The Online Photographer

Open Mike: Poetry

["Open Mike" the not-always off-topic Editorial Page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays.]

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I just sent a private message to my Patreon supporters with my ideas about when Leica "lost its soul." One more thing, though, that I didn't mention...people have soul, companies don't. We're speaking figuratively and metaphorically and imaginatively when we talk about companies having a "soul."

But the subject reminds me that there are many qualities that there are words for or that can be described that just can't be defined or "nailed down" so to speak. I wrote yesterday a little about Peter Henry Emerson, surely one of the more interesting (odd?) figures in the history of photography, so I looked to see what books about him are hanging around on Amazon. The classic, of course, is Nancy Newhall's P.H. Emerson: The Fight for Photography as a Fine Art, which is still procurable at reasonable prices. I read that one many years ago and found it tough slogging in places but engaging overall (there's something intrinsically boring about books about photographers—maybe it's what Martin Mull touched on in his famous quote "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." It's easier and more exciting to see a photographer in his or her photographs than it is to sift through details about all the effort of them doing their work). There's a newer title I don't know, a 2008 exhibition catalog, Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography, by Christian A. Peterson, which was published by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Christian Peterson was Acting Curator of Photographs at the MIA at the time. After more than 30 years at the Museum, he now writes independently about the history of photography and is a dealer in out-of-print photographic books who issues three catalogs a year. Here's his website.

Anyway, in the process of that, I noticed that there's a slight but expensive Emerson title called Poetry in Photography—not Emerson's own title; the book evidently contains selections from his writings, a little bit of which goes a long way.

It's funny, but one adjective that's been a linchpin of my own critical notions over many years has been the word "poetic." Yet I've never really developed the idea and certainly never defined it; I'm not sure you could define what "poetic" means where it relates to poetry, much less as it relates to photographs. I always tippy-toe around the subject. I don't even like talking about it.

Soul is another word like that. I used to have to dismiss 96% of all the photographs I see and now I probably have to dismiss 99%, and the hardest test for any randomly-encountered photo to pass is probably the simple question of whether there's any soul or poetry whatsoever in whatever I'm looking at. Is there a person in there, behind that random-seeming snap? A viewpoint—not literally but conceptually? Something, anything being said? Anything to be gleaned about the being behind the finder? If it's what's called expressive photography, well, does it express anything—anything at all? With most camera-pointing and "testing" photography today (most photographs these days are test shots!—tongue partly in cheek there, but only partly), not a scintilla of soul that can be inferred. I feel awash in a vast sea of sharp bright photographs of settings with nothing in them. It's not that the photos have nothing to say, it's that the camera-pointers don't.

And yet, what the hell does "poetic photograph" even mean? How in the world would you define a photograph with soul? It's too glib to say you know it when you see it.

Maybe your soul senses it.

I kid. Sorta.

People might have soul; and a lot of the people who used Leicas for many years did indeed have soul—so many they're like a parade. But remember, one real reason Leica is famous is that a whole generation of vital and vigorous yet penurious young photographers, photographers who felt an urgency about photography, found good solid sturdy castoff Leicas for sale on camera store shelves in the 1960s and '70s. They were there because people like thee and me who wanted the latest and greatest thing had all moved on to SLRs, which were better, and shucked off their limited and limiting once-expensive 1950s rangefinders. It's those many photographers' souls that rubbed off on Leica, eventually, not the other way around. Heck, in the '50s, Zeiss was top dog among German cameramakers; Leica played second fiddle. But for Zeiss's finicky and fragile shutters and Leitz's durable ones, we'd all be talking about the soul of Zeiss this Wednesday, not of Leica.

Companies don't have souls. It's just that we sometimes wish they did.

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Abbey)

Disclaimer: Whenever I say anything about my own notions about photographs, I'm only talking about myself. I'm not suggesting that my ideas are or should be valid for everyone or even anyone else. We all own our own photography, and different people have very different ideas of what they're after, and what they like, and why. That's as it should be, and is not something that anyone should or could seek to change.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Jonathan Morse: "Yes, the term 'soul' is as slippery as a banana peel. But an aid to thinking in an unpeeled way about what you attempt to see through the finder might be an essay written in Russia 102 years ago by Viktor Shklovsky: 'Art as Technique.' Here's a quote. 'Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.' The essay is online."

Graham Byrnes: "Maybe not soul, but Zeitgeist. If Leica fitted the needs of poets, it was a poet's tool; if many poets used the same tool, chances are it was a tool that helped them make their poetry. And so as ever, someone wishing to be a poet would be inclined to equip him- or herself with such a tool, neglecting the past tense.

"As for the word 'poet,' it seems to have been mutated in a similar fashion: the poets of the School of Athens or Alexandria were more likely to be physicists or mathematicians or physiologists: they were doing science but saw 'poetry' as a fitting description for their enquiries into the truth of the world, while writing with elegance and precision. I expect the poets of the ancient world would be disappointed to see their discipline pass under the heading 'art' when science and art separated in the modern world (see e.g. C.P. Snow on The Two Cultures), after which many modern poets were proudly opposed to the scientific world view. They may have been happier to see technological devices used to capture and transport images of the world in a search for its 'truth.'

"Then one could also say much the same for the lost anchor of art, where fashion, nostalgia and marketing allow the word to take any meaning that can be forced into the public habits of thought...."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I don’t subscribe to such metaphysical concepts as 'soul.' But companies / organizations of people do usually exhibit an ethos at some points in time, usually near their inception. Leica was positively swimming in Lake Ethos for decades until it nearly drowned."

Mike replies: ...Or until it started selling tickets to sightseeing tours of the lake. (Are we torturing this metaphor yet?)

Curtis: "Reading or writing poetry can help promote the type of non-linear thinking that is required to produce soulful photographs."

Aaron C Greenman: "And Leica cameras don’t have a soul either, despite this (nicely shot and effective) advertisement (titled 'Soul'!) about a Leica camera’s lifetime, including being born in Wetzlar. Or the Leica official launch video for the M-10D, which described the camera as 'digital body, analog soul.'"

Martin D: "Thank you to our fellow TOP reader Jonathan Morse for his reference to the essay by Viktor Shklovsky: 'Art as Technique.' I admit I was completely ignorant of the man and the essay. A very perceptive essay. And yes, Shklovsky's reflections about the role of 'defamiliarisation' do help me think about what I do when I take a photograph. A real find (for me)."

David Comdico: "It’s interesting to note that the root of the word soul is anima, which means 'breathe of wind' which recalls many creation myths where God breathes life into humans and 'animates' them. Anima is also the root of animals (something like 'beings that breathe') and so all animals have souls (vegans +1) which is then contrasted with their form. Related, animus highlighted the mind/body duality and Socrates emphasized this quality of the soul (reason). It’s interesting that the term has become negative over time and codified in legal definition (is it reason that sways a jury?). So, I think it is reasonable to say that a camera can have soul. And one who wields such a device is always re-enacting a primal scene, the demiurge who breathes life into a pile of mud (a kind of sol, perhaps freckled with rare earth minerals)."

Geoff Wittig: "Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography is probably a niche title for a limited audience. It's a very nice, modestly sized book with good reproductions of photographs spanning the transition from Pictorialism to 'straight' photography around 1880 to 1920.

"I find it fascinating because this period matches the heyday of the Tonalist movement in painting. Tonalism emphasized moody, emotionally resonant landscape paintings, often representing intimate forest or field views rather than grand scenics. The photographic aesthetic highlighted by this book really strikes me as tonalism on film."

Dont' Worry, You'll Be All Right

My worries, reported yesterday, are not unreasonable...and yet there's no reason to be unduly pessimistic.

Yes, smartphone cameras have replaced digicams almost entirely, and this has hurt the camera-makers' bottom lines. Yes, sales of digital cameras and interchangeable lenses are down, and that's painful for the camera companies too. And it is very likely sales will decline further—Canon itself not long ago predicted that its own sales will soon be half of what they were in the peak year of 2012 (fast receding, alas). But the fact is that despite these contractions, interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) and the lenses for them are still selling very well. The camera industry continues to be blessed with a robust customer base. Sales will continue to decline to well below the peak; but the peak was very high. What remains as the market stabilizes will easily be enough to sustain the development and sales of new cameras.

I recall an article in Popular Photography in the 1980s which explained that the mass market had always supported the enthusiast market—the people who Kodak (and me, too, taking its lead) liked to call AdAms, for "advanced amateurs." (Art photographers are advanced amateurs, too.) That article, way back then, had a section of gloom-and-doom because point-and-shoots were robbing camera stores of accessory sales. A good SLR needed extra lenses and a flash and filters and a bag and a strap—follow-on sales galore—whereas a point-and-shoot had a fixed lenses and a built-in flash and no filter threads, and came with its own strap and could fit in a pocket or a purse. No accessories needed, or even possible. Disaster?

Maybe it was...for stores. Somehow, though, serious cameras continued to be made.

Recently there have been lots of articles sounding the death knell of "stand-alone" cameras. The Wall Street Journal had an article back in May called "The Tech My Toddler Will Never Know: Six Gadgets Headed for the Graveyard" by Joanna Stern (it's behind a paywall so I won't link to it)—it probably goes without saying that one of the doomed gadgets named by the article is the ILC. And two days ago Om Malik published a nice blog post called "Camera sales are falling sharply," in which he compares cameras to servers, and likens companies such as Nikon to Sun Microsystems. Interesting.

And he's perfectly correct—camera sales are falling sharply. But take a closer look at his second chart, which goes way back to the '70s.

Somewhere in his excellent book Life on the Mississippi (which is wonderful and essential reading for Americans in my opinion, whether as a companion to his two masterpieces or on its own), Mark Twain recounts that the river had been shortening at a certain rate, due to the fact that "loops" called meanders can be short-cutted when the river cuts a new channel. He then calculates the rate at which the river's length had been contracting, and extrapolates that by such-and-such a year the river would be gone altogether. (Forgive me if this is ill-described or badly reported—it's been decades since I read the book.) Of course he's being funny—the river obviously can't get shorter than the minimum distance from its source to its mouth as the crow flies.

I think there's a parallel to the market for ILCs and their lenses. Although (unlike the river) there's no absolute minimum size for it, just because the camera market is shrinking fast doesn't mean that it will continue to shrink and shrink until there's nothing left of it. In fact, what the second chart in Om Malik's article makes clear is that camera and lens sales are still more than three times what they were in the film era. Canon's ILC sales can shrink to 50% of peak and it will still be selling far more cameras and lenses than it was in 1989.

Sure, certain companies might go out of business, or leave the camera business; the pace of improvements might slow down; AdAms might be happier with what they have and keep their cameras longer; the used market might continue to cannibalize new camera sales; and so forth. Styles and fashions in what people prefer are fickle and will surely shift. Change will happen, including changes none of us can foresee. But a current trend doesn't imply eventual catastrophe, necessarily. It's just the normal warp and woof of business, which always has its ups and downs.

