Have Camera Manufacturers Fallen Victim to Audience Capture?

Sroyon wrote: I feel like Leica (for example) has to some extent fallen victim to audience capture. The basic M design was so revolutionary, and attracted such a loyal following, that they're condemned to repeating it forever and ever with only minor tweaks allowed.

In the post below this we were talking about "audience capture," which theportal.wiki defines as "a self-reinforcing feedback loop that involves telling one's audience what they want to hear and getting rewarded for it."

Berny Belvedere wrote about a term called "intellectual capture":

It is very important to me to be able to avoid intellectual capture.

By that I mean putting myself in a position where I have to professionally censor what I really believe due to investors disagreeing with it, or advertising people not approving of it, or an audience not appreciating it. It is of paramount importance to me to avoid ever being in a situation like this.

That’s not because I have particularly explosive beliefs. It’s because the lifeblood of a writer is being able to think and write freely.

That used to be called being "co-opted" in the 1960s, if I'm not mistaken. If you were co-opted, you sold out—joined the oppressors, abandoned your higher principles, self-censored, etc.

The business of business is business
As far as business is concerned, it seems obvious that "capture" of some sort is part of the very nature of enterprise. You give your audience what they want because they will buy it. And since the goal of business is not something amorphous like "doing good" or "having integrity" but simply making money, there's a pretty coarse test of concept right at hand: if something sells, you were right, and if it's a dud in the marketplace then it's a fail. You are pursuing customers who will pay, and you'll give them whatever they will want to pay for. So of course businesses are "captured" by their audiences—at least, that portion of the audience that actually buys their stuff. And they want to be captured.

There are a lot of ancillary issues around this that have intermittently interested me, and we can't parse them all here. As you know, though, an issue that preoccupies me these days is complexification—the continual addition of features in order to vie for customers. As soon as one manufacturer adds GPS or dual card slots or slow-motion video or built-in Bluetooth or whatever, then everyone has to do it, and they get slagged in reviews if they don't. And no matter how many features the makers lard into their infernally cunning little computerized cameras, the mavens always laser down on the ones that are missing, which might include things nobody knew they wanted two years prior. The overall result has been that most consumers now just sidestep cameras. Because instead of making life easier, the ever-increasing trend toward extreme capabilities just makes things too complicated for mere humans to master during the shortish lifetime of any given product. When was the last time you read and mastered a whole camera instruction book? I used to do it as a matter of course. Now it's too much like taking a semester-long college course.

I personally think that cameramakers have painted themselves into a corner in this regard. They've catered to the neverending nattering of the nabobs until even experts don't know all the capabilities of their own devices. "Audience capture" has led them into making products that are fundamentally unappealing except to an ever-shrinking pool of hardcore mavens. The public, meanwhile, given a viable alternative in smartphones, is drifting away. Most potential buyers of cameras don't even know what an ƒ-stop is, or that best focus in a fixed-lensmount camera is a plane parallel to the plane of the sensor. How are they going to master 28 pages in the IB on AF setup?

I do agree with Sroyon's point about the M, although I like the camera. But here's the funny thing: given my preoccupation with complexification—more accurately put, my yearning for radical simplification, for purity—I actually think Leica is the one company that has not been captured by its audience. It's the only company that has the cojones to go against the crowd and make fundamentally simple cameras.

I wish it weren't so, because Leica is also our industry's only maker of Veblen goods, the one company that frankly caters to the carriage trade. Nothing wrong with that, except for me, because I can't/won't participate. I've only bought cameras that cost close to $3k twice in my life, and both times it just drove me crazy to have that much cash hanging from a strap.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike

