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Kinda. The lunch table is shrinking too. Camera sales peaked in 2010, with 121M units sold. By 2019, they were at 15M units sold, and 2020 was a disastrous year

Kinda. The lunch table is shrinking too. Camera sales peaked in 2010, with 121M units sold. By 2019, they were at 15M units sold, and 2020 was a disastrous year, with COVID19, and it's not clear if there will be a rebound. My camera is from shortly after 2010, incidentally, and I don't see a need to upgrade. At the same time, mounts are chaos. I have many thousands of dollars of lenses, and I'm not ready to make that kind of investment again, especially with the kind of uncertainty we have in the market. Nikon and Canon likely got in too late, but the flip side is their mounts are better designs than E-mount. Coming in years later, they learned from Sony's mistakes. If they don't die, Sony might be squeezed out, or might make yet another mount. Sony's support for A-mount all these years was less than acceptable. What I would buy into is a mount-agnostic camera which adapted to A-mount, F-mount, K-mount, and EF-mount lenses with everything working (autofocus, video, etc.), and conversely, lenses which adopted to multiple mounts. Sigma almost did that, but mount conversions cost about as much as new lenses. There ought to be a swapable part.

chaoticmass 5y ago
In 2018 I bought a Sony A99II to use with my old Minolta A-mount lenses. I have a hunch it is going to be the last A-mount camera they ever make. If/when I buy another camera body, it will be an E-mount and I'll use an adapter to fit my A-mount glass.
stan_rogers 5y ago
You missed that boat - Tamron was doing that eons ago with their Adaptall systems. It was easy to do when everything was mechanical - aperture setting tabs on the lenses telling the body what was going on, basically an all-or-nothing lever arrangement doing the stop-down, manual focus, etc. With everything being electronic and "you'll need to reverse-engineer that" proprietary, a simple swapable arse on an otherwise generic lens really isn't in the cards anymore.
nucleardog 5y ago
> My camera is from shortly after 2010, incidentally, and I don't see a need to upgrade. Mostly same boat. I had (well, still have) a Nikon D70 from 2004. Just last year I benched it in favour of a Nikon D300s from 2009. I've bought newer lenses because lenses have appreciably improved over the years, but in general I really don't think the camera tech has moved that far for most people's application. I love Nikon, but I've spent... maybe $500 with them directly over my lifetime (35mm prime + 50mm prime bought new). With the F-mount remaining more-or-less compatible for over 60 years, there's a huge used market for their lenses and the older camera bodies are still workhorses a decade later. It's sad, but the fact that they haven't been trying to wring every last cent out of the market with different lens mounts, planned obsolescence in the bodies, etc may in fact be a significant factor in their downfall.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Same here. I've spent more on adapters for F-mount lenses on foreign bodies than I ever spent directly on new Nikkor lenses.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Recently improved tech is about recording video, nowadays it's also big use case as much as photo.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Definitely. My camera is "only" from 2016 (an Olympus EM-5 II), but the video on it is absolutely subpar by current standards and I'd want to get something newer if I did more video. I also find that the autofocus tracking on swiftly moving objects (e.g. birds) isn't as good as it could be.
Scene_Cast2 5y ago
Z-mount has the largest diameter and the shortest flange distance of any full-frame camera, so there's plenty of AF-ready adapters to most other mounts.
hef19898 5y ago
Just restarted being serious, kind of, at photography with a D200, 18-140 Nikkor and a FX Tamron up to 300. And the pictures are nice! I guess cameras, especially sensors, got good enough around 2010 to not make that much of a difference anymore. Which leaves lenses, like always. And the difference between FX and DX. I don't think Nikon will go under so. There lenses are decent, as are the Z-series bodies. And then there are people like me, that won't switch to another brand. Of the big three so, I do see Nikon the weakest. Not because of their products, but because Sony and Canon have additional revenue streams to cameras. If Nikon goes under, that would be quite said so. And the time to gear up maybe faster on a Z mount system. One can dream of a Z7 and and Z6II, can't one?
alexvoda 5y ago
I do not consider Canon's mounts to be better than Sony's E-mount. Canon is stuck with 2 mounts, the EF-M and the RF, with the RF being the more future proof one. But there is no way to adapt the EF-M to the RF. And there is no way to adapt any other MILC mount to RF. Meanwhile, the Nikon Z-mount is as close as you can get to a universal mount. You can adapt almost everything E-mount, everything Laica, everything DSLR. And there are videos on YouTube doing just this. Its a combination of the largest diameter with the shortest flange distance. I forsee Canon getting stuck in indecision.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  I foresee the Canon EF-M competing favorably with the Nikon One mount. One major limitation of E-mount is diameter. E-mount is 46.1mm to Canon's 54mm and Nikon's 55mm. I think a lot of the other limitations can be fixed, but that one is a bit tough for Sony. That means they will run into issues with vert fast/wide aperture lenses. Nikon goes down to f/0.95 on their 58mm. Nikon seems like the clear winner here.