As I said yesterday, the important thing for people who love photography is that photographers continue to have what they need to do their work. Maintenance of an entire industry at 2012 levels is absolutely not a requirement for that to continue to happen. Gloomy memes in the press notwithstanding, camera sales are falling, but the sky is not.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Donald Johnson: "As a software engineer who has deployed on Sun Servers(then), Linux Servers (later), and Cloud-based containers (now), I don't think it is an apt comparison to Nikon or other companies. I can run the same bit of code on all three types of servers, and get the same end results. The difference between the types is around such things as scalability and redundancy, and the cost of getting the same performance. Sun died because you could get the same result on much cheaper commodity Linux boxes, even if it took more of them to do it (and more effort as well). Also not mentioned in the comparison is the rise of Open Source software, of which Linux is one of the most successful examples. Is there even an equivalent in the photography world? Right now the bits from a phone are not the same. The real advantage for phones is the ease in use and sharing, which makes the quality 'good enough' for most people."

Kenneth Tanaka: " The future of cameras doesn't worry me in the least. Conversely, the current state and short-term future of photography itself (beyond hobbyist spheres) is certainly somewhat of a worrisome, incoherent mess right now."

Open Mike: I Worry

Y2K—Anno Domini 2000—wasn't that long ago in grumpy curmudgeon years. The best-selling vehicle in America then was the Ford F-150 pickup truck—same as now. The best TV sitcom was "Seinfeld"—same as now. I was young, dynamic, nimble, had a full head of hair, and was a chick magnet—same as now*.

But it was a long time ago as far as the camera market is concerned.

Then, each new generation of cameras seemed to offer amazing strides forward. Many photographers still hadn't "gone digital," but more and more did every day. Every year, digital camera sales rose. Hopes were high, the world was young, the sky was the limit. Photography (which I called digital imaging in Y2K) was booming.

And where the camera market is concerned, I was worried about the same thing then as I am now.

What worried me was the lowest common denominator. It just seems to me that with all kinds of products, first companies compete by trying to make their products better, and then, later, they compete by trying to make the products cheaper. And, eventually, cheaper dominates.

Digital cameras are truly high-tech products. Unlike, say, a view camera, they require technology that no individual, no matter how clever, can fabricate alone. What would happen, I fretted, when the mass market decided it had what it needed, and digital cameras became commodities to be mass-produced in huge numbers for the largest possible segment of the market?

You see, it's always been my contention that, to us, the market doesn't really matter and that fashions and styles and trends don't really matter. What matters, to my way of thinking anyway, is that photographers have the freedom and the tools they need to do the work they want to do. So what would happen if the digital camera market devolved to the lowest common denominator and the equipment and supplies that serious photographers needed became casualties of market forces?

Back then, those concerns were, shall we say, shouted down. According to the responses, I was an idiot**, the world would always need cameras, they would always give us what we wanted, new cameras were coming along all the time, the market was huge, there'd always be a niche, etc.

Which could well be correct. But I worry.

It looks like that lowest common denominator product, the one I was worried about in 2000, has at least assumed a shape. Here's what it looks like:

Credit: Samsung

It's an amazing, incredible achievement, don't get me wrong.

It's also not enough of a camera for every serious creative photographer.

We can still buy high-quality cameras, obviously. The competition to make cameras "better" is still ongoing. But, there's at least a little to worry about there, too. You might not have been paying too much attention over the last couple of years, but the camera industry has been in decline. All five of the top brands have seen their sales take a swan dive. The companies are obviously still being creative—witness my lately-beloved X-H1; and the market is still dynamic—witness the recent en masse shift to full-frame mirrorless; and, just like it was doing in Y2K, Canon is still putting downward pressure on prices—witness the full-frame Digital Rebel, the RP.

But it's not same-old same-old. The day that was dawning then is heading into, let's say, late afternoon now. Is that an allowable metaphor? Is it possible that we're fated to live through the entire lifespan of digital cameras, like some of us did with, say, cassette tapes?

We were okay when this happened with film. Granted, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in the 35mm-film-camera manufacturing segment in recent years: there's no latest-and-greatest tempting our wallets there. A fair number of those players have gone the way of all things. But it's a fair bet that everyone who who still needs film for their work (admittedly, there are fewer and fewer such people) can still mostly get what they need, within certain limitations. They're not being catered to any more, but they're okay.

Will it be that way with digital?

Could be.

Or, we could all end up stuck with only what the mass market wants. Like I say, I worry.

But then, I always have.

Mike

*TOP's official statistician is out to lunch, so there might be anomalies in this data.

**Which might be true, but the fact was not relevant to whether my argument was valid.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Pete_S: "Why worry? Do like most of us: start using a mobile phone for everyday photography. I have a phone, three years old. In June I bought a new camera. It looks like phone, everybody confuses it with a phone, but it is not a phone for me. It is a camera with three lenses. I don't use it like a phone. I take pictures with it and share them, sometimes instantly. I have a good DSLR with many lenses. I use it for 'serious' photography and for fun. It suits me perfectly. But sharing is pain. So on I just enjoy taking pictures with it. Mostly not seriously, enjoying just like I would walking on a beach on a beautiful day. No hurry. Just pure joy."

huw Morgan: "I think we're looking at something like the turntable market here. A mass market for cameras will disappear and will be replaced by a healthy niche market. The great masses have already shifted (my Facebook is filled with back-to-school pictures of the kids of friends and relatives—all taken with phones). The question is: what will the niche market look like and who will satisfy it? Will the large companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony leave the market and be replaced with smaller players? Or, will they persevere and just reduce the size of their camera divisions? In any case, if the turntable market is anything to go by, we'll still have lots of choice. Innovation will continue."

Thomas Paul McCann: "There is nothing in this world that someone can't make cheaper and worse."

marcin wuu: "As one of the people still working with film I gotta say, I'm feelin' less and less okay as the time flies. Not only because of the middle age crisis, mind you. The costs skyrocket, quality and availability of services plummet. I'm slowly planning to move to digital, but damn, it's a shame—I truly believe that for what I do, digital is really not the way to go."

Dennis: "Check out Thom's article '2019 Starts Badly.' It ends with an outlook that's neither rosy nor gloomy. Worst case, I think we end up with the situation you describe at the end of the article. Imagine if Sony didn't come out with an A7XIV and an RX100MCI in 10 years! What if the A7III was replaced in, say, four years instead of one year? And what if Nikon didn't come out with a D6 in time for the Olympics? It's really astounding to me that we still are seeing so many product releases—cameras, lenses, third party lenses, tripods, bags, bags and more bags, even medium format gear. I guess everyone is fighting for market share at this point. The market is big enough for 'stuff.' How much, how often, and for how long, I don't know, but enough to keep me happy, I'm sure. Just so long as I reserve the right to grumble about what's not available."

Mike replies: Thanks for the heads up. Very interesting article, as usual. I'm glad he thinks Nikon is negotiating the contraction well.

Thom's Fujifilm Roundup

Thom Hogan (right) has just produced a flurry of Fujifilm camera reviews—how he churns this stuff out so quickly astonishes me—but the article you ought to see if you're in the Fuji camp is called "Rounding Up the Fujifilm XF Cameras." It's his overall summary of Fuji's current product lineup, setting aside and omitting the X-Pro2.

As usual, he's very interested in the marketing and business angles, and his comments about APS-C's shrinking "niche" are trenchant. The camera market has been volatile lately and his summary of the changing boundaries are as good as I've encountered.

He makes a number of specific statements that I'd like to comment on. I'll add those later today, in an Update—you can go to the source and read the article for yourself first.

Probably best to hold your comments till the Update appears, so I'll close the comments to this post this morning and open them up again later this afternoon. If you have your own reactions to Thom's article, hold that thought.

Mike

UPDATE late Wednesday evening:

1. Thom's basic premise has to do with what he calls "camera squeeze." There are $1k smartphone cameras on the low end nipping at the heels of 1"-sensor cameras, and full-frame (FF) cameras coming down in price from above to compete with high-end APS-C models. This means there's a narrower window for APS-C cameras to fit while keeping them "right priced." Within that window, he feels, there's not as much room as there used to be to spread out the number of models that Fuji has. Remembering that he's excluding the X-Pro2 from his discussion, that means there are six Fuji models between $400 and $1,300, and he thinks that's too many. He thinks there ought to be more like four, with the "two inner points...curved slightly more towards the lower boundary (e.g. US$500, US$700, US$900, US$1250)."

My comment: That sounds perfectly reasonable, although I don't know why he picked $500 when the X-T100 he likes so much costs just $400 right now. I just have one thought...that since there probably isn't going to be a successor to the unpopular X-H1, mainly because any camera I like gets orphaned (*cough* GX8), I suggest that the $1,250 spot go to an "X-T4" that's a merging and a melding of the current X-T3 with the X-H1.

(I assume the X-Pro2 can continue to be priced above his range because it's so well differentiated from anyone else's offering. Nobody else has anything like the X-Pro2.)

2. Thom also says [the italics are his], "(To Fujifilm: one reason the X-H1 underperformed is the lens lineup. At the high APS-C level, Fujifilm just doesn't have the extensive telephoto lens lineup that's necessary to fully attract wildlife and sports shooters.)"

My comment: I'm on shaky ground when I say this, because I'm not a telephoto shooter (although I'm very much looking forward to wringing out my new-to-me 100–400mm). But I really don't think Fuji should chase that market. Those lenses are very expensive to make, and aren't sports and wildlife shooters why Canon and Nikon keep their high-end APS-C DSLRs around? So people with long FF tele lenses can get more effective reach?

Frankly, I don't know why all ultra-long tele guys aren't shooting Micro 4/3, but then as I say long telephoto is not my bag and never has been, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

3. When Thom is talking about Fuji differentiating its products and finding "ways to stand out," he says that "key among them is the size/weight thing."

My comment: This matches my own personal experience as a consumer. I like small, light cameras, and I experienced a bit of a personal dilemma when my desire for IBIS collided with the relatively hefty size of the X-H1. I'm going to accommodate to the X-H1, but "accommodate" is the word for it—I'd like it better if it were the size of the X-T3. Yeah, I know all the arguments about why that supposedly isn't possible, but I really do feel like the Panasonic G9 and the Fuji X-H1 just shouldn't be bigger than the Sony A7III. They're not big cameras and anybody could get used to them, but I think Thom is right about the size and weight being key. Those "Fujicrons" loom really large for me among the reasons why I like Fuji.

4. I'm going to risk quoting a rather long section here (Thom reads TOP at least sometimes, so if he objects I can change this). I'll truncate the bullet points so as not to pirate too much of his material.

