I totally get it, though. I don't know how many of my friends and family have taken almost all of their kids pictures growing up on their cell phone.
It's really weird, technology has brought us the ability to take GREAT pictures with tiny cameras like m4/3 or the small DSLRs. Instead, people want to use cameras that net them about the same image quality as the pictures my mom took when I grew up - chitty polaroid looking stuff. Blurry, grainy, whatever.
It'll be interesting to see how the fallout affects the cameras we all buy. P&S and entry-level DSLRs are/were the bread and butter of the camera business and also helped subsidize the R&D of the more advance lines. Take that support away and the remaining business looks very niche...and very expensive.
Mirrorless is expensive. A beginner can buy a Rebel SLR kit reasonably cheaply. Also, the kit lenses are actually pretty good now. A Rebel + kit lens is reasonably large compared to mirrorless, but not at all heavy.
People in the US by and large use cars to transport themselves around. Usually only people in very large cities or those without the cash to buy a car travel by public transit. If you take your own car then equipment size is not that big of a deal.
Lots of people buy what their friends have. If all of your friends shoot Canon or Nikon with pretty good results why would a newb buy anything different?
Where is the mirrorless camera advertising? How are people expected to buy them? Best Buy only has the Sony NEX5 and NEX7. Other big box stores don't carry mirrorless at all.
Sales people at brick and mortar stores where I live don't push mirrorless, they usually push Nikon.
It is good in the respect that professional photography will be more desirable if less people have capable cameras in their hands. Having an iphone image of the Grand Canyon vs a dslr image makes people more likely to buy their memory from you.
One other comment: I have an EOS M and I was comparing size versus the 6D for example. The M with the EF adapter and the 60mm macro is a very close size comparison for the 6D + Zuiko 50 f/1.4. Full frame DSLR does not have to be huge, people just choose to use them that way.
mco_970 wrote:
I totally get it, though. I don't know how many of my friends and family have taken almost all of their kids pictures growing up on their cell phone.
It's really weird, technology has brought us the ability to take GREAT pictures with tiny cameras like m4/3 or the small DSLRs. Instead, people want to use cameras that net them about the same image quality as the pictures my mom took when I grew up - chitty polaroid looking stuff. Blurry, grainy, whatever.
I get so annoyed.
People mostly don't care about better quality because (1) The often can't tell the difference in quality and (2) will frequently choose poorer quality even when they can tell the difference. My wife would watch a show in SD instead of HD frequently, claiming not to be able to see the difference. I would walk over and switch the channel to make her watch her show in HD. "We're paying for HD, the TV is HD, so you are watching in HD!!!"
Another example: I've taken a zillion shots of my kids, and most of the best ones are candids where they're deeply involved in some activity, paying no attention to the camera. My mother, however, only wants the pictures in which they're staring into the camera, wearing forced smiles. "Hey Mom, here's a great shot, want me to print it for you?" "But he's not looking at the camera! And he's not smiling!!" What are you gonna do? I've given up. Inset line about old dogs and new tricks [here]. But don't tell her I said that.
Makes sense to me. I've been into good camera gear for a long time, but I still often use my cell's camera, especially for quick family and friend candids.
Nothing really surprises me anymore about photography and the public. As soon as digital started taking off over 6? years ago you could see things were changing when we were participating in Art shows. I would display large Lightjet and Chromira Fuji Crystal Archive photos taken with Large Format, Medium Format, and 35mm Leica SLRs and the wife would not infrequently say to the husband: "Honey, you should blow yours up, it will look just like that".
Nowadays everyone seems to have a digital camera but is using their cell phones more and more and their better digital cameras less. In the last 3 or so years though now that I have been displaying Metal Prints from film and digital cameras at Art Shows, no one has made any suggestion about blowing theirs up it will look just like that. But, it has become more difficult to sell work in this economy.
santiclaws wrote:
My wife would watch a show in SD instead of HD frequently, claiming not to be able to see the difference. I would walk over and switch the channel to make her watch her show in HD. "We're paying for HD, the TV is HD, so you are watching in HD!!!"
I am with your wife here. I of course bought a PS3 and started buying Blu-Rays, but apart from the incredibly annoying forced content increase, and the constant "is this blu-Ray allowed to go online" nagging (NO, IT MAY NOT, no way to turn it off permanently that I can see), I found that for almost all movies, I prefer SD. The extra detail actively distracts me from what is really important: the storyline; it makes me look places that don't matter.
I have started buying DVDs again. I even sold a couple of Blu-Rays and re-bought on DVD.
