The Online Photographer

The Tail that Wags the Dog

We got some very interesting and perceptive comments around here yesterday, for which thanks.

The trouble with focus groups
Phil Thomas wrote:

I keep hearing about people who want to upgrade from compacts to interchangeable lens cameras without DSLR bulk but I have never actually met one. They must exist, in focus groups at least, though whether their stated desires translate to real world purchases I do wonder. I know several people with Micro 4/3 cameras and a couple of people with Sony NEX cameras but all of them have DSLRs (except one who sold his DSLR to get a NEX). All of them are photography enthusiasts who wanted something smaller for when they didn't feel like carrying a DSLR with them. I also know a few people with DSLRs who are not photography enthusiasts at all. They bought DSLRs as they associated them with professional photography and therefore expected to get better photographs than they did with their compacts or phones.

Here's the problem with focus groups: it turns out that when you can get a bunch of people together and get their undivided attention, and have an extended period of time in which to explain your product and its rationale to them while they're feeling attentive and receptive, you get different reactions than when your product is just sitting there unexplained in a bubbling cauldron of hundreds of other similar products all competing for the harried consumer's attention. (Bubbling cauldron metaphor: surfaces briefly every so often and then sinks out of sight again.)

One of the most consumer-researched product introductions of all time in this industry was also one of the biggest flops: APS, the Advanced Photo System, which was an attempt to create a better standard than the then-standard 35mm color negative film with one-hour processing. The engineers got a chance to back-engineer the product the market had already decided it wanted. They created a new standard that did everything the old standard did but had better efficiency and better profitability along with a few added technical advantages, such as built-in multi-format capability. When they had a chance to explain it carefully to attentive consumers, the attentive consumers liked it.

Masahiro Suzuki, the Nikon R&D Manager in charge of the Nikon 1 project
Photo by Shawn Barnett (used with permission)

Trouble was, the product didn't have much natural appeal to people unless it was explained carefully to them. As far as most people could see from the "normal viewing distance," APS didn't offer any advantages over what they already had, plus it had the disadvantage of being new and unestablished—and it wasn't any cheaper. The "it's more efficient" argument turns out to be weak when the savings are going into suppliers' pockets as profits rather than translating to savings for the consumer.

In fairness, APS never really had a chance. If digital hadn't appeared on the horizon just after APS's 1996 introduction, it's possible that it would eventually have caught on. As it was, it lasted eight years. That's before it sunk beneath the waves; the ship was listing and doomed long before that.

Significantly, one of the APS consortium's big mistakes (the consortium: Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, and Konica, all film makers, with cameras from Minolta, Canon, and Nikon as well as Kodak and Fuji) was that the system had no appeal to pros and advanced amateurs. Like it or not, the small core of enthusists and pros are the tail that wags the dog in the photo market. They (I should say "we," of course, since that's us) have an outsized influence on the purchases our friends, relatives, and neighbors make.

Of course, we don't control anything; we just contribute. But the fact that APS had nothing to offer the enthusiast or pro, and garnered no enthusiasm from those quarters, added to its miseries.

A reader signing himself "david" wrote: "If Nikon had done the same thing [with the Nikon 1 System] as they did except based around an APS-C sensor, I think the reaction would have been 100% the other way. Every enthusiast Nikon DX owner would have been falling all over themselves to pre-order one." Possibly true; it's also possibly true that manufacturers need to throw us enthusiasts our bones, not because the product needs the features that appeal to us but just because the we're the ones who are going to explain the appeal of the product to the non-enthusiasts who are supposed to buy it.

The better Nikon communicates to us the advantages of the Nikon 1, the better it will sell to the market it's intended for. And that's why things like Imaging-Resource's exclusive interview with Nikon's Masahiro Suzuki (suggested by "beuler" in the Comments) are going to be important.

A quick sample, which will bring me to my last point:

MS: We are quite confident that we achieved almost exactly the same quality as our DSLR.

DE [Dave Etchells, publisher of Imaging-Resource]: (surprised) The same quality as DSLRs.

MS: Yes...Please evaluate! (laughs)

DE: Yes, obviously, we'll test and we'll hold you to that! That's very interesting, because this is a much smaller sensor, but you say the same quality.

MS: Mm-hmm.

The final component? Trial by firing, you might say—actual trials, tests, and reviews. As Dave says.

And that relates back to enthusiast appeal, too, because products that consumers use but that don't draw any interest from enthusiasts tend not to get reviewed. Even the comprehensive review sites don't review all the point-and-shoots on the market, for instance, and you'll notice that when Imaging-Resource actually reviewed a camera phone recently, it was an unusual enough occurrence that we noted it here.

That might be one area where being a Nikon really does help. It will belp ensure reviews, which will help communicate the product's virtues to enthusiasts...who will then help educate and inform the elusive non-camera-customer market that's supposedly out there waiting for these new products made especially for them.

Mike

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Featured Comment by KeithB: "I think one telling point about the new Nikon system is that Luminous-Landscape—which usually pounces on anything new, and dare I say exciting—has so far had not a peep to say about the new system on the main page."

Featured Comment by Nick: "This analysis seems spot-on to me, but I am not a marketing professional. I can say that my friends do come to me to ask for camera recommendations. So far, I believe I have helped several people settle on good sub-$300 pocket superzooms, one person settle on a very inexpensive Canon compact, and one person settle on an E-P3. Perhaps I'm not explaining the advantages of larger, more expensive cameras well enough. Of course, I am one of the apparently rare enthusiasts who uses nothing but Micro 4/3 gear and does not own a DSLR...."

Featured Comment by K. Harrington: "A very interesting interview with Mister Suzuki...I said it yesterday on here and I'll say it again, this camera will be a run away hit!"

Featured Comment by Gerry Morgan: "I'm under no illusions about my power of influence over friends seeking camera purchase advice. I'm always scrupulously careful not to unduly favour the brand or format that I happen to use. Typically, the person then talks to someone else with no such qualms, and buys the camera the other photographer enthuses about. Not that this undermines Mike's argument in any way. It just means that I personally have not the slightest influence on the market, except when I'm buying."

Featured [partial] Comment by Speed: "Focus Groups: Imagine leading a focus group 15 years ago and asking, 'Who wants a camera in their phone?'"

Featured Comment by Peter Rees: "My wife has an Olympus E-P1. I call it her 'photographer's wife's camera.'"

Featured Comment by latent_image: "Just for the record, my wife loved—I should say LOVED—her APS Nikon Nuvis S. As a non-photographer, it delivered everything she wanted from a camera: foolproof film loading, auto-everything operation, and a very clever system for image storage and retrieval. The Nuvis S was sandwiched by a Canonet QL19 and a Canon digicam, both which she hated.

"I personally think digital cameras will—over time—prove to be disastrous when it comes to family photos. Many ordinary folks will end up losing their image files. Even my very bright son-in-law, with a master's degree in computer science, managed to lose a large batch of his first child's baby pictures. Shoe boxes are dead simple. Digital image management is more than most want to think about."

Mike replies: I've lost digital images I really wanted to keep. I have to admit. But then, I've lost precious negatives, too.

Micro 4/3 is the Big Kahuna

The Micro 4/3 sensor: small, yet big. Big, yet small.

-

"Kahuna is a Hawaiian word, defined in the Pukui & Elbert (1986) as a 'Priest, sorcerer, magician, wizard, minister, expert in any profession.' [...] The term [was] commonplace in Beach Party films of the 1960s such as 'Beach Blanket Bingo,' where the 'Big Kahuna' was the best surfer on the beach." (Wikipedia)

The Nikon 1 certainly caused a stir yesterday. Most of it, unfortunately, negative. Thom Hogan of ByThom.com referred to the reaction variously as "anger, anger, anger," and an "uproar."

Me, I spent a fascinating couple of hours yesterday reading up on the IBM PCjr, the Edsel, and Kodak's Photo CD.

Did you know, for instance, that IBM spent $40 million just on pre-launch advertising for the PCjr, and never made it up over the life of the product? And did you know that Edsel was not just a car, but was supposed to be an entire Ford division, like Buick was at GM? It's just too bad that it was also the ultimate ignominy for Edsel Ford, who despite being a really good guy seemed to get the shaft at every turn—he even died before his time (of stomach cancer, at 49). As for Photo CD, I could tell you stories. For many years, Kodak was just so big that it assumed it could create the very markets it expected to supply. It tried that trick over and over—early on with success; later, not so much. For those whose memory may be hazy, I'll just note that, once upon a time, Kodak's concept of the future was that everyone was going to be looking at their pictures on their TV sets, using purpose-specific components that looked like stereo music CD players (because they basically were). Kodak expected to sell 250,000 of these a year. When the dust finally settled on the interminable closeouts six or eight years later, sales were something like a tenth of that. Not for one year; for the entire life of the product.

People, Americans especially, seem to give enormous weight and respect to bigness. IBM was the big dog in computers in the early '80s, with 70% of the mainframe market locked up. It was assumed that IBM could do no wrong and would win every battle. By the way, did I tell you that my shuttle driver to the airport when I went to Maine used to be an IT guy? For mainframes. He never worried about PCs because he figured the PC would never catch on and the mainframe would never go away. He said he had to go back to school to learn how to drive a truck.

But I digress.