"Thus, if you're a serious general purpose APS-C shooter, I'd say that today Fujifilm is your best choice. [Bold text his.] That's because:

• In the DSLR world, Canon (EF-S) and Nikon (DX) basically went 'all consumer,' and mostly serve up low-cost convenience cameras and lenses. [...]
• In the Canon mirrorless APS-C world (EOS M), the emphasis seems to be on very compact cameras with modest build quality, and again only with consumer convenience lens choices. [...]
• In the Sony mirrorless APS-C world (E mount), you have one basic camera that has been updated into four (A6000, A6300, A6400, A6500), and you may not like that camera design at all. Lens choice originally looked like it would fill out, but Sony abandoned that work to produce more full frame lenses.... [...]

"So what it really boils down to is this: are you a serious APS-C shooter? 

"I'm not sure what would define you as such a photographer any more, unfortunately."

My comment: It's curious, but that guy is me. The only thought I have to contribute under this heading is that Thom writes under the basic assumption (which may reflect objective market research for all I know, but still) that buyers would naturally choose FF if they could. [John Camp put this better in his featured partial comment, below.]

Speaking just as a camera user, I don't share that assumption. I've repeatedly used FF cameras and repeatedly been underwhelmed. I just don't see a clear enough differentiation in the results to make it worth my while to spend more money and carry bigger lenses. (Consider this. Those lenses are 630g vs. 300g and  $1,598 vs. $899. I have the one I want. [See also the picture by Ben Jacobsen linked by Matt in his featured partial comment below.]) Maybe I just don't value the properties in pictures that makes others prefer FF; after all, I made the same decision in the film era, shooting 35mm after repeatedly trying medium format. Granted, other people have other requirements. Or maybe there's such a kneejerk correlation of "bigger" with "better" in the general population that FF is preferred even among people who can't actually distinguish the differences in the pictures or the equipment. But if I personally were given the choice of a $1,250 "X-T4" with IBIS and a $1,250 Canon RP, and they both had all the same equivalent angle-of-view lenses available, I'm pretty sure I would still prefer Fuji.

Fuji's lenses would be smaller and cheaper—but that's not the only reason. It's possible it boils down to being a cultural thing: the Japanese tend to be charmed by exquisite, small, gem-like objects, and Americans drive enormous four-door pickup trucks as personal conveyances. We like big; they like small. I probably just come down on the side of Japanese aesthetics in that regard is all.

—MJ

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Matt (partial comment): "Thom claims Fuji's top cameras are almost as big and heavy as full frame cameras. Coming from Canon and Nikon full frame, I disagree. Even Fuji's bigger lenses, like the 10–24mm ƒ/4 OIS, are nowhere near as cumbersome as Nikon's 16–35mm ƒ/4 VR. Just look at this picture and tell yourself the two systems have the same heft.

[...]

"What Tom underrates is the strength of the Fujifilm system as a whole, in particular the appeal of Fuji's small yet very capable lenses. With Canon, Nikon and Sony APS-C cameras, you have either low-quality consumer lenses or big full-frame lenses. They offer almost no quality APS-C lenses, unlike Fujifilm. If you add the size, weight and cost of full frame lenses, you cannot claim that full frame trumps Fuji in terms of bulk and price. I'd even be happy to pay a bit more for the same quality output in a smaller, lighter package!"

beuler (partial comment): "Bigger sensors and bigger lenses output higher resolution (spatial and chromatic). I take this as fact. The majority of FF users will never use all the resolution available to them, but they value owning it nonetheless. This phenomenon mirrors the SUV syndrome closely. You might say the Japanese value owning only what they can use, while Americans value owning as much as they can afford."

John Camp (partial comment): "I think Thom makes a fundamental mistake in his overall argument, and that is, he assumes that most people still pay a lot of attention to sensor size. A person like Ctein, who could said to be quite persnickety about print quality, finds a good deal of satisfaction in a Micro 4/3 print, as do other persnickety people. So I think photo enthusiasts are no longer as focused on sensor size as they once were, but rather on other things. Fuji, for example, is its own ecology. It's like Leica. They're different. You either want what the Fuji or Leica cameras offer, or you don't, and it's not about the sensor."

Matthew (partial comment): "Over the past ten years I've become one of those older guys standing behind the counter in a local camera store, and the shopping emphasis has shifted substantially over that time. Image quality, and its sensor size association, is no longer the defining factor in the hobby of camera-choosing. They're all good, so design and suitability become deciding factors. We're past the time of the 'Best Camera,' and instead look for what will serve each individual photographer the best."

John Krumm (partial comment): "These days I don't pick cameras by sensor size (or at least, it's way down on the list). To me it comes down to how the camera feels, how it works, how the images look I get out of the camera, and what lenses are available (do I like them). Most important is this: does the camera make me want to pick it up and use it a lot? Sensor size is more of an afterthought."

MikeK (partial comment): "I think, broadly speaking at least, that a fair proportion of people would opt to go FF if there was only a minor price difference."

Nat Young (partial comment): "I respect Thom and read his blog, but he seems to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to photographic hobbyists. Hobbyists aren't gearheads, as they don't necessarily want the latest and greatest. However, like gearheads, they find equipment part of the fun. They enjoy the process of tinkering around with lenses and cameras, as well as the images they produce. For the hobbyist, the smaller formats are a dream."

Paul Amyes: "Theoretically, long-lens shooters like myself should be flocking to Micro 4/3. My experience has been that using Micro 4/3 for bird photography has been very mixed. I like the compact size of my E-M1 and G85 with the Panasonic 100–400mm; what I don’t like is the noise when shooting at ISO 3200 which is quite often with small birds in the understory of the forest. It is a very delicate balance with removing noise and maintaining fine feather detail.

"This year I finally broke down and dug the the old Canon 6D out of the back of the cupboard and bought a copy of the Sigma 150–600 Contemporary. What a difference! It’s not all beer and skittles though. I miss the light weight, the EVF with prechimping, and focus points to the edges of the frame. I’m now waiting to see if Canon can make a well specified full frame mirrorless camera."

Is Canon On To Something Here? The Elusive Fun Factor

Canon EOS RP and RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS lens.
Photo courtesy Canon Ireland.

In the previous post I asked my old friend Josh Hawkins (former camera store manager, longtime photojournalist) how he likes his new Canon EOS RP (at $1,299, the lowest-priced full-frame camera ever at initial pricing) and this morning he answered:

"I’m really enjoying it. I’m used to using Canon in live view a lot. Focus at ƒ/1.4 is much better in live view, so it’s a really small step for me to use it all the time. I’m a much more flippant photographer with the RP. I think that’s good for me right now. I’m just having a lot of fun with it. I used it for several weekends with the RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS ($449), and I was really delighted with that lens. Far more than I should be. It’s got an excellent flavor/mojo/vibe, call it what you will. A lens that cheap shouldn’t feel that good. It is completely oversized for a 35mm ~ƒ/2 though. I’m now trying my 50mm Leica Summicron DR, and other things in my closest, and having a good time with that. I miss focus with the DR constantly but it’s a lens with great mojo that I’ve never gotten comfortable with before. Again, just having fun taking fun pictures for me. It’s a good space to be in."

I spent a few hours last night poking around the Web reading the conclusions of reviews of the RP, and here's my meta-analysis summary report:

It might not technically be the greatest camera with the latest features, but it's a lot of fun to shoot with and the reviewer enjoyed it

That's all the reviews I read in a nutshell.

So my question is, how did strange concepts like being a lot of fun to shoot with and enjoyment somehow get separated from our notions of what a great camera is?

Think about that for a minute.

Shouldn't those things come first? Or at least be equal?

Consider what Tim Bradshaw wrote the other day when I wrote about modern cameras being too complex:

"Thank you for reminding me why I never want to buy another digital camera. Today I took out my Pentax 67 II for the first time in, I think, two years. I think I had to check to see which way the exposure compensation dial worked, but that was it: the rest of it was muscle memory, down to the use-the-self-timer trick to avoid having to carry a shutter release cable. And its not a camera I ever used that much. I have two digital cameras, and every time I swap to the other one I have about a day's worth of nausea trying to work out which of the several hundred parameters I left in some odd state (even though I never do that). At least the menu system on the Ricoh makes sense. I am done with this absurd, useless complexity."

I keep my ear to the ground in this hobby, listening for hoofbeats. And although few people come right out and say it, I think there's a lot of frustration out there with the diminishing fun-factor amongst the evolutionary dead-ends of ultra-competitive geeky specsmanship. Mastering stills/video hybrids has gotten to be like a university course in a subject you don't like, and over every outing looms the possibility of a pop quiz.

I'm sure Canon's engineers aren't paying much attention to the RP any more. It was built to the brief and they've moved on. They're no doubt beavering away building the S1R killer, the upcoming Canon FF mirrorless flagship über monstercam, which will be an insanely complicated camera-like product that, like a Mercedes, will have 87 onboard computers and, like Photoshop or Microsoft Word, will be impossible to fully understand or master. And all the review sites will say it's a "great" camera but it's got 987 features and it needs three more, and this feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the Z7 and that feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the A9 so it's not perfect, for some angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead forum-disputation value of "perfect."

If Josh is right and the RP is a lot of fun, I wonder how such a thing happened. Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun. Is it possible that they've built a great camera accidentally? As in, they tried to build a small-and-simple "Digital Rebel" version of the new R mount for the much pooh-pooh'd entry level, beginner, price leader, backup-body tier of the perceived market, and they came up with something that's actually fun and satisfying to shoot with? How else did such a thing happen, except inadvertently?

Meanwhile, they've actually built a good camera for once—one about which a longtime camera buff and everyday shooter like Josh can say "I’m just having a lot of fun with it." Could be they're on to something. I just wonder if anyone realizes it.

I want to live in a world where fun to shoot with and I enjoy this is valued more highly than diminishing-returns OCD levels of time-stamped techy perfection that will fade in a few years, if not months, like the bloom on a cut rose.

Do yer research
I want to know what I'm on about, so I'm gettin' my peeps to send along an RP and one of those 35's Josh likes. I'm not a big Canon guy, and FF doesn't hold any allure, but I have a feeling I ought to check this out for myself.

