Lack of Prosumer cameras

--
John L2

I note there has been a lot of discussion on these threads as to why Nikon, and others, etc. have not been heavily bringing out 8700 and 8800 style cameras.

One thought is demand. The demand is created by the retailers in camera stores, somewhat. If I buy an 8700 (Which I did, and love it.) there isn't much of a demand for additional lenses except for the WA and Tele adapter to the prime lens (and I really do not have a need for a tele adapter). As a retailer I am faced with one sale of any size.

If I sell a DSLR, I am still sitting in the same position I would have been had digitals not existed. I can sell a variety of lenses, shades, and goodies, ad infinitum.

Now, if the response to the Prosumers had created an all new demand for goodies, whooopeee! Retailers would be overjoyed!
What say you?

John L2 said:

One thought is demand. The demand is created by the retailers in
camera stores, somewhat. If I buy an 8700 (Which I did, and love
it.) there isn't much of a demand for additional lenses except for
the WA and Tele adapter to the prime lens (and I really do not have
a need for a tele adapter). As a retailer I am faced with one sale
of any size.

Click to expand...

I don't think it's the demand from retailers. It's really demand from consumers that drives everything. Besides, there are plenty of accessories available to "prosumer" digicams like the 8700:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?ci=1&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=product.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t&shs=nikon+8700

Besides, if retailers were really concerned about having only "one sale", then they would be a lot less interested in P&S digicams too.

Well, not to have a presence in the P&S market is suicide. It might not make a lot of money but it's where the majority of the non-"fan" public looks and where corporate image must be upheld due to that.

There are some pretty nice "prosumer" cams out there, just not from the big 2. They wish to pay more attention to the (more long-term profitable) DSLR sales.

--
John L2
I agree with both of you to a certain extent, BUT,-------

It isn't in the best interest of the retailer to make one sale, and be done with it! Then not see the customer for 3 to 4 years.

In my case, the retailer whom I have known for 20 years did his darndest to convince me to buy a DSLR, with the attendent lenses, and all the add - ons.

I purchased a Nikon 8700 (he only had one in stock in an unopened package),I added the WA lens, the add-on 6battery pack, the hard lens hood, and 4-512 memory chips, bag, extra NIMH batteries, and chargers, and I was done!

I don't shoot sports games, so speed is not one of my interests, but I found out how to zone focus for moving objects.

Now, if the retailer doesn't order DSLR's in volume from the mfgr, lenses, and glass filters by the hundreds, the mfgr. and the retailer is going to feel the effects of decreased volumes. There is no point in pointing out what decreased volumes can do to any mfgr.

So if you take a great camera with all built in, sales volumes fall.

as birds.

Capable all-in-one cameras are not going to disappear. They may change the size and form, but the need for them exists.
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T3 said:

John L2 said:

One thought is demand. The demand is created by the retailers in
camera stores, somewhat. If I buy an 8700 (Which I did, and love
it.) there isn't much of a demand for additional lenses except for
the WA and Tele adapter to the prime lens (and I really do not have
a need for a tele adapter). As a retailer I am faced with one sale
of any size.

Click to expand...

I don't think it's the demand from retailers. It's really demand
from consumers that drives everything. Besides, there are plenty
of accessories available to "prosumer" digicams like the 8700:

Click to expand...

You really think it is the demand from consumers. Wow, I wish I could agree, because then the market would be like it should be.
The question still is what was first? The egg or the hen.

Look, it's very easy to think of conspiracies ("the eeeevil camera makers aren't making the cameras we want so they can push their overpriced accessory junk on us") but it really doesn't hold water. The competition in the camera market is cutthroat: if there was a demand for prosumer cameras, someone would be making prosumer cameras. If Canon or Nikon don't make them not to cannibalize their dSLR sales, somebody else would.

Look at the sadly lamented Konica-Minolta, for example. They waited a looong time before coming out with an SLR; instead, they put their money on prosumers, and produced what I believe to be the greatest prosumer ever made, the KM Dimage A1. And where did it get them? Out of the business. I was active in the KM community here, around the dSLR transition, and with KM not being able to come out with a dSLR, the community was bleeding people to Canon (at the time pretty much the only game in town for reasonably-affordable dSLR's) on a daily basis, including folks who had massive amounts of Minolta film gear that they'd been using for decades.