Anyway, another thing I learned yesterday was that IBM actually timed its pre-launch announcements and advertising specifically to interfere with competitors' sales. It worked. People held off buying the PCjr's competitors because they expected big-dog IBM to automatically prevail.

It's not how big a stick you have, it's how hard you swing it
Similarly, lots of photographers have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards mirrorless because the biggies (Canikon, who together control, oh, something like 117% of the camera market) hadn't signed on yet. Surely when Canon and Nikon came into mirrorless they would blow the little guys away with their...their...bigness.

Just like in the '70s in the U.S. auto market when imports were growing like crazy. All sorts of people were just waiting for things to get serious. For Detroit to enter the fray. What they turned out to be waiting for were the Pinto and the Vega.

Turned out Detroit didn't take small cars seriously.

The outrage and anger anger anger in our little corner of the photographic firmament is not so much over Nikon's mirrorless offering as that—in our terms, this would be—we found out yesterday that Nikon isn't taking mirrorless seriously. I cannot speak for the pink-camera-wielding Asian female "what does 'megapixel' mean anyway?" crowd. All I can talk about are all the photo-dawgs who expected the arriving half of the Canikon juggernaut to blitz the weak, wimpling little Oly-Panaleica snivelers with its glorious big Nikon Kahunishness. We expected a photographer's tool that would take on Micro 4/3 and NEX on their own terms, head-to-head, and smash into them rugby-style. Instead, Nikon created a targeted consumer product aimed at people not serious enough about photography to own a D5100. That has spray-and-pray built in. That is interesting mainly because it has some of what we hope will be trickle-up deep technology.

(Canon, for its part, must be a little like a guy who has been following another guy across a minefield—right after the first guy got blown up. Hmm, what's the next step now?)

The apparent market leader really is leading the market
My suspicion is that what yesterday really proves is that Micro 4/3 really is the real deal, the sweet spot, the best option—the real Kahuna.

APS-C sensors work fine in fixed-lens mirrorless cameras, such as the Leica X1* and the Fujifilm X100. And while NEX is making its own splash and winning its own adherents, many have pointed out that the over-large sensor is distorting the size of the lenses, preventing them from being miniaturized in proportion to the cameras. On the other hand, Micro 4/3 really does seem to have it right: the sensor is big enough, but not too big; small enough, but not too small. The cameras are right-sized, the lenses are right-sized. Everything's in balance. Everything fits.

Not only that, but there are choices everywhere. Choices, which buyers like to have. Choices not just of bodies (how many are there now?) but of body styles. And having two-slash-three companies (Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica-branded Panasonic) making the same system is reaping obvious rewards in one very important area: lenses. The latest sweet little morsel is due to ship this very month: the tasty Leica DG Summilux 25mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH.

I'll just wait here while you go look up that 18.5mm ƒ/1.4 for the Nikon 1. Dump-de-dum.

Take a look at this page—looking like a system, isn't it gang? A pretty generous one. You can get a fisheye. And a superfast premium ultrawide. And a choice of eight standard zooms (although I don't quite grok why they're all different, but then I'm zoom-impaired). And a 3D lens. And not one but a choice of three pancakes.

Let's take bets on on how long you'll have to wait for this many lenses for the NEX or the Nikon 1. (And don't give me that adaptor crap—not that Micro 4/3 doesn't have plenty of those. I mean fully functioning auto-coupled lenses designed for the system.) Even if Micro 4/3 stands still, which it won't, you're still talking years for Sony and Nikon to fill all their lineup holes.

Canon kingdom come
Acolytes of bigness will not be swayed, I'm sure. They'll just say, serenely, sure, but wait till Canon comes. Just you wait. 

Wait.

Thing is, I'm not sure we have to do any more waiting. Yesterday seemed like a milestone to me. It was a couple of Nikons that arrived, I know that. But somehow it seemed like what really arrived was Micro 4/3.

Mike

*Which doesn't seem to be getting much mindshare these days, or is that just in my little backwater Parish?

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Featured Comment by Joseph: "Does my having purchased the DMC-GF1 just two months after its arrival offset the 1972 Pinto I bought new at age 19?

Featured Comment by Robert Roaldi: "And I'm still shooting non-Micro 4/3 Olympus DSLRs. Man, do I feel old or what.

Featured Comment by Ivan: "Americans like bigness, yet we hate carrying big cameras. I suspect it's because there's little prestige in it, unlike showing up in a new black 'Slade. As for Canon mirrorless, the mystery is over—it will be, point for point, like Nikon's. In the same colors, too, I predict. Long live Micro 4/3."

Featured Comment by Malcolm S: "I'm not sure that you quite 'get it.' Whether the Nikon 1 succeeds or not, it heralds the beginning of a new paradigm in still photography. No longer will photographers able to afford only a cheaper camera have to compose a single scenario for the 'perfect' picture. They will extract that picture from within a rapidly taken sequence. For that you need fast autofocus and processing speed, with the Nikon 1 claimed to have those in spades (faster even than the D3s). The size of the sensor and number of pixels are largely irrelevant with reasonable lighting and print sizes to 11x17. The age of the slow plodding dinosaur may be coming to a close, with faster and more agile species overtaking it in the evolutionary race."

Featured Comment by Mark Crabtree: "I thought that Micro 4/3 was the big winner yesterday. That sensor seems bigger than it did two days ago, doesn't it?

"The Nikon is cute and does some interesting and amazing (and sometimes annoying) things. I can see it thriving as a fun and fashionable amateur camera, but it is hard to imagine that the current price structure isn't going to be a problem in that market.

"I keep obsessively reading camera reviews and always end up back at the Panasonic G3 (or GH2). Nevertheless, I'm happy enough with the Sony Alpha 100 that I've ended up with sort of by accident (a throw-in on a camera trade). For now I can make the pictures I want to with the gear I have, and just sit back and watch the parade of amazing new cameras."

Featured Comment by Johan: "The guy in the minefield following the other guy would at least know to follow him to the exact spot where he exploded. Whereto from there, however, is the big question.

"There are still a few things that need to click for me with regards to Micro 4/3, but it is pretty much getting there. I just need to find a body that is affordable and fast enough and it would, along with that Panasonic 20/1.7 pancake, probably never leave my hands.

"But I don't need one now, so I can wait and see if Canon will make a move. Mostly because I might want to be able to use the EF glass and flash I already own on a mirrorless as well."

Featured Comment by Don Craig: "The bottom of the market is a dangerous place to be, as mobile phones are just about to pass eight megapixels. Phones include lots of funky apps for canned post-processing of snaps of me and my friends, and everyone carries one all the time. Pretty soon, the only market for camera cameras will be for those serious photographers Nikon has just ignored."

Featured Comment by Craig: "While Kodak's Photo CD may have been a market failure, it was a great solution for many of us involved in color print publication back in the day."

Featured Comment by Will Frostmill: "Can I get an A-men?"

Featured Comment by John Krumm: "I think there's truth to what you say, Mike, and if you add in the third party lenses coming even more so (Sigma is rumored to be working on Micro 4/3 lenses). But give the new systems a few years to catch up on their own terms. Nikon displayed a slew of mock-up lenses it plans to release. And the phase/cdaf combo AF sounds like a breakthrough, and might be easily used on a DX version of this camera. What if the D400 or later D500 looks somewhat like an upsized version of the V1? That might be interesting."

Featured Comment by Michael: "Impeccably logical conclusion...but I'm buying a NEX 7 anyway. :)"

Featured Comment by Nick: "A look at the specs on the NEX 7 makes me want to abandon my bag of Micro 4/3 gear and buy one; a look at the NEX lens options makes me want to cuddle my bag of Micro 4/3 gear to my chest like it was an an adorable little puppy.

"At this point, I'm not sure what Canon could introduce that would woo people away from what's already out there. The APS mirrorless field is badly overcrowded (and Canon might not want to risk its Rebel sales); Micro 4/3 would be hard to dislodge from its perch on the half-sized sensor market; and Nikon has beaten them to the market in the last remaining sensible size category for system cameras. Maybe if Canon had a six-lens system (bright primes and dim zooms in each of wide, normal, and tele) ready to ship on release day?"

Featured Comment by Pavel Urusov: "I think you should pay some attention to Samsung. Their lens line-up is very promising, their roadmap even more so. And they have pancakes, too! Tweny millimeter and 30mm NX pancakes are very good, and the upcoming 16mm pancake also looks attractive. In my opinion, Samsung NX system shows that APS-C lenses can be made sufficiently small."

Featured Comment by Steve Jacob: "Actually, everyone has it backwards—the real problem with MFT is that it is basically a high end netbook for people that actually want a laptop, but are happy to lose performance because its a bit lighter and smaller. The N1 is more like an iPad - a computer for people that dont pretend they want to WORK on the darn thing, they just want to surf and play and read newspapers. An iPad does not replace a laptop - its for people that never actually wanted or needed a laptop in the first place, they just wanted to do some of the fun things a laptop did without all the hassle of learning to use one. Nikon 1 is the camera Apple would make, (though theirs would look nicer). Nice pictures without that pesky manual."

Mike replies: I was following your argument up until that last sentence. That still kinda remains to be seen, no?