Mike
(Half of this old-fashioned weblog's support now comes from direct voluntary donations from fans via Patreon. If you enjoy the written word and like The Online Photographer, here's how to start a Patreon donation. Thanks to all my Patreon supporters! And thanks as well to all those who have upped their original donation amounts. I notice every one, and I appreciate it. It's very kind of you.)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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Featured Comments from:

Bob Keefer: "Fun is essential in any pursuit. I took my most recent job when, as I told the boss, it looked like a fun place to work. The fact she agreed that fun was important sealed the deal. Back to photography: Fun is what has kept me shooting with Pentax DSLRs lo these many years. Their cameras feel good in the hand and are fun to shoot with. I mean, who really needs perfect autofocus?"

robert e: "Yes! Now that you say it, fun really was the thing for me with cameras like the Olympus XA, and the quality missing from so many cameras that passed through my hands. Sadly a headline we never see on those camera-measuring sites: 'The most fun camera you can buy today,' or 'The most fun cameras ever'...."

Josh Hawkins: "It's good to know I can still sell you cameras...kind of. There was actually a point on one of my camping trips where I was shooting with the RF 35mm where I started wondering what your opinion of it would be. I've got experience with lenses but not like yours. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on both items."

Ned Bunnell: "Josh has the right attitude. We’ve definitely lost sight that first and foremost photography should be fun.

"I was very fortunate to attend three workshops with Charles Harbutt in the early '70s. In my opinion he’s underappreciated as one of our great photographers and teachers in the past 50 years. He made a point in each workshop that if you don’t feel a little rush every time you see one of your prints come to life then you probably should find another hobby. He also soundly admonished anyone who asked if the camera made a difference.

"I’m sure if Charles were alive today he’d have a lot to say about how technology has not made us better photographers.

"I could never match Charles’s insights or way with words. However I think the problem with technology today is it has made us far too serious about what’s in our bag. For the vast majority of us, photography should be personal, fun and simple...which can be easy to forget if you’re obsessing over the latest and greatest.

"Sorry for the diatribe, but here’s another example of why the fun or simple joy in photographing is apparently not an accepted attitude if you are 'serious.' I went to a Peter Turnley workshop in Cuba in 2014. I only brought my little Ricoh GR, while the other attendees came loaded for bear with multiple bodies and lenses. Peter instructed everyone they only needed one camera and that if they were going to use a zoom lens, tape it down so you were only shooting at 28mm or 35mm. When he got to me he smiled a little and said I was OK.

"I know most attendees looked at me wondering why this old guy had only brought what looked like a nondescript point-and-shoot camera. I had a blast walking the streets of Havana, the GR hanging unnoticed at my side. I think by the end of the week a few of the attendees realized my little camera wasn’t really a toy. The problem was and still is that many folks don’t take the GR seriously. (Note: this is not a plug for the GR. It could be any camera that allows you to effortlessly get the technology out your way so you can just take pictures.)

"Fortunately, I carry as little gear as possible with me these days and focus instead on maximizing the joy that I still get when I see a photograph and depress the shutter. And if that means you don’t consider me a serious photographer, I couldn’t care less. Thank you, Charles."

[Ned is the former President of Pentax USA and has always been a dyed-in-the-wool photography enthusiast. —Ed.]

Mark Sirota: "I can very much relate to this. We spent spring break this year in your neck of the woods—Watkins Glen, Corning, Ithaca—and all I brought with me was a Nikon FM2N with a 50mm ƒ/1.4. And it was fun in a way I was really not expecting...I loved having only two controls, focusing manually through a bright, effective ground glass, and being selective with my shots. Got nothing exciting out of those two rolls, but I've got dozens more in the freezer that I had been contemplating throwing out, and now I think I'll shoot them. Haven't had that much fun in a long time.

"This isn't the only film camera I shoot with—I do shoot 120 in a pinhole camera more frequently than 35mm. But that doesn't have the same fun factor. My big question is, had the camera been mechanically identical but digital, would it have been that much fun? Hard to say."

Curt Gerston: "Fun has become my top criteria for a number of years now. I figured out ultimate speed or image quality wasn't what I wanted (I chased that for a while, though). So, yeah, pump up the fun factor on our cameras please!"

John Krumm: "For me, fun photography has come down to a wide to normal small prime, and a body set to manual. I use manual so much now it's second nature, and the small primes keep my cameras light enough (though I would welcome a lighter K1). When this Canon system came out I found it appealing immediately, and it was because of that affordable prime lens."

Gerard Kingma: "Re 'Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun'—and yet, I had the exact same experience that Ned Bunnell describes, but with a Canon M2. The whole photographic world p*sses on the Canon M system, and perhaps deservedly so, but I had the honor of attending a week-long workshop with Jay Maisel, together with 15 other enthusiasts loaded with tons of in-your-face DSLRs. When Jay saw me with the Canon M2 and its tiny but excellent 22mm ƒ/2 prime, I saw a glint in his eye but he said nothing. We went to a farmer's fair in rural Maine, I talked to people and matter-of-factly shot the most wonderful portraits one after the other of people who otherwise froze up or skittered away at the sight of the big guns. I've had tons of fun with the M2. Probably because no one takes me seriously with it."

Mike replies: A camera no one takes seriously is a big asset. It's one reason why it's so relaxing to take pictures with a phone.

I first learned this when I was doing portraits in the mezzanine of the art room when I taught high school. My usual lens was a little Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar with a small and unimposing front element—a lens I was "slumming" with until I could save up my money for the magnificent Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/1.4 Planar I really wanted (below). But a friend loaned me one of the faster Zeisses with its much larger front element, and I noticed that my portrait subjects were noticeably less comfortable in front of it. There was something about that huge front element staring at them like the eye of a giant squid, seeing into the secrets of their hearts, that just made them tense.

It was intimidating to be "looked at" by this giant front element. But they
sure have held their value—this one's for sale on eBay right now.

I went back to the little ƒ/2.8 Sonnar (discussed near the end of this long post) and never bought a Planar.

Tom Burke: "Absolutely. My Canon 5D Mark IV is a much better camera than my Canon 750D [Rebel T6i in the States —Ed.], both in terms of the specifications and the files it produces, but I seem to enjoy using the 750D more—have more fun with it—than the 5D. Possibly just because it's lighter? Easier to handle? Less complex? More in tune with the sort of Canon (D)SLR I've been buying and using for 30 years? I don't know, but I do know I'm a happier bunny with the smaller, simpler, less-good camera."

FujiFILM?

Clean and attractive

Should Fuji stop emblazoning the word "Fujifilm" on the front of all its digital cameras? Wouldn't "Fuji" do just as nicely?

Changes happen. Pentaxes used to be made by Asahi and were engraved "Asahi Pentax." Contax, as a marque name, was owned by Yashica which was eventually bought by Kyocera, but none of the cameras said "Yashica" or "Kyocera" on the front of the prism. Nikons used to be made by a company called Nippon Kōgaku (Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha, 日本光学工業株式会社, Japan Optical Industries Corporation. The company was renamed Nikon Corporation, after its cameras, in 1988*. —Wikipedia). But Nippon Kōgaku (not to mention "Japan Optical Industries"!) was too long for a top plate.

Mike
(Thanks to David Zivic)

*And the lenses couldn't be called Nikon because Zeiss objected that it was too close to Ikon, Zeiss's premier model name. Hence Nikkor.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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Featured Comments from:

Tim Bradshaw: "Almost certainly not: I suspect strongly that 'Fuji' is a word which the company can't assert suitable rights over, which means anyone can label their camera 'Fuji' and there would be nothing that could be done about it."

Franklin Berryman: "It doesn't matter what it says under the tape."

David Goldenberg: "I'm pretty sure that the name Nikkor came before Nikon and the dustup with Zeiss. See here, where it says that the first Nikkor camera lens was an 'Aero-Nikkor' made in 1933. The first Canon camera, the Hansa Canon, in 1936, also had a Nikkor lens. Nippon Kogaku didn't enter the camera business itself until after World War II. I have always presumed that the Nikkor name was meant to follow in the European tradition of giving lenses names, like Tessar, Sonnar, Elmar, etc. Except that Nippon Kogaku used the same name for all of their lenses, rather than using the names to distinguish among designs, or later, by Leitz, maximum aperture."

Grant Cunningham: "In the 1980s, Fuji's corporate name was Fuji Photo; their cameras were labeled Fujica. In the mid-'90s, as the digital revolution came on the horizon, they renamed the company Fujifilm and adorned their cameras with the new corporate logo. Now that we're in the digital era, their cameras are stuck with an incongruous label that would have been more appropriate 35 years ago—and the camera brand they used then would be perfectly at home now, had they only kept it!"

Niko X: "The examples you mention (Kyocera Yashica Contax, Asahi Pentax) are far longer and offer little more than historical/ownership information. 'Fujifilm' has more significance, being a reference to the company's film heritage, which is still relevant today. Isn't its praised color science based on the 'feel' of its emulsions? I say keep 'Fujifilm.'"

George Feucht: "Simple: while Acros exists, call yourself 'Fujifilm.' When you take Acros away from the world, you are not allowed to ever say the word 'film' any more."

Mike replies: There's lots of bitterness out there about that, isn't there?

Kalli: "This makes me think of how Panasonic brands their cameras as Lumix. As much as I like my Panasonic G80, which is a lot, I can't stand the Lumix moniker. I get that Panasonic is a long word and not a particularly sexy brand name, but Lumix just sounds like…like a pretentious brand name.

"That said, part of what annoys me may be how I think the Lumix logo on the not-pentaprism housing on Panasonic cameras doesn't look good. On the GX line of cameras the L is bigger, than on the DSLR-style cameras, which makes the logo look nicer and maybe even fitting for the boxy GX cameras (their DSLR-style cameras hardly distinguish themselves style-wise, but I tend to like the looks of the GX bodies—maybe that says something about which brandname/logo fits each?). Maybe if I'd buy a GX9 I'd start referring to my camera as a Lumix instead of a Panasonic as I do now?"

Mike replies: That reminds me of a good joke from when I was a magazine editor and had to deal with corporations all the time:

A behavioral experiment: ten monkeys are confined in a small room. In the middle of the ceiling is a hook and from the hook hangs a bunch of fresh bananas. Under the bananas in the middle of the room is a stepladder leading right up to the bananas.

No brainer, right? But every time a monkey tries to climb the stepladder to get the bananas, sprinklers in the ceiling douse all the monkeys in the room with ice water, which they hate.

So whenever a monkey tries to climb the stepladder, the rest of the monkeys set upon him, pull him off the ladder, and beat him up. Soon enough, none of them tries to climb the stepladder any more.

Then one day, one of the original ten monkeys is removed from the room and replaced with a new monkey. The new guy sizes up the situation, wonders why no one has done the obvious and gone to get the bananas, and begins to climb up the stepladder. At which point all the other monkeys set upon him, pull him off the ladder, and beat him up. After two or three tries, he, too, no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

Then another of the original monkeys is replaced by a second new guy, and the same thing happens to him. Only this time, the first new guy joins in with all the other monkeys and helps to beat the new guy up. Except he doesn't know why he does this. All he knows is that everyone else does it and it seems to be the accepted thing to do. So he goes along.

