I am, and have been, a Canon film camera and DSLR camera owner/user since the 1990's.
As I started reading this I realized that I wanted to respond with my genuine thoughts in the moment. The reason I say that is because that first line appears to be an indication that I'm supposed to start off this thread believing you are absolutely pro-real camera, sensible, and I should relax my skepticism before we even get out of the gate. This is a rhetorical strategy used in debates to disarm your opponent and your audience so that they are more receptive to a controversial (read: incorrect) argument. If I'm wrong, then I'll leave this here as testimony to my wrongness.
I currently have, among other Canon cameras, an R5 with the RF 100 - 500 mm lens and love the combination. Very, very nice operability characteristics, performance and image quality. This is the best camera I have ever owned and hope to keep it indefinitely.
Even more disarming. I wonder what's coming next. I wonder if it's going to be a reduction of the camera in order to make phone cameras appear even more amazing than one would have previously thought.
Having said that, the combination costs over $6K US and it weighs at least 5 lbs. I have to make a definite point to carry it around while looking for wildlife photo opportunities.
Thus the heavy, expensive rig is taken down a notch. Still, those things you state are correct. I wonder why the largest, most expensive rig was your choice. The weight, the size, the inconvenience are all choices you didn't have to make. Smaller, great cameras and zooms are available.
I just read about the new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra that was introduced today and it is quite sobering. Four cameras, raw capability, AI processing, 4K video, etc. and it costs "only" $1200 US.
And a decent chunk of that is the camera module, but not nearly a majority. None of those cameras producing RAW are nearly the same quality as the R5 sensor. 4K on a tiny sensor with a tiny lens is still a world away from 4K on the R5, even though they use the same spec. call out....I mean, "4K" just triggers part of our brain that says this video is going to blow me away.
I know that this subject has been beat to death, but the vast majority of people will never need an R series or other mirrorless or DSLR camera and I am reluctant
What does "the vast majority of people" ever have to do with anything? This is another ad populum argument that is, on its face, fallacious. The vast majority of people also will never use RAW or the manual controls on that S21. They'll never care about composition or framing or lighting or noise or detail or dynamic range: they'll point the camera and take a picture. AND THEN some of those billions of images will be amazing and by the shear existence of large numbers and the principle of normal distribution (i.e. the bell curve) those amazing images will be used as proof that the S21 camera is all you ACTUALLY ever really need.
, but depressed, to say that I can only see the continued death spiral of the traditional camera industry.
There hasn't been much decrease in ILC or DSLR sales. Point and shoots have decreased dramatically. But let's think about this for just one minute.
There were decades of film cameras where some of the big convenience innovations were instant Polaroids or those cheap disposable film cameras. No internet to speak of, no Facebook or Instagram for sharing, and not even e-mail or widespread computer ownership to speak of. Then in the 90's the internet and e-mail and not long after social media that wasn't even all that photography based leading eventually to social media services that were entirely photography based.
It wasn't long after that digital photography became the new, hot technology. And once cameras were cheap enough and in demand the innovation began apace. As with any computing technology they started off pretty crappy but oh my gosh all the convenience. Then people stopped debating if film was better because it was so plainly obvious that 18MP with 10 stops of dynamic range was way better.
And what happens to highly profitable, fast moving innovation technology sectors after a decade or so? Technology improvements plateau because the easy gains have been used up and then comes the hard work of slow improvements and replacing old reliable tech like PDAF with really incredible (but not shockingly world shattering) DPAF and the like. Things get better, lighter, cheaper and those are worth money but the big things like image quality, shooting speed, EVF's quality, dynamic range and the things that only enthusiasts are really impressed with and are willing to keep spending money on take time to mature.
And once a threshold is met, typical consumers are happy and they don't buy a new camera every year or two but instead keep the latest one until it breaks.
Even without phones sales of cameras were eventually going to crash. And it just so happens that camera technology matured enough to be cheap enough and good enough to.....wait for it......be part of a new smartphone market. Do you think that's a coincidence? The camera market made sensors good enough and cheap enough that when people saw a phone with a camera and the images weren't pure suck (like the garbage cameras on the old flip phones) and the images on the tiny screen looked good for once they probably started taking a lot of images for the first time in their lives.
I live in Florida, within several miles of the Gulf Coast. Many people go to watch and photograph sunsets. Virtually everyone is using a smart phone or tablet to do selfies against the setting sun or to take pictures of the sunset itself.
Again, you're connecting things that are entirely unrelated. Do you think in the past those people would have had any camera at all? Would have EVEN BEEN THERE if there wasn't a chance to humble brag on Facebook about #thegoodlife or whatever the hashtag is these days for miserable people who appear super happy in their curated online fake lives?
Doubtful. I'd say the vast majority of images captured these days are coming from people who never would have even purchased a camera in the fist place, but when they bought their internet phone the camera was glued on and the lure of Facebook and Instagram is more than the human mind can resist.
Ten or more years ago, people would see me with my DSLR and ask me to take pictures of them with their digital cameras. Now, no one asks to have their picture taken. Quite a change!
Because WHO EVEN HAD A CAMERA when they went out into public?
Yeah, this topic has been beaten to death. And things have changed a lot. For the most part I think people taking more photographs is a good thing. I think the perception of the changes is far, far too simplified and influenced by anecdotes rather than logic and evidence.
