The Downward spiral of cameras

[Deleted]

Over the weekend I stopped by the largest camera store in the state. It has been around since the end of World War II. "Camera" always was part of the store name. As I was entering the mall branch of the store I noticed the sign outside said something about "Adventure" rather than cameras. I asked the senior salesman there (who is almost as old as me) what was going on?

"All the staff from the different branches met with the owners last week," he said. "The owner said that nationally, in 2014, 60 percent fewer cameras were imported than in the previous year. So we are trying to diversify and not be identified as just a camera store."

This store sells everything from point and shoots the high end Nikons. Those statistics are pretty staggering. The reason isn't difficult to figure, however. Anywhere you go, whether on vacation or just around town, if there is something worth photographing, most of the picture taking is being done with cell phones. In fact, since cell phones became common, a lot more people are taking pictures on an everyday basis. Now we can argue all we want about how phone don't produce the image quality, but the younger generations in particular could care less. They pack around a device that is a phone, can answer just about any question you can think to ask, shoot HD video and take still photographs. They don't care that the images probably can't be blown up to 16 x 20. All they want is some sort of image.

A few years ago the forums were discussing how long film photography would be around. A better question today would be "How long will cameras be around?" You may think I'm getting carried away. But I would be willing to wager that within five years, dedicated cameras will be pretty much a thing of the past. Oh sure, there will still be some high end DSLRs for commercial work, but everyday folks will be recording virtually all their images with their phones.

Think about it. . . .a 60 percent drop in camera imports it one year!!! The times they are a changing.

W.

[Stephen]

I think this has been going on longer than we realise, digital cameras began selling outside the photographic shops, and brands like Sony and Panasonic came along from outside the camera industry. In the UK the trend towards closure of specialist shops was about 2000/2005 period, with a steep downwards slope afterwards. The final nail was the collapse of Kodak, who lost the point of cameras only being there to make photographs, it is the photographs that you are selling, not the cameras. With so many shots being taken on phones etc, and the lack of people getting paper copies advancing, just where are we heading? It has got to be towards devices that "take and display" the shots, which the industry is trying harder to push now.

Stephen.

[Deleted]

there was a guy on our Russian cruise last year who shot all his pictures and videos with an ipad. Not exactly the easiest device to shoot with and looked rather silly at times but I saw some of his images and they were quite good -- at least when displayed on an ipad.
W.

[truls]

Then the mobile phone producers have to make much better inphone cameras, glass lenses, bigger sensor etc. But cameras are going into the phone Department. I know the Samsung NX 2000 has a user Interface like a phone.

[paulhofseth]

Maybe a glut of images will satiate the users as time goes by, so that only a select few matter enough to conserve.

Whatever happens, selection and storage will remain. The tiny memories of iPhones are quickly saturated. Then deletion and finally transfer to storage of the surviving must-have pictures is needed.

As old phones are bypassed by fashion, get dropped or drowned , the storage business will thrive. WIth enough pictures hijacked, cloudsites broke, broken or orphaned, even personal storage systems may thrive.

p.

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2015 13:55:33 GMT -5 truls said:

Then the mobile phone producers have to make much better inphone cameras, glass lenses, bigger sensor etc. But cameras are going into the phone Department. I know the Samsung NX 2000 has a user Interface like a phone.

The point is that the new generations of picture takers DON'T CARE if the lenses are better or made of glass. All they want is an image they can sent to friends to view on the their phones.

[philbirch]

Jan 9, 2015 20:37:56 GMT -5 @wayne said:

Jan 9, 2015 13:55:33 GMT -5 truls said:

Then the mobile phone producers have to make much better inphone cameras, glass lenses, bigger sensor etc. But cameras are going into the phone Department. I know the Samsung NX 2000 has a user Interface like a phone.

The point is that the new generations of picture takers DON'T CARE if the lenses are better or made of glass. All they want is an image they can sent to friends to view on the their phones.