This process is repeated until all ten of the original monkeys have been replaced.

Now, none of the monkeys in the room has ever been doused with ice water. But whenever a new guy comes along and tries to climb the stepladder, everyone else beats him up. None of them know the reason for this behavior. It's just the way things are done, and the way it's always been.

And that explains corporate culture.

So I'd guess the reason why Panasonic doggedly sticks with "Lumix" is that whenever someone suggests doing something else, he's pulled off the stepladder and gets beaten up.

Richard Parkin (partial comment): "The brand story I’ve always liked is that giant Sharp electronics brand takes its name from the pencil they made 100 years ago."

Save the Tax: B&H's "Payboo" Card

[Full disclosure: I'm a B&H Photo affiliate. Purchases from B&H through my links benefit me. So I'm not an objective outside observer here. —MJ]

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In October of 2018, B&H Photo, as a result of the South Dakota vs. Wayfair Supreme Court decision, began collecting sales tax on interstate sales in 22 states. This put it at a disadvantage compared to some of its competitors.

As a corrective, B&H is today implementing a give-back program for its customers called "Payboo." It struck me at first as a rather odd name, but at least it's unique rather than anodyne, which is practical in the Age of Google. Under this plan, you apply for the B&H Payboo credit card and use it to make your purchases at B&H. You still technically pay sales tax (this is important because it means you are not required to self-pay the tax in your home state, as you are now), but B&H pays you back by applying an equivalent reward instantly at checkout, thus effectively nullifying the sales-tax hit for you.

Implementation will vary from state to state, and Payboo doesn't affect international sales. (I'll just mention that it's especially good news for those of us living in New York and New Jersey, because we were hit with sales tax even prior to the Wayfair decision, on account of B&H has "physical presences" in our states, and now we get relief through Payboo.)

You still must apply for the card, but once you do, the tax-back reward is instantaneous at point of purchase, whether you're in the superstore on buying online. For more information, check out B&H's FAQ page about the new program. To check if your state is affected, click on the "Check Savings" link near the top of the page at the link and enter your Zip Code. Note that people in some states were already not paying sales taxes.

But beware—be sure you don't carry a balance. The interest is very high.

I had a credit card only once in my life, when I got my first "real" job in the 1980s. I quickly racked up debt to the limit, compulsively buying the then-new supercool Compact Discs, or CDs, which now slumber in boxes in the barn. (Smart purchase decisions, Mike.) The debt then took me two years to pay back. The lesson was clear: credit cards are not for me. I haven't had one since—all I've had for the past 30-odd years is one debit card.

But I buy a lot of things through B&H, so I think I'm going to make an exception this time. Tax relief for photographers—or at least for this photographer—that's a cause I can get behind.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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Featured Comments from:

Dave (partial comment): "Good luck if you make a late payment. The fine print says the APR is 29.99%! Any tax savings will be eaten up—and then some—by the interest charges. Nice idea by B&H, but as is said, the devil's in the details."

Mike replies: I added a sentence cautioning about this to the post.

Geoff Wittig: "This may seem bizarre, I realize. But I don't actually mind paying the sales tax. No, really. Follow my logic here. I love my photography toys, but honestly they represent a luxury purchase. I live in NY State, and the sales tax I pay at B&H goes to pay for things like highways, schoolteachers and the State Department of Environmental Conservation. (Okay, it also goes to pay for tax abatement for grifting billion dollar corporations, but you get my point). So I'm not sure I feel happy about helping B&H dodge a bit of social responsibility. As the saying goes, taxes are the price we pay for civilization."

Bob Rosen: "B&H is not going to 'dodge a bit of social responsibility' by not paying sales tax on your purchases. As it states in paragraph four of their FAQ, they will continue to 'remit sales tax in accordance with state laws and regulations.' Obviously, this program appears to be an agreement between B&H and Synchrony Bank, and the tax credits given to customers will somehow be reimbursed to B&H out of the income Synchrony hopes to make on their sky-high interest charges to anyone foolish (or careless) enough to carry a balance on their account."

John Camp: "Not paying sales tax is the reason that we no longer have camera stores in many towns—I just bought a Z6 kit over the Internet and saved a bit more than $200. That's why people in NY buy cameras from Samy's in California, while people in California buy cameras from B&H in NY. The country really needs a federal sales tax on Internet purchases, with the money then divided between the states according to population. Right now, sales tax is an extremely difficult issue, because with local options, a single state can have hundreds of different sales tax rates, depending on where a person lives, because of local tax options. A single federal tax (that also barred state sales taxes on Internet sales) would avoid that problem, and probably bring back some local stores."

Real Options

Just musing here. Mulling over the comments about the Range Rover thing, how's this for a concept....

A.) you pay a healthy amount of money for a luxury car, maybe double what you'd pay for a similar mainstream non-luxury version of something similar, b.) you get presented with a list of options, and c.) tick as many boxes as you want, configure your car just the way you like...

...NO CHARGE.

That's having options!

I predict the first company to do this will make out like bandits. Kia could do it, maybe. As a differentiator. Or Genesis.

And lest you say this is off topic, oh no, because it's exactly the way I'd like to buy premium (luxury) cameras. Pay one price, and they'll configure it the way you want it. Put everything on it, take everything off it, or anything in between.

To my knowledge only Leica has ever done this, with its à la carte program with film M's back in the day (and you paid an à la carte charge but nothing past that, right? I think), but that was mostly for cosmetic choices.

Mike

P.S. I'm sure people will say it can't be done. Nonsense. If it was what the market expected and the only way anyone could make money selling premium cameras, everyone would be doing it.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Want to help?

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

Speed: "Prix Fixe."

Walter, from girlfriends account...: "Sorry to disappoint, within this à la carte program Leica charged and charges for everything extra, besides a hefty basic fee to do so at all."

Brand Sunsets (and Kodakit)

I wish there were such a thing as "brand sunsets." A sunset provision in public policy, as you might know, is "a measure within a statute, regulation or other law that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific date, unless further legislative action is taken to extend the law." It would be nice if brand names had to be retired after the conditions which earned them their luster in the first place had changed irrevocably for the worse. So many great brand names get dragged through the mud after their glory days are gone.

The "brand sunsets" idea is just idealistic fantasy, of course. You could never enforce such an idea, because so many companies have complex arcs during the course of their existences. So I'm just musing here, not suggesting serious reform. But maybe there could be a word for when an older, trusted brand has been seized by miscreants and the public's residual trust in the name is being exploited in what can be interpreted as, well, swindles.

Consider the situation with "Kodakit." A company that happens to share the same name as the former august, principled, ethical, legendary and trusted American photographic giant, Eastman Kodak, which I once heard described as "the bluest of blue chips*," has set up a division, Kodakit, which pilfers pretty much every conceivable photographic right from the people who own them...photographers, which Eastman Kodak used to serve so well. Its contract details a rights grab with all the integrity of the small print in a smarmy, cynical fly-by-night "photo contest."

Why? Because "to manage copyrights…is a pain point for [clients]," in the words of Kodakit's chief marketing officer. Do an assignment under contract for Kodakit, and you surrender your "entire copyright." You aren't allowed to keep your own outtakes (!), you can't use the shot for your own promotion, and you can't even claim that you're the person who took the picture you took! Then-Kodak-CEO Jeff Clarke called this "building upon [Kodak's] longstanding legacy as one of the most trusted names in film and photography." Right. Stripping the copper piping out of the once grand old building might be a better way to put it.

It's so much more convenient not to have to be fair and ethical.

Several websites are sounding the alarm about this. The two I've skimmed are PDNPulse and PetaPixel, and I refer you to those sites if you want the full rundown. Suffice it to say I wouldn't touch "Kodakit" with someone else's ten-foot pole, and I don't think anyone else should either.

Last ray of sunlight
Pie-in-the-sky though it might be, one excellent example of brand sunsetting did occur, and with one of photography's most august company names, too: when the Leitz family sold Leica, it forbade the buyers to use the Leitz name. You'll never see Ernst Leitz on a post-Leitz-era Leica.

That's the way to do it.

Because really, is what Kodak doing worthy of Kodak? Shame on Kodak for besmirching Kodak.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael J. Perini)

*"A blue chip is a nationally recognized, well-established, and financially sound company. ... Blue chip companies are known to weather downturns and operate profitably in the face of adverse economic conditions, which helps to contribute to their long record of stable and reliable growth." (Investopedia)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

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

Geoff Wittig: "One of the wackier recent attempts to strip-mine the Kodak brand for residual value involved a scheme for renting hardware and software to permit the customer to 'mine' for Bitcoin. Near as I can tell, this is a vaporous electronic faux-currency about as solid as pixie-dust and unicorn dandruff, hence a fertile field for get-rich-quick schemes. The same dynamic is at work with Polaroid. Once a solid brand name for instant photography, it's now evidently a label anyone can stick on a piece of shabby plastic stuff for a licensing fee."

Michael Perini: "If the process of swindling the creator's rights to his or her own images under the guise of streamlining the copyright issue isn't bad enough, the next step is that if the the client 'rejects' the work (or pays a pittance for it), the rights are passed to Kodakit. They now have an ever growing set of stock images that they own but didn't pay for.

"One would hope that common sense among photographers will cause this effort to whither on the vine. Disgraceful."

Is Apple Showing Overt Hostility to...Us?!?

Forgive the possible paranoia—it's election day in the U.S., and we have a clash of different cultures in this country at present. (The book American Nations by Colin Woodard is a readable and entertaining deconstruction of this that I recommend—if you read only one book about North America and the U.S., these days that should probably be it. But I digress.)

...So paranoia aside, as I was saying, maybe it has become time to keep in mind that Apple is now a direct competitor of the entire camera industry. I said directly. Indirectly, does that mean it's becoming antagonistic to established photographic culture as it's been practiced for the past 70 years or so?

The signs are small as yet. Exhibit one: it killed its own Aperture app—aimed at, and useful to, people like us. What, couldn't they afford to keep it going? Exhibit two: I don't remember where off the top of my head, but an Apple spokesman recently corrected an interviewer to claim that Apple is the number one camera manufacturer in the world. Exhibit three: there's no SD card slot on the new Mac Minis.

It's tempting—a little too tempting—to explain that last in conspiracy-theory fashion, by suspecting that Apple is relegating people who use "old style," unconnected, large-sensor, interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) to the purgatory of using a dongled card reader that takes up a port because...well, Apple no longer likes or approves of the likes of us, nor does it wish to support us.

We're the competition? We should be using our Apple cameras (AKA iPhones) like other good citizens?

I mean, I do. My iPhone is firmly ensconced in my camera kit and in my daily practice. But I also use my Fujis and Panasonics and my full-capability photo editing programs (like, um, Aperture was) and my Epson printer. But maybe Apple no longer supports me or my creative life.