P.S. I once actually painted myself into a corner. In an outbuilding at my grandparents' summer cottage there was a chauffeur's room upstairs, because in the early days of the automobile it took three days to drive from Indianapolis to northern Michigan and my great-grandparents hired a driver to cope with the crappy roads and the incessant tire changes. (This would have been in the 1900s and 1910s.) Back then they stayed all summer and went home in the fall. And of course the driver had nothing to do once they got there but to hang out and wait for the drive back. So the little room above the workshop was for him to live in. I suppose it was only used for that purpose for a few years; roads and cars improved dramatically in a relatively short time. Anyway I and my friends used that room as a hangout, briefly, in my early teen years, and I found a can of green enamel down in the workshop that was still good, so, in the spirit of decorating the hangout, I happily painted the floor of the chauffeur's room green, ending up in a little aperture in the corner that led to the space under the eaves. After realizing what I had done and heartily experiencing the feeling of being an absolute dunce, I had to walk across the freshly painted enamel, repairing the footprints as I went, and then leave my now green-soled tennis shoes in the sun to dry so I wouldn't inadvertently leave a green footprint somewhere I oughtn't. So the expression "painted into a corner" has long been a vivid one for me. An older cousin later moved that old outbuilding down the shore to his own property. I don't know it for a fact, but I'd wager that little upstairs room still has a green floor.

And by the way, one of the things I once treasured that is now lost is a scrapbook my great-aunt Margie made when she was a girl that documented one of those three-day trips to the cottage. There were a lot of pictures of punctured tires being changed at different locations. The car was an open touring car with a tonneau cover of a type that was common then. A Pierce-Arrow similar to the one above. According to family lore, my great-grandmother was the first female in Indianapolis to learn to drive; she made her chauffeur give her lessons on the little winding roads of Crown Hill Cemetery.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Sroyon [OP]: "Ooh that's an interesting way to look at it! I like simple cameras too. I have the good fortune of owning an M3; I love it to bits.  :-) 

"I recently did a few photoshoots with dancers: DSLR, multiple speedlights, wireless trigger, the works. And the technology is marvelous, no two ways about it. But today I was taking available-light photos with a manual-focus Minolta SLR, just for myself. Sweet delight."

Dogman: "You know those camera reviews? The ones that list the 'Pros' and 'Cons' of the camera under review? Yeah, those. I always read the 'Cons' first. They always tell you what the camera doesn't have. That's what I'm interested in. I like not having all those things."

John Camp: "I agree with you that some of the over-elaboration of cameras can get silly, but I've never understood you obsession with 'simple' cameras. I have four complicated cameras (wait: when I think of it, I have five; no, six.) But they're all designed to be made simple. Yes, you have to thumb through a complicated instruction guide, but still: they can be made simple for whatever your particular definition of simple may be. Given the likelihood that no two photographers are exactly alike, the question becomes, which photographers would you leave out with your simple camera, because you don't value what they do? Astrophotographers, maybe? Or wildlife? Or bird? Or night shooters? Or those who prefer square aspect ratios, or 4/3? Or those who prefer legacy lenses because they like them or because it's all they can afford, and need to be able to shoot manually instead of with automation? How about sports shooters who value bracketing? What about people who do three or four different things, and value one-button assists to switch modes? I mean, really, who would you choose to leave out?"

Mike replies: I hear objections like this a lot, and in some ways of course they're valid. But they're also like saying, "when Leica made the Monochrom, they ignored the needs and wishes of the millions of people who love and crave colors!" Or, about the Miata, "aren't you forgetting about people who have large families? Which children would you suggest they leave at home?" You get the drift. Just because a few cameras are pared-down and purist doesn't mean others can't be "do-everything." And if some cameras were specialized tools in one way it doesn't mean others can't be specialized for other uses.

Put another way, I've never said all cameras should be simple.

Kenneth Tanaka: "There's a vast chasm between 'audience capture,' as it's been portrayed here, and customer responsiveness. The former is a symptom of a psychiatric / emotional disorder that compels attention seeking...with no direct reward other than the momentary attention of an 'audience.' The latter is a business tactic usually deployed in order to retain / attract customers who pay for your products or services. Each of the top camera manufacturers has proven to be responsive to their customers; that's why they're 'top' companies. And that especially applies to Leica, whose customers tend to be very involved with the response loop."

kevin willoughby (partial comment): "Re 'I actually think Leica is the one company that has not been captured by its audience,' I respectfully disagree. Leica did try to build a different / better rangefinder camera: the M5. The Leica M audience rejected the camera. Leica had to drop back and issue a more M3-ish design: the M6. The audience rejected the M5 and demanded the M6. Leica did what the audience demanded."