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Mike is definitely on to something with the Nikon-as-Kodak analogy. Big and successful companies notoriously tend to ossify and become fatally conservative in their thinking. The path to managerial advancement becomes ever more conformist when the profits keep rolling in. Here in the Rochester N.Y. area it's been agonizing to witness the slow motion suicide of the company once known as "the Great Yellow Father." Their latest act of desperation: selling off their priceless collection of patents for pennies on the dollar, just to stave off bankruptcy for another year or two. The vultures are circling.

"Kodak's Photo CD was certainly a disappointment to the company. However, I believe the fatal wound was inflicted by their huge investment in the launch of a brand new film format (APS) at the worst possible moment in history. Kodak sank literally billions into the new system, bleeding them dry of development funds just as the digital tsunami began to rise."

Featured Comment by Sergio Muscat: "I am a Nikon guy and was very curious about the new mirrorless system (I also have an EPL2 which I love, meaning there was no waiting for me, because I knew that anyway it would take at least a year or two for a new format to settle, and I knew Nikon would want to do it 'their way'). Anyway, my point is that at face value, the new format is disappointing. However, what is interesting is the fantastic technology which is under the hood. What Nikon have done is used the 1 series to create a new, solid basis for their new DSLR lineup, which I am pretty sure remains their primary focus. Now I am really curious to see the new DSLR upgrades."

Jobs

A couple of potential jobs—

Milwaukee: My next-door neighbor is a high-end interior designer, and is looking for someone to provide photographs of her work for her new website on an ongoing basis. She doesn't need each shot to be Architectural Digest magazine quality—she wants a variety of shots of each project, in web resolution, that are more competent than typical real-estate snaps or the "in-progess" snaps she makes herself. She expects to pay professional rates, but doesn't need the services of the people at the very top of the specialty. She's looking for a more mid-level pro with appropriate skills and equipment who she can afford to hire regularly going forward. If you're in Chicago or Southeastern Wisconsin and you or someone you know might be interested, please contact me at the "email me" link in the right-hand sidebar and I'll put you in touch with her.

New York: The Documentary Photography Project of the Open Society Institute is looking for an Exhibition Coordinator. More information at the job posting here. This looks like it could be a fun and influential job for the right person. Don't contact me about this; I'm just passing it along.

Mike
(Thanks to Gabi)

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Nikon Mirrorless Announcement Imminent?

Nikon Rumors is reporting that it has confirmed Nikon press events in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Romania, and China, all for September 21st.

The World's Best Nikon Site, as usual, has a trenchant analysis of the possibilities: "Nikon followers are waiting for four things from Nikon: the D4, the D700 follow up, the D300s follow up, and the mirrorless system." ByThom.com analyzes the potential ramifications of each possibility with typical thoroughness on its "Quick Links & Comments" page. There's no permalink for this specific news item, so you might have to scroll down or go looking for this; the header is "The Strange September Situation."

Meanwhile, the SSS has resulted in one of the most perfectly hilarious press releases I've seen in 23 years in this business, good enough to commemorate in full. Titled "Comments on Media Reports about Nikon's imaging product," it reads—in its entirety—"Nikon understands that some article appeared in the media regarding Nikon's imaging product. Please note that Nikon has made no announcement in this regards."

I totally love this. They're confirming that baseless media speculation is baseless(!).

Good to know.

ByThom puts the skewer through that, though. "...Almost no matter what Nikon does later this month, they won't have correctly managed the perceptions of enough of their current and potential customers."

As if tsunamis weren't bad enough. It's a tough world out there, for sure.

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko, TOP's Croatian Editor-at-Large)

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Featured Comment by Thom Hogan: "It's even worse than it first appears. I've discussed this with four different U.S. dealers so far. They all agree: the one product Nikon should announce this month and ship prior to Christmas is the D300s follow up. Their second choice would typically be the D700 follow up, though there's a bit of disagreement that enters at that position. Mirrorless was the third choice of three of the dealers.

"The (good) dealers know what they can sell the most of. None of them tell me that they can sell a lot of mirrorless cameras. Heck, those that already sell them here in the U.S. mostly report modest sales at best.

"This brings up the same thing that happened with automobiles: the Japanese aren't seeing the external markets as different than their home market, and that's going to cause them grief. It certainly is causing them to sell less than they could.

"Every now and again one of the companies takes a chance at something out of the box and it either succeeds (e.g. X100), in which case we get a lot of copying, or it doesn't (e.g. Sony R1), it which case everyone nods to themselves that it's a good thing that they aren't doing things out of the box ;~).

"The U.S. market will gobble up about 50 million of the ~150 million cameras made in 2011. Yet most of the products made aren't optimized for the desires of the U.S. user base. Canon, Nikon, Sony, et. al, need design centers in the U.S. (and probably Europe). They need to learn to take base technology platforms and optimize them for the local markets, à la Toyota and Nissan in the '90s."

Sony's Big Mistake

In the Comments yesterday, Thom Hogan, one of the most knowledgable gadflies* of the camera industry there is, said, "...while I like the NEX, so far Sony hasn't delivered on lenses, and I don't see how going to 24 MP is going to help."

Like going to 24 MP in the A900 in 2008 didn't help.

Just to put an underline on this point: this is why Sony now runs neck-and-neck with Canon and Nikon in the compact camera arena but doesn't come anywhere close in SLRs. The company doesn't pay enough attention to lenses. Not for nothing were most of the traditional cameramakers optical companies first and foremost. Sony doesn't get that the lens lines are what sells interchangeable-lens cameras. It's quite apparent from the product lineup and the pace of product introductions that to Sony's way of thinking, lenses are an afterthought, and a limited hodgepodge that includes a few standard zooms and a few premium examples is all you need. Wrong.

Prediction: Sony will never rival Canon and Nikon in SLR (or, let's say, SLR-type) sales** unless and until Sony has a full, complete, and up-to-date lens line for whatever cameras it wants to sell.

Mike

*I use the term as a high compliment. Cf. Wikipedia on Socrates: "Plato refers to Socrates as the 'gadfly' of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness."

**and NEX will never catch Micro 4/3

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Featured Comment by Michael Trupiano: "The A900 was the first DSLR I purchased after not using a 35mm for many, many years (exclusively used view camera). I chose the A900 over Canon and Nikon for specific reasons (mostly to do with UI). While I am happy with the camera I frequently wonder if I made the right decision, precisely due to lack of a complete lens family.

"And what Sony perhaps does not understand or perhaps refuses to accept (or perhaps they just don't care) is that photographers invest in a system. And that once they have a significant investment in glass they tend to stick with the same body manufacturer for years to come (all other things being equal)."

Mike replies: I hear ya. I would have bought an A900 but for the lack of lenses. See also SeanG's much harsher comment in the Comments section.

In some ways, Sony parallels in the digital world my favorite cameras from the film era: Contax. Whenever people would ask me about getting into the Contax system, I'd tell them the very same thing you and SeanG are suggesting with Sony: just make sure the lenses you want already exist and that you can afford them, because waiting for new lens introductions—or for prices to come down—would be an exercise in frustration. I knew whereof I spoke.

Significantly, Sony is probably dealing with some of the very same frustrations Contax had to, in that some of the lenses of each were and are made by the same make-haste-slowly company, Carl Zeiss.

That said, I will give Sony credit for introducing one of the lenses I actually wanted, the 85mm ƒ/2.8 (and, completely as an aside, does anybody know where there's a cross section of that lens on the web? I haven't been able to find it). That happened after the advent of the A900. Of course the Sony Alpha mount system is not as complete yet as the Zeiss Contax/Yashica mount system was, either, so they've got more gaps to fill. Still, gotta give credit where it's due.

Featured Comment by mbka: "I think the bigger problem at-large is not confidence in the present (lens lineup, technology) but confidence in the future: credibility that a product line will be supported, expanded, etc. Just as in the larger economy, trust in the future. In this light, Sony's problem is a lack of consistency. First the DSLR line was introduced and heavily advertised as a future complete system. Then NEX as a mirrorless. Then the 33/55 as a mirror-bearing mirrorless. No one knows if NEX is going to get finders or if the A33/55/77 will get smaller. The NEX is an odd product in itself for the reasons you said—odd lens lineup, unclear future, and especially, the lenses are huge compared to the body. It doesn't look very useable to me at all as a setup.

"For all its faults and some slowness in the lens line buildup, Micro 4/3 looks by far the best and most flexible and most 'modern,' truly contemporary, system right now. Yes, some brighter zooms would be nice, probably prevented by the CDAF that needs light lens elements. Yes, sensors have a handicap. But the Pana/Oly systems are remarkable complete compared to NEX, say, never mind the other brands. And I have much higher confidence that at least Panasonic and Olympus will stay the course with m4/3."

Featured Comment by Pascal Jappy: "The infuriating thing, with the (likely) new A77 and NEX-7 is that they seem very good with manual focus lenses but Sony, who seem to have a strong partnership with Zeiss, have no access to the current ZE/ZF lenses that might be well suited to the densely packed pixels of the new cameras. What a shame. Leitax to the rescue (or adapters for the NEX), possibly, but still it's not the same."

Mike replies: I agree, that's positively bewildering.

