Apart from the fact that some cannot get past the dollar bit (it was only $5 back then...) I think the problem is that we all buy a lot more stuff now than we did. just think of how many items fill our homes compared with,say, what our grandparents had.
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Has the digital camera industry hit a wall?
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Tom_N
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The Canon AE-1 Program film SLR, introduced in 1976, cost 81,000 yen (including a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens). It was the first microprocessor-equipped SLR, and it went on to sell over 5.7 million units.
https://global.canon/en/c-museum/product/film93.html
https://www.678vintagecameras.ca/blog/the-canon-ae-1-a-new-kind-of-slr
In today's market, 81,000 Japanese yen are roughly equivalent to 623.05 U.S. dollars, and adjusting for inflation, 623.05 dollars in 1976 are roughly equivalent to $3,165.72 dollars, today.
You can get Nikon D3000s and 5000s (entry-level DSLRs) with an 18-55mm lens for $650 and $800, respectively. Canon EOS Rebel T7s and SL3s for $480 and $750. Pentax K70s for $700. Even the prices for the two mirrorless camera kits that you listed appear to be less than the price for a Canon AE-1 film SLR kit, in inflation-adjusted terms.
There was enough of a market for SLRs during the film years to sustain Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony, and Olympus. There was also a large market for compact film cameras – and camera makers tried out at least five formats on the public – not counting instant film. These included 35mm, APS, 110 cartridge film, 126 cartridge film, and disc film . Disc film negatives had less than 1/10th the size of 35mm ones so "the resulting prints often disappointed the consumer."
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Overrank
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You have to be careful in doing that conversion, Canon will likely have sold the AE-1 Program for a significantly different price than the exchange rate would suggest. For example for a long time prices in the UK on technology were often numerically equivalent to the USA, even when one £ was equivalent to 1.8 $.
So if price in USA was $999, price in UK would be £999 even when that was $1,500 - $1,800 based on the £:$ exchange rate. This was particularly noticeable with things like computers. Even if you do that conversion you need the 1976 exchange rate rather than todays. Ideally you want the US retail price in 1976 of the AE-1. I often see £2k - £3k quoted as inflation adjusted prices for pro SLRs from the 1970s. Consumer cameras would be less
e.g. A Canon AV-1 was £109 in 1980 which £400 - £500 today (source Argos catalogue for 1980 - https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no14-1980-autumnwinter/261 and https://www.inflationtool.com/british-pound/1980-to-present-value?year2=2022&frequency=yearly ). A Nikon Z50 with lens is ~£1200 today. A OM-10 was £123 so would be a similar price to the AV-1 today
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Focusing on the image quality of smartphone photos misses what the majority of beginning and enthusiast photographers value them for. It's the user interface; the experience of doing photography with a smartphone camera that makes them so popular. It's easy to make an image with a creative look and - something nobody does with digital ILCs - share that masterpiece with all your friends and family through social media.
Annual sales of digital ILCs peaked a decade ago. The ILC bodies made today are superior on many levels. Their resolution, low light performance, autofocus, burst rate, video capabilities...all are noticeably, measurably better today than a decade ago. Unfortunately, the user interface of the digital ILC is essentially unchanged. And for that reason, smartphones have continued to erode sales of dedicated cameras.
To paraphrase Agent Smith, "You hear that CaNikOny... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Good bye, CaNikOny."
Admittedly, that's hyperbole...but maybe not too far from the eventual truth. The dedicated camera industry isn't going away. It isn't dying. It's just contracting to the point of becoming irrelevant to image-making. Sales will fall below 3 million units globally by 2025. Those will largely be high-end products. It's a niche market but the customer demographic is very desirable to advertisers.
I enjoy using digital ILCs, choosing my settings, making photos, processing and exporting images. The photos I make reflect my aesthetic but are closer to documenting moments than to inventing fictional tales. I don't ever see myself migrating from ILCs to smartphones for photography that matters.
But every year, more emerging photographers choose to stay with the smartphone platform and use that technology to do amazing work. By this time a decade from now, DP Review will be running articles recalling wistfully that time in the history of photography when professionals used dedicated cameras and smartphones were scorned. The article will probably cite a survey taken at the 2032 WPPI virtual convention in which 85% (or more) of professional wedding photographers cite the photos having the greatest meaning to their clients as having been made with smartphones.
