When Will The Camera Market Stop Shrinking?

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

And what is going to make my cameras disappear within the year?

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

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All new ideas that I've never read before. So insightful and alarming.

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

Click to expand...

Yes the number of “real camera” buyers is certainly in the decline. But the number of cameras being bought in my camera club is actually increasing. Over the last 2 years more than 50% of my 60 member club have purchased new Mirrorless kits. These kits average about $5,000 per kit (camera and a few native lenses), and of these 30+ new Mirrorless buyers, 20+ have purchased full Olympus MFT kits for the smaller size.

FluidKnowledge said:

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

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I agree with this completely.... but, we are beginning to see the inclusion of computational features in the latest cameras. The question seems to me to be, is it too little and too late for some manufacturers?

FluidKnowledge said:

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

gary0319 said:

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

Click to expand...

Yes the number of “real camera” buyers is certainly in the decline. But the number of cameras being bought in my camera club is actually increasing. Over the last 2 years more than 50% of my 60 member club have purchased new Mirrorless kits. These kits average about $5,000 per kit (camera and a few native lenses), and of these 30+ new Mirrorless buyers, 20+ have purchased full Olympus MFT kits for the smaller size.

gary0319 said:

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

Click to expand...

I agree with this completely.... but, we are beginning to see the inclusion of computational features in the latest cameras. The question seems to me to be, is it too little and too late for some manufacturers?

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Also, I believe camera manufacturers need to pay more attention to the MMI design of their cameras. It now seems that they just put single and dual functions buttons anywhere on the camera that there is space.

gary0319 said:

gary0319 said:

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

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I see this as like what the PC industry has gone through:

- rapid innovation and performance increases caused a large market for at least a decade

- maturing technology and market saturation drastically slowing sales

- competition from smartphones replaced the need for many people for both PCs and cameras

- it's going to stabilize but at a much lower level. The serious hobbyists and professionals will still buy and also replace their hardware, just more slowly than previously. For cameras, mirrorless will probably drive some increased sales as DSLR owners start switching systems

I disagree that there won't be a market for APSC and/or M43. I have both and have no intention of buying a FF. I don't want to carry big lenses and I also don't want to pay the price of that HW. The APSC quality is only 1 stop worse and yet smaller and cheaper. That's good enough for me. My APSC camera is around the same size as my old 35mm SLR. I'm not going bigger than that in size to carry with me.

M43 is nice because if you don't need the high ISO or higher DR, M43 gives you great quality and much lower price and the lens selection is extensive and excellent. Also on average much cheaper than FF lenses.

I could see either M43 or some APSC system falling away, but not all of them. I think Canon EFS is in more danger than say Sony E for APSC since Sony shares their E mount with FF. IMHO Canon's decision to use a fourth(!) mount (if you call EF vs EF-S two mounts which is not quite true) means Canon is managing four mounts. Which means that somebody is going to get shortchanged big time in the Canon space.

FluidKnowledge said:

FluidKnowledge wrote: Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor.

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A year? That's crazy talk. Maybe in a decade.

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

I was planning to buy a Micro Four Thirds camera and lenses but after reading this I will just get a smartphone instead. Thanks for the advice.

When it disappears up its own aperture.

I walked by a vinyl record display at Target the other day. People still buy turntables. Yes, the camera industry is going to contract even more, but there will probably always be enthusiasts who enjoy a stand-alone camera.

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

Click to expand...

Camera sales will probably drop to the same level as before digital (except for P&S which smartphones have replaced). Just because camera sales have been abnormally high for a number of years when digital was new, it does not have to stay the same forever.

FluidKnowledge said:

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

Click to expand...

Just like in the past there will be a use for many different formats in the future too. Just like there where a market for many film formats, it will also be so for digital.

FluidKnowledge said:

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

Click to expand...

The sales are normalising to a sustainable level, from the abnormally high sales we have had during a few years in the past.

FluidKnowledge said:

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

It is not the quality of the images on DSLR and Mirrorless that is the the problem. It is that images from smartphones are good enought for most users, so why should they get another image capturing device than their smartphone? Most users just want a convenient device they can capture everyday snapshots with. It has been the same the last 100 years.

The "real" market for ILC is just not as big it seems to have been during a short period of time when digital photography was new.

FluidKnowledge said:

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

Click to expand...

A lot of your premise I can agree with but I think you're selling users short. There will always be enthusiasts market for cameras better than point and shoots but less than full frame professional cameras. The vast majority of the medium for display of images today is social media, on the cell phone screen and on the computer screen, but there are still people interested in more than that, still people who look at photography as hangable on the wall.