The fact is that "prosumers" got killed off by the sub-$1000 dSLR. Most of their market went there. Simple as that.

Compare to the fate of "ZLR's:" they appeared, caused a stir, and retreated to a niche. I can't see any reason why the market for "prosumers" would be dramatically bigger than the market for "ZLR's." theyt will survive in that niche, I've no doubt, but will be few and far between.

Petteri
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Doesn't seem to be that few prosumers. In my opinion Sont R1, Samsung Pro815, Pansonic FZ30 and Fuji S9000 all are prosumer cameras although some of them also fit in the ultrazoom category.

What's weird is that Nikon and Canon don't seem to want to sell anything in this category. Can't belive that they don't understand that a dSLR aren't an option for many buyers. Btw, Nikon 8800 (and 8700) is still listed as available in some stores.

Personally I blame the lack of prosumers on the price performance ratio.

How many manufactures or buyers are going to want to spend $800 for a camera that does perform well compared to the sub $1k DSLRs and does not signifigantly out perform most P&S cameras?

The noise was not signifigantly better than a P&S, the image quality was slightly better but not by leaps and bounds, burst modes and movie modes are the same as a decent P&S or super zoom. Yes the glass was better but 90% of consumers don't know the differnce.

A lot of people went to prosumers for the larger zoom or the W/A well now that the super zoom market has taken off and you can get a nice IS super zoom for $350ish and the super zooms are more compact that some of the prosumers.

The WA market still exists but that seems to be a much smaller market and some manufactures are looking at this like Kodak with their dual lens 5mp camera that has the 23mm lens and a 3x zoom.

Mr. Fixitx

The Canon 350D is an excellent prosumer, and so is the Olympus E-500.

Consumer camera have got better - dSLRs have got cheaper. The gap inbetween is currently hard to fill - as the required product would likely cost too much to produce for a segment.

I expect this will change in the next 18 months - only my opinion.
--
Jules.

Petteri Sulonen said:

Look, it's very easy to think of conspiracies ("the eeeevil camera
makers aren't making the cameras we want so they can push their
overpriced accessory junk on us") but it really doesn't hold water.
The competition in the camera market is cutthroat: if there was a
demand for prosumer cameras, someone would be making prosumer
cameras. If Canon or Nikon don't make them not to cannibalize their
dSLR sales, somebody else would.

Look at the sadly lamented Konica-Minolta, for example. They waited
a looong time before coming out with an SLR; instead, they put
their money on prosumers, and produced what I believe to be the
greatest prosumer ever made, the KM Dimage A1. And where did it get
them? Out of the business. I was active in the KM community here,
around the dSLR transition, and with KM not being able to come out
with a dSLR, the community was bleeding people to Canon (at the
time pretty much the only game in town for reasonably-affordable
dSLR's) on a daily basis, including folks who had massive amounts
of Minolta film gear that they'd been using for decades.

The fact is that "prosumers" got killed off by the sub-$1000 dSLR.
Most of their market went there. Simple as that.

Click to expand...

For certain the "inexpensive" DSLR has cut into higher-end prosumer sales - you're right. But K-M's prosumer cameras, while the biggest line and with some models having (open to discussion) the best technical specs, the entire line of products had some "issues". The A-2, for instance, had great built quality, an acceptable size, the best EVF in existence, anti-shake and almost everything you could want in a camera but the tests - all tests, almost everywhere you look - of the camera show occasional but very serious focusing errors and a general lack of highest detail. I was looking at the A-2 but that killed the deal for me. I, personally, suspect the alignment guides for the anti-shake weren't as accurate as absolutely required because some of the same focus "issues" show up in K-M DSLR's using the same technology. To me, personally, it sounds like K-M could certainly have used some higher-precision low-friction ceramic guides for the anti-shake mechanism...can anyone say “Kyocera, please”??

The other problem for the K-M prosumer line was, well, the looks and shape of the "regular" prosumers (verus the "high-end" prosumers?? How else to describe it??! ) That rounded, sci-fi profile didn't help sales, I feel, and put off some people who expected a camera to look like, well, a "classic" camera. And then some of those models with the "flip" viewfinder / LCD display was just taking things a bit too far in "weird" - people felt things were being done just to be "different". In your hand the Z-series just didn’t “feel” very good - reasonably solid, yes, but not “great” like the A-series or the competition like the Oly 8080 or the Nikons. I don’t know but I think it was not completely them just being plastic, the feel of the camera was a bit “off” – maybe it was the (overly) rounded grip that lacked enough “edge” and prevented your grip from acquiring a bit of “bite”.

