So what to make of Photokina 2010? Not a lot, actually. All the trends that have already been observed in the market seem to be in full blossom. Compact cameras keep getting iterated, though not in any manner that's going to generate more sales or a larger market. The Japanese companies seem oblivious to the fact that compact cameras are getting marginalized very rapidly by competent cell phones at one end, and their own mirrorless offerings at the other. Mirrorless continues to be pushed forward, but slowly and without any clear directive other than "the mirror must go and we need to make it small." DSLRs continue iterating on the megapixel and video fronts, as if that will solve all problems. And medium format pokes its head up to say "we're not dead yet" once again. As usual at Photokina, we see both retro and futuristic trends in designs, neither done all that well. It also appears that plenty of companies got the "3D is the next breakthrough" memo, though the origins of that memo are in question and the assertion in it is obviously incorrect.
In short, a typical Photokina.
There was no modular, communicating, or programmable in evidence, so it appears that the Japanese still haven't gotten my memo, or they are choosing to ignore it.
Meanwhile, the amount of money spent at Photokina is staggering. And misspent. Big trade shows really aren't very useful in these days of the Internet (another memo ignored), and a colossal waste of money. You could send multiple people into every camera store in the world for a portion of the costs of these exhibits and trade show presence. And you'd get better information about what's actually happening at the sales and customer end of things than you get from a rep network that is two, three, or more steps removed from corporate. In short, the Japanese camera companies are executing the past formula as if nothing has changed, nothing is wrong, and they're wasting lots of money doing so.
Most of the Japanese companies are actually large bureaucracies now. And like all bureaucracies, they prefer to keep the status quo intact instead of challenging it and being efficient. Nikon has 26,000+ employees (by comparison Apple has 35,000+, but sells more than five times as much as Nikon in a year). So small iteration is the name of the game, and that was very much in evidence at Photokina this year.
Let's take it maker by maker:
- Canon: Canon came with a quiver of recently updated and new products, most notably the 60D, the G12, and the S95. It's not surprising that video is a big part of the new offerings, and the 60D seems like a strong competitor to Nikon's latest. It's interesting that Canon fixed a couple of minor points on the G12 to make it a better-handling camera in a pro's hands, but they didn't catch their primary mistake with the S90 in updating the S95: gripping it (fortunately Richard Franiec is busy fixing that for them). Sometimes you wonder if the design teams at a Japanese company ever talk to one another. Overall, Canon seems to be trying to execute on the same product plan as before: iterate, iterate, iterate. So we get more megapixels, better video, more features, and sometimes some user interface refinements, but nothing completely new (e.g. mirrorless). I guess that Canon thinks that's nothing broken in their product plan. Evidence shows slightly to the contrary, though. I find it curious, though, that no one seemed to notice or report on the missing camera: the 1DsIV. It should have been at Photokina 2010 if Canon was still on their old product schedules. The fact that it wasn't seems to indicate that something is amiss in the top pro products for Canon. Normally, this would be the point in the timeline when Canon leapfrogs Nikon again, but the D3s and D3x are mightily tall things to leapfrog over.
- Casio: Casio has always been a curiosity in the camera business. They keep executing like they were a top five compact camera maker, but they aren't. I guess they sell enough cameras to be profitable since they have so many models being re-developed simultaneously over and over, but their margins must be relatively low. Casio's big announcement at Photokina was integration of maps and other data with the GPS built into some of their cameras. Sigh. Compare what the iPhone or Android phones and Google Maps do (some of it via apps) versus what the Casio cameras do, and then consider all the engineering and resources that went into achieving what Casio managed. Seems like doing things the hard way to me. Why not just make the camera a communicator (WiFi, Bluetooth, or even Cellular) and leverage the massive amounts of location data and resources already available? Oh, right, that wouldn't be proprietary.
