old-gregg
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 p.2 #2 · Nikon imaging (cameras, lenses, and related products including red) down 22% year over year | |
@nhmorgan I clicked on the "like" button under your post because I am 100% with you spiritually  But I disagree with most of it, lets see...
nhmorgan wrote:
I think Nikon is uniquely positioned to do something radical, but video isn't it.
Video is their only hope. Remember, the stills market has evaporated. Billions of users stopped buying cameras and switched to phones. The small group that's left, about 10%, is also divided into relatiely small niche sub-markets: weddings, commercial real estate, sports, advanced amateurs, and every group wants a camera designed for them!
Meanwhile, billions of lemmings waste their lives away staring at videos every day. You see them everywhere: on public transit, in a gym, at family dinners not paying attention to each other, even while driving! Short-form video is by far the best monetizable content on the internet. It drives engagement and half of world's GDP is driven by advertizing delivered on the back of these short-term videos. Saying that video is a bigger market is an understatement. We're talking about orders of magnitude difference in potential.
Fun reading on this topic:
https://nicholasachow.substack.com/p/everyone-becomes-crabs
nhmorgan wrote:
Look at what's happening right now with F6 and FM3A prices. They've gone nuts.
Nope. They are dirt cheap. Sure, they've gone nuts compared to 10 years ago when they were nearly free, but a nice FM3a is still just $1k. I bought and sold them on eBay and also here on FM. There's no room for healthy margins in $1k cameras, sorry.
nhmorgan wrote:
Nikon's strengths are it's image quality and understanding of color science
I like their profiles too, especialy Rich Tone Portrait. But a LUT is not "color science", or a business strength. It's just a file with a table mapping ADC output to pleasant wavelengths, which you can't get a patent for. Lots of photographers sell their presets online for $20-50. I am using Nikon's Rich Tone Portrait on Sony cameras with identical results. Colors have absolutely nothing to do with your camera. Color is 100% software concept.
But I appreciate you being creative here. Being a doomer would be the cheapest position to take, so I'm not willing to I'm gonna follow your lead and contribute. If I was in charge of their product strategy, I would focus on large markets (sadly, it means de-prioritizing us, hobbysts, because there aren't enough of us). Two big markets to go after are smartphone users and video.
They already have something in mind regarding video (Red). To lure smartphone users, they need to get creative and release products similar to Fuji X100 series, or Leica Q in spirit. One area where all traditional camera makers are awul at is OOC JPEGs. Objectively, they are like 25 years behind computational photography teams at Apple and Google. Another opportunity is in styling, something Leica and Hasselblad understand very well. A camera can be more than a camera, it's an accessory and a look-at-me eye grabber. Ever noticed how much Leica people love posting iPhone images of their cameras neatly arranged on a desk with a coffe, Moleskine, pen, and mechanical watch? To them, a camera is not a tool to make images, it is an accessory to wear and signal with.
Ok, having dreamed for little, let's get our feet back on the ground. The situation isn't pretty: Nikon has about $1B in cash and $1.3B in debt (and growing). Their revenue is $4.5B but imaging is only half of that. At their scale, companies typically allocate around 15% of their revenue to R&D (Nikon does even less at 11%, let's say about $250M per year for imaging). Meanwhile, the design and manufacturing of a single chip, like EXPEED, if you want industry-best power efficiency on a 7nm node, will cost $150M+ [1] I am not even adding optics, software development, mechanical parts, to this depressing math. TBH I just don't see where they're going to find money to develop any breakthroughs... I am worried.
[1] Because of these high fixed costs, Nikon is not really independent in their product designs. EXPEED is a product of a joint venture between Nikon, Fuji and Panasonic. The second important chip, the sensor, comes from Sony. I am greatly simplifying for brevity, but the point stands: how can you differentiate if your product is assembled from the parts jointly developed with your own competitors?
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