It's clear to me that the dedicated ILC market has been in this decade-long decline primarily because the manufacturers never evolved the user interface. Not only have they not adopted the most-liked features of smartphones, ILC manufacturers have turned back the clock to develop retro products so they can enjoy a brief boost in sales to oldsters like me.
In five years, I'll still be out in the forest photographing wildlife with my digital ILC. Smartphone content creators will be producing fictionalized versions of their own lives. The stories shared to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will be about fictional persons the creators imagine themselves being. It'll be like the Matrix. People will have the lives they live as themselves in their homes and the fictional lives they lead as characters on social media.
Fogel70
Senior Member
It is not really a decline, but it is going back to normal.
The only reason for the short lived digital ILC bubble was that during this time only ILC that could give decent image quality. So a lot of people not really interested in ILC bought a ILC with one kit lens for being able to access the IQ it gave. But soon they realized that they did not enjoy lugging around a large ILC. And once smartphones had decent IQ they never looked back on using ILC again.
This ILC bubble will not come back, so now it is only enthusiasts that buy ILC, just like in the film days.
Strobist
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I believe you - and it scares me on so many levels.
The cognitive dissonance for young(er) people between the perfect online life / persona, and the real world reality where the young ones are losing on all fronts.
The debt:
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educationdata.org
The Gig economy (even for white collar work)
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www.brookings.edu
The housing crisis:
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fee.org
Social Media and its connection to mental health:
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Really, this is like watching a car crash in slow motion, - and it will be ugly.
But rest assured that the Pharma industry will be there, ready to sell some pick-me-up drugs to a couple of billions young people around the world.
It scares me, it scares me a lot.
Redhenry
Senior Member
I know this is drifting away from the topic but I have seen this student loan crisis coming for a long time. When UK prime minister Tony Blair said in the 1990s that he wanted 50% of all young people to go to university, I was horrified. I don’t want to come across as someone who thinks everything was better in the olden days but when I did my university degree in the mid-1970s, I had to spend three years at university and a year abroad to become fluent in a foreign language. All final year essays (and there were a lot of these) were in the foreign language.I spent another year working abroad to improve the fluency, before taking yet another year to complete a teaching qualification. Twenty years ago, I re-trained to work in the criminal Justice system. This required a total, over two years, of twelve essays. I was contacted by the tutor after three of these to be told that I was making life difficult for myself by including lots of research which was unnecessary. All I needed to do, she told me, was prove to the people marking the essays that I had read the source material they prescribed (about the same quantity of reading material contained in the average magazine). The academic component of that “degree” took me approximately 150 hours over 20 months. You can probably guess which of my two university qualifications I value more! And here are thousands of young people saddling themselves with debt in return for almost worthless qualifications which will not enable them to take up well-paid jobs which, in turn, would allow them to pay off their loans easily.
tbcass
Forum Pro
4 of my grandkids are in high school. I often see students with DSLRs at events. I have to admit it surprises me but I do see it. I have to assume they are students interested in photography.
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Tom
sportyaccordy
Forum Pro
We have the generations before us to thank for all this.
Thanks for the decades of govt deficits and erosion of currency value creating debt we'll never be able to pay back.
Thanks for embracing the exploitative business model that deifies capital and demonizes labor.
Thanks for destroying the kinds of public services and depts that helped people manage their mental health.
None of this happened in a vacuum; much of it was set into place before this generation was born, so rather than blaming young people for coping with the hands they were dealt let's lay the blame at the feet of those responsible for where we are today.
sportyaccordy
Forum Pro
Good grief. Whats with all the old people here feeling the need to dump on young people? Give it a rest. A lot of their problems are your generation's fault.
I agree with the camera piece of your post, but I think you've confused convenience for "user interface". The mass market has always been driven by convenience. The ILC boom was driven by the confluence of factors that made them the most convenient way to get photos of decent IQ for a short period.
Then, leading up to 2012, a bunch of things happened in quick succession:
- 4G mobile internet & phones
- Cheap online photo storage
- Social media platforms launch
Mackiesback
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Biggest boom/bust here in the states recently was adult coloring books. We went from almost nothing, to art pencil companies increasing production tenfold, back to near nothing in a matter of a couple years.
BGD300V1
Senior Member
'Digital killed the analog star'
At first very expensive and not as good as film, just more timely.
