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This page of the site contains the latest 10 articles to appear on bythom, followed by links to the archives.
Who Won? Everybody or Nobody?
As I noted earlier, it's that time of year when previous year statistics get bandied about. And has happened at least twice prior, this year we have two companies claiming victory from the same set of statistics.
The data in question is the US register receipts that is captured by Circana/NPD (formerly just NPD). This data is typically only available for sale at high cost, though sometimes portions of it are provided to journalists or are summarized by Circana/NPD themselves.
First up was Canon claiming three straight years of selling the most mirrorless cameras. This was followed by Sony's PR team claiming that they were the leading seller of full frame mirrorless cameras (both in dollars, and in units).
Both can be true. Indeed, I believe both to be true.
But it's time for me to go ballistic on both Canon and Sony. WTF, guys? Do you have interns running the engineering and marketing operations now?
Let's start with Canon. (He comes a big buzzing sound ;~)
The reason that Canon can make the claim of being the leading seller is...wait for it...wait for it...yep, crop-sensor cameras (APS-C). And in 2023 that included the last of the M series and four RF cameras. For which Canon offers all of, you guessed it, four kit-type zoom lenses. And only four lenses.
You would think that you'd want to play to your strength. If you're leading mirrorless by producing crop-sensor cameras in mass, you'd think that you'd want to support them with at least a solid, basic lens set. Yes, I know Canon has a small number of full frame RF lenses that are reasonable on the small RF-S crop sensor bodies, but even they are too embarrassed to market that. You don't find Canon saying to RF-S purchasers "here are four RF-S and four RF lenses you'll want to own." Darned marketing interns. Maybe you should mentor them more ;~).
Here's the flawed strategy logic reasoning excuse Canon has for crippling the RF-S lens set: by not building a fuller RF-S lens set, if you want more capability you'll have to buy one of our full frame cameras and buy new lenses. Or buy Fujifilm gear ;~). Oops.
Two of Canon's RF-S cameras are actually quite good (R10 and R7), and two are cameras I'd quickly Kiss goodbye (see what I did there?). Canon's in deep with this "hook 'em low" idea, but Nikon's and Sony's recent success in full frame probably has them wondering what they did wrong (I'm available for consulting, CanonUSA ;~).
Meanwhile, Sony apparently told Petapixel that they made the decision to "refrain from publicly broadcasting any of these claims" this time. Uh, what? Sony is now all in on humble? That doesn't sound right.
Which makes me wonder about the full Circana/NPD data. Sony, for example, says that their A7 Mark IV was the best selling full frame camera in 2023 according to those register tallies, but the A7 Mark IV sold for 12 months while the Nikon Z8 sold for 8 months and was in short supply for half of those. I'm now wondering just how close Nikon came to being able to dislodge Sony's claim (mostly on dollars).
When I track data, I try to track it over broad periods of time. The best selling camera in any given month tends to be most recently announced one. After that, one of three things tends to happen: (1) there's a rapid drop-off in sales back down to where the previous model was end-of-life selling; (2) there's a brief period of heightened sales followed by a long taper back down to base; or (3) there's a long period of heightened sales that continues until some other product matches or bests it. I'd place the Sony A7 Mark IV as a #2, the Nikon Z8 as a #3. I'd guess that at some point in 2023, the Z8 at least once took the dollars number from Sony, which may be one reason why Sony is disinclined to make a PR claim (if they did, Nikon, who also subscribes to that data, could make a counter-claim).
A really good marketing team backed by a strong engineering team would make mincemeat of the Japanese camera companies. Oh, wait, one did: Apple and the iPhone (plus Samsung and the Galaxy) basically killed over two-thirds of camera sales and are still eroding them.
How Far Do We Look Ahead?
In doing some cleanup on my systems, I came across my old "100 ideas in 20 minutes" presentation about photography tech possibilities, particularly computational photography, which I first created for an imaging symposium at the turn of the century (and was last updated in 2005).
While some of my future imaging suggestions will seem familiar—pixel shift and what some of the computational multi-sampling smartphones are currently doing, for example—some are still not yet done by anyone, which surprised me a bit. If I could think of things that could be done that still aren't available, how many other folk out there can come up with their own set of still undone ideas?
Of course, I shouldn't exactly be surprised. After all, I asked for stacked semiconductors back in 1980 at a big tech conference with all the usual suspects, and was clearly told this was not remotely possible by IBM, Intel, and other semiconductor makers. One thing I learned even before that, though, was "never say it isn't possible." So I just ignored them and kept asking.
Why was I asking for stacked semiconductors? Well, it struck me from all the Cray propaganda marketing that speed was defined by shortest distance, so why would you restrict your layout to two dimensions? (Implicit answer: "because that's how we designed our equipment to be able to build things." Also: "we believe we wouldn't be able to dissipate the heat.")
Many engineers tend to be linear thinkers. They see how X is done today, so they immediately tackle a small, incremental improvement to X using known iteration techniques. I'd call that somewhat lazy engineering in high tech, as understanding Moore's Law tells us that incremental improvements cascade from that constantly with even only modest additional effort. Process size reduces? Chip complexity and/or speed increases. Speed increases? Data access increases. The list goes on and on. A lot of tech engineering tends to be just trying to keep up with Moore's Law, not taking new advantages of it or changing something else about how you're using it. The change from CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), for instance, was a big one that's still having trickle effects, particularly in the GPU and NPU arenas. But such dramatic shifts tend to happen much more rarely than iteration.