I personally feel K-M’s problem was not that they did prosumer digitals, for in my opinion it does back much, much further than that. With the Dynax / Maxuum line they had the forefront of SLR technology when they introduced the original 7000…and they let it slip away from them with slow developments of new models and slow marketing. Minolta put more emphasis on business products by the 1990’s and it showed in their cameras, which slipped behind in (apparent) development or, at least, marketing. When Minolta needed / wanted to get back in the game the game was digital and by this time the Minolta name had taken a tremendous back seat to both Nikon and Canon, which it never should have done considering the lead they had when the 7000 was introduced. They needed help so much they had to combine with Konica in order to get enough market position and backing in order to attempt to get themselves out of the hole – by the time the K-M merger happened Minolta’s business products division even showed a lot of slipups (you probably don’t follow that area as much as I do, color lasers and copiers, but my moonlighting hobby is micropublishing and I get excited when even new laser papers show up!! ^ ^ ).

(con't)

(con't)

For instance: Minolta’s DeskLaser series lost it’s early lead on affordable desktop lasers because the 22xx series got outperformed by new designs that both produced better quality output and were cheaper to run (I had a 2200 and the cost to run was outrageous). The color laser that kept / put Minolta on the map in terms of company image, the 61xx series, was discontinued and for almost 1 & ½ years…Minolta didn’t have a A3-sized color laser! The stupidity! The 6100 series was very well respected for A3 sizes and starting at about $3000 and up Minolta certainly couldn’t be losing money on selling them. They sold them for years and the printers were desirable.

By the time the 7300 came out, the replacement for the well regarded 61xx, Minolta’s A3 position had pretty much, well, disappeared. Everyone, customers that is, moved on to other brands. The 7300 came, and went, with just a whimper rather than a roar because Minolta took far too long to introduce it after completely discontinuing the 6100’s, leaving customers with not a single K-M-Q A3 choice for far too long. And then the 7300, for all that wait, wasn’t better than the competition – which at the price point, the 6100-series was .

In that very long-winded (sorry!) thought is my belief that K-M (K-M-Q for printers) completely drops balls in marketing and quite a bit in development and has a history of doing so. They merged because they had to, to make up for all their slipups in both imaging and business divisions over, at least, the last decade. When the merger happened fans of photography felt Minolta was the stronger of the two in the merger…but, in actuality, the opposite was true, Konica was stronger. Konica had disappeared from the camera markets but they focused on business products and their copier division put the company into a much better long-term position of strength than Minolta was at the time of the merger. Konica was the stronger of the two, not Minolta.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0301/03010701konicaminoltamerger.asp

“Some analysts noted worries that Konica, whose market capitalization is double Minolta's, would be weighed down by the camera maker's battered balance sheet.”

“While the companies have roughly equal annual revenues around 500 billion yen a year, their market value has diverged sharply in recent years as Minolta struggled with hefty losses and an out-of-focus product strategy.”

In other words, the issue of K-M dropping out of the photo business was rather a touch of a surprise but not unforeseen. Minolta’s name and market position has been tarnished by a “lack of focus” for almost 10 years now and the Konica merger was a way to get capitalization for Minolta , for Konica (although not in a great position) was certainly better than Minolta in that regard. Minolta hoped to leverage their “classic” name with the additional funding the Konica merger would give, and Konica hoped to get it’s foot back into the photo business in the same manner. It fell flat.

[yikes, that’s long! ^ ^ ]

Yes, I do agree Prosumer do not drive synergy sales such as lens and alike, but DSLR is far more complex and demanding and certainly a lot less user friendly. The one thing I think why therr are less and less of prosumer is simply the fact that previous generations of prosumer had reach a plateau of performance and features. Don't we all heard many of fellow prosumer using members on this forum happily snapping away with their Minolta A2, or Canon G series / PRo-1, or the Sony F707/717/828 etc ....

There is really little need for them to upgrade, and DC users who are faced with need or wanting to upgrade will look at todays market and found prosumer kind of lacking, not in performance, but when priced as such they are ( more expensive than an entry level DSLR with a lens or 2 ). And plainly all the prosumers is simply too bulky and too big from a DC user point of view.