Comments

[Chuck Albertson]

M cameras are a profitable niche for the company. It's not to be sniffed at.

[Brian]

i am not sure if i read it here but catering to the carriage trade has its drawbacks if your business is the large scale production of carriage whips when the carriage is supplanted by cars!

I have tried a leica m7 but could not master the trick of manual focus especially at the moment. otherwise loved it. critical focus cannot be fixed in post. zone focus does not produce critical sharp images. i have better luck manual focusing my nikon fm3a and good exposure as well.

[kirk]

"I've only bought cameras that cost close to $3k twice in my life, and both times it just drove me crazy to have that much cash hanging from a strap."

Try a better strap.

[Charlie Ewers]

Mike,

Did you realize you were channeling Spiro Agnew when you referred to "nattering nabobs?"

--Charlie

[John C Longenecker]

A friend once rented an apartment that had the kitchen floor painted brown. It had a trail of newspaper across it. The previous tenant painted himself into a corner then laid newspaper ahead of himself on the wet paint so he could walk across it. The tenant moved on the newspaper was still there. Your method seems more satisfactory.

[Malcolm Myers]

I suppose that another German product that has not changed much visually (although it has internally) is the Porsche 911.

So are Porsche simply slaves to audience capture - continually putting out a compromised design just to assuage the nostalgic feelings of their loyal customer base - or is the 911 a fundamentally great design that has simply been improved with every new release? You decide!

[I personally think they're a bunch of different cars with the same name, but maybe that's just me. --Mike]

[Dan Khong]

I think the Leica Monochrome is revolutionary even if it's still in the same Leica M shape. The concept of capturing pictures in just three colours - Black & White & Grey - has never been copied by their competitors (even though they can easily do that). Who dares wins!

[kevin willoughby]

re: "I actually think Leica is the one company that has not been captured by its audience." I respectfully disagree. Leica did try to build a different / better rangefinder camera: the M5. The Leica M audience rejected the camera. Leica had to drop back and issue a more M3-ish design: the M6. The audience rejected the M5 and demanded the M6. Leica did what the captured audience demanded.

@Malcolm Myers: Porsche has tried to replace the 911 with a better design (for some value of "better"): the 928. Although the 928 has some success, the captured audience of 911 fans rejected the 928. The 928 was made for 1978 to 1995, but the captured audience demanded that the 911 continue through today and who knows how long in the future.

[Bill Tyler]

?When was the last time you read and mastered a whole camera instruction book?"

Three days ago, when my OM-1 arrived. The book packed with the camera is nearly 300 pages long, with the same material repeated, if I counted correctly, in 28 different languages. That gives about 10 pages per language (actually 12 for the English language section) in very un-dense form. For instance, one full page is devoted to inserting SD cards and attaching a lens, with most of the page occupied with drawings. Oh - you meant the full-form manual? That's a download of more than 300 pages. I didn't read that one.

[Ken]

"I hear objections like this a lot, and in some ways of course they're valid"

As a build-your-own-camera fantasy, simple cameras sound good. But Leica (especially the b/w version) and Miata are low-volume, high-margin niche products. So are you just asking for a Leica-like niche camera but priced at a more affordable level? Doesn't Fuji already make something close to that with the X-100 and the X-pro? Their market share is, I believe, in the low single digits. And I think XH-2 is their tacit admission that they need to reach a bigger audience, even with Fuji's deep pockets.

How much more room is there in the market for additional "simple" camera(s) from other makers? How many camera makers can remain profitable and survive in a shrinking market if they spend their limited R&D and manufacturing resources for mid-priced (i.e. low margin) niche products that will sell in smaller numbers?

That said, if we're going to be wishing for simple cameras, I want one that's optimally designed for bird and wildlife photography.