Many of you know that Science Fiction has foretold many a technical advancement we've eventually ended up actually creating. Arthur C. Clarke, for instance, was telling us what we could do with satellites long before we had any. Science Fiction writers tend to be non-linear thinkers. They jump start themselves into a future where anything is possible and are not constrained by current capabilities, ideas, or limitations.
Artificial intelligence has long been one of those Sci Fi possibilities.
People ask me all the time about whether I think Artificial Intelligence is going to destroy photography. My answer to that would tend to be no. One reason came to mind as I was looking at my old presentation. While I hadn't done this in that presentation, I now see that there were some logical and distinct "categories" my turn-of-the-century ideas all fit into. For instance, abstraction, enhancement, and optimization. AI is mostly targeting the enhancement category. As most of you know, I'm an optimalist—as opposed to optimist ;~)—and thus I'm not overly excited about generative photo AI. But if AI can take an as-optimal-as-possible data set and find a way to enhance that without adding information that's in contradiction, I'm all for that.
The painting world used to be about realism. And then it wasn't. So what we're seeing with generative AI and photography these days is often something similar: a camera-taken photo is "real" but a "generative AI" "photo" isn't. I don't have any issues with both existing, but I do want to know which one I'm looking at ;~).
Aside: a lot of what photo AI is doing is actually because you asked for it ;~). You didn't control your background while taking the photo and now have a distracting element you want to remove. But you also don't want to learn and spend time doing proper masking, let alone use restoration techniques on the affected area. Too much trouble, too much time, too much to learn. What you really wanted was a button to press to do all that automatically. Well, you got it. The reason why it has to be AI-driven is that there are quite a few decisions that have to be made, and you also don't want a button that, when pressed, then asks you a long series of questions. I call this "shortcutting." The reason why AI is getting so popular now in so many aspects of photography is that it relieves you of having to make so many decisions.
Returning back to the presentation I found: it was prompted by a request for a paper on differences in how imaging might be done differently in the 21st century. Specifically digital imaging. After all, I had been doing some form of digital imaging since the early 1980's.
But it really doesn't matter when you create such a forward-looking assignment; At any given moment in time, what is possible 10 years from that moment is clearly different than what is being done at that moment, and that difference is increasing, not decreasing. The real question is whether you're open and looking for truly new ideas or not.
Most of the people who are involved in looking to the future that I talk to about this seem to think that AI will be the primary driver for the next 10 years. I worry about that, but probably not for the reason you think. Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLM) are the big AI pushes right now, but both of them tend to be backward-looking, not creatively imaginative and making unexpected forward leaps. (Yes, I know about hallucinations in LLM, but those aren't necessarily forward leaps, they're incorrect backward analysis.) Moreover, the trend in AI has been to replace or augment a real time capture with something conjured from existing work. Where are the future technologies that improve the real time capture abilities?
We're actually in a period with photography similar to what happened in other artistic disciplines. For example, music. Music up until the multi-track recorder came along tended to be 100% real time. Even a recording was just a capture of a real time performance. But then we started creating overdubs, and then sampling and sequencing, and then auto tune and much more. The result was Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode—both of whose music I like, by the way—but this was pushing music away from real time performance to tech-augmented compilation. It's ironic that musicians have all found that they need to return to real time performance to make money, but to me this is exciting because it also means that they are having to play with real-time things to stand out. The Grateful Dead had it right all along ;~).
So the question I'm pondering today after my short trip down memory lane is this: as a photographer in the field in the year 2034, what will I be using and how will it make the experience of taking a photo different? Yes, I'm sure new technologies will be part of that, but note that I'm asking this from the photographer perspective, not the technology perspective. That's important, and I think it's the thing that often gets missed when companies try to come up with and execute a future product plan. What benefit does the user really get?
To finish off, I'm going to hint at one thing I believe will happen: Plogging. Not blogging, not vlogging, but plogging.
I'll leave you to figure out what I think plogging is ;~). (No, it's not photography logging.)
The Year End Statistics Summary
Back in the first decade of the DSLR, I used to report quite a few statistics sets and use them to predict what was going to happen in the camera market. As it turns out, fairly reliably, as I was able to predict both peak ILC and when mirrorless would surpass DSLR pretty accurately. Once it became clear that we had achieved "peak camera", though, I stopped doing as much reporting on the data numbers I was seeing (both public and private). I still report on public data sets from time to time, but do so with much less frequency. This is the most recent such report.
This time of year, all the photo sites trying to figure out something to say as they jump on the numbers coming out of Japan. Here are two market share data sets that have gotten a lot of play (in graph form):
I love the interpretations that come from others with this BCN data: "Nikon's doomed", "Pentax can't even gain share in a market that has no competitors", "Olympus [OMDS] is holding its own in mirrorless", and many more back seat economist conclusions.
As I've noted before, BCN tends to aggregate mostly lower end and chain store data in Japan. I don't believe they include any significant data from the big independent camera stores that sell higher end gear, but even if they did, the real thing the BCN data tells you is that camera volume in Japan is heavily weighted on price. That's because the top 10 selling cameras, according to BCN, are, in order: Sony ZV-E10, Sony A6400, Canon R50, Canon R10, Canon M2, Olympus E-P7, Nikon Zfc, Olympus E-PL10, Olympus E-M10 Mark IV, and Sony A7 Mark IV. That green OMDS line in the lefthand chart, above, are cameras that list for US$700 or less, and often have discounts from that in Japan.