If so, that's a long, loooong way from the original stated Jobsian mission of the Mac, which was to enable creative people to create. Ordinary everyday non-computer-geek creative people. And I know whereof I speak there too: the Apple Macintosh was what enabled me to become a writer in the first place, period, back when the Orwellian hero hurled the hammer at the huge screen image of Big Brother. In my little study on a locked corridor in the stacks of Baker Library at Dartmouth, I literally cut up paper manuscripts and taped the pieces to the wall to reorganize written works, and laboriously retyped short story manuscripts again and again to revise them. Then along came the Mac and let me do in minutes what used to take me hours. I honestly seriously doubt I would be a writer today if it weren't for the v.1 128k Mac I used in 1984 and the seventeen or so Macs I've owned or used since.

I'd hate to think that the now-mighty juggernaut wants the likes of us to wither up and go away. Who would be the Big Brother then, hmm?

Dyspeptic musings? Maybe. I'll probably feel better after the election's over. You might have to give me a week or three.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

C.R. Marshall: "The book recommendation reminds me of The Nine Nations of North America by Garreau."

Mike replies: Yes, you're right, it's a direct descendant of Joel Garreau's 1982 book, and builds on and updates it.

Matt Anderson: "It’s interesting how differently the same facts can be framed. That Apple wishes to be seen as a camera manufacturer and has invested so much in computational photography and democratizing the taking and sharing of pictures could be seen to indicate that it is the biggest ally we have. Big-name Apple executives (like Phil Schiller) are reported to be photography nuts like us, using DSLRs and digital medium format as avid hobby photographers.

"More evidence? The latest iPad Pro just announced may be the best photo-editing computer (and value on a cost per image computing cycle) ever, and its introductory keynote and ads featured Photoshop, Lightroom, and connection to DSLRs prominently.

"While I’d prefer to see the SD card slot continue (and it does in the iMacs), Apple’s focus on portability could be seen as a miscalculation about what Pros need and/or a bad forecaster about the direction of storage, and not an overt war on independent photography.

"The narratives we put around facts to give them meaning to us make up so much of how we see the world. Maybe that’s something useful to remember as we hear the election results tonight? (Whatever the results and whatever your leanings.)"

MikeK (partial comment): "I'm not sure Apple hates us, so much as it just doesn't care that much. Leaving off SD card slots and USB ports might be seen as an echo of the decision to leave a floppy drive out the original iMac (which might seem prescient now, but there weren't really any other options in removable storage back then).

"What really proves their ambivalence to me, though, is found on the bottom of my mouse. On my old work Mac (2011 vintage) when the batteries died, I needed only swap them out for another set of (rechargeable) AAs. On its replacement, the batteries are non-removable and it must be charged via the propietary USB cable, which plugs into the bottom of the mouse, thus rendering it completely unusable when being charged. They could have put it on the front, but no, that would compromise the aesthetics by about 0.01%. It wouldn't be so bad if the OS gave more than about five minutes warning of the mouse's paucity of power....

Mike replies: It's pretty indulgent, that form-over-function thing they do. But I also like a lot of things about it, for instance the insistence on simplicity.

Yonatan K: "From the very beginning, the Jobsian ethos was to let creative people create...as long as they did it in the way that Apple thought best. Just to be clear—I am now fully entrenched in the Apple gear-o-sphere, but I didn't cross over to the dark side until OS X made its debut precisely because the previous OS was an inflexible black box: it was the Apple way or nothing. This principle hasn't really changed; Apple has just gotten better at covering all the bases (except the ones that they don't want you to use anymore). Rant over."

Scott Symes: "I am unhappy about the SD card slot going away too but.... Maybe you should consider it from the other side. Let's say the traditional camera manufacturers are failing us. Why are they not doing more to build connected devices in this age of constant connectivity? Snapbridge, Fuji Cam Remote, etc...NOPE. This is not what is needed. This is the traditional camera manufacturers being hostile to us. Build us the cameras that connect with the rest of the digital image ecosystem. This is overdue."

Michael Perini: "I don't think Apple hates us. It's just that traditional enthusiast/professional photography is seen by them as an increasingly irrelevant niche.

"When they killed Aperture after recruiting professionals to build their business on it, it was still one of the most popular App store Downloads. Apple's model is iPhone pictures stored on Apple's servers. They view dedicated stills cameras as dinosaurs. Apple has been right about an awful lot of things, and they may be right about this too. But that doesn't make it any easier for those of us who prefer traditional photography and like to be able to upgrade their own computers. They look at traditional camera companies with their lack of connectivity as dead men walking. They may be right about that too.

"So while they don't hate us, they are not going even a tiny bit out of their way to accommodate us. Even their choice of the fairly obscure P3 Video Projector Gamut and color space was a message—the Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB folks can do it our way, or buy a PC.

"PC's had 10 bit color workflows four years before Apple.

"I have been using Macs since 1985; I doubt I'll change, but I remember a time when the creative community were their only customers. I think we deserve better even if our pursuits are not 'cutting edge.'"

Joe Holmes: "I won't offer any opinion whatsoever on your crazy, paranoid, delusionary psycho-rant, but I will note that I dearly loved Apple's Aperture and I miss it like crazy. The interface was vastly superior to Lightroom (which makes me feel claustrophobic); it let me scroll thumbnails at top speed unlike Capture One, and, with one exception, its interface was smooth. The counterexample: allowing unmodified letter keys to perform actions rather than standard command-keys. I don't know how many times I thought I was typing a keyword but accidentally ended up typing a whole string of commands which I then had to try to undo. I've been using Capture One for more than a year now—it's the closest thing out there to Aperture—and I still miss Aperture all the time."

Mike replies: Made me laugh.

Ed Hawco: "I am in a constant emotional loop with Apple innovations: Outrage > Ambivalence > Acceptance > Approval. Then the next innovation resets me back to outrage.

"A classic example is the move from the original iPhone connector to the Lightning connector. It just seemed so pointless and manipulative. Now I'm in awe at the Lightning connector and how universal and useful it is. I suspect I'll go the same route with the SD slot. From Apple's point of view, it probably seems silly to build an SD slot into the unit when probably only 5% of Mac Mini users need an SD slot. Those in the 5% can buy a dongle! Or they can use the SD slot that is built into many monitors. In my case, I rarely use my 2012 Mac Mini's SD slot because it's hard to reach (due to the unit's placement on my desk). My Dell monitor has one right there on the side, within easy reach, so that's where I go.

"Hey look, I don't even have a 2018 Mac Mini yet and I've already gone through the outrage loop!"

T. Edwards: "While it's true that paranoid people do, in fact, sometimes have enemies out to get them, I think there's another explanation here. Apple dropped the card slots from all (I think) of its laptops, too. Along with old-style USB ports, HDMI ports, etc. Now you have to get dongles and adapters. I think the purpose is to jettison everything possible to free up space inside and make products smaller overall.

"I use the SD card slot on my 2103 era MacBook Pro all the time, but I have had friends who own other Macs ask me—what's that little slot for? So they never use SD cards. I would guess that there are enough people out there who either a.) don't care at all about this or b.) will buy adapters. Apple isn't alone in this. I've been eyeing the new Lenova Yoga 930—a fantastic thin, light, laptop/tablet—and it, too, just has to USB-C (I think) ports.

"As for Aperture, my uneducated guess is that keeping that going and doing raw converters for new generations of cameras and dealing with the kvetching of photographers was just not worth the time. I mean, when you are selling $1,000 phones like hotcakes, why do you want to task employees to do low-return work on a photo editing program?"

Open Mike: What's All This Mean?

This might be a short post, because my answer to the above question is "beats me."

And it could be even shorter because thunderstorms are moving in, and if the atmosphere really gets to thrashing I might have to turn off the computer.

But...quite a day yesterday. I haven't even covered all the news yet. But if you admit the idea that "camera culture" is a thing, and a thing distinct from photo culture, then, clearly, Photokina '18 is a watershed moment. Here's the capsule review:

Sony, relatively new to the camera business and very ambitious, becomes a "throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" kind of company, embracing everything from a tiny FF fixed-lens camera to the old pellicle mirror idea (before that, last seen dying a prolonged death with the Canon EOS RT, a camera I loved but the market decidedly did not). Eventually it alights on full-frame mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, and the spaghetti sticks to the wall: people love 'em. Sales soar, and Sony, fickle as ever, dumps resources into full-frame mirrorless (FFM), plunging its old APS-C lines into benign neglect, discontinuing the SLTs and responding to criticisms about the FFM lens line with an ambitious flurry of pro-oriented paperweights.

Meanwhile, the flourishing used market, the sufficiency of older models, the rising cost of upgrading, and the slowing of technological development puts a lasting damper on the camera market. Suddenly it's not just point-and-shoots AKA digicams being pillaged by smartphones—it begins to erode the DSLR market as well. Prestigious Leica seems to be quietly copying many of Sony's ideas, but putting its own spin on its takes on those ideas. Even Complacent Canon starts getting shaken. By some metrics, Sony begins to look like it's...winning.

So at some point, Canon and Nikon (ever mindful more of each other than of other competition or even of the market, in classic Japanese corporate fashion) decide that Sony indeed has the magic formula and they'd better protect themselves. Giant Panasonic, evidently not reaping enough profit from sustainable energy and kitchen appliances and the lovingly reimagined SL-1200G, and feeling increasingly ghettoized in the Micro 4/3 box, wants a piece of the Sony-identified pie too, and gets a creative idea to expand its longstanding Leica partnership in an innovative new way, bringing Sigma into the picture too, and the L-Mount...what's it called? Not "consortium"...alliance, that's it, alliance—the L-Mount Alliance is born.

So now the camera industry is poised, one would think, to a.) move away from legacy SLRs and consign that antiquated 1950s configuration to the dustbin of history at long last and b.) to annoint FFM as the new serious format-and-camera-configuration standard.

The only trouble being, it would seem, that the market really hasn't decided that's what it wants, entirely.

I mean, what if Sony's FFM cameras are already saturating the segment? Can the potential energy of the unmet demand really sustain the move from one and an eighth players (Sony and Leica) to four big players, one of them a three-company consortium (er, alliance)?

Is everyone (and his brother, and his uncle) going to start buying FFM system cameras now? Is the camera market going to be smartphones at the base level and FFM for pros and camerafans, with Fuji as the set-aside company that gets to be truly independent and go its own way (like, say, Woody Allen among filmmakers) and Leica as the sole Veblen Good supplier to the carriage trade?

