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I'm seeing a lot of people discussing sales numbers; here is one article showing the decline in terms of both lens and interchangeable lens cameras shipped: htt

• deleted 4y ago
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• cameldrv 4y ago
  Look again at that chart. It's even worse for cameras. It's almost a 75% decline.
• georgemcbay 4y ago
  > starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good. ILC cameras also got really good. I'm not at all doubting that smartphones are the primary cannibalization vector, but even for people who prefer to use cameras with significantly larger sensors than can be put into a smartphone I think the cameras themselves reached a point years ago where it became difficult even for ILC enthusiasts to justify upgrades on a regular basis because what people already owned was "Good Enough". I reached this point with the Sony A7R Mk3 and other people probably reached this point sooner. For years it felt like Canon and Nikon were kind of aware this would happen with ILCs and were dragging their feet on camera body tech making incremental upgrades behind where the technology should have been if they were competing full speed, and then other vendors like Sony just came smashing in without being part of this implicit agreement and pushed camera body tech along extremely quickly for a few years (with Canon/Nikon having to follow along to some degree to keep up) and it didn't take many iterations of this pushing the technology to where it could be for ILC camera bodies to be something you feel no itch to upgrade from year to year because the shiny new thing is an extremely marginal upgrade. So the cannibalization of the market probably had two fronts, the larger one from smartphones, and a smaller but still significant one from "Good Enough" (which is an issue smartphones are starting to run into as well).
  • bdavisx 4y ago
    Yep, my wife and I used to do wedding photography and from that period we have 2 Canon 5D Mk II's and 2 40D's along with 3 L lenses, some primes and a few cheaper zooms. There's absolutely no reason we would ever need another camera. Even people with a single body wouldn't ever need another one unless they broke it.
    • tagrun 4y ago
      I'm guessing you don't record videos then. In terms of video capabilities, Canon 5D Mk II is limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 1080p H.264 recording at 30fps, maxing out at 12 minutes of recording. That is a far cry from 10-bit (or 12-bit) 4:2:2 4K, 6K or even 8K RAW or ProRes at 120fps or higher with unlimited recording from a similarly priced camera in today's money. (It's also limited in terms of RAW photo as well though: the best recording option is 8-bit 10MP RAW) No phone comes anywhere near that either, not to mention the lenses for phones can't compete with the real interchangeable lenses. The difference probably doesn't matter to someone who is just going to record his baby walking around and watch it on a 7 inch screen, but of course that's not the target audience for those cameras.
      • lmm 4y ago
        Videos are not what most people mean by "photography", 10-bit is mostly a gimmick (there are situations where it gives a real advantage, but they're niche), and higher-than-1080p resolutions are honestly pretty marginal a lot of the time. 30fps is pretty awful though.
      • t0bia_s 4y ago
        10bit and 4:2:2 is only for editing in post, majority of consumers don't need that.
        • tagrun 4y ago
          If you read the last sentence of the post that you're replying to, I already said that it won't matter to most people. That being said, "is only for editing in post" (which is not really true, banding is an issue in scenes with high dynamic range with 8-bit, not limited to sky but also with strong lights or deep shadows) doesn't mean people won't want it. Around 10-15 years ago, in the age of single-digit-GB slow SD cards and weaker camera/phone processors, that's what people used to say about RAW photos repeatedly. Now it is mainstream in even in phones, with built-in editing apps and easy to use desktop programs with few knobs. This means editing itself in post isn't a barrier for mainstream adoption, the issue is video editing currently has a high barrier as it is essentially impossible on portable devices, the programs have their learning curves, and the whole stack requires some financial investment.
• WWLink 4y ago
  "starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good" -exasperated sigh- I wish I could agree but I just can't. I feel around that point pictures taken by phone cameras stopped looking real. They started forcing stuff like HDR and AI correction and very heavy handed noise filtering. Looking back at my old pictures from the 2010s, I think my canon digital elph took better pictures than my phones do now lol. I realize how stupid that sounds.
  • mrelectric 4y ago
    No, you're right. Pictures taken by my one plus one (especially the raw ones) were much much better than my new latest Samsung.
  • numpad0 4y ago
    To me they do seem to be getting “better”, in air quotes, I think due to ILCs supplying ground truth data… IMO the real problem is that there aren’t much connection between that photos you like and people. “If we take the S.D. Card out of the proper camera and insert it into a proper Computer…” just don’t cut it anymore. They only have a phone each. You have to be able to get the photo to the phone to social media before the flash unit finishes recharging(on fresh batteries of course). Else they’ll lose interest.
    • ge0rg 4y ago
      The companion apps provided by ILC manufacturers are just horrible, broken, useless. I was really glad that I could hack the in-camera "send email" function of the Samsung NX500 to send the picture to a VPS which then forwards it to my favorite photo sharing chat instead.