Meanwhile, one of the big Japanese camera stores, Yodabashi, publishes its own list periodically, which also tends to get picked up as something meaningful by the same photography sites, even if it contradicts what those sites have already written. The top 10 compact cameras for the last two weeks of December in Japan were: Ricoh GR IIIx, OMDS Tough TG-7, Canon PowerShot SX740 HS, Canon IXY 650, Sony ZV-1 II, Ricoh GR III, Leica Q3, Kodak PixPro WPZ2, Ricoh GR IIIx Urban Edition, and Sony Cybershot RX100 Mark VII. Hmm, no OMDS ILC cameras?
Which, of course, contradicts Yodabashi's own "Top 20 list for all of 2023." There, the order runs Sony A7 Mark IV, Nikon Z8, Sony A7R Mark V, Canon R6 Mark II, Sony A7 Mark IV with kit lens, Nikon Zfc with kit lens, Nikon Z50 double lens kit, Canon R50 double lens kit, Sony FX3, and Nikon Z9 as the top ten. Again, note no OMDS ILC.
The Japanese chart that tells us the most isn't about the home market at all, it's CIPA's overall global sales volume figures. Here's the way global unit volume has changed since "peak ILC sales":
Overall, we're still trying to ascertain whether the modest growth since the pandemic-challenged 2020 drop is real growth or not. I'd say not. I believe that 6m ILC is the current point that things have fallen to from peak, and that it's only up from previous years because the Canon/Nikon full move into mirrorless has pressed everyone to intentionally push the market some. My current thought is that once the DSLR to mirrorless transition is complete and people have picked up more expensive mirrorless models, the buying activity among the photography faithful is going to again trend down some.
I wrote in 2019 that I believed that the base floor of ILC volume was somewhere between 4m and 6m units a year. I was worried that we'd drop to 4m, which would make it difficult for as many players as we have to stay with their heads above water. Since we are now seeing some new buyers in the market, I'm convinced at the moment that the worst case base is more likely something like 5 to 5.5m units. With sales and marketing promotion and perhaps some camera innovation, the Japanese companies might be able to keep pushing that above 6m units, but the natural buying I believe is below that.
I mentioned DSLR to mirrorless transition earlier. It's clear that we're deep into that now. Here's the volume of those ILC that are mirrorless tracked for the same period:
For 2023, ILC was almost exactly 6m units (fell ~1000 units short, though I've seen some sites report it as being over 6m). DSLR was just 19% of that, with mirrorless now a commanding 81% of ILC units coming out of Japan. It's going to get more lop-sided in 2024 for sure, as I believe Canon will essentially be end-of-lifing all DSLRs in 2024, and Nikon will be following not too far behind.
Meanwhile, Yodabashi also published it's list of the top selling lenses for 2023: 5 Sony, 5 Canon, 5 Nikon, 3 Tamron, and 2 Sigma zooms. That's correct, not a single prime lens made their top 20. Moreover, 12 of those lenses could be construed to be a form of mid-range zoom (e.g. 20, 24, 28, or 35mm at the wide end, 70, 105, 120, or 150mm at the long end). Four were long telephoto zooms (Canon 100-400mm and 100-500mm, Nikon 100-400mm and 180-600mm). That's not far off from some private data I've seen here in the US from retailers.
Looking at the register-based dealer sales numbers I've been shown for 2023 in the US, if I wanted to conclude anything from this year's collection of data in terms of higher-end photography gear, I'd say this: you're buying mirrorless with a mid-range zoom. Either a crop sensor camera just above the US$1000 mark, or a full frame camera in the US$2000-2500 range. The one surprise in that data set is that the higher-priced Z8 did so well. Demand is supposed to decline with price according to MBA teaching, but the Z8 sticks out like a sore thumb in the data, thumbing its nose at price elasticity of demand. At least in 2023. I'm not sure that'll hold true through 2024.
By the way, watch out for unclear statements about all these numbers that are getting reported. Amateur Photography magazine in the UK wrote "After crunching the latest numbers, used retailer MPB is predicting that the retail market will exceed its 2012 peak by next year." I have no idea what numbers they were crunching, but apparently some numbers were harmed in the process.
At first I thought they might have been referring to dollars taken in instead of units. But "peak ILC" produced 753,163,393,000 yen in 2012 and in 2023 we had 637,044,302,000 yen. We'd need 20% higher sales in 2024 to match the dollars taken back in 2012.
However, hidden in that (probable) mis-prediction is something that a lot of folk don't quite grok yet. In 2012, the average yen taken in per ILC unit was 37,400 yen. In 2023 it has grown to 106,000 yen. That's correct, the average ILC sold today is about 65% higher in revenue (at the manufacturer) than it was at peak. That outstrips (US) inflation during that period by about double. So yes, one of Japan's responses to your buying fewer cameras is to make more expensive cameras. That, unfortunately for Tokyo, is not a sustainable road to success, so it's a good thing that actual unit volume ticked up a bit this past year.
I Had a Dream...
I think this dream was triggered by the 60th birthday photo I took of Galen that I posted in the Africa blog. I used an Olympus XA for that image.
What if we resurrected the Olympus XA design for the digital era, but with some really modern twists?
For those that don't remember, the XA was a shirt pocket compact film camera with an excellent lens and some basic controls. You could also attach a dedicated flash to its one side. It was probably the simplest of the most sophisticated film compacts ever made. And that's the thing I miss: something that's always in my shirt pocket that I can pull out, not fiddle with settings, and take high quality level photos instantly.