Over time incremental change in digital overtook film where there was little room for change. Any advances there in AF, AE, etc. were transferred easily to digital.
The innovation came about in output with the addition of video with the Nikon D90. This started a sub-track of increasing video capability.
Manufacturing technology made more and more Megapixels possible even if they weren't really necessary because the images were most commonly presented on digital media or published on forms that made their own changes before display.
That display change meant that you threw away most of those expensive MPs before anyone saw your work.
Why wear a watch, your phone can tell you the time? Why carry a camera when your phone an take a picture? Why bother to think? Siri,Alexa, Google, or Cortana will tell you all you need to know.
Does the world end when your battery dies?
At first very expensive and not as good as film, just more timely.
Over time incremental change in digital overtook film where there was little room for change. Any advances there in AF, AE, etc. were transferred easily to digital.
The innovation came about in output with the addition of video with the Nikon D90. This started a sub-track of increasing video capability.
Manufacturing technology made more and more Megapixels possible even if they weren't really necessary because the images were most commonly presented on digital media or published on forms that made their own changes before display.
That display change meant that you threw away most of those expensive MPs before anyone saw your work.
Why wear a watch, your phone can tell you the time? Why carry a camera when your phone an take a picture? Why bother to think? Siri,Alexa, Google, or Cortana will tell you all you need to know.
Does the world end when your battery dies?
Who's "dumping" on young people. Please quote where I've criticized young people. I'm one of the few - perhaps only - persons on this forum who's written extensively about how young people (e.g. emerging photograhers) are using cameras to evolve literary works in new and creative directions.
You, on the other hand, read a comment about how cameras will be used and assume a truckload of judgemental garbage that wasn't said. You're putting words and intentions in my mouth that exist only in your mind.
A lot of the criticism of AI tools and other recent advances in photographic technologies comes from an old school perspective that photograhy supports text and must be documentary in essence. What I've been seeing and writing about is the use of cameras to produce visual literary works in a range of genres that have long abd well-establushed places in literature. That includes works of fiction.
Saying that people will be using cameras to produce fictional narratives about characters they portray online isn't a criticism. It's an acknowledgement of the direction content creation is going and the central role of the smartphone in that evolution.
Yup. Thom Hogan has a couple recent articles around this topic, one comparing the ILC brands and one talking about ILCs v. smartphones:
https://bythom.com/newsviews/low-margin-versus-high.html
https://bythom.com/newsviews/smartphones-crush-cameras.html
The second of those has a particularly interesting chart showing Nikon's predications for an ILC market that's nearly at rock bottom, but continues to shrink to 4.5 million units over the next couple years before flatlining ... but more interesting, as the total unit volume drops, the number of "mid/high" end bodies increases from 2.7M to 3M (2/3 the total). So it's predicting a modest increase in high end bodies and a more significant decrease in low end bodies. And that's the market that, according to Nikon, the camera makers are fighting over going forward. The second article suggests that Nikon and Sony (and Fuji) are pretty well adjusted to that new market and are positioned to fight for their pieces of what's left, while Canon's share of the market is overweighted in the low end stuff so as the market shifts to high end, it stands to lose the most at this time. (It will still hold the top market share even after the shift). It gets its 50% market share with 75% of the low end market and 37% of the high end market, so lower
Interesting reading - $1000 is going to be the new "bottom" that most manufacturers will want to target and $2000+ is where they want most of their cameras targeted, because the volume isn't there to make money on lower end stuff any more.
- Dennis
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Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com
https://bythom.com/newsviews/low-margin-versus-high.html
https://bythom.com/newsviews/smartphones-crush-cameras.html
The second of those has a particularly interesting chart showing Nikon's predications for an ILC market that's nearly at rock bottom, but continues to shrink to 4.5 million units over the next couple years before flatlining ... but more interesting, as the total unit volume drops, the number of "mid/high" end bodies increases from 2.7M to 3M (2/3 the total). So it's predicting a modest increase in high end bodies and a more significant decrease in low end bodies. And that's the market that, according to Nikon, the camera makers are fighting over going forward. The second article suggests that Nikon and Sony (and Fuji) are pretty well adjusted to that new market and are positioned to fight for their pieces of what's left, while Canon's share of the market is overweighted in the low end stuff so as the market shifts to high end, it stands to lose the most at this time. (It will still hold the top market share even after the shift). It gets its 50% market share with 75% of the low end market and 37% of the high end market, so lower
Interesting reading - $1000 is going to be the new "bottom" that most manufacturers will want to target and $2000+ is where they want most of their cameras targeted, because the volume isn't there to make money on lower end stuff any more.