Of course, I might feel differently if I had to watch NTSC.
MikeW wrote:
It is good in the respect that professional photography will be more desirable if less people have capable cameras in their hands. Having an iphone image of the Grand Canyon vs a dslr image makes people more likely to buy their memory from you.
Depends really, with some quick and easy pano software on a smartphone you can make a pretty nice ultra wide image of something like the grand canyon.
Furthermore, someone has to actually want a printed image of the canyon. iPhone image would be plenty fine for something like Facebook, and how many people really decorate with fine art photos of things like the Grand Canyon ? Pretty small percentage no doubt.
Really what someone is buying though isn't a DSLR image, but rather a skilled photographers image, who probably gets up before sunrise, and who hikes up there when the roads are closed at the gate etc to get a unique image.
Its not so much the camera, its the time.
If you show up at noon and take a shot from a normal vantage point, its going to look boring regardless of the camera used.
On topic, I have noticed that more and more of my friends just don't care about the improvements any more. The friend who bought my 5D off me has been wondering for a while about taking a step *down* in quality, to get the size reduction. He is not interested in paying for an A7 or whatever, he just wants something decent but smaller. I might recommend an E-PL5 to him, or something similar.
FF is the new medium format. Few people care, and most of those who do are in it for the status, not the image quality. I think Fuji is sitting in the sweet spot right now. I hope that they are making profits.
carstenw wrote:
On topic, I have noticed that more and more of my friends just don't care about the improvements any more. The friend who bought my 5D off me has been wondering for a while about taking a step *down* in quality, to get the size reduction. He is not interested in paying for an A7 or whatever, he just wants something decent but smaller. I might recommend an E-PL5 to him, or something similar.
FF is the new medium format. Few people care, and most of those who do are in it for the status, not the image quality. I think Fuji is sitting in the sweet spot right now. I hope that they are making profits....Show more →
Fujifilm is not even remotely close to making a profit with their camera division. Last quarter saw an increase in losses (year-on-year) of 260%. Further, you can search back over a decade and find that Fujifilm has NEVER reported a profit with their imaging solutions division.
This past quarter Fujifilm merged into their Imaging Solution division, the optics group, which IS very profitable. Even with this profitable addition to Imaging Solutions, losses were almost trip from that a year ago for the past quarter.
Mirrorless camera sales are nowhere near helping Fujifilm turn a profit with their Imaging Group.
The one point that Fuji fans can hang onto is that overall, in total Fujifilm is profitable. Business activities away from Imaging turn decent profits.
millsart wrote:
"SLRs are heavy and noisy, whereas mirrorless are small and quiet."
How ironic I've owned a good number of SLR/DSLR that were all far quieter than my A7r lol
I can believe that! What I could not believe was how loud the shutter is on the Sony A7r. That is one LOUD camera. I lost interest real quick when I heard that cannon go off. I prefer much more discreet cameras.
mco_970 wrote:
I totally get it, though. I don't know how many of my friends and family have taken almost all of their kids pictures growing up on their cell phone.
It's really weird, technology has brought us the ability to take GREAT pictures with tiny cameras like m4/3 or the small DSLRs. Instead, people want to use cameras that net them about the same image quality as the pictures my mom took when I grew up - chitty polaroid looking stuff. Blurry, grainy, whatever.
MikeW wrote:
It is good in the respect that professional photography will be more desirable if less people have capable cameras in their hands. Having an iphone image of the Grand Canyon vs a dslr image makes people more likely to buy their memory from you.
Or everyone's standards are lowered to the phone cameras and no one needs the expensive "capable" camera photos. After all, do these expensive camera photos really look any better on Facebook?
Sometimes! Cars actually do make great blinds for wild life shooting.
But my point is that if you're driving your car to the photography site then you can bring basically whatever you want. Multiple camera bodies, multiple lenses, tripod, etc... and size matters little as long as it fits in the car. Once you're walking around you probably want to scale that down, but you can bring whatever you want to the site.
If you're taking public transportation then it is a different story. For example, a couple years ago I went to Washington DC on business. I moved around the city by: bus, subway, and taxi. If I were traveling by bus and subway exclusively then camera and lens size DOES matter. The seating is tight and space is at a premium.
I've never been to Europe, but I understand that large portions of the population travel by public transportation so I'd be similar to my Washington DC example.
It is seriously headbanging stuff. Especially for a generation who is defined by the 'Selfie'.
Cars actually do make great blinds for wild life shooting.