FluidKnowledge said:

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

Click to expand...

Agreed that computational photography will be the next wave in cameras, only growing and growing. Cameras already have wifi, ability to upload, agreed these features need to grow and probably will. Not all users need instant gratification, but the cross over from cell phone picture taker to somebody who wants more control more possibilities will cross over to cameras easier and faster with cameras mimicking more cell phone like features. Cameras are basically not too smart computers now, they just need to become more powerful computers and increase the benefits.

Camera market keeps growing. It’s just cameras are in a wide variety of devices now!

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

I don't don't know what's wrong with your raw files, but how do the JPEGs look?

If you can't outsmart an AI at the current level of technology, your future is bleak in so many ways.

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

There's nothing "horrific" or "fake" about that great, shallow DOF smartphone shot Absquatulate shared that fooled everyone into thinking it was taken with a large sensor camera.

That smartphones are able to produce such great results in seconds is a BIG reason for the shrinking "proper" camera market.

As you note, it also doesn't help matters that the default RAW output of most cameras looks horrible and flat, requiring shadow lifting and highlight recovery to look halfway decent.

Fregoli said:

FluidKnowledge said:

So seems the sky is still falling and camera sales are still tanking. When will the camera market stop shrinking? Will DPReview even exist in a year? Seems like the camera industry is contracting at 30-50% a year. That's just suicide.

I don't see any place for APSC or smaller cameras. Only full frame and medium format will exist in a year in any meaningful manor. I think only the very top end cameras and elite users will be around. Everyone will be on smartphones and won't care about image quality. Seems like no one cares about all the smeared pixels and horrific fake bokeh that gets things so wrong.

I think the way for the camera industry to stop this endless downward spiral is that there must be computational photography and full post processing built into the camera body and built in full time wifi that can upload straight from the camera. Users these days want instant gratification. Telling them they need to manually post process RAW files is the reason the camera industry is going the way of horse and buggy whips.

It's also the reason why beginner users think DSLR and mirrorless cameras take bad photos. That's because RAW files look horrible without automated post processing. Any normal person would pick up their smartphone after seeing the mess of colors and contrast of a RAW file.

Click to expand...

There's nothing "horrific" or "fake" about that great, shallow DOF smartphone shot Absquatulate shared that fooled everyone into thinking it was taken with a large sensor camera.

Click to expand...

Fooled everyone? Really? Didn’t look like a large sensor camera with the way the background rendered...and didn’t look like film. Fooled you maybe.

Fregoli said:

That smartphones are able to produce such great results in seconds is a BIG reason for the shrinking "proper" camera market.

As you note, it also doesn't help matters that the default RAW output of most cameras looks horrible and flat, requiring shadow lifting and highlight recovery to look halfway decent.

Click to expand...

Fregoli said:

There's nothing "horrific" or "fake" about that great, shallow DOF smartphone shot Absquatulate shared that fooled everyone into thinking it was taken with a large sensor camera

Click to expand...

Didn't fool me. Looks like garbage. You think his postage sized photo with a horrible grain filter added on top is supposed to be a large sensor camera? The fact that he turned it black and white to further remove any semblance of detail is supposed to indicate quality? What are you smoking?

He purposely did all that to hide all the horrible noise, smeared pixels, and fake bokeh that blurred the wrong things. I've seen full resolution P30 Pro and they are indeed horrible compared to full frame.

Big wedding with over 700 people and all I saw was just the hired photogs and a few guests with dedicated cameras. Everybody is now shooting with their phones. Among my friends, I know they all own cameras before.

If people feel comfortable shooting with phones, why would they buy another camera.

I don't see this trend reversed any time soon.

After reading this I just picture a bunch of photographers standing on the sidelines of a football game taking pictures with their smartphones. The wedding photographer taking pictures with a smartphone and maybe the wedding party not even having a professional photographer.

I don't see the format to be a major issue (other than APS-C); it's mostly the mount. ANd most importantly, the practicality.

The camera market will continuously shrink until it becomes reserved for semi-pros and pros only; the reason why Olympus ditched their E-PM, Air and soon E-PL.

Who knows? Maybe Hartblei would become more popular as digital backs are getting cheaper? And maybe, the 1 inch market will fully disappear since MFT proved to be close when it comes to size and a lot more flexible.

The only reason Panasonic is doing well in the non-pro market is that they do a much better job in hybrids than Sony IMHO. Indecisive cameras for indecisive people.