Yes, I know some of you are saying "but that's your iPhone 15 Pro Max, Thom."
Nope. To use the phone I have to fiddle quite a bit, particularly since it doesn't always like to remember settings between sessions. Moreover, then there's the issue of which sensor and lens is used, whether I want that binned, downsized, or whatnot, and have all these controls overlaying the view.
Here are the key points from my dream about a byThom XAD (the D is for digital):
- Same size body as original XA, same slide open to reveal lens and viewfinder as it turns on, close slide and it turns off.
- 24mp APS-C image sensor and some SoC processor, perhaps a SnapDragon.
- 16mm, 23mm, or 33mm f/2 lens. Maybe three models with different lenses.
- Autofocus via PD on sensor.
- Sensor IS if possible. (I could live with overscan sensor and electronic IS; e.g. 26mp sensor cropped to 24mp)
- Only five controls: aperture, shutter speed, shutter release, focus, and a user-defined button on front.
- Front selfie mirror (maybe small LCD).
- EVF on back, no Rear LCD.
- No cards, all internal storage (preferably 512GB).
- No video, only stills.
- USB-C connectivity only.
This camera is about dirt-simple UX that can be taught in three minutes. Everything about this product is convenience with high image quality. Best possible image sensor, best possible lens, best possible data handling.
Wait a second, you're saying, what about exposure? And other things?
Okay, the XAD determines exposure using a (tunable via app) ETTR analysis. If the aperture and shutter speed you set won't render the final image properly, it uses a virtual Auto ISO schema to produce the JPEG but saves base ISO data for the DNG. Wait, what? Yes, the camera always takes a JPEG and a DNG image. Might have to get creative about how the DNG data is placed in low light, but we're going to rely on post processing to put the final image data where we want it.
Meanwhile, focus is Human/Cat/Dog subject detect, with closest subject priority otherwise. How do you get AF-S and AF-C? There's an AF button on the back. Press it once and it does AF-S; hold it for more than a quarter second and it's performing AF-C while held.
If the images are in the camera's storage, how do we get them out? You connect the camera via USB-C to your mobile device or computer. Our apps then do the rest (manually or automatically, as you prefer).
You may have noticed that button and the "user" defined shutter speed mark. Those controls are "loaded" with what you want them to do via the app (automatically updated on connection). In other words, you can define a slower shutter speed (only one), and you can define a mode the camera goes into by pressing the button on the front (it lights to tell you its in that mode). Modes might be things like bracketing, focus shift, interval, and so on. We'll tackle which to do first by user survey. Oh, and you can create your own mode by combining the base modes ;~). Yeah, programming.
The EVF is simple but tells you everything you need to know. For instance, it shows aperture and shutter speed, and whether focus has been achieved and where. The button that controls mode is shown to be on or off in the EVF. Also, since I know you're worried about that auto exposure system, there's a warning that the JPEG (and DNG in post) needs to be lifted more than three stops (or a different warning level if you made one in the app). If you see that warning, change your aperture or shutter speed if you're concerned about noise.
Oh dear, there are other things that need to be done, too, right? How about single frame versus continuous release? Same as the AF button: press the shutter release once and it you get a single frame. Hold it for more than a half second and you get a continuous burst (the camera continues recording starting on the initial press, just in case ;~).
That's right, I'm not adding menus and controls willy nilly. It's not that kind of camera. It's Quality with Convenience. If you want some "menu like" things, check out what the app can do. It's where any added camera features would appear.
Given the simplicity, this shouldn't be an expensive camera. Call it US$1000, and you can have it in any color you'd like as long as that's black.
Touch Versus Dials
I've long been thinking about why so many younger folk who grew up taking photos on phones seem to like the "dials cameras," such as the Fujifilm X100V or the Nikon Zfc/Zf. There's a clear pattern of this being true, both anecdotally as well as in the results from a few surveys I'm privy to.
The usual proclamation is that it's a retro trend that is propelling the desire for those dials cameras, but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that isn't really the case. Retro, trend, fad, whatever you want to call it, all seem more like a justification to me than an explanation.
Let me give you an alternative reason why these dials cameras may be appealing.
When all you have is a display and no physical controls as you do on a phone, you have one of two possibilities for control: gestures or overlays. That's it. A gesture can invoke something, but the number of gestures that make sense is limited. I was around and designing software back when this was first being investigated. Tap, double-tap, tap-hold, swipe, drag, pinch, and...well, everything else starts to get more complicated—witness Apple's "spread thumb and three fingers"—more difficult to describe, and easily both forgotten and accidentally triggered.
Even having just a half-dozen gestures can be tricky, because there's nothing that tells the user what they are. They have to learn and remember them. The more gestures you add, the harder they are to learn and remember. But even with only the base five of gestures, someone has to demonstrate them to you and you have to commit them to memory. Gestures are direct in use, but indirect in the sense that they aren't common sense until you learn them.
If you've used an iPhone from the beginning, you'll note that the Camera app has changed from day one to the present. Moreover, you can get other camera apps, as well, and they, too, basically add the same things that Apple has been: overlays. You use part of the screen for virtual buttons and controls, basically. In its current form, Apple by default makes the image area less than the full display size so that they can create a "control band" at the top and bottom. If you change to 16:9, the bottom band changes to overlays. In essence, each of the current 10 basic virtual controls are either a menu (bring up choices) or a toggle (change to the other option).