Or will this watershed moment—FFM—become an historical diversion, a backwater, a onetime next-big-thing that fizzled? After all, with sensors getting better and better, 1-inch, Micro 4/3, and APS-C get more capable all the time, not less. And more sensible as a realistic choice for photographers as time goes by, too. And along those lines, one last question: did Olympus just get lucky, seeing its biggest competition turn to a new project and a new direction, which means that in the future Panasonic will effectively leave Olympus alone to increasingly own Micro 4/3? Or if it, too, doesn't turn to FFM, will Olympus be odd man out again, as it was in the second half of the '80s when it made the decision not to go to AF right away?

I'm doubtful that there's enough gas (pun intended) in the full-frame mirrorless market to sustain four big players in the kind of prosperity they all want—the kind of prosperity Sony's earned after working it for five years. Because, don't forget, Sony's been working hard at it, diversifying the A7 product line and reiterating each tier several times.

But maybe there is. Maybe FFM, like pickup trucks and SUVs on American roads, is what everyone actually really wants.

And then of course there's always the specter of real disruption lurking—some magic formula that no one has quite divined yet but that the buying public will take a shine to. These days, you can never rule such a thing out.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the editorial page of TOP. It appears with rigid regularity on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

John McMillin: "FFM leaves me cold. When I bought my FF DSLR, it wasn't for greater detail capture or bigger pixels. My K5IIs gave me everything I needed in the IQ department. I just wanted a bigger optical VF, like I enjoyed in the film era, the better to study and respond to the framed image before I clicked the shutter. Once mirrorless tech came along to decouple sensor size from viewfinder optics, I see far less need for FF. Whatever full frame gives in acuity, it takes back in DOF problems. And the difference between image detail from my two-pound K-1 (plus lens) and my featherweight Ricoh GRII is surprisingly small.

"That said, there's no denying the market's zest for bigness and overcapacity. Like those jumbo, dual-tired pickups in the school dropoff lane, we like to look like we're packed for action, and better equipped than the next guy, because, who's really secure anymore? In that sense, all FF cameras are Veblen goods."

Kenneth Tanaka: "What does it 'mean'? It means 'Summer’s here an' the time is right for dancin’ in the streets!' It means that nearly all of the big camera companies are taking advantage of a now-or-maybe-never moment, albeit a year or two late, as is characteristic of cautious industrialists. Consumer confidence and spending in most developed nations has risen sharply. Money is still relatively cheap and the prospects for good return on investment figures are good. The big (mirror) box boys are sick of being called big fatties. The small-sensor boys are tired of being...small-sensor boys. It means that Leica has found new friends in their desperation to save their over-weight/over-priced/under-featured SL system. It means that Panasonic thinks it might have a path out of the languishing Micro-4/3 bog. It means that Fujifilm is enjoying a well-earned moment in the warm sun.

"What does it 'mean' for photography? Nothing, really. None of the Photokina announcements I've seen so far have any apparent relationship to the recognition of where photography as a medium is going. It's just consumer electronics."

David Raboin: "I've never seen so much exciting camera tech released in such a short period of time. Is the photography economy approaching peak GAS, or can we go higher?

"The camera manufacturers and many of us photographers are obsessed with camera specs but nobody outside of the smartphone world and Silicon Valley pays attention to the other half of photography: sharing and displaying photos. How do you consume and share most photos? In my on-the-go life (which I'm guessing is similar to your 2018 life) I do 90% of my photo sharing and communing through a phone. As an image resolution fanatic this leaves me disappointed. I wish my photos were viewed bigger and I would like to see other's work displayed bigger, but we live in a smartphone world. Every now and then I get a chance to show somebody my work on a high-res laptop screen and it always has more impact than a picture sent over the phone.

"If photographers and camera manufacturers want to save cameras from the encroachment of smart phones we need to figure out a way to more easily display our photos larger. Canikon should be dumping research dollars into making printing easier and less expensive. They should also be inventing new ways to display photos. Someone please come up with a wall-mount LCD display that's affordable and that my wife approves of. Also, us photographers need to do a better job sharing our high resolution work. We should publicly show off our photos as much as possible. It's our job to inspire the masses to want better cameras."

Jim Richardson: "I think it means that the pull of 'Full Frame' has proven to be irresistible and that all other formats (however logical or practical) are doomed."

More About Variety in the Marketplace

A couple of further points to add to the "Wealth of Choices" arguments.

First, check out this article at The Verge, the upshot of which is that Sony has surpassed Canon and Nikon in U.S. sales of full-frame cameras, reportedly in both dollars and units sold. A linked article notes that "Nikon will try to position its [Z-series] cameras head-to-head with Sony’s. (Even the names are kind of similar)," and "from the sound of it, Nikon is going to kick things off by going straight after Sony’s most important mirrorless line."

Corporations aren't omniscient
I don't buy the arguments that more variety isn't possible in the camera marketplace because the companies only develop and build what sells. Bullcrêpe! Companies don't know what will sell; they only know what has sold in the past. That's why most of them keep building the same thing...or building what seems to sell for other companies*. Publishing was my business for a while, and publishers don't know where the next bestseller is coming from. That's why they "spray and pray" by publishing ten new books for every one that makes money. Magazine publishers love to tell you how much "market research" they pay for so they'll "know" what covers will attract attention and trigger newsstand sales, but the fact is that they don't know which cover will sell and which cover won't, or why. (I once actually demonstrated this with a deliberate experiment with the magazine I edited, to refute an outside consultant who had been hired to harass me. Well, maybe that's not why he was hired—it was just what he did.) Do the movie studios know what's going to be popular? If they did there would never be a flop. They game the system and manipulate public opinion down to the gritty nubbins and they still can't accurately predict the hits and misses.

The BMW 3-series has a long history of success**, so Lexus builds a nice 3-series clone called the RC-F. High-performance car, gorgeous interior; doesn't sell. Why? No one knows. All this hoohockey about companies only building what sells is nonsense. What, Toyota can't afford market research? And can't independent individuals sometimes guess what might be popular? Don't forget, I wrote an article essentially describing the Fuji X100 five years before it came along. Predicted the focal length of the fixed lens to within one millimeter. The fact is, companies try things and see what works. If companies knew what was going to sell, everything would. They try their absolute best to predict trends, tastes, and sales and they still can't get it completely right. Sometimes they even get it completely wrong***.

Who needs it?
Next, I never said I cared about whether the manufacturers make money or not. That's not my business—I'm not on their side. I'm on your side. That is, I care about photographers and whether they have what they need to do good work. That's whose side I'm on; that's whose interests I think about. If I worked for a camera company, then I would spend my days thinking about what would sell. But I don't.

Take for an example a thought experiment about a postulated imaginary digital "view camera." Imagine a medium-format-sensor camera intended to be used on a tripod in the field that had an integrated viewing screen the size of the Retina screen on a 12.9-inch iPad. Imagine the camera had controls that allowed the application of basic movements in software, but in real time so a photographer in the field could see the effects as he or she worked.

In response to that idea, a certain number of commenters would say "I don't need that," or "you could do the same thing with a tethered laptop" (or with some other workaround) or "just use film," or "you could do the same corrections later in post." In another "bin" would be comments such as "it would never sell enough" or "there isn't enough demand" or "the company that developed such a camera would lose money." Still another group would dismiss the idea with what amount to veiled insults like "you're just attached to the past," etc.

But to me, you see, all three types of comment miss the point I happen to care about. The question for me is, are there photographers out there for whom the small viewing screens of existing cameras aren't big enough, whose work would benefit from being able to see their subjects more clearly with a much larger viewing screen? Are there photographers out there who would be enabled to do better work if they could see perspective corrections in real time, as they were photographing?

If there aren't, then I don't care about such an option. If there are, then I would wish such an option existed. Even if it can't.

The variety I would want to see in the camera market is directed at these sorts of issues. Whether it's a viable product for a company to make or not is perfectly rational to consider, because it possibly describes why such a product could exist or doesn't exist. But either way, it's not the salient point to me. I want photographers to be served with what would enable them to do good work more effectively. That's where I'm coming from. 

Back to the Z-series
Here's what I think is going on with Thursday's announcement. Nikon is responding to Sony's rising market share in FF cameras by poaching the successful A7[x] lineup with two copycat products. Since there will be few native lenses at first (and possibly forever), much attention will be paid to offering top-level support to the use of Nikon DSLR lenses with adapters. Meanwhile, since the Z-series introduces a new lensmount from Nikon (this is huge news in and of itself, actually, given the history of the F-mount), the lensmount, as one of our commenters noted, might support a medium-format sensor size and lenses, presaging a future Fuji GFX killer from Nikon as well. (That's the end of the market these companies are most interested in these days, because smartphones have eaten their lunch at the other end.) [UPDATE: Stephen schooled us on this...not gonna happen. Okay. —MJ]

And yep, there's always the possibility that Z[x] will out-do A7[x], and be better cameras.****.

All that is guesswork. But now I feel I have a framework for evaluating this development as it develops! Grab popcorn, sit back....

Mike

*Remember how Nikon built the Coolpix A in 2013, going after the success of the Ricoh GR? How'd me-tooism work out for them that time?

**I said that instead of using the word "iconic," and you're welcome!

***cf. Kodak PhotoCD.

****Heck, I liked the Coolpix A.

TOP will be off tomorrow, as Yr. Hmbl. Ed. attempts to rejuvenate by going 24 hours without thinking about photography.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Jim Arthur: "I see what you mean. I often consider too many variables when faced with an issue and don’t focus on the crux of the matter. This can lead to inaction on my part. In this case, if the market does not have a wish list, the market research is of no use and things remain the same. You have to make your heart’s desire known."

JH (partial comment): "Aha, now you are getting into topics I'm covering in my book on management you inspired me to get back to work on!

"Corporations are stupid. Ever hear of the 'Peter Principle'—people in corporations rise to their level of incompetence. Based on 50 years in business, I can assure you that is the case. The people running companies are generally incompetent and the absolute worst people to be running them. A survey of corporate executives in America a few years ago showed the majority would rather be playing golf. Most work to protect their bonuses and some, like Elon Musk, work and tweet on acid (true according to today's New York Times.) Most companies have an idea they start with and few ever have a second good one. After a while they rely on chasing their competition and products become 'me too' copies. They either stagnate or die.

"I'll skip the stories about cars and focus on cameras. Maybe. Look at Kodak. They invent the digital camera but let it kill them. They had stagnated and had no idea how to apply the same creativity to marketing that they had in R&D. (Hell, I was helping them develop integrated circuits in 1969, I know how good their R&D was.) Nikon and Canon focus so tightly on each other, they can't innovate much at all. I've seen this in tech companies before. Management refuses to allow innovation because 1.) it's risky and I don't want to risk my job and 2.) that's not what the competition is doing. Olympus was a backmarker so developing a new type of camera (Micro 4/3) was easier, even easier for Panasonic who was not a serious player at all, since the alternative was to continue to fade away. Innovation worked for them. Sony was a tech leader and had no baggage to stop new ideas—ever see the Mavica? Early success showed the idea had merit and justified continuing the process.