[ChrisC]

I think a big part of the problem is the lack of filters. In the past feature requests would be filtered through various layers, the dealer, the regional manager, the national distributor and so on. Nowadays anyone can make a YouTube video and spam numerous forums with any crazy idea that comes into their head

It is part of the information overload that we all experience these days. And so much of that information is in need of editing at a whole range of levels - should it be written in the first place and if it is, is it written well enough.

Writing was never my strong point, but these days I so often find myself thinking that things could be written better (here is one of the exceptions and is really well written). That applies across a range of media - books, newspapers as well as the internet.

[Zave Shapiro]

I'm sympathetic to your view. It brings up just a few questions; how much of a success were the Cosina/Voigtlander rangefinders? The only modern feature I'm married to is IBIS. Could I live with manual-focus with focus-peaking, fine jpeg output and a superior EVF? With a modest form and a modest price I think I'd have to try one.

[Bear.]

I’m sorry. I’m a self-employed businessman, and in more than one field (including, recently, as a photographer). Are you suggesting there is something wrong with my delivering what my client seek (assuming, of course, that there I no ethical objection to what they seek)? I doubt it very much. If that is “audience capture”, so be it. Lead on McDuff.

[Well, I'm not saying something is wrong with in specific cases, or in your particular case, but broadly speaking, of course there is something wrong with it. We do all kinds of things wrong by pandering to the lowest common denominator of what people demand. As just one example, we have a food industry that strenuously works toward ruining our bodies and our health, for one. All you have to do to see that is look around. There are a great many cases demonstrating that market capitalism encourages catastrophic unintended consequences, such as ruining the weather. --Mike]

[Benjamin Marks]

I think the missing piece of the conversation is to know what information, if any, camera companies receive back from the world, other than sales figures. We all crave those little dopamine hits of approval, but the camera companies aren't unitary entities. Even to the extent that you want to personify the decision-makers as the companies themselves, it isn't clear that they are good analogues for that fellow in the linked article who is eating himself to death. It is an interesting thought, but I think Ken T. has it right in his observation.

By the way, wasn't it always the case that most companies copy their with-whiches* rather than innovate brilliantly in their own modes? Kodak made T-Grain films, Ilford responded with Detla. Rodenstock made Sironar lenses, Schneider made their APO-Componons. Coke made Diet Coke, and Pepsi made. . . well you get the idea. When the trend was hard-focus, you didn't see companies saying, let's bring back soft-focus lenses. Or if they did, they remained niches within the niche.

My sense is that camera complexity is driven as much by the fact that its all software and not hard-engineering. This is all really digital signal processing you are talking about, not optics or engineering. You have a fixed hardware cost for the body and circuit boards, and you want to re-use that work as many times as you can so that you don't have to re-invent the wheel in cameras-as-fashion land of yearly upgrades. We do the same thing with legislation too: we tend to add laws rather than do a good housekeeping for what's not used any more. That's why my little Vermont town has elected positions for "Weigher of the Coal," "Fence Viewer" and Constable, even though the original functions of those jobs are all lost to the mists of time.

Ben

* my wife teaches at a small liberal-arts college, and when they want to see what other small liberal-arts colleges are doing on curriculum or tuition, or some other policy, they look at their "with whiches." That is, the institutions with which they compare themselves. Useful if amusing concept.

[Rob Campbell]

I tend to agree about the over-complication of cameras. I don’t totally accept that umpteen af and/or exposure methods are essential for happy ownership. I’ve never even used that little exposure compensation button on my cameras: what’s so difficult about simply looking at the exposure information bar and just using your thumb or forefinger on one of the control wheels to modify your exposure a smidgen to either left or right?

If you work a scene, chances are that the basic exposure remains pretty static between shots; only when you change your direction relative to the light, or to the type of background tonality, do you run into probable exposure changes that require you to tweak in a little less or more exposure, and that new situation usually remains much the same until the next radical change of shooting zone.

I remember using Kodachrom 64 Pro for my work. The exposure would remain remarkable constant for much of the day; that kind of film was not noted for its ability to capture a massive range of tones: if it could handle most of what I did outdoors, then I think it’s ludicrous to imagine that digital needs constant tweaking to get good files. It really is crowding angels on the head of a pin: the viewer will never know if you worked with a team of fifteen of them, or could muster only a lowly twelve.