So let me ask a basic question. Apertures are important to depth of field and shutter speeds are important to subject motion. Both are things you'll learn are important in photography as you start using a camera more. What's the aperture or shutter speed on your iPhone?
Good luck finding that with Apple's app. Even with some of the so-called "pro" camera apps that are available, dictating or holding a particular aperture or shutter speed choice is sometimes problematic, as the iPhone's computational use of the image sensor will fight you in some edge cases.
Which brings us to dials. Let's say you're a teen just learning about photography and have been using your phone for that when you start to realize the importance of aperture and shutter speed. What kind of camera would you want? That's right, one where that's clearly controlled by something that's labeled. Call it a "dial" ;~). The fact that you can say it's also retro trendy is a nice bonus.
Dials are great for learning (and controlling) some clear basic photography tasks, tasks that are even more important the larger the image sensor is and the more singular the capture is (e.g. opposite of phones). Lately I've seen some on the Internet asking the question "is a dials-based camera better for learning the basics of photography?" The answer to that is yes. As long as the dials don't lie to you ;~).
Here's the thing: Canon and Nikon—the primary drivers of modern camera design for the last 50 years—all very early on learned something about dials that's a bit equivalent to the touch problem: you can't litter the surface of the camera with dials. Moreover, to look at a dial you have to look away from the viewfinder. If you put that information in the viewfinder, you don't need the dials, only a fast way of changing the values. All of which led to the modern button+dial interface.
In the "best" version of button+dial, your hand and eye positions don't really change as you're framing. The Nikon Giugiaro design, which continues to this day (except for the Zf and Zfc) generally holds the right hand position intact with the right middle finger controlling a horizontally aligned front dial and the thumb the horizontally aligned back dial; your index finger stays over the shutter release. In most DSLR versions of this design, the left hand pushed a button while the right hand moved a dial. The Z System tends to violate this (though not so much the Z8 and Z9). Indeed, Nikon designers have talked about using the right thumb to reach critical buttons, but that's a contradiction to the Giugiaro design. Tread lightly, Nikon.
Canon's button+dial implementation used vertically aligned dials and often an overloaded button complex that was difficult to distinguish by feel. I considered it an inferior approach because it distorted your right hand position to make a change, and often took your index finger off of the shutter release while making said change.
But that's not important to today's point. What I'm describing here are three levels of UX (user experience) control with a camera:
- Touch (used by phones)
- Dials (used by retro/legacy cameras)
- Customizable button+dials (used by high end modern cameras)
Some people would be perfectly happy with #1, and just not worry about controlling more than touch easily allows. Some will be perfectly happy with #2, as it opens up direct control of two very important attributes (and a hidden one in ISO). The top practitioners aren't bothered by complexity but more importantly value fast useful-to-them change without missing a beat, so want #3.
Looking back at it, I can now more clearly see why compact cameras died off (well, at least most of them). Camera makers were being challenged by phones doing better and better jobs at #1 while also achieving better and better image quality. I've got an older Coolpix camera sitting on my desk at the moment, and it illustrates the issue: Nikon used a dial to basically control 10 automatic things ;~). Then they panicked about all-auto functions and added button functions—mostly on the Direction pad—that aren't instant, but procedural. Worse still, through a menu system that wasn't touch capable (and changed with the automatic mode). So all they did was add a great deal of confusing complexity while still not allowing the user to set aperture and shutter speed! Who wants that? As it turns out, no one. Over time, Nikon started adding "more lens" because that huge telephoto reach was something phones couldn't do, but you'll notice that this didn't help them sell compact cameras all that much, did it?
Fujifilm and Nikon are finding some resonance with the dials cameras, and if you agree with my numbered UX progression, you can understand why. I'm not sure Fujifilm and Nikon understand why, though. Their marketing departments keep telling me "these cameras are fashionable with the youth." I now believe that they're missing a key point. If they keep trying to design for fashion and style, they will discover diminishing returns and even make wrong decisions.
As a thought test, consider the Ricoh GR. Why isn't it regarded as fashionable and trendy among the young moving up from a smartphone? It's not a dials camera, and putting a bright blue or orange ring on the front is not what that crowd is looking for.
Right now when I talk to the college-aged group about camera desires, understandable direct control, vlogging usability, and interchangeable lenses seem to be the three big bullets on their wish list in order to move from a phone (or an action camera). Being able to say it also looks retro cool is a bonus.
The CP+ show in Japan every February tends to always have one or more panel discussions that intersect with this topic. But the comments I hear made on those panels by the Japanese camera designers and marketing teams aren't getting their market evaluations correct, in my opinion. Moreover, they often take credit for something they only discover after the fact (e.g. that the dials cameras resonated with many younger users).
I'd love to debate my hypothesis above with the camera designers themselves, but that ain't going to happen, so I just present it to you instead ;~).
When Is A Product Out of Production?
We recently had a rumor site state that all F-mount products are out of production at Nikon. No source that could be affirmed was given for that claim.
"Production" has a meaning in the US. Dating back to some of the earlier more consumer protection laws (e.g. 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act), there's been an ongoing dance between regulators and businesses. At present, the primary law where "production" has relevance is California's. Because California is in essence the fifth largest economy in the world, companies would have to make a decision to produce two different outcomes in the US: one for California, one for the other 49 states.
This happened for awhile, for instance, with the auto makers, where California's early emissions regulations produced one form of internal combustion engine for California, and different ones for the rest of the nation. Until, of course, other states started to have the same issues that California did with smog, and opted to endorse the California regulations themselves.