"Ninety-nine percent of all the innovation going on in photography and camera development today is in the cellphone business. That's where the innovative companies are and more importantly, that's where the money is. That they understand how most users want to use cameras leads to their success.
If your interest is along the lines of traditional photographers, you have to live with what the Canikon companies give you—better traditional cameras (what they know) but poor interface to today's digital world. In another decade, they will probably decline similarly to the film photography industry as their market shrinks, revenue and profit declines, and innovation becomes less justifiable."

Michael Perini (partial comment): "As for the predictive value of 'Corporate Marketing' I'm not sure you are looking at that in a realistic way. Pick any business that makes consumer goods then narrow that down to a group that has had long term success—say 25 years or more—then narrow that down further to a group that has been so successful that they are now a multi-billion dollar corporation. The most successful enterprises. They could have only gotten there by making lots of correct decisions about what they can sell. For better or worse they all have a process that they use to decide what to make. They know it is highly fallible, but the also know it got them where they are. But if you look closely you will see that they have all had lots of failures. Failures that look really dumb with the benefit of hindsight. It is very easy to cherry pick those and point them out. They all know that it is not an exact science, and if they can be right more than they are wrong they grow. If the balance shifts negative they shrink. If they can't turn it around they disappear."

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "Some points I'd like to throw in for discussion: Its pretty clear to me that you have no experience in formal product development for engineering-based products, or your views would likely be very different. With all due respect, publishing a magazine is the not the same process nor poses the same challenges as researching, developing, verifying, validating and manufacturing a camera, or a DNA sequencer, for that matter. Movies don't qualify, either. Movies and magazines don't have deliver on a set of critical functional responses (aka CFR) and be able to manufacture them in statistical control. Here's some facts for you: any product development company that has and implements a formal and disciplined Voice of the Customer (VOC) process, and then executes and the fulfills on the customer requirements that are the deliverables of that VOC process, then executes on those customer requirements with a high level of engineering specification and quality (by using an approach e.g. DFSS) can, and does, make products that will sell and sell well, all the time. I personally have 10 years of experience and data in the biotech sector to prove it."

Mike replies: With all due respect back at you, I do realize that the people charged with developing new products do so responsibly and intelligently. But the limitation of VOC is contained in your phrase "customer requirements." The better the customer can define their requirements, the better companies can fulfill them. Sometimes that's straightforward. But not where real innovation is concerned. It's the focus-group problem: focus groups can only tell you what they think of what they already know about. They can't evaluate what they will like or dislike about products they can't yet imagine. Imagining new ways of doing things is what real innovation is about—it gives customers things they're going to love but that they don't yet know they want. 

Steve Jacob: "Corporations identify target markets with very wide definitions, but once those markets are defined it is almost impossible to de-silo the entire customer requirements > R&D > production > marketing > sales pipeline from the organisation that is created to service it. R&D are clever folks, but they are given a bucket list and a price point. Whether the list and price point are correct is not within their remit to decide. And so begins a long steady process of refinement of a model range to the point where it is very good, but no longer what the market wants. Their blind spot is that they gather requirements from existing customers and channels. They should be analysing the customers that didn't buy them instead."

Wealth of Choice? Really?

If you're in my business, you get used to certain things. For example, that whenever a post about gear gets a lot of comments, someone will bemoan the fact that posts about pictures never get that many comments. (The post before this one has gotten 121 comments so far.)

...Even though most gear posts don't get that many comments, and a few posts about pictures do get a lot of comments.

I'm not calling anyone out, please understand—I'm not criticizing. It's just a thing that happens. I get fish-slapped with the patterns.

So. Another comment that rises above the waves regularly is that "we've never had so many cameras to choose from," "it's a great time to be a photographer because we have so many choices," etc., etc.

I do not think so.

Or rather, I do, because we do have a lot of choices, and a lot of those choices are nice. (And maybe I should write a post celebrating the options we have.) At the same time, I wish people would stop saying that. Here are a few things we could have but don't:

1. A TLR-inspired "street" camera with a side-mounted handle and an upward-facing viewing screen that has a pop-up hood;
2. An affordable B&W-only camera;
3. Cameras that are radically simple and de-complexified;
4. Cameras that dispense with JPEG modes and options to reduce menu and processing complexity;
5. Cameras with built-in memory;
6. An affordable rangefinder camera that takes M-mount lenses;
7. Cameras with modern sensors that have web-only resolution, i.e., two, four, six or eight megapixels;
8. A camera or two with a square sensor....

And the list could go on.

Granted, some of these things we've had in the past (the affordable M-mount rangefinder, 6-MP cameras), some of them we do have in extremely expensive or otherwise impractical versions (the B&W-only camera); several of them have workarounds; a few of them might not be marketable. (But don't think I couldn't name choices specifically conceived to be marketable.)

The wacky but delightful (and star-crossed) 2010 Ricoh GXR, with its
interchangeable lens-sensor modules. Image via Amateur Photographer.

I don't even fault the manufacturers, who, collectively, have been pretty adventurous in trying different things over the years, e.g. the clever "Optical-Porro Finder" on the 2005 Olympus E-300 EVOLT, or the pellicle-mirror "SLT" models from Sony, or Ricoh's terminally quirky GXR that never quite made minimum sense as a product offering but definitely offered creative design thinking that was way outside the box, or Sigma's Foveon-sensor cameras. I might also add that if you removed Sony and Leica from the current camera market, a lot of the choices we do have go away.

I'm not even saying that we should have all of the things listed above. All I'm saying is that we don't. They're not choices we have.

Just because there are nine different me-too DSLRs that mimic each other and seven different models of mirrorless cameras that are all cautiously, conservatively similar to each other doesn't mean that those things are "choices." I mean they are, obviously, in that you have to choose whether you want one or the other. But if you hate pickup trucks, having more pickup trucks to choose from doesn't help.

Really, there is lots of room for more choice.

Mike

P.S. And in response to the comments about a digital view camera, why not a capable digital ILC camera designed to be used on a tripod with a viewing screen the size of an iPad? The technology is all right there. The movements could even be effected in software; that would be cool.

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Sharon: "Like I said in the previous thread, I recently purchased a Fujifilm GFX 50s. If I were my cat, you could hear the purring from there. This is the most satisfying experience I have ever had with a camera. I'm not much of a gearhead and have no patience for charts and graphs and data. I'm not a fan girl either. Using this camera makes me want to belt out a song like our beloved Aretha. I wish everyone could find a camera that makes them feel this way. So I hope if that list of camera wishes would ring your bell the way this camera has rung mine that some camera company hears you and makes it.  :-)  "

Yonatan K.: "One of your favorite cameras has built-in memory and is (or can be, in its default mode) very simple.... Just sayin'.

"You caught me in a congenially argumentative mood, i.e., awake. This is a genetic condition, as we found out when our kids learned to talk."

Mike replies: The mind-picture you painted of argumentative toddlers made me laugh. Thanks for the pick-me-up.

Kirk W.: "To your point #2, I am surprised that Fujifilm hasn't released an XPro-2M. Seems like an easy way to squeeze some sales out of a model already imitating the M series. And by a firm that can roll out some semi-legitimate marketing lines about 'deep knowledge of what artists prefer in B&W film-like simulations.' I'd be tempted and I don't even have a particular affinity for B&W."

c.d.embrey: "A Dixie® Cup economy. The original Dixie® idea, from 1907, was a use it once and throw it away paper cup. This spawned the commodity paper-plate industry. Now-a-days ubiquitous paper cups/plates and their cousin the plastic eating utensil, are clogging-up landfills in first-world countries. The consumer goods marketplace is being changed by commodified products. Is there any quality difference when using an Android or iOS device? When looking at a photo on social media, can even the most dedicated pixel-peeper tell what camera was used? At this point in history, does anyone really care anymore? Sony has been in the commodity business for a long time. They build Dixie®-Cup-like products at a price-point that allows the consumer to replace them with a newer and better item, rather than make expensive repairs on obsolete gear. What's not to like? In this modern, and changing, world does it make any sense to agonize over the imperceptible differences between commodity items? I think not.

Jonathan: "I personally would love to see 3, 6 and 8. I think you are right that we essentially have a lot of great cameras to choose from, just like we have a lot of great crossover SUVs to choose from. A little more variety would be nice."

SteveW (partial comment): "I am in agreement with this take on the camera market. There's a reason Apple and Google have not jumped in the camera ILC market: they already own the camera market with smartphones. Same reason Samsung bailed. In my opinion, the camera companies are great with camera hardware, but the software is mediocre at best, and the connectivity to modern technology such as our computers and the internet (i.e. cloud) is poor. Cameras have no built-in memory. The menu systems are archaic and cumbersome, and sometimes seem to have no logic to them. Using the camera has levels of complexity over other modern devices that seems totally unnecessary, or at least mostly unnecessary. Why not built-in memory, an android or iOS system, LTE/Wireless connectivity, ability to download apps, and so on and so forth. Having a data plan for the camera like we can get for iPads would be nice as well. Memory cards? At most memory cards should be for back up or overflow, not as primary storage...."

[Ed. Note: You can see the remainder of SteveW's comment, and the full version of all other comments marked "partial," in the Comments section. —Ed.]

Robert Roaldi: "I wish I spent as much time taking and looking at pictures as I do thinking about equipment."

alex-virt: "There was a 'TLR-inspired "street" camera with a side-mounted handle and an upward-facing viewing screen'—the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1. No pop-up hood though."

Mike replies: I loved that camera and would love to see it resurrected, but I fear the size of the viewing screen expected today would make it impractical to design. It, like the Nikon CoolPix 950-style designs, was enabled by the small viewing screens of the day.

Should the New Nikons Succeed?

SL killer? Screen grab from Nikon's latest teaser.

Just a brief question—do you want the coming Canikon mirrorless cameras to succeed?

I have a mild case of the traditional American attitude of "rooting for the underdog," and I also have a little problem with bully capitalism, meaning, corporations using their wealth and strength to take over competing businesses when those competing businesses get too uppity. I'm not sure either of those prejudices even pertain in this case. But what we're about to witness here is probably not innovation. (Except perhaps down in the details.) It's just larger corporations looking at the existing landscape and calculating how they might use their strength and power to appropriate pieces of the pie the other guys have, using me-too products based on those other guys' successful products.

And I find myself nagged by this sense that Canikon already have enough pie. And that it might not be in my interest for them to hog more.

Nothing against Canikon.

Of course, the market decides...but then, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, what do you hope happens—not what will happen, or what should happen based on Econ 101 ideas.

But, speaking of that, even if you are a diehard, survival-of-the-biggest, law