- Fujifilm: the X100 is an interesting idea, but so was the Sigma DP1 and the Leica X1 (as is my original Large Sensor Compact article that predates them all by several years and Michael Johnson's DMD articles). The execution is what makes a product work or not work. Given that we're still six months away from Fujifilm's expected launch date (and they have a history of missing those on complex APS bodies), it's difficult to assess the viability of the product. Everyone seems to like the retro notion behind it, but there are numerous design flaws I see in just looking at the prototype. Indeed, the front looks overly retro, but the back looks like a very busy and poorly thought out kludge between digital and retro rangefinder. Little touches, like the tripod socket and flash shoe being offset from the center of the lens shows that the engineers who designed it don't actually take many photos or think about what users might be interested in. 35mm f/2 is also a relatively conservative choice that isn't exactly where the sweet spot of the market would be, either (either wider or 50mm would do better). But the big problem is that the bar is set high for these fixed-lens, large-sensor compacts: the m4/3 and the Sony NEX bodies do quite well and are much more flexible. Fujifilm's other Photokina offerings are also off the mark, I think. 3D isn't going anywhere soon, and the user interface on all the new FinePix cameras seems to imply that Fujifilm doesn't think there was anything broken with their old menu systems (hint to Fujifilm: there was).
- Kodak: well, Kodak never really was a great camera company (perhaps Brownies excepted). They seem content on proving that over and over. Nothing to see here, let's move on.
- Leica: Despite all the hubbub about Leica at this year's Photokina, I found the offerings a big yawn: you can spend even more money to get your M9 in Titanium, the X1 now comes in black, and the Panasonic-rebadging gives us more expensive equivalents with the V-Lux 2 and D-Lux 5. In short, a lot of press releases, not much new.
- Nikon: I'll deal with them later in the article.
- Olympus: the E-5 seems like a warmed over E-3. The 4/3 pot was therefore stirred, but it didn't produce a sauce any different than before. No new m4/3 bodies, though some lens action was visible. The big story was the prototype of YALSC (Yet Another Large Sensor Compact). Or is it a large sensor compact? Hard to say from what little info was revealed, but the use of the Zuiko name on the lens and the way it was discussed, the prototype is at least in the G12/P7000 category, perhaps better. Personally, I'd rather have seen Olympus concentrate on fixing the user interfaces on their m4/3 bodies (especially after another trip to Africa with them and constantly fighting the controls, which tend to set random things when you're not looking). I suspect Olympus is in a lull between major offerings. They spent a lot of engineering energy on the E-P1, E-P2, E-PL1 set, and it'll be a bit before the true second generation of m4/3 bodies appears. Shame, that. As Panasonic and Sony seem to be slowly getting more momentum in the arena that Olympus pioneered.
- Panasonic: the big news was the GH2, which looks like a winner (disclaimer: I'm recording almost all my video these days on a hacked GH1). Coupled with new lenses, the LX-5, and a the other new Panasonic compacts, and taken together with the recent G2, Panasonic seems to be running engineering at full tilt. I'm curious, though. 18mp in a m4/3 body seems a bit ambitious. I'm hoping that Panasonic has made a noise breakthrough at the sensor level, not taken to more post processing noise reduction. I've always thought Panasonic's engineers seem more like actual camera users than those at other companies, so I have high hopes for their new offerings. I just wish they'd quit crippling certain aspects in their designs (like video bandwidth).
- Pentax: The recent K-r and K-5 plus a couple of new lenses keep Hoya in the DSLR game. Yet it's still unclear how Hoya expects to build on sales in a declining market. Executing the same small iteration plan over and over isn't building share, just churning their current user base. Pentax is building a lot of competent products, but other than the 645D, which isn't being built to demand, it isn't clear how they expect to differentiate themselves long term. As we saw with film bodies, once the peak sales year is past, it gets harder and harder to stay in business just catering to your mount faithful.
- Ricoh: Finally, another APS lens module (28mm f/2.5 equivalent) for the GXR. Considering that Ricoh made some of its reputation off of wide angle compacts, the choice of 28mm seems rather modest. It should have been 24mm in my opinion. And an 85mm should have been created at the same time (then we'd have 24, 50, 85mm). But what everyone really wants is a Leica M-mount module. Until that appears, the GXR will be the also ran it is today, which is a shame, because Ricoh has a very good overall camera design that feels comfortable in a photographer's hands.
- Samsung: the NX100 extends their mirrorless line, and we've gotten some much needed new lenses, as well (20mm f/2.8, 20-50mm f/3.5-5.6, both small). Now if Samsung could only get their image quality level up (I find their APS sensor models about equivalent to the m4/3 models of competitors, while Sony's APS sensor NEX models do better). Is it really that hard? Usability, Image Quality, Consistency, and Photographer-centric should be the four corners of camera design. It's amazing how often we don't get all four corners.