The operative California law that comes into play for cameras has been undergoing some change with the recent Right to Repair initiatives that have passed, but the basic tenant is that for any product over US$100, an electronics maker must provide repair parts for a period of seven years after the product's last manufacturing date. What we don't have is a law or regulation that requires companies to disclose when that date actually occurs, which makes it difficult to enforce the law.
Nikon is never going to announce that they've stopped producing a product, therefore. However, over the years of observing them, I've noticed a few patterns. An open database that was maintained by US Customs for awhile (now closed), allowed me to substantiate some of my observations until a few years ago.
Here's what I'd say about "ceasing production":
First, that doesn't appear to work the way I've seen it hinted at or reported elsewhere: Nikon doesn't appear to build a "final inventory" and then sell from that until they have no more, then claim the product is discontinued. Back in the earlier days of DSLRs when volume growth was ratcheting quite rapidly, Nikon did make large "batches" of a particular camera or lens. But pretty much since they had to reconfigure all their manufacturing after the quake and tsunami in Japan plus the flood in Thailand, they've moved to a different strategy. Low demand products get moved off the main assembly lines and into something that is more "hand assembled" in low volume as needed. That appears to be absolutely true for cameras at the Thailand plant, and has been since Nikon started the shift away from DSLRs with the D500. I don't believe the last D500's were made in quantity on the main line, but rather in a low-volume queue as needed. Exactly when the last D500 was made is unclear, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 2019 or 2020.
You have to also remember that NikonUSA attempts to get all the units coming into their warehouse sold to individual dealers, too. If there's just enough demand from dealers for a camera and Nikon has the parts, producing it occasionally in response to direct demand in low volume is the most efficient and profitable way to do that.
One visible clue that no new units are being produced is price. I've noticed that Nikon discounts many (if not most) products right into end-of-life, but the minute the product returns to full price and you're seeing some dealers list "backordered" as the status, it's highly likely that the product is no longer produced. Or, at least, that Nikon stopped production for the time being. Sometimes it seems that a last production run has been made—the Coolpix P1000 for instance—but then months later suddenly a small batch shows up again, only to repeat the process. As far as I can tell, these periodic deliveries are coming from the low-volume section on a "need to make" basis.
Why does the price go back up to full retail? Because some large volume purchasers—think NASA, government, agencies, etc.—standardize on a product for as long as they can—think training and support—and don't want the newest upgrade when they need to replace a unit for some reason. Dealers, particular a big one such as B&H, also use price to discourage the casual buyer from eating up the last of the product that's in their inventories.
The other aspect of end-of-life has to do with Gray Market. You can actually see what's happening with pricing in B&H's current Nikon DSLR offerings:
- Still discounted product: D7500, D780, D850
- Gray market product: D500, D610, D750, D810
- Full price product: D6
- No longer available: D3400, D5600
From this I'd say the D3400, D5600, D500, D610, D750, and D810 are no longer manufactured, and any gray market version that's still available new is coming from the SE Asia arbitragers. The D6 is probably on its last legs and kept at full price to encourage most people to go to the Z9 instead while keeping it available for government and agencies. Given the continued discounting, the D7500, D780, and D850 are likely still being manufactured.
I don't believe there are piles of finished D7500, D780, and D850 models sitting around Nikon corporate. There are likely piles of parts for those cameras that are sitting in inventory somewhere, otherwise those cameras would no longer be discounted. And more specifically, there are two parts that you just can't order up some new ones whenever needed: EXPEED6 and the image sensors. The D780, specifically, uses the same parts as the Z6 II, so is probably the camera least in danger of leaving production at the moment.
While I've used Nikon in my discussion so far, it's interesting to note that Sony is clearly using an older Nikon DSLR tactic: you can buy brand new A7 Mark II, Mark III, and Mark IV models, for instance, which seems to suggest that Sony Imaging has parts on hand to continue making three generations of cameras. How long that stays true is a different story, but it seems to me that Sony is about where Nikon was in 2012 when peak camera was reached. Given how many models Sony now makes, and given how many generations they are keeping in the market, I'd say that Sony is going to have to make some tough decisions soon, otherwise they are giving up profit margin for what benefit? Clearly Canon has stopped the Sony overall market share gain (and at a lower level than Nikon achieved).
Lenses are a trickier story, and I don't have any insight as to how the shift in production has gone there for Nikon, as I have no sources left in the plants where they are made. Whereas most DSLR lens production was performed at three different plants in Japan, the majority of the Z-mount production is now done in China and Thailand, with only a small number of lenses made at the remaining factory in Tochigi Japan.
Overall, do I believe Nikon has stopped all F-mount production as the rumor said? No.
Of course, F-mount production is clearly way down now. As far as I can tell it's been moved off the main production floor in Thailand to the low-volume area. Also clearly, the F-mount DX lens production does seem to have mostly ceased. Nikon Japan, for instance, is down to listing only four such lenses in their current lineup.
Which brings me to a final point: for Nikon specifically, the Japanese market is the canary in the coal mine. If a product gets discontinued there, it is either out of production or has been shifted to low-volume manufacturing and sent only to markets that still have lingering sales. The reasons why the US market often is the last to see things like F-mount discontinuations are: (1) it's a large market with a lot of dealers that's also not split into sub-markets (as is Europe); (2) many of Nikon's costs are delineated by Thai/US currency shifts, not Japan/US ones, which have historically had more dramatic shifts; and (3) the US market was slower to shift to mirrorless than Japan itself was.