• irrational 4y ago
  I'm still a bit interested in buying a ILC camera, but I assumed at some point the prices would start dropping, but they really haven't. Demand has gone way down and supply isn't really limited. There is even competition. But the prices remain fairly constant.
  • Zak 4y ago
    Used is the budget option. Cameras aren't in the kind of rapid development cycle where an older model isn't competitive, but it's often half the price of new, or less.
  • re-thc 4y ago
    The prices will go up as the products become more a niche. Less demand = lower economies of scale.
  • stephen_g 4y ago
    I wouldn't expect that to happen... Especially with lenses (full of expensive bits of glass) but new cameras will always be sold at a premium. Firms set prices for products, supply and demand mostly doesn't come into it (except pushing prices up perhaps when availability of components are constrained).
• mod50ack 4y ago
  Phones definitely cannot compete with ILCs in the applications that photographers use. Phones fundamentally lack the larger sensors and specialist lenses that allow ILCs to produce the images they do. Yes, phones can blur stuff to fake bokeh, but even very basic things are not accounted for in phones. What phones can do is replace dedicated cameras for the basic photography needs of many consumers. Point and shoot cameras have gone by the wayside. So have many cheaper consumer-oriented interchangeable-lens models. Many people bought APS-C DSLRs and just used them with the kit lens. That market has fizzled out. For one, most of those people now just use their phones. But even if they don't use their phones, DSLRs from the early 2010s still produce good images by today's standards. But you know what a smartphone can't replace? My 135mm f/1.8 lens, just to name one. And full-frame sensors are way better than phone sensors. I'd much rather use my Canon 5Diii (from 2012) than my Pixel 6 Pro. More than that, I feel that in their question to get bigger and bigger sensors, phone cameras have missed the mark with their actual purpose. The Pixel 6 Pro, for instance, has a larger sensor size to get a shallower depth of field. But this is NOT a welcome change when I am photographing pieces of paper and get the wrong focus in my images. The fact that you can't stop down the aperture on the lenses in 99% of phones is a major limitation. And that's just the beginning. Now, I'm not saying I never use the camera on my Pixel. But I am saying that it's not at all useful for anything I'd use a real camera for.
  • lmm 4y ago
    > Phones definitely cannot compete with ILCs in the applications that photographers use. That's overly broad. A lot of what photographers do doesn't need those capabilities (hell, some photographers work with literal children's toys), and the niches where you need them are getting smaller all the time. There are a few things you still can't photograph well with a phone (e.g. birds in flight), but that's a long way from being all photography. > The fact that you can't stop down the aperture on the lenses in 99% of phones is a major limitation. My last two phones have been able to do this, FWIW.
    • throwaway290 4y ago
      In Asia I see more people with cameras year after year. It is now at a point where striking a convo about a camera someone has is tired because the next person over also has a cool camera. I mean I saw a guy with TWO Leicas yesterday. Fuji's mirrorless are huge and medium format is now as frequent as those Fujis were 6-8 years ago. It's not only about features, in which I still think cameras best phones any day. It's also about the process. I don't want to use the same hated device that pesters me with work and atrocious social media for something artful. Same reason film is big lately. Sadly DPR due to its name excludes film.
• numpad0 4y ago
  > I can go on a rant about the number of clicks necessary to wirelessly transfer from camera Yeah this is a huge unaddressed issue that must be hemorrhaging users out of cameras. It’ll need a substantial rework in cameras and perhaps phones too, but I’ve seen enough times that the display of LCD taken and uploaded on social media and they must know that’s being done. They could make a phone-camera hybrid, with or without in-camera Lightroom, TransferJet, USB cable transfer, anything in those direction that were attempted low-effort and forgotten. People aren’t going to appreciate current hours-long delayed gratification that current ILCs require. No way.
  • throwaway290 4y ago
    These android-based cameras you talk about exist but not sure why any serious photographer would use one. When I need the camera I need it now, not wait for the camera app to decide to boot. Also, posting the result on social media as is is a thing of the past, people do post processing now and pros use raws. To develop a raw well you gotta use a proper big screen.
• t0bia_s 4y ago
  Cameras made after 2016 are so good in terms of image quality that you will not see any improvement in newer cameras. So upgrading is reasonable option only for those, who need better functionality, which majority of amateurs don't need.
  • stephen_g 4y ago
    It depends for what. There are still ways to go with video, but mostly only for people who care to colour grade their footage. I expect a significant proportion of people now are buying mirrorless cameras now almost entirely to shoot video so I expect it is a major consideration. Things like in-camera 10-bit raw video recording which is still fairly rare. Probably mirrorless cameras will start being able to shoot 5K or 6K too, which is useful (for reframing by cropping in, otherwise downscaling to increase visual quality).
    • t0bia_s 4y ago
      It is pointless for casual consumers and professionals usually use cameras dedicated for video (Arri, RED), not hybrid camera. Sure, there is specific group of enthusiastic folks on youtube that promote products consumed... by youtubers I guess?
      • deleted 4y ago
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