I totally agree. A similar situation with music technology. There are systems available for awesome quality music, but it is the buffs who want that. Your average punter will accept lossy mp3's if they can stream online or play from their phone. They just want the tune.

[truls]

Wayne and Phil, I got the point know.

Here is a "Phone":


Collectible?

[rickoleson]

We've all observed the painful decline of film, and of dedicated camera stores. The irony may be that the most endangered species of all is the digital point & shoot that was largely responsible for the demise of film: having no particular aesthetic character or charm, it is easy prey for replacement by cell phones and for the most part I think this has already happened. I think there will continue to be niche interest in film cameras, at least those made of real metal and possessing some quality and character (similar to that for vinyl LP records which I have seen reappearing in mainstream shops within the past year); but the digital market will probably sort out between high end SLRs needed by professionals, and cheaper copies for wannabes like myself, at one end, and cell phones and iPads at the other.

If you've noticed, in the collectible film area, things like Leica and Rolleiflex have held their value pretty well through all of this while a good quality 35mm SLR can be had for $15 or $20 without much of a struggle. I think the same thing will happen (or has already happened) in digital with the middle ground disappearing.

[Deleted]

Excellent assessment, Rick. I was one of those who in the early 2000s thought it would be a decade or more before digital would take over the market. Then we went to Europe in 2007 and China in 2008 and I don't think I saw more than a half dozen travelers packing film cameras. . . . mostly digital point and shoots with a few DSLRs thrown in for good measure. In 2013 we went to Russia and the majority of people were using phones or Ipads ( I still don't understand shooting trip images with a tablet). The area where phone are still somewhat lacking is in true zoom capabilities but I suspect that will be rectified soon.

The big change came when commercial photo processors caught up with technology. Today I uploaded images taken over the past year with digital P&Ss and cell phones to Costco and when we went to the store a couple of hours later we picked up the prints -- costing less than 20 dollars for 150 4x6 prints. I suspect we'll see film developing and printing equipment only in specialized labs soon.

W.

[genazzano]

As that brilliant businessman once said, "You press the button, we do the rest". The "We" is now the phone or iPad but that vast number of people have never been interested in the quality of the images, but rather being able to simply just press the button. The most successful camera in history (until recently that is) was the Kodak Instamatic. I was looking at photos taken by the Instamatics and they are indeed poor but that had little effect on the popularity of that camera. Perhaps the portion of the population that is interested in cameras and lenses and the quality of images will diminish with the advent of the phone cameras or ergonomically challenged iPad cameras, but I am skeptical.

[truls]

Well, it boils Down to what matter for most of us, low cost and availability. People not interested in photography are however photographing because of their Phones. In a way there are New kind of photographers.

Are those cameraphones collectible? Or does the phone part exclude them for camera collectors?

[rickoleson]

On a related subject, it pained me today to discover that "Contaflex" is now the name of a brand of contact lenses:
www.contamac.com/Products/Hydrophilic/Contaflex.aspx

[genazzano]

I would think that the use of the word Contaflex would bring in the Intellectual Property lawyers since its use is in the optics field. Perhaps it wouldn't be important if Contaflex was to be used as the name of some laxative, maybe. However, didn't Zeiss protect this name even though it hadn't been used in decades? I guess not.

Regarding collecting old camera cellphones, I think that is already starting. Collection of old cell phones is pretty big these days.

How does any of this impact on a bunch of people who collect and discuss cameras made 40, 50, even 120 years ago? Many of us use these plastic computers disguised as cameras to make images of our old cameras to display on the Internet. Even if we use film cameras, we must digitized the images in order to send them off to others in the world. I'm not sure whether it would mean much to me if a Digital camera happened to have a telephone in it. MG, our digital cameras have GPS and WiFi.

[John Farrell]

I bought my cellphone in 2006, and it still does a fine job of texts and calls. The start of a collection?