There's little doubt that the F-mount is on its final legs. As I noted last year, the upcoming European regulations that come into effect at the end of 2024 are going to play a part in that, too. But has production stopped? I don't see the signs that it has, at least for a handful of remaining products. Nikon themselves have refuted the rumor both publicly and privately, though their language, as usual with Nikon, is a bit on the non-specific side other than to say that production is ongoing.
Which gets us back to that California law: by not being specific about when production actually ends for a product, consumers can't hold Nikon's feet to the fire about when repairs and support ends. For example, does the D500 repair and support end in 2025, 2026, or 2027? I don't know. I just know that it will.
This is the way the F-mount ends. This is the way the F-mount ends. This is the way the F-mount ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
The September Africa Blog is Back (Day 9)
Some of you probably remember that the blog for my September 2023 workshop was cut short just after I started posting it in November. That's because Tony Medici, who was writing and providing most of the images for it, had a medical emergency that required hospitalization, and I didn't want to cut in and finish it myself.
The good news is that Tony is now recovered and has gotten caught back up to all the things that he had in progress, so I've restarted the blog (now complete, with bonuses!). I should be revealing a new day every weekday until we reach the end of the trip.
Tony and I are tag-teaming the September workshop that's scheduled for this year. I'll be there to teach at the beginning and end, with Tony handling the main portion of the trip. We still have a couple of openings for this Okavango workshop, and it's still priced at 2021 prices. Besides the obvious mammals, we expect this September's trip to be another birder's delight. If you're interested in this upcoming workshop, please see this page.
The Run Up to CP+
CP+ is the largest consumer camera show in Japan, held early each year in Yokohama.
This week we officially start the CP+ launch window. This is an elaborate and exciting dance whereby each of the Japanese companies attempt to not step on each others' toes with same day launches, but also attempt to make the most impressive introduction that holds up no matter what the others do. The closer to the show opening you can your splash, the better.
I've never quite figured out how the date jockeying gets done. It has to be similar to what happens with Hollywood studios trying to launch blockbuster films. However, in the case of Hollywood, all the studios jockeying for position know what films are coming. I don't know how the Japanese camera companies know exactly what the others are planning, so how can they assess who should get the "best intro dates"? Do they draw for the short chopstick?
To some degree, the CP+ launches have already started. The Korean and Chinese lens makers have already started their new product launches—which is slowing my ability to get everything realigned in the sansmirror lens database—and I'm sure more are imminent. I've got a list now that's about a dozen lenses deep that all should be launched in the next month.
Because no one really introduced anything significant at CES in early January, I'm actually expecting every company to make an introduction of some sort for CP+. The timing and home court advantage is just too good to ignore.
I was originally going to quote a Japanese source to identify what some of those upcoming products likely are, but I'm not really interested in being part of the specific pre-hype hype. The real purpose of this article is different than identifying individual products and pumping the rumor mill. The purpose of this article is to alert you to the fact that the next month will be one of three significant launch windows this year. If you're trying to make purchase decisions, you should know that here in 2024 we're back on a more predictable path with announcements again, something that we haven't had since the pandemic began.
Those three traditional windows are CES/CP+, the usual fiscal Q1 spring launches (typically April/May/NAB), and the early fall period. Two of the companies I follow appear to be gearing up for significant introductions in each of those time frames. However, because of the Paris Olympics, Canon, Nikon, and Sony are going to be organizational tied up with the games from June through August, so their spring launches may be a little earlier this year.
I'm not sure if my Japanese source was accurate or not as to the individual models he told me about, but he was predicting that all six of the major camera players will announce something reasonably significant in the next month, and I believe him: this year should see all the Japanese makers being active at CP+.
Is the Dog Chasing its Tail?
I hear comments along the lines of "X released the Y in response to the Z" all the time. Moreover, Internet fora then pick up on this same idea and suggest specific things like "Canon should release a retro-design body like Nikon did with the Zf."
These simplifications belie a naïveté about product management, that products are created in response to other products.
It may look something like that from the outside, but the real thing going on is that products are created because potential new, additional, and upgrading customers seem to have been identified.
One problem I have is that Tokyo is immersed in paternalistic self observation. The Japanese companies believe they "know" what customers want and need, and produce that instead of what customers may actually might want and need. Worse still, as we've seen with the continued cancellations of compact cameras and the rising pricing levels of the cameras that the Japanese still want to sell, the real "design initiative" in Tokyo became mostly centered around accounting. The companies were willing to sacrifice volume to keep profits and return on investment up. The counters in Japan haven't met a bean they won't pay attention to.
However, when a competitor company suddenly produces a new hit product that isn't anything like their own, the Japanese companies also panic and believe that they may need to do something similar in order to win that same customer. So, yes, the dog does chase its tail, but that chasing is about customers, not a specific product.
As I was pondering the above, I received an email that claimed that Japan is starting to really worry that the Chinese will begin making cameras around a new Chinese "open" lens mount. The implication, of course, is that such interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) will turn out to be less expensive than what the Japanese are producing these days, have a wide array of potential lenses, and this would then put Japanese ILC sales and margins at risk. Count them beans, boys.
Apparently all through Honshu the strategists have been asleep at the wheel.