chaoticmass 5y ago

In 2018 I bought a Sony A99II to use with my old Minolta A-mount lenses. I have a hunch it is going to be the last A-mount camera they ever make. If/when I buy another camera body, it will be an E-mount and I'll use an adapter to fit my A-mount glass.

stan_rogers 5y ago

You missed that boat - Tamron was doing that eons ago with their Adaptall systems. It was easy to do when everything was mechanical - aperture setting tabs on the lenses telling the body what was going on, basically an all-or-nothing lever arrangement doing the stop-down, manual focus, etc. With everything being electronic and "you'll need to reverse-engineer that" proprietary, a simple swapable arse on an otherwise generic lens really isn't in the cards anymore.

nucleardog 5y ago

> My camera is from shortly after 2010, incidentally, and I don't see a need to upgrade. Mostly same boat. I had (well, still have) a Nikon D70 from 2004. Just last year I benched it in favour of a Nikon D300s from 2009. I've bought newer lenses because lenses have appreciably improved over the years, but in general I really don't think the camera tech has moved that far for most people's application. I love Nikon, but I've spent... maybe $500 with them directly over my lifetime (35mm prime + 50mm prime bought new). With the F-mount remaining more-or-less compatible for over 60 years, there's a huge used market for their lenses and the older camera bodies are still workhorses a decade later. It's sad, but the fact that they haven't been trying to wring every last cent out of the market with different lens mounts, planned obsolescence in the bodies, etc may in fact be a significant factor in their downfall.

jeffbee 5y ago
Same here. I've spent more on adapters for F-mount lenses on foreign bodies than I ever spent directly on new Nikkor lenses.
fomine3 5y ago
Recently improved tech is about recording video, nowadays it's also big use case as much as photo.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  Definitely. My camera is "only" from 2016 (an Olympus EM-5 II), but the video on it is absolutely subpar by current standards and I'd want to get something newer if I did more video. I also find that the autofocus tracking on swiftly moving objects (e.g. birds) isn't as good as it could be.

Scene_Cast2 5y ago

Z-mount has the largest diameter and the shortest flange distance of any full-frame camera, so there's plenty of AF-ready adapters to most other mounts.

hef19898 5y ago

Just restarted being serious, kind of, at photography with a D200, 18-140 Nikkor and a FX Tamron up to 300. And the pictures are nice! I guess cameras, especially sensors, got good enough around 2010 to not make that much of a difference anymore. Which leaves lenses, like always. And the difference between FX and DX. I don't think Nikon will go under so. There lenses are decent, as are the Z-series bodies. And then there are people like me, that won't switch to another brand. Of the big three so, I do see Nikon the weakest. Not because of their products, but because Sony and Canon have additional revenue streams to cameras. If Nikon goes under, that would be quite said so. And the time to gear up maybe faster on a Z mount system. One can dream of a Z7 and and Z6II, can't one?

alexvoda 5y ago

I do not consider Canon's mounts to be better than Sony's E-mount. Canon is stuck with 2 mounts, the EF-M and the RF, with the RF being the more future proof one. But there is no way to adapt the EF-M to the RF. And there is no way to adapt any other MILC mount to RF. Meanwhile, the Nikon Z-mount is as close as you can get to a universal mount. You can adapt almost everything E-mount, everything Laica, everything DSLR. And there are videos on YouTube doing just this. Its a combination of the largest diameter with the shortest flange distance. I forsee Canon getting stuck in indecision.

murgindrag 5y ago
I foresee the Canon EF-M competing favorably with the Nikon One mount. One major limitation of E-mount is diameter. E-mount is 46.1mm to Canon's 54mm and Nikon's 55mm. I think a lot of the other limitations can be fixed, but that one is a bit tough for Sony. That means they will run into issues with vert fast/wide aperture lenses. Nikon goes down to f/0.95 on their 58mm. Nikon seems like the clear winner here.