IMHO the next wave of Prosumer need to lose weight and slim down. DC like the R1 sure are great, but at their size and weight I am not too eager to take them along. Sony had shown one of the way with their V3 ( if they shoudl just provide it with more control ) and Ricoh with the GR-digital. This is how I see the future of prosumer are.

--
Franka

John L2 said:

One thought is demand. The demand is created by the retailers in
camera stores, somewhat.

Click to expand...

The bulk of consumer digital camera sales is now moving through Big Box stores in the US. These stores are more driven by turns of inventory (sales efficiency) and add-on warranties than selling accessories. Essentially, they'll sell what's moving. And just taking Nikon, for example, the 5700 was still sitting in those stores when the 8700 came out, despite aggressive rebates by Nikon. And the 8700 was still sitting in stores when the 8800 came out, again aggressive rebates didn't move the inventory fast enough.

As someone pointed out, ZSLRs faced somewhat the same dilemma back in the film days. I think the issue is primarily bulk. People either want to maximize performance or minimize size. The all-in-ones for the most part don't do either (the Sony R1 being the primary exception at the moment, which may be why it's selling decently). This is even true for pros. Back in the film days, those of us who used SLRs also tended to always carry a high-quality compact, usually the Olympus XA. It fit in a pocket and had quite good quality.

There's certainly room for a couple of successful all-in-ones in the market, but the category isn't a hot seller, especially now that DSLR prices are in the consumer realm. Sony got it mostly right with the R1 (should have had VR, needs some minor work on speed, especially shooting raw). But that also priced it higher than several two lens DSLR kits.

--
Thom Hogan
author, Nikon Field Guide & Nikon Flash Guide
editor, Nikon DSLR Report
author, Complete Guides: D50, D70, D100, D1 series, D2h, D2x, S2 Pro
http://www.bythom.com

...i've ever read from you, and it's spot-on. it couples well with petteri's point about sub $1kusd dslr's cutting off the oxygen for what had come to be known as a "prosumer".

let me add my more tendentious opinions:

1) i have always detested the term "prosumer" for its gross imprecision and condescension. the only things that could be said to be solid about the term is an inference of a favorable ratio of user configurability, output quality, and price. these are now met by low-cost dslr's, as petteri and you and others have stated.

2) it may well be that the "prosumer" target market has somewhat dried up----if the rest of the target market is anything like me, we have already purchased our prosumer cam [an oly 8080 for me], and realize that there is nothing else superior on the market for our needs AND LIKELY WON'T BE FOR SOME TIME [due to some inherent technological hurdles that will keep costs for better sensors high for the forseeable future] . right now i---and i'll bet many others--- am perfectly happy continuing to use my quite acceptable "prosumer" camera.

3) i have no doubt that we will all see some very interesting cameras in the next few years that will appeal to those of us whose shooting style doesn't, or doesn't always, include a bag full of gear. these will include the cameras i look forward to: rangefinder-ish, semi-compact, very high quality, user controllable. there was a good comment in a post above in response to prosumers going the way of the dinosaur---that they will evolve into birds. i think a bird in the hand would be a good thing, and thoughtful people like petteri know what i mean.

the market is still very young

My point was, when did the term "prosumer" come to mean "non-DSLR"? I thought it referred to cameras that were above cheap consumer cameras but not quite good enough to be considered "professional."

The inexpensive DSLRs now fall into that category. I'm a prosumer guy myself, and I have a DSLR now. Back in the old days I had a Sony F707.

Photography seems to have more than its share of rotten terms.

There's kind of a continuum of 'ability' from the free little digital I got with an order a few days ago to something like the P45 digital back. But it's not a non-branching straight line.

We just don't have good shorthand terms to describe various points on the continuum.

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Thom Hogan said:

There's certainly room for a couple of successful all-in-ones in the market,

Click to expand...

That is one conception of what the category is... but for me the important characteristics are quality, EVF, and small total kit size. That category can easily be filled with an EVIL. Conspiracy may be a good word to describe why that category is being delayed so long ... collusion to extend profit taking is normal in an industry with few vendors who are highly co dependant. How hard could it be to put an A-mount on the R1? Mount the chip on an AS platform? Add video capability? All that technology proven, in house, at Sony. Well of course the latter would compete against their 6 figure video cams and we can't expect that to happen until someone else breaks the logjam.
--
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