Let me point out one example. Nikon saw the action camera market that GoPro pioneered and decided to hone in on that (new customer!). Nikon's KeyMission cameras were reasonable designs, but the issues with them were manyfold, and they didn't really add anything new. Meanwhile Nikon didn't really have any particular cost advantage over GoPro. Nikon also found that a lot of GoPro's success was due to merchandizing deals in stores, and those are costly. The KeyMissions used Nikon's barely adequate SnapBridge communications, and had no back end that Nikon supported, another ding. Nikon's Ambassadors, for the most part, weren't the folk that the action-camera-buying crowd would look to for advice on what to buy and why it works.
Contrast that to DJI and the Osmo. The Osmo directly takes on the GoPro Hero and, as far as I'm concerned, with the latest version (4) has topped it in a number of critical performance and usability issues. The DJI Mimo software works in ways SnapBridge can only dream about. DJI has cost advantages that neither GoPro or Nikon have. DJI is already entrenched in the crowd that is action camera adjacent (via drones).
So. The Japanese ran away from the smartphone market by killing compacts. And Nikon ran away from the action market when it got its first bruise. And now they're worried they might have to run from some Chinese ILCs? Sure, good luck with all that running.
I've been pointing out for a decade-and-a-half now where the disconnect (literally) is: 21st century communications and software. Let me throw just one simple example at you of just how disconnected Tokyo camera design is: why is it that after walking on a trail in one of our great National Park taking some photos, I get back to my car and the photos I just took aren't automatically uploaded to my home NAS? My car is Internet connected. The phone I carry in my car is Internet connected. I can show someone in my car my photos that are stored at home ;~). But getting my photos from my camera to my home and back is...well, impossible at the moment with what the Japanese have given us.
The irony in all of this is that the Japanese were the first to be moving photos around in their Internet systems (and using early Japanese cell phones, too).
Let me take another angle on things: if the Japanese are indeed just looking at what the other companies have done and copying that, this is much like always mating with your relatives: the DNA eventually erodes—called genetic erosion—instead of developing new potentially useful patterns.
The camera companies are looking at their problems (smartphones, action cameras, Chinese makers) the wrong way. They need to see and understand why those things resonate with customers and figure out how to add those DNA snippets to their products, not isolate their products further.
More importantly: if you put all your wagons in a circle, your competitors know exactly where to attack you, because you're not moving.
Be Careful What You Ask For
It's too bad that we don't have variable pricing in photography gear. That would end a lot of gear debates really, really quickly.
What do I mean? Well, consider the following options for an image sensor:
- 11-stop dynamic range (SNR 20:1 to saturation): US$2000
- 11.5-stop dynamic range: US$3000
- 12-stop dynamic range: US$4000
Which would you buy?
Or maybe a lens (all other attributes the same):
- 80 LPPM (line pairs per millimeter): US$1000
- 100 LPPM: US$2000
- 120 LPPM: US$4000
Most of you would be buying #1 in each case. Particularly once you recognized that your field discipline and post processing aren't able to show the differences that #2 or #3 might allow.
True, a few would buy #3 in each case because "they just have to have the best." That massages their ego and deflates their wallet, but generally those folk have huge egos that need constant feeding and either don't mind declaring bankruptcy every few years or have way more money than they need. Unfortunately, there probably aren't enough of those folk around for the camera companies to make the #3 options universally, and because demand would be so low, the prices might be even higher.
I'm reminded of this because I just had another person take me to task about not getting completely excited about the Sony A9 Mark III's 120 fps capability. I'm perfectly happy with my Nikons' 20 fps and more limiting 30/60 fps options. Would I really pay a huge amount of money to switch systems get get 120 fps? No. If I were already fully vested in Sony gear might I add an A9 Mark III? Maybe. As I've previously noted, the primary benefit I'd see with the global shutter has to do with LED displays at field level, not frame rate.
The marketing departments of the camera companies long ago lost the thread on all this. Japanese continuous iteration engineering will always extract a little more with each generation of product. They've been doing that most of my life now in tech, and I don't see them stopping. However, the first few generation gains are the most dramatic, and once we're in the tenth or later iteration, the gains are so minimal that the marketing teams can't even see them, let alone describe them.
That problem in marketing has existed for some time now. Back when the iPhone first appeared and started getting "camera attention," Fujifilm tried showing how their compact cameras were better at noise, pixels, and other parameters in their ads. Unfortunately, they forgot the "and just as convenient" bit ;~). At least Fujifilm's marketing team made a valiant attempt.
Much of the gear discussion and debate I see these days is trying to argue that small differences are worth paying big money for. This argument has, unfortunately, become permanent in forums and emails. And it's driving a lot of camera marketing as if that is the most meaningful thing about a new camera.
Large, meaningful technical breakthroughs happen rarely, and tend to be dramatic enough to easily demonstrate. That's not where the market is today. This is making the camera makers' problem of re-growing the market a risky game. If they throw too much hyperbole and exaggeration into their marketing, that might sell a camera today to the unsuspecting, but the larger crowd is getting too wise for that, and sales can actually go down if you over-market a product's abilities. The camera everyone has today is going to take a perfectly fine photo when used well, after all.
As I've pointed out before, the High Fidelity market went through this same sequence after hitting its peak. Eventually, convenience won out over small, contested-about improvements. As the high-end market dwindled, the few customers left also made the prices go up.
So, be careful of what you wish for. Another small gain may come at a huge price (literally).
Personally, I'm for fixing the UX and the integration of cameras with 21st century communications. Those things would be far more useful to me and others, and if done right, I'd argue that they'd grow the market.
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