Featured Comment by Harry Lew: "I have more than enough Alpha mount lenses (Sony/Minolta)...35 at last count for my a700, a850, and several legacy Minolta bodies. (OK, I'm a collector.) But what I'm most excited about is how the NEX cameras open the door to countless manual-focus lenses in whatever brand you crave. Right now, I'm savoring my OM Zuiko 50mm ƒ/1.2 on a cheap (purchased at a ridiculous close-out discount) NEX 3. A $30 adapter lets me use a killer lens that had been languishing in my closet. The lens is a dream to fondle and operate, produces luscious images with incredible bokeh. With a lens like this, who needs native-mount NEX lenses? Having said this, I will be at the head of the order window when the NEX 7 becomes available. And the Zeiss 24 1.8 will be hard to resist."

Featured Comment by Bob Rosinsky: "I purchased a Sony a850 and the CZ 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 alpha mount lens to complement the camera. I love the combo. I primarily photograph dogs in a studio environment with this kit. I set the lens to ƒ/13 to ƒ/16 most of the time. To this day, I am continually amazed by the amount of detail and contrast the lens is able to draw onto the sensor. As for the Sony, I am continually amazed by its dynamic range. I generally shoot at base ISO and use strobes. I've used the Canon 1DS III with the 24–105mm lens too. The Sony/Zeiss combo knocks the socks off of the Canon setup. Fortunately, my lens requirements are rather modest. If I shot architecture, sports, and low-light subjects, my opinion would differ. I am eagerly awaiting the next iteration of a Sony FF camera. I may even consider the a77 as a backup. As with any craft, there is always the right tool for the right job."

Nikon Outpoints Canon in J.D. Power Satisfaction Surveys

The press release:

J.D. Power and Associates Reports:

Online DSLR Camera Buyers Are Most Satisfied with Picture Quality, While Camera Durability and Shutter Speed/Lag Time Provide Opportunities for Brand Differentiation

Nikon Pro Series Ranks Highest in Online Buyer Satisfaction with DSLR Cameras

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.: 19 July 2011 — Owners of DSLR cameras indicate they are highly satisfied with the picture quality of their cameras, but are notably less satisfied with durability and shutter speed/lag time, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera Online Buyer Study released today.

The study examines satisfaction among verified online buyers of digital single-lens reflex camera models. Responses were collected by PowerReviews and reflect the attitudes of actual DSLR camera owners who conducted their purchase using an e-commerce site. The study measures satisfaction among DSLR camera owners across five factors (listed in order of importance): picture quality (including picture clarity, sharpness and color); durability and reliability (including damage resistance, battery life and sturdiness); variety of features (including zoom, image stabilization and low light settings); ease of operation; and shutter speed/lag time (overall "speed" of the camera, including shutter lag time).

Overall, online DSLR buyers indicate they are well satisfied with their cameras, with satisfaction averaging 887 on a 1,000-point scale. Among the five factors, camera owners are particularly satisfied with picture quality (917), but are least satisfied with the shutter speed/lag time and durability of their cameras (866 each).

"Clearly, picture quality is crucial to online buyers of DSLR cameras," said Larry Wu, senior director at J.D. Power and Associates. "However, owners expect no less than high-quality photos from their DSLRs, and other performance factors—such as durability and reliability, which is the second-most influential factor in overall satisfaction—have evolved as ways for DSLR camera models to differentiate themselves."

The Nikon Pro Series ranks highest in online buyer satisfaction with a score of 914. The Nikon Pro Series performs particularly well in shutter speed/lag time, durability and reliability and ease of operation. The Canon Mark-Series follows in the rankings with a score of 909, and performs particularly well in performance and picture quality. The Canon D-Series and Nikon D-Series rank third in a tie, each with a score of 889.

The study also includes the following key findings:

• Online buyers spend an average of $937 on their camera.
• Online buyers report taking an average of 918 photos per month using their DSLR camera.
• A vast majority of online buyers (87%) say they "definitely will" recommend their DSLR camera to friends and family.
• One-third of online DSLR buyers use their camera for shooting video.
• While overall performance is cited as a reason for purchasing a particular DSLR model 31 percent of the time, online buyers cite previous ownership and brand reputation nearly as often.

The 2011 Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera Online Buyer Study is based on responses provided by PowerReviews from nearly 4,500 verified buyers who purchased a DSLR camera online. The study was fielded October 2010 through April 2011.

The chart of the makes in the survey can be seen here. Sony pro series (A850 and A900, I presume) and Olympus E-series cameras weren't included because the survey sample sizes were too low.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Dennis: "My satisfaction with my DSLR is vastly higher than my satisfaction with J.D. Power surveys."

Open Mike: Educate the Editor

I often say that TOP isn't a forum, and I seldom just throw out plain unadorned discussion-leading questions for the sake of eliciting answers. But no one knows everything about anything, of course, and right now I have a question that I think readers in the know could educate me about more quickly than I could do the research myself.

Twenty-five years ago, I taught at a girls' high school, had fallen in love with a model*, had recently assisted for a studio advertising photographer, and was soon to be a partner in a studio myself. I even had a student who had paid for her own college education (completely, and yes, really) by modeling in Japan every summer during her high school years**.

So I knew a lot about (not all about, but a lot) the modeling scene and modeling as a career. When one of my students came to me wanting a headshot or a comp sheet or with questions about a modeling career, I could at least talk intelligently about it.***

No longer—my knowledge is out of date.

So my question: if a young woman came to you asking what she needs to try modeling, what's today's answer? What body type (height/weight) is the standard for what they're looking for these days? What kind of work is available? Where is it? What are the going rates for part-time character models, catalog, fashion, runway? What does a standard headshot look like these days, and does a model need one? What's the current equivalent of the composite sheet—do they still use those, or is there some more up-to-the-minute version, on the web or something? Assuming the prospective model has no tearsheets, are single-photographer comp sheets useful, or does it have to be a mix? What are the better agencies? (I'm mainly interested in the Midwest, if that's not a non sequiteur.) What's the path of least resistance to breaking in?

A side note: It's always a bit obnoxious for a person asking a question to specify who he wants to hear answers from, so I apologize in advance for that, but I'm really looking to hear from people with firsthand recent experience—people who are models or who work with them. I don't need to hear about something somebody read in a magazine or saw in a movie, and out-of-date info isn't going to help (as I say, I already have a lot of that myself).

If you can help educate me, or rather re-educate me, I'd appreciate the help.

And, as they say on the forums, "thanks in advance."

Mike the Ed.

"Open Mike" is a series of open-topic posts by yer 'umble 'ost that appears on certain Sundays. Recently we have had a hard time staying off-topic, but we'll work on that.

*She was a hair model—they'd fly her to New York, some haute couture hairdresser o' the moment would work his magic arranging her coiffure, she'd be photographed, and she'd return to school on Monday morning with a check in her purse which to her art school friends seemed astronomically large. A few weeks later she'd show me the latest issue of Elle or Glamour or Vogue sporting a stunning picture of her looking ravishing and ready to slay men's dreams with a single dusky glance.

G. the hair model. A digisnap from a fading 16x20 print made from a 4x5 neg.

**I have a very interesting picture of her around here that would make a wonderful web tutorial if I could ever find the "before" print. And if I had a working scanner. Oh, never mind.

***Mostly, I just talked them out of it.

Discontinuous Demand and Its Discontents

In a comment written in response to the "Film Falls Off a Cliff" post below, our friend Thom Hogan (of ByThom.com, the world's best Nikon news site) wrote the following:

Beware that statistics can show something both 'up' and 'down' simultaneously. You have to look at what's being measured. The 'down' statistic is overall film sales. This is a 'global' statistic, the entire universe of film. You can have 'up' statistics, too. For instance, if there were 10 competitors each with 10% of the global market, the global market shrinks by 50% and six competitors close their doors, someone's sales are going to go up (maybe all of the remaining four, but by definition, at least one).

I talked to one local lab about this. Their sales were up, and they felt comfortable that film was seeing a resurrection. Then I pointed out that all their local competitors were now closed, so anyone who was still shooting film who had used a local competitor was now coming to them.

Still feel confident that things are 'up'?

Just so. Oren and I had been discussing this privately. He referred to it as "taking share from others." Writing back, I wondered what accounted for Harman's 8% rise in sales in 2010. "It's quite possible it could have been linked to disappearing competition as easily as increased popularity. I really don't want to have to research it—especially since I know the conclusions will be, well, inconclusive—but it's quite possible it could be simply people migrating to Ilford as other B&W films went south. Impossible to know without more data than we have readily available."

The concept was most vividly and succinctly put into words in my experience by the late Ian Brightman, who was at that time the owner of Beseler, the enlarger manufacturer, in a meeting in the publisher's office at the photo magazine I edited. The publisher asked him if he was worried about the decline in enlarger sales, and he replied, "Not necessarily. In a down market, the last man standing makes out like a bandit."

But what if there is no 'last man'?
A somewhat related topic is what happens to industries when none of them can weather an abrupt market change (apropos the Ctein column below, I should say that I'm doubtless discovering for myself ideas that are very familiar to economists—I've never taken an econ course in my life, more's the pity).

To create an illustration, let's say that somebody invented hovercars that were half as expensive as automobiles and ran on antigravity, sunlight, and optimism. The market for gas cars would crash as the world's population swiftly migrated to hovercars for their personal transportation. But let's say that 15% of the population still needed or wanted petrol cars*. The problem would be, for the short term, that for a while there would be a huge number of perfectly good gasoline-powered cars glutting the used market—so many for so little money that, for a good long stretch of time, no one would need to buy a new car. So all the car manufacturers would go out of business, or switch to making the newfangled hovercars.

