generations of EVF and fast on - sensor PDAF will retire the reflex mirror. By that time global shutter will finally rid the camera of shutter related shake.
 
Peter Wijninga said:
Thanks for sharing. I thought Fuji was on a roll... but then I don't have a Facebook account and I don't Twitter.
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Note that any time the article talks about the camera companies or divisions that it mentions the entire company/division. It doesn't distinguish between mirrorless and just plain compacts.

Fuji and others could be raking in money on their mirrorless cameras and still losing money overall due to poor compact sales. We can't tell from this article.

-Greg
 
The way I see it the camera industry is in the early stages of going through what the film industry has been going through for the past decade. What does that mean for photographers? If I had to hazard a guess I'd say we're likely to see a reduction in the number of camera lines being produced by each company. So rather then having 4-5 different DSLR lines Canon and Nikon may only have 2 or 3 lines. While other company's may end up merging in order to survive and some simple won't survive.
 
Guessing long-term trend from short term data may not be the best idea. There are too many random influences on the one hand (particular products, competing products (e. g. many people (e. g. students) buy only limited amount of gadgets per year, hence useful and affordable tablets may result in not buying a new camera THIS YEAR... and it may be similar for many people at the same time), temporary economic fluctuations and particular impacts on groups of potential buyers and on the other hand the market with camera systems may express extreme momentum due to large volumes of (especially) lenses accumulated. The manual focus SLR cameras were produced in larger numbers more than a decade after the AF cameras started to be produced, hence the mirrorless cameras are unlikely to replace the DSLR much more quickly (except the entry-level market).
 
Mcary said:
The way I see it the camera industry is in the early stages of going through what the film industry has been going through for the past decade. What does that mean for photographers? If I had to hazard a guess I'd say we're likely to see a reduction in the number of camera lines being produced by each company. So rather then having 4-5 different DSLR lines Canon and Nikon may only have 2 or 3 lines. While other company's may end up merging in order to survive and some simple won't survive.
Click to expand...

Another alternative is the cameras will have longer innovation cycles. DSLR lines might experience the same fate as the Olympus 4/3 line of DSLR - slowly demise of entry-level part and ending with the single high-end model... but this will IMHO last pretty long.
 
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