Complexity tends to equate with confusion, and the urge to appear to have an answer for everything, including questions never yet asked.

Leica and its M bodies? I wish the company luck, and laud it for the way in which it involves and includes its clients by virtue of all those exhibitions it sponsors, the many videos it supports, creating the concept of some kind of a family, however bogus or not that may actually be. Of course the inevitable bottom line is shifting boxes; but hey, there are nice ways and less than nice ways of doing that. If you can afford it, go enjoy it! I have never felt any kind of manufacturer/user bond between myself and any camera brand other than, perhaps just a little bit, with Hasselblad-as-was.

[Dave]

"It's the only company that has the cojones to go against the crowd and make fundamentally simple cameras."

Isn't Leica known for relatively simple cameras? I've never even held one in my hands, but I don't remember them having models that were cluttered with features, so while they may be going against the crowd, they are continuing to make their type of camera. [I see Kevin W.'s comment about the M5. Will investigate.]

Pierce-Arrow; pretty fancy. One of the "three P's" of motordom -- the others being Packard and Cleveland's Peerless. The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum had one of the 16-cylinder Peerless models and IIRC one of the Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow models. Sadly, it appears they sold off some of their cars a number of years ago. But they still have the Thunderbird and Continental with stainless steel bodies.

( https://www.wrhs.org/crawford/autos/ )

After Pierce-Arrow went bankrupt, you would still find the Pierce name on the front of certain fire engines. Seagrave bought the tooling for the V-12 engine at the bankruptcy auction.

Now you'll probably dig into Pierce-Arrow and become a member of the Pierce Arrow Society!

[HVJ]

I recently sold a GRIII, a G9 body, 7 M43 lenses, a drum kit and a watch, and got a new Q2. It's joyous. I've given up reading all gear / review sites. What surprises me is how little I cosset it - it's the first camera I've owned that I feel no need to cosset. Because I'm done buying?

[Benjamin Marks]

I am going to make a rare second comment here, which is that I don't use more than a small percentage of my cameras' settings. I use them all the same way: I need access to the ISO, aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation settings. That's it. Even the feature heavy Pentax K-1 and Olympus OM-1 allow you to do this without too much hassle. The Fuji X-1 Pro always takes me a moment to figure out. But my go-to cameras, including the M-9 all operate on the same basic principles. So yeah, there are a huge number of potential settings. But most cameras I use let you ignore these 99% if the time. And it is the ability to ignore options that kinda-sorta lets you claw back to some Leica-like simplicity.

[Jeff in Colorado]

Deyan Sudjic devoted a page to the Leica M3 in Cult Objects: The complete guide to having it all, and that's how I think of Leica rangefinder cameras.

https://archive.org/details/cultobjectscompl0000sudj/page/n163/mode/2up
(refer to back cover for Sudjic's definition)

Today's cameras accommodate many possible definitions of Simplicity, and the narrower the definition, the more niche (niche-ier?) it is. Olympus did a clever thing with the Pen-F: You can have your LCD or not simply by flipping the thing around.

[Olybacker]

The example of Leica is maybe a poor one. Those of us that have used a Leica M, in my case for film photography, know that it is (they all are, M5 excluded) a superb tool for a specific purpose. Exactly the same is true for me in the case of the OM1 and OM2 and their n-suffixed descendants but then I would say that wouldn't I?

My reponse to sroyon: why change something that works really, really, well? Just to remind you, Leica did try to change the M range with the M5. It went down like a lead balloon with the market although it has a niche following, especially in the post-film, digital era for user/collectors.

[Stan B.]

If memory serves, Leica did not build the M5 differently because they were trying to make a better, different rangefinder- they simply couldn’t fit a behind the lens meter into the confines of a classic M body. Practically had not kept pace with technology. I thought of that when they introduced their M8, where their current tech (crop sensor) had yet to catch up with the practicality of using ff lenses.