But then, eventually, the supply of decent used petrol cars would begin to dwindle and disappear. At that point, the 15-percenters are in trouble, no? Because they still want to use petrol cars, but no one is making petrol cars any more. The irony in this scenario is that there might be, at that point, a market perfectly sufficient to support one or two companies making petrol-powered cars. There just wouldn't be any manufacturers who had survived from the era of petrol-powered cars to supply them. (And, of course, re-starting an industry is much more difficult and expensive than simply continuing an existing industry, even on a much reduced scale.)

If I had to put my own name to this problem, I might call it "discontinuous demand." Not only does an industry get whacked by an abrupt shift, but there's a period when the remaining demand "looks" artificially low, because of temporarily high supply from the used market.

That's the situation film camera makers find themselves in right now, I suspect. There's probably a market out there for film cameras—it never really went away, and it will be sufficient in the future to support one, two, or three small companies. But it can't support any camera manufacturers in the interim, because of the vast supply from the used market that it can't compete with.

The situation isn't absolute—there are still some nice film cameras available. But you'll notice that many of them are niche products suited to markets that were already very small even before digital came along. (I'm speaking mainly of bespoke handmade view cameras. The Fuji folder is another example—Fuji was making the odd occasional quirky one-off camera every now and then back in the film-only era, too.) Those companies can deal with limited demand, because they'd been dealing with a limited market all along.

Crystal ball gazing
My friend Phil Davis used to tell me he didn't fear death—that his problem with reaching the end of his life (he died at 85 in 2007) was that he was so curious about what was going to happen next. I won't be around to survey the camera market in 2060, but I wish I could be. I'm very curious as to what it will look like.

I'll make two predictions: first, that large-format black-and-white optical-chemical photography, practiced by a small band of craft adherents, will be the very most prestigious form of photography—and that there will be one, two, or three small manufacturers making a variety of film cameras, steaming merrily along and doing very well, thank you. Just a guess.

Mike

*The diehard pessimists?

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Featured Comment by David A. Goldfarb: "Case in point:

Driving Essentials Whips
Chrysalis Acres Tufflex Carriage Driving Whip
Westfield Whip
Advanced Equine Whips for Drivers
Big Black Horse Whips and Accessories

Featured Comment by Chad Thompson: "As much as people love to trot out the old adage involving buggy whips, something a little closer to home is the wet plate camera. Currently there are about three manufacturers of them here in the states. Near as I can tell they're all doing fairly well selling their buggy whips. Here's my whip:

"And thanks to another reader here for the referral to the builder."

Ricoh, Panasonic, Olympus to Shed Jobs, Factories

Without knowing the situation in more detail it's probably impossible for a mere blogger in the hinterlands to say definitiely that this news is a result of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, but there have been various announcements in the past month regarding companies with a stake in the camera market.

Mayumi Negishi at Reuters is reporting that Ricoh, which makes offbeat point-and-shoot cameras beloved of enthusiasts (including the popular GRDIII and the very offbeat modular GXR system, which features interchangeable lens/sensor units on the same body) will cut 10,000 jobs and "unprofitable products." The article, however, implies that this is overdue cost-cutting that comes in response to the natural disaster but was not caused by it—and that the news caused a bounce in Ricoh's stock price.

Meanwhile, a month ago now, according to Businesswire, Panasonic—makers of the mirrorless GF2 and the new G3 that's coming in June (not to mention my favorite lens for digital)—announced that it will cut 17,000 jobs and close as many as 70 factories. President Fumio Ohtsubo's comments at a business policy meeting were summarized thusly: "While operations at Panasonic factories in the disaster-hit region have been recovering steadily, disruptions in its supply chain are still affecting the group’s operations." However, Panasonic "is determined to play a significant role in the country’s reconstruction efforts with its products and business activities."

Finally, Olympus, whose new President and COO, Michael Woodford, is British, will cut jobs to address "what he said was an unacceptable slump in earnings," according to Business Times. But not in Japan. (Translation: the jobs that will get the axe are mainly in China.) Olympus makes the sleek E-PL2.

Of course, all three of these conglomerates have business interests far beyond cameras. Without greater familiarity with the situations of each, it's impossible to do more than guess at the ramifications these moves will have on the respective companies' photographic product lines—if any.

Mike
(Thanks to Editor-at-Large Vlatko Juric-Kokic)

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Real Reasons to Pick One Camera Over Another

...Or a few that I can think of right now, anyway. In reverse order of importance:

8. You have a relationship with the company or one of its representatives. I know too many stories to recount. Includes sponsorship by that company, or membership in that company's Professional Services. Or maybe you just know someone associated with that brand, like my now-retired friend Don "Mr. Pentax" Nelson.

7. The camera really does have a feature you really like that a competing model doesn't have. If you really, really want video, you won't be happy with a Sony A900. If you really want, oh, say, body-integral IS (ahem), you won't be happy with a 5D Mark II.

6. You're "standing in line behind yourself." Dan Ariely, in his book Predictable Irrationality, notes that people love to do what other people are doing, so all of us are more likely to "stand in line" behind others and do what they do. In other words, lots of people buy Canon because lots of other people buy Canon. But, Ariely points out, we also "stand in line with ourselves," meaning, we want to do again over time what we have done before. Marketers know that if you've bought six Nikons in a row over twenty-five years, you're much more likely to buy a seventh Nikon. If you think of yourself as someone who "always buys American cars," your next car is much more likely to be an American one. And so on. It's harder to market something new or different to someone with entrenched habits. (I still can't believe I bought a car without a stick shift.)

5. The system in question has certain accessories you really need—the best flash system or a certain underwater housing or whatever.

4. You are already invested in that system.

3. It's what all your friends use. A friend emailed me this morning privately about this, and he's right. If all the photographers around you use one brand and you use another, you lose all kinds of benefits—loaning lenses and accessories back and forth, sharing esoteric secrets of menus and settings, etc. I started out with Contax, and switched to Nikon because I joined a studio with three other shooters, all of whom shot Nikon. It was partly that I wanted to borrow their equipment, and partly that I wanted to do my part within the group and be able to loan my equipment to them.

2. The lenses you want or need fit that camera body.

1. You really want a particular camera. It amazes me that so many people will go to such great lengths working to objectively justify a particular buying choice when the real reason is simply that they really want it. To me, really wanting something is the best reason to buy something, not the worst. There's nothing dishonorable or indulgent about it; you'll be happier, shoot more often, and might even do better work if you have the camera and/or lens you want. They're only cameras—we're not talking beach houses or Italian exoticars or Gulfstream jets. If you really want something, lucky for you—how much better is that than indecision, or not having a basis to choose, or, worst of all, "purchase paralysis"? It's worse to not know. So if you really want something, save your money and get it.

Why not? It's a very good reason, if you ask me. We only live once.

Mike

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Featured Comment by hugh crawford: "When I was doing this stuff for money, the biggest reasons to pick a brand were that:

1. It was easiest to rent if you needed some esoteric lens or accessory;
2. It had enough people using it that it was easy to buy or sell used gear at not too much of a loss (pro gear didn't used to lose value very quickly);
3. Assistants knew their way around it; and
4. Clients were comfortable with it.

"So I ended up using Nikons, Hasselblads, and Normans, because they were effectively the cheapest, most practical gear I could be using, because it was popular, even though I would have much rather used Rolleis, Pentaxes, and Graflexes. Normans were fine either way.

"Now I'm using full-frame Canons and the Sony NEX because they work with all the Nikon, Pentax and other weird bits of gear that I have lying around or want to try. Don't much care for the lenses that match the cameras, although there are some lenses for the other Sony cameras that look pretty nice."

Fuji X100 Production Halted

I have to confess I have found the days since Friday hard to face. "Business as usual" has not come easily.

I know I personally have no concerns and nothing to complain about. I suffered no loss in the disaster in Japan; I have experienced none of the corrosive worry affecting those in need of news; and I don't know firsthand any of the places that have been ruined or any of the people who have been lost. But I can't keep my sympathy in check. I can't keep Japan and its people from my thoughts. I soak in the news, watch the sickening but fascinating videos. I find myself imagining the stories we have not been told.

I worry about my own country; it seems natural at this time to think "what if." We are far less well prepared than Japan for such an event. I think of my own relatives near the Pacific. Our government has been weakened by systematic antagonism from within, our economy made fragile by the irresponsible behavior of the greedy. Our response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was far less adequate than our response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and things aren't getting better: just days before the disaster in Japan, the newly elected majority in the House of Representatives passed a bill gutting the funding of, among many other things, California's tsunami early warning system—yet another irony in a dispiriting parade of ironies in America. Japan, with a far more homogenous population and greater political unity, arguably as much wealth, and far better preparation, is reeling terribly. How would we do?

Such thoughts don't make for easy nights.

Well—back to the news. Fujifilm Inc. confirmed Monday that its Taiwa-Cho factory, 20 miles from Sendai city, was damaged in the disaster. No employees were injured, but the production of the much-awaited X100 has been halted. This is, of course, but a tiny data point amidst the enormity, not significant in itself, yet perhaps symbolic of the irruption that will roil the waters of world commerce in the days and weeks to come. Even Toyota has closed all its plants until Thursday.