- Dennis
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Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com
tbcass
Forum Pro
In what way is he dumping on young people?
Now you are dumping on older people.
Brian Chichester
Senior Member
I rate myself a serious hobbyist photographer (note I didn't say a good photographer). I've been using various digital kit for 18 years now, and I've bought and sold many models to get to the current "stable" of user cameras on my shelf .
But the newest model in the line-up is a 2015 release, and I've not seen the need to move on to anything more modern. Money is not the problem - rather diminishing incremental improvements and a move towards serious cameras being more video-centric. And I have been a little surprised by the durability and longevity of digital cameras.
I'm a stills photographer only, and I don't do sports, BIF or extreme wildlife, so my 7-year plus kit does all that I need. I don't say I'm typical, but digital cameras reached a level of performance some years back that was ample for me. So perhaps the camera industry is a victim of its own success, making cameras that exceed the requirements of most users, and last too long.
But the newest model in the line-up is a 2015 release, and I've not seen the need to move on to anything more modern. Money is not the problem - rather diminishing incremental improvements and a move towards serious cameras being more video-centric. And I have been a little surprised by the durability and longevity of digital cameras.
I'm a stills photographer only, and I don't do sports, BIF or extreme wildlife, so my 7-year plus kit does all that I need. I don't say I'm typical, but digital cameras reached a level of performance some years back that was ample for me. So perhaps the camera industry is a victim of its own success, making cameras that exceed the requirements of most users, and last too long.
007peter
Forum Pro
absolutely True. AT&T shut down its 2G/3G service on 12/31/2021 forcing me to uprade my 6yrs old Samsung Note 4 with single camera to a cheap Samsung S20 FE with 3 camera lens with computational bokeh & Night Mode.
Since I still have my M43 Panasonic GF6 with fast 20mm F/1.7 prime, I did a side by side comparison and the result wasn't even closed.
Samsung Smartphone consistently wins with
Flawless White Balance, neither too warm not too cold
Shockingly Good Handheld Night Mode, without Blur。Smartphone can take photo in complete pitch dark without a tripod using computational assistance. Where as my traditional M43/20f1.7
- Struggle to find focus in the dark
- Struggle with inconsistent White Balance
- Struggle with poor color saturation @iso3200
- Struggle with Noisy iso3200,that plagued all m43
- Handheld Night Mode is a joke on GF6, it's cpu is simply too slow resulting in blurry images
- Tripod is require for any night photo.
In additions to Smartphone tech, I think Pandemic Lockdown put the Nail in camera sales decline
- Can't go out celebrating Bday in restaurant = less family photo, less need for a dedicated camera
- No Concert, No fun mass Social Events allow
- Part Shortage drive up the cost of Camera component
- Part Shortage prompted Sony to kill off its Consumer Friendly A6100 entry camera in favor making more profitable Expensive FF camera
- as Camera Price Increase, SALES DROP 90%
- Further deterring Young people from trying out camera
- Aging Baby Boomer and GenXer = rapid decline in its Consumer Base.
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Smaug01
Veteran Member
↑ I agree so far...
Here, I disagree. People who bought Digital Rebels earlier wanted something better than what they could get from point & shoot digitals, but not enough to spend a TON of money on a higher end DSLR. Nowadays, smartphones have almost completely replaced compact digicams and partly or largely replaced DSLRs.
Yes, except for the newly-created need of always-there portability. ;-)
Yep.
I don't think the telephoto market will EVER be adequately served by smartphone cameras. To my understanding, proper telephoto lenses are inherently too big to be reasonably integrated into mass market smartphones, even with the small sensors that smartphones have.
BackToNature1
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Well the Global Populations grows each year, so I don't buy the saturation idea. What I do buy into, more folks are more than happy with their so called smartphones, IQ. So far more folks really don't see any need to buy a Real Camera.
I am a believer there was going to an decline in traffic for dedicated camera reviews sites regardless of the number camera sales. Most sites are boring an really don't bring anything new an or important to photography.
So although it's not being commonly spoke of yet, the double whammy for the Camera Industry could be an impending Global Recession. An that would potentially knock off more than just a couple of brands.
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