- Sigma: The prototype SD1 certainly is interesting. A new Foveon sensor, this time in 1.5x instead of 1.7x size, and with a true 15mp count (45mp in Sigma marketing parlance). As someone else noted: finally a really nice 15mp B&W camera ;~). But one has to wonder if Sigma has upped their game in the noise tendencies of the sensor (not likely given the Foveon's limited DR) and in the actual camera body itself. As I've written elsewhere, Sigma's cameras feel a bit like they belong in the late 1980's or early 1990's (performance and ergonomics wise).
- Sony: Sony announced most of their wad well prior to the show, with the A560 and A580 being the most recent announcements. I think the jury is still out on Pellicle Round 2, but I like that the Minolta, uh, excuse me, Sony, engineers are still trying to push the box into another shape. NEX dominated their booth, as it probably should. I was heartened to hear that Sony will coming out with a firmware update to address many of we users' complaints about the user interface, but it's unclear exactly what is changing other than some video changes. At least they heard the complaints, which is more than I can say for some Japanese camera companies.
So let's talk about Nikon in context of what I've written so far. Photokina turned out to have a lot of Nikon noise and visibility for a change. Normally, Nikon announces very early before Photokina and is relatively low-key at the show. This time they pushed some announcements right up before the show and seem much more like they're trying to leverage that on the show floor and in their marketing.
Both the D3100 and D7000 are important cameras for Nikon. First, the D3100 needs to establish that Nikon can produce a fully featured, relatively high performance entry DSLR. The D40 to D60 to D3000 progression basically petered out, as each new camera didn't really raise the bar. The D3100 definitely raises a number of bars, not the least of which is that it had Nikon's best video offering to date when it was introduced. The image quality looks good so far (I'll have much more to say on this soon), so it very well may be that Nikon can truly go toe to toe with Canon at the bottom of the DSLR line for the first time in some while.
The D7000 is in the anchor position of the consumer line. The D90 was Nikon's most successful consumer DSLR, and the D7000 has to go a long way to take over that mantle. Fortunately, it seems to be ready to do just that (though I haven't yet seen image quality from it yet, and that will be the final important leg for it to stand on). If the image quality holds up, even D90 users are going to be tempted to upgrade, which means the camera should do exceedingly well for Nikon.
Meanwhile, the Coolpix P7000 looks mostly promising, though it also seems much like a Canon G12 with a slightly longer lens. But the price is silly. Apparently Canon, Nikon, and Panasonic are colluding, as the prices for the G12, P7000, and LX-5 are aligned perfectly at US$499. Now exactly how did that happen? These are US$399 cameras, in my opinion. At best.
So Nikon came to Photokina with plenty of new ammo in the box. Combine the D3100 and D7000 with the D700, D3s, and D3x, and you have five cameras that are hard for anyone else to top. That leaves the D5000 and D300s looking a little weak, but only a little. In short, Nikon's DSLR lineup is as strong as it has ever been, and that probably bodes well for them as they've been successfully tussling with Canon despite previously weaker overall lineups.
The funny thing is that none of this is enough for the Nikon faithful. Cries of "where is the D400", "where is the D700 replacement", and "where is the affordable D3x" can clearly be heard. The answers are: next year for the first, and we'll eventually get one or the other for the latter two (probably in early 2011).
Overall, Nikon is a good position when measured on traditional offerings. The DSLR lineup is as good as it has ever been. The Coolpix lineup is mostly competent though not exciting. But those are all cameras as we've come to know them in the digital age. As I've outlined in my Camera Reinvented and as we've seen with large sensor compacts and mirrorless cameras, there are alternatives. Nikon is staying the course of iterating current designs, and not venturing far from the middle of the stream. Kimura-san has been making a lot of statements lately about reinventing the camera (at least one statement seems to have been lifted from a presentation I made in Japan to Nikon executives in March, though a bit misappropriated), but it remains to be seen whether that's just code for "we'll have a mirrorless camera, too" or amounts to something more substantial. I'm actually guessing that it'll be somewhere in between: I suspect that Nikon will have a mirrorless camera with a couple of surprises, including some modest programmability and perhaps a display option that is unique.
But I think we're still quite far from any camera company, let alone Nikon, reinventing the camera the way it should be done. Photokina 2010 was basically a show of "more of the same," with little offshoots extending a few minor new trends.