Much of Fujifilm's digicam manufacture was transferred to the Suzhou industrial district of China in 2007, and is not affected.

"First Shot" by Pieter Franken, from the flickr X100 Group Pool. (RAW converted to TIFF in Silkypix and edited in LR3. ISO 200 at ƒ/2.)

Meanwhile, the number of X100 samples on flickr has risen past 500, and B&H has started to accept pre-orders.

Mike
(Thanks to Robert Jagitsch and Arthur Elkon)

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Featured Comment by Nikhil Ramkarran: "I work less than a mile away from the Atlantic Ocean in a city that is six feet below sea level (protected by an immense length of seawall). While we are exceedingly fortunate here not to be subject to any natural disasters (unless you consider politicians 'natural'; I don't) I can't help but wonder, what if it had been us? I've seen several of the videos of the onrushing tsunami and wondered how many of those people had to contemplate their families and loved ones being inundated. It is a thought to give you nightmares (and it has to me, two nights in a row now). With all the bad things happening in the world right now, I consider the fact that I can be typing this, a matter of great fortune which I am treasuring. Anyone who wants to donate, should do so sensibly and have a look at the guidelines that Consumer Reports give."

Featured Comment by Chris Y.: "I lived in Japan for two years, working in the mountains of Nagano. I was not a kid, I was 38 years old when I arrived. It was 20 years ago, and to me it still seems like yesterday. The Japanese daily devotion to inner strength, calm, patience and respect changed my life profoundly, and for the better. Yes, I know, I was a gaijin, an 'outside-world-person' and that is all I will ever be to Japan. But what Japan is to me is still inside me, and to see the news of this catastrophe absolutely breaks my heart. I know I am not alone in this. Everyone who has ever made friends in that Alice-in-Wonderland world is feeling the same. We know that like the pine bough weighted with snow, Japan will again bend, but it will not break."

Canon Reports Injuries, Plant Closings

Note: In no way is this brief report intended to minimize, mitigate, or delimit our concern for all the people of Japan or for any of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami or the nuclear powerplant crisis there. This is a photography-related website, and we discuss many things as they relate to photography. I hope it goes without saying that that does not mean that's the only thing we care about. —Ed.

Canon Inc. has this morning issued a Damage Report [link is a PDF download] detailing the suspension of operations at several operation sites and group companies. For most, the resumption of normal operations is marked "To Be Determined," but in the case of the Utsunomiya plants and Fukushima Canon Inc., an additional note is appended saying that "additional time will likely be needed before operations resume." There are 15 employee injuries reported at the Utsunomiya plant.

The report also notes that if Canon has to shut down operations for more than a month, it will consider making use of undamaged alternate sites as a means of continuing production.

Nikon and Epson have also issued further damage reports.

'They're just coming to take photos'
I noted that a Japanese woman in this Reuters video mentions that "nobody's coming here. They're just coming to take photos, and that's about it."

Speaking of photos, few things have brought home the incredible power of the tsunami more than these interactive shutter-curtain photos at nytimes.com. They're comparative satellite photos before and after the tidal wave. Astonishing and horrifying.

Particularly heartbreaking is that apparently, in areas largely swept away by the tsunami, few survivors are being found.

Tsunami-proof house
Just as a point of interest (and to inject a faint note of hopefulness after a very discouraging weekend following the news), I happened to remember from my housing research a few years ago that there's a company called Topsider that builds hurricane- and tsunami-resistant houses. They use a radiating pattern of reinforced post-and-beam atop a concrete piling.

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko Juric-Kokic)

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Featured Comment by Marc Saylor: "The designers of the Topsider tsunami-proof house might want to add the possibility of passenger ferries to their contingency plans."

Associated Press

Localization in Camera Markets

Panasonic has announced the pricing of the GF2, a somewhat smaller and simpler successor of the GF1. It'll come in black, silver, red, and white models and have a suggested retail price of $499.95. Availability is imminent—the middle of this month.

And speaking of mirrorless developments, Ricoh Camera has just announced the so-called "GXR Lens Mount Unit," in development for release next fall. You remember the GXR—that's the camera with the interchangeable self-contained lens-sensors units. The Lens Mount Unit will enable the use of Leica M mount lenses in a unit that contains a 12.9 MP APS-C sized CMOS sensor behind a focal plane shutter. In other words, exactly what many enthusiasts were barking for when the exotic GXR was first treed.

And speaking of Ricoh...it's a company that has long had a very low penetration and a low profile in the U.S. market. Think of Ricoh (the camera division, I'm talking about—the company also makes business products and much else) as being roughly analogous to Subaru—a proud but quirky little company that goes its own way, and that has a user base sometimes described as a "cult following." Small but dedicated. For years, Ricoh bypassed the U.S. for its cameras, feeling its products got lost in the crowd. In the last decade, however, it has quietly re-entered the U.S. market with at least four dealers: Adorama, Tony Rose's PopFlash in Thousand Oaks, California, and Rich Pinto's Photo Village in New York City, and it has just struck an agreement to sell directly through Amazon. So at least non-gray Ricoh cameras are available here again, and have been for at least six or seven years now. Still, Ricoh remains a very minor presence in the U.S.

And speaking of "regionality" where cameras are concerned...take the following with a grain of salt, because I'm no expert on the international camera market—this is just a report of rumors, none of which has an official source. But I hear there are some significant regional aspects to the popularity of various cameras and brands. For example, evidently it's mainly China that's keeping the global pipeline for the Leica S2 dry as a bone: the S2 is rampantly popular among newly minted millionaires there (and to a lesser extent in India). The country that's turning the Pentax 645D from a prestige loss-leader into a viable cash-cow product is India (and to a lesser extent China), where the camera is in great demand. And the Brazilians (they of the most recent economic miracle) are apparently wild for Sony NEX cameras. NEX 5's are apparently just the hottest thing going there. Or so rumor has it.

Of course, the opposite happens sometimes as well: The Fuji X100 was reportedly conceived as a niche boutique product principally for the Japanese home market, but is now slated for a worldwide rollout because of all the attention it got in the wake of Photokina.

My favorite lens. For now.

Finally—on a matter of extremely local concern*—can anybody steeped in Oly links 'n' lore fill me in on the current status of the rumored upcoming "pro" Micro 4/3 camera? Any camera that takes my current favorite lens is of at least a little interest to me.

Mike

*Here in my office, or, you might say, inside my head.

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Featured Comment by Russ: "In New Zealand Subaru are very popular and Ricoh not so much, so even your comparisons are localised!"

Featured Comment by Jeff: "My understanding is that the largest proportion of late model Leica M film cameras (MP and M7) have been sold in Japan."

Mike replies: Thank you Jeff. I forgot that example.

The End of Cameras?

I haven't mentioned CES yet this year—the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which ended yesterday. I guess it's because I found the whole thing to be pretty much a giant yawn this year. Basically, a bunch of new digicams were announced. That's got to be exciting to people who just didn't have enough digital point-and-shoots to choose from before.

The new digicams included a waterproof one from Kodak (the EasyShare Sport), a "ruggedized" (waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof) one with GPS from Fujifilm (the FinePix XP30), and a Casio with a BSI sensor (the catchily named Exilim EX-ZR100). Probably the two most significant camera introductions at the show were the Olympus E-PL2, an improved uptick of the E-PL1, and the Samsung NX-11, both mirrorless cameras based on earlier models.

The Olympus E-PL2 sure is a sleek and handsome little box.

It's safe to say that cameras weren't creating the biggest splash at CES. In fact, I can't escape this nagging sense of foreboding in the back of my brain that the camera functionality of multi-use devices is beginning to fatally contaminate the concept of the "camera" altogether. Well, maybe that "fatally" is hyperbolic. But first you have the increasingly ubiquitous cross-contamination of video and still-picture functionality, and then there's the continued improvement of the cameras in phones; and given the astonishing number of tablets introduced at CES—I think I heard the number was 80—how long can it be before tablets replace laptops and include built-in cameras up in one corner? Seems like the still-picture single-use device category is starting to take a beating. I hope the photography area of CES 2021 won't be a forlorn little corner with a few cheap, basic remnant products in it, like the darkroom supply area of my local camera store is now.

I don't know, maybe this is just general curmudgeonliness, or something I ate. I had a bad weekend, despite the Packers win and the generally fantastic football (see the video at the link if you haven't already). Let me rephrase that: I didn't have a bad weekend so much as America had a bad weekend*. Whatever the cause, and whether or not this sense of foreboding I'm describing has any merit, this CES still seemed rather forgettable in my book.

Mike

*Despite this mention, I'd rather not have to ride herd on a discussion about the event in Arizona. Too far off topic, and I'm far too preoccupied with it as it is. Thanks for your co-operation.

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Are Digicams Doomed?

Along with daytime soap operas, print magazines, and Compact Discs, digital point-and-shoot cameras—digicams—appear to have passed their peak. According to a recent article by Sam Grobart, unit sales of digicams are down 16% since 2008.

Their sin? They are "single use devices," according to Grobart.

Devices that do only one thing. Like can openers. How quaint. Even a rolling pin has two uses—it can roll out pie crust, and Olive Oyl can use it to brain Popeye when she's sore at him.

All digicams do is take pictures. Well, movies, too, most of 'em—but that only gets them into the rolling-pin category. Call it 1.1-use.

A digicam (this is the Panasonic TS10) is an amazing marvel of technology, but its best attribute—convenience—is fast being superseded

As it was long predicted they would, cellphone cameras have, in the past few years, surpassed the magic quality threshhold—the point at which their quality has become "good enough" for their convenience advantages to engage with a turbocharger kick. Sales of smartphones are soaring. Not just because of their photographic capabilities, of course; but their photographic capabilities are causing more and more people who own them to set aside their fusty old 1.1-use point-and-shoots. (Or leave them at home on the shelf...just as point-and-shoots once caused casual "consumer"-type photographers to leave their SLRs back home in the bag in the closet.)

Sam Grobart says people love the apps, too. I'll take his word for that.

The reported trend accords with my anecdotal experience lately. I can't tell you how many people have told me that their iPhone 4 or other smartphone has become their carry-all-the-time camera. That includes at least two real pros (by "real" I mean people who make all or almost all of their actual livings as photographers, not just those who sell a print once in a while or do a few weddings a year for friends of friends. I'm not a pro, by that measure).

As with CDs, the softening market might only soften so far. Some people like single-use devices—you'll laugh when I tell you about my own newest photographic single-use device, which I'll get around to doing probably within the next few weeks.

And remember, this isn't necessarily bad news for digital imaging. Sales of DSLRs are up, continuing a trend that was only briefly interrupted by the worldwide recession. I foresee a good world, imaging-wise, in the immediate future, in which multi-use devices of ever-improving quality and flexibility take the low end, a thriving market for good-quality 4/3-to-ff-sensor cameras occupies a smaller but vibrantly competitive and healthy middle ground, and a decent handful of quality-above-all cameras like the Leica S2, Pentax 645D, Leaf Aptus II-12, and Hasselblad H4D-40 occupy the Olympian fastnesses at the pinnacle.

That's until the next paradigm shift, at any rate—which is also coming. (We just don't know what that will be yet.)

The point-and-shoot—the camera real photographers loved and hated, loved to hate, and hated to love, but sometimes did. Too early for an R.I.P., but maybe the beginning of the long goodbye.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Paul Van: "I would suggest that the watch business is a good place to look at to get an idea what will happen.

"At one time, everyone had a watch. Then, it seemed to decrease as clocks were available in all cars, microwaves and so on. Then timekeeping became a cell phone function.

"A lot of watch names disappeared, but the market has stabilized. People wear watches, still. If you ever thought photographers or audiophiles were a little obsessed, then check out some of the watch forums! But be careful...like audiophiles and photographers, they welcome you into their world—and you might not leave!"

Featured Comment by D'11: "One another interesting and unintended effect of many smartphones (or at least the iPhone): People of my generation (in their 20s) adjusting to the idea of using a single, fixed-focal lens. The iPhone doesn't have an optical zoom, and people seem to be alright with that. All of a sudden, when I hand people my GF1 + 20mm kit, they seem to be more likely to take a step forward or backward, instead of immediately asking where the zoom button is."

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Goggin: "As yet more proof that cell phone cameras are indeed becoming our future, Dave Wyman is now offering photo tours of Yosemite National Park geared to cell phone users:

Alternative Photography in Yosemite—Thursday through Sunday, November 17–20, 2011

We will test our creative eyes on this unique trip to Yosemite, where there will be one restriction: no DSLRs. A digital point-and-shoot, a cell phone, Holga, Diana, Instamatic, a Rolleiflex or Yashika Mat, a Polaroid or a pinhole camera? Yes.

For a few days, we will remove ourselves from the burden of weight and the burden of technological complexity, and from the belief that weight and complexity are necessary components of meaningful or artistic photography. Includes accommodations, a couple of meals, field locations. Instructors: Chuck Nadeau, Dave Wyman. Cost: $525 (single supplement available).

The Red and the Black*

The conventional wisdom so far seems to have it that overall Black Friday retail sales for 2010 were up only slightly, by .3% (the figure seems to trace back to a Chicago research firm called ShopperTrak). However, online sales were reportedly up by 16% to 19% for the day, depending on who's reporting. ("Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, when most Americans have a day off, is regarded as the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. It usually ranks among the top ten or twelve shopping days of the year.) So people aren't buying more, but they're buying more of what they do buy online.

A big winner in the photography category in 2010, according to PMA Newsline, is Leica Camera AG, which saw sales nearly double from €59.5 million to €110.8 million ($78.8 million to $146.74 million) in the first half of fiscal 2010 compared to the same period in fiscal 2009. "Sales were driven by the Leica M9 rangefinder camera and the Leica S2 professional system," according to the article. Leica's CEO, Alfred Schopf, is quoted saying that Leica has added 30 new manufacturing employees in order to help fulfill its order backlog.

Another winner is Hoya Corp., parent company of Pentax...I think. PMA Newsline says, "Hoya Corp. posted a net profit of 33.9 billion yen (US$842 million), up 139 percent year-on-year, on group total sales of 212.6 billion yen (US$2.62 billion), up 5.4 percent, according to JPEA Photo Electro News." I don't know exactly what that means, because it doesn't specify a sales period—maybe financial people know such things intuitively? (I looked up "year-on-year" and it apparently means a comparison from "the same period" the previous year.) Sounds like good news, anyway.

An apparent loser this year is Olympus, which saw an 80.5% decline in "consolidated net profits" and a 4.2% decline in sales.

The best-selling DSLR continues to be the Canon T2i.

Mike
(Thanks to Dean Johnston)

*So where else do you get Stendahl titles with your financial news?

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More New Stuff Like the Old Stuff

...And speaking of the Department of Redundancy Reduction of Redundancy, as we were in the previous post, Pentax has announced a new prime lens. Full moniker: the SMC Pentax DA L 35mm ƒ/2.4 AL. A brand new...er...35mm ƒ/2.4.

What?

Oh, right, right...

...Because, of course, Nikon has had a modest success with its economical normal-lens-equivalent for reduced-sized sensors, and then Sony came out with its version, and so now Pentax wants one, too.

I think this is partially a cultural thing. I don't know any Japanese people, so I'm just going on a mix of hearsay and received wisdom and possibly bigotry, but it's a commonplace that Americans are known to value individuality, innovation, and going your own way ("Think Different," advised the Apple computer ads, proudly if ungrammatically), whereas the Japanese place a higher cultural value on co-operation, conformity, and imitation as a virtue. I don't know that firsthand, or for a fact.

I do know that, as an American, tracking Japanese product introductions can sometimes drive me insane. So there's that data point.

As everyone knows, I'm all in favor of primes. And I love Pentax—they're our major sponsor right now, God bless 'em—but this is not the new prime lens we needed from Pentax at this point. Because of course it almost exactly duplicates the already-existing DA Macro lens. Which is one of the best lenses currently made for digital cameras, period. But why would you want to use a superlative lens that is one of the best reasons to shoot Pentax at all, when you could have a cheaper, crappier version?

I shouldn't say the new lens is crappier. That's irresponsible, and provocative. Pentax won't like it. It's cheaper. It's not the DA Macro, which is enough to indict it in my eyes, but then, I'm prejudiced: I've used the DA Macro.

Pentax-wielding friends, Romans, countrymen: The DA Macro is expensive. But it's not that expensive. Assuming you want a prime 35mm, here's my advice: SAVE UP. Put aside fifty bucks today and do the same thing two weeks from now. Add a twenty or a C-note when you can. Sooner or later, you will have saved up the difference between what the cheap new lens will cost and the DA Macro.

You will not be sorry. A camera body is just a camera body, but a great lens is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Mike

UPDATE

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Featured Comment by Alex H.: "While on the topic of 'normal'/standard lenses: Let's pray that someone bright at Nikon, Sony, Pentax will finally think it a good idea to have a reasonably fast, not incredibly expensive 24mm DX/APS-C lens (35mm-e). Now that would be something new...."

Mike replies: From your lips to the ears of the directors of product development, Alex. (Although there we go again, just thinking in terms of what photographers need and not in terms of what will sell well.)

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Normally I'm in your camp on the dearth of decent primes, but this time I think you're barking up the wrong tree. That wonderful Pentax 35 macro's a $550 lens! I'll eat the web page if the new 35mm's street price is over $200. That is not a trivial difference in price; it's an entirely different class of buyer. Complaining that this is redundant feel to me a lot like complaining that it's redundant when camera makers produce two superficially similar DSLRs that sell, respectively, for around $800 and $2,000."

Mike replies: Okay, okay. My judgement is probably clouded by the fact that it's not "a reasonably fast, not incredibly expensive 24mm DX/APS-C lens (35mm-e)."

Featured Comment by 645D Next?: "Here's the 35mm ƒ/2.4 color choices link."

The Most Excellent Engineers of LPL Co., Tokyo

One of the very first of the 250 or so published articles I wrote for various photography magazines was about enlargers. I got into a rather bitter fight with a manufacturer, which had a salutary side effect: very early in my career, it taught me to go ahead and say what I meant and to pay no attention to pressure. Ever since then my priorities have been ordered: readers first, employer second, manufacturers third. I didn't go to the mat with employers very often, but I did so when I thought it necessary to look after the readers' interests. I lost at least a couple of those fights. But I won some, too.

That early disputation over enlargers had another happy result: it introduced me to the Saunders/LPL 4500II 4x5 enlarger. At the time, the enlarger of choice for large-format and Zone System photographers was the Beseler 45MXT, which is still available new, equipped with an aftermarket cold-light head of the type manufactured by Aristo. (The cold light head was what caused all the ruckus, mainly because it was not manufactured by Aristo. I'll tell the story someday.)

The Saunders, which I will henceforth refer to as the LPL—Saunders was the then-importer, LPL Co. of Tokyo the manufacturer—was a whole 'nuther animal. It was based on dichroic color enlarger technology, and seemed to me clearly to be built to an altogether higher standard than the American enlargers of the day. It was slick and very convenient to use, and technically very competent.

Fast-forward to 1994. I lived in a very beautiful loft apartment in Chicago, with 14-foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, giant wooden beams, naked ductwork, and panoramic rooftop views. The only place for a darkroom was a converted powder room or half-bath. There was no room for the big Saunders, which therefore had to be de-accessioned. To replace it, because I had been so happy with the larger one, I bought the smaller, medium-format Saunders/LPL 670 VCCE (670 refers to the largest format the enlarger handle—6x7cm—and VCCE stands for "variable contrast constant exposure").

Saunders/LPL VCCE, c. 1994

I quite honestly didn't think a lot about it one way or the other. It wasn't terribly fancy and it did what I expected it to do. Nothing to get excited about—it was clearly a step down from its big brother.

Fast forward to today. I've been happily puttering in the new darkroom—which I find relaxing. The aging LPL has been sitting, neglected, in a corner, for almost a decade. So I had to take it entirely apart.

As you can see, spiders had set up house in the bellows! The whole thing needed a thorough clean-and-check.

Having it all apart gave me a renewed appreciation for the thought and care that went into making this thing. I know it's not rocket science, but the engineering problems aren't trivial, either—not when they're solved to this degree of elegance—and there are a number of them that all have to be satisfied equally well. For instance, the light source must be perfectly even and bright; no light can come out of the device except where it's supposed to; many different parts need to move and adjust relative to each other yet still remain rigidly positioned with a really pretty high degree of precision; the color of the light has to change without changing the intensity; and the whole thing must be easy and intuitive to use.

From what I hear, LPL's engineers derived a number of their solutions from earlier Durst enlargers, Durst (1936–2006) being the longtime European leader in enlargers. But wherever the "prior art" came from, this is clearly a refined design with a long engineering evolution behind it, cleverly and thoroughly thought through.

This is the enlarger head, removed from the chassis, upright, and with its top off and the light mixing box removed. The three small glass filters you can see—one yellow, one magenta, and one neutral density (ND)—slide up and and down in varying ratios as a single knob on the side of the side of the head—the big black one visible in the first picture—is turned. The effect is to change the color of the light without varying its intensity. The bulb itself, a regular 12V, 100-watt halogen projector bulb like the one pictured here, is hidden in the chamber behind the filters.

Here's a detail. As usual, you can click on any of these pictures to make them larger.

The three filters do an independently-variable little up-and-down dance when you turn the contrast-control knob. The weird color and the apparent green bar are caused by reflections from the optical coatings.

After passing through the filters, the light enters the light-mixing box through a hole. This is what sits directly above the negative carrier. (And this whole arrangement raises and lowers with a lever, too, to allow easy insertion and removal of the negative carrier.)

The core of the mixing box—and thus, in essence, the core of the enlarger—is made of styrofoam! Not fancy, but ideal from a functional standpoint. I've heard that these styrofoam mixing boxes were known to yellow over time in early 4x5 models, but this one is still bright white after 16 years or so (the yellowish-greenish tint comes from my horrid mixed lighting). The last piece—what the negative sees—is a diffuser made of translucent plastic that comprises the bottom of the box. You can see a bit of it there to the right of the mixing box.

I wonder if the engineers who designed the 670 VCCE are still active and working for LPL? Wherever they may be now, they have my respect, admiration, and regards. For all its modesty, this is a well-made, high-value product.

My enlarger seems to have held up well over time, for the most part, despite the spiders. The big question for me is whether the contrast filters have held their values over the years. If they've faded, either the parts or the whole head will have to be replaced.

LPL enlargers are now distributed in the U.S. by former competitor Omega. The 670 VCCE now costs $1,295, which isn't much of an increase from the ~$895 I paid in '94, especially when you factor in today's considerably reduced demand. Used ones, of course, are not difficult to find.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Helcio J. Tagliolatto:

Nikon at Photokina

I always just assume that everybody knows about Photokina (as I understand it, the official name is spelled with a lowercase "p"—the official title is "photokina, world of imaging [sic]"—but I'm too middlebrow to write it that way).

But maybe some people reading this don't know. And, to be honest, it took me by surprise this year—I'm either having a big success with TOP or else wasting my precious life, because it's hardly conceivable to me that a whole two years could possibly have passed since the last Photokina. Time flies when you're sitting like a lump staring at your computer every waking minute.

Anyway, Photokina is the world's largest international photography- and imaging-related trade fair, held every two years in Cologne, Germany. This year's Photokina, coming up fast now, will be held at the Cologne International Expocenter (a.k.a. Kölnmesse) from Tuesday, September 21st, to Sunday, September 26th, 2010.The public is welcome.

Traditionally, companies working in our sphere reserve at least some of their big product announcements for Photokina—even though the torrid and fiercely competitive pace of digital innovation has de-emphasized that schedule over the past decade or decade and a half. Every year, it's news within the industry as to who's got what sized booth, who's conspicuous by their absence, and so forth.

And most of the major announcements don't actually wait to appear until the trade fair starts; they're announced in the run-up to the show. Canon has already dropped its major news this year—the EOS 60D, PowerShot S95, two new teleconverters, and four new lenses: the EF 300mm ƒ/2.8L IS II USM, EF 400mm ƒ/2.8 IS II USM, EF 70–300mm ƒ/4–5.6L IS USM (an L lens for the consumer market), and the EF 8–15mm ƒ/4L Fisheye USM (because they're Canon, and they can).

Now that the Canon announcements have dropped, we're waiting to hear what Nikon is going to put on offer for this fall and Christmas season. The lenses have already been announced—there's the AF-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.4G that we already wrote about ("Nikkor," by the way, is the trade name for all Nikon lenses), the AF-S Nikkor 28–300mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 ED VR (another exemplar in a class of lenses that has always made me shudder with dread and horror—truly anti-Mike lenses), the AF-S Nikkor 24–120mm ƒ/4G ED VR (sure to be popular), and the AF-S Nikkor 200–400mm ƒ/4G ED VR II (shown). That last should be called "The Wildlife Lens," a descendant of the lens Art Wolfe made famous, perfect for the D300s. Also already announced is the entry-level D3100, a refresh of the nifty D3000, heir of the D40.

Also expected are one more major and one not so major camera, with a third one casting its long shadow über allen. I'll put the names in quotation marks, not to mock them but because they're not officially official yet. Expected are the "P7000," a premium small-sensor digicam that will compete with the Canon G11, and the "D7000," said to be the replacement for the D90.

The D90 is a tough act to follow. For a long time, its sensor ranked highest at DxOmark.com of all ~APS-C DSLRs, and it is a supremely well-sorted camera in terms of size, ergonomics, and performance, at least by the standards of these times. It's a bit boring—Nikon is extremely concerned both to regularize its lineup, in accordance with the current Japanese fashion, and to match Canon pretty closely step-for-step—but it's a very capable mainstream camera that sold by the gobs. The replacement is doubtless slated to improve the video performance, but it had better not mess up in any other area, either: the stakes in this segment of the market are high.

The camera that everyone is wondering about is the D700 replacement / complement. Whether what comes will be a "replacement" or a "complement" is something nobody seems to be quite sure of any more. For a while it was assumed that Nikon would continue its lower-pixel-count/faster, higher-pixel-count/not quite as fast bifurcation of models, seen for example in the D3s and D3x, and introduce a sort of "D700x," whatever it would actually be called. In his 2010 predictions, Thom Hogan, who knows more about Nikon than Nikon does, called for this camera to be announced by March. Well, March has marched past. Now the CW seems to be thinking that the "D800" that's coming (whatever it will actually be called) will be a D700 replacement.

Again, high stakes...very high. The D700, a full-frame, 12-MP camera with extremely good high-ISO performance, has been a stellar seller, very, very popular amongst the core cadre of loyal Nikonians. The "D700x/D800" is widely expected not to make its appearance at Photokina. So, then, when? For Nikon's sake, let's predict: before Christmas. Time, as ever, will tell.

Mike

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A Micro 4/3 Rangefinder

As a personal comment derived from the previous post, I would like to express the hope that Mr. Kobayashi of Cosina (a great photography enthusiast himself, based on the available evidence) will one day bring to market a manual-focus optical-rangefinder camera based on the Micro 4/3 standard and on the lenses Voigtländer will be making for that system. I believe such a product would complement rather than compete with Leica's astutely-judged digital product lineup, and that such a camera would likely bring happiness and satisfaction to a wide spectrum of photographers and photography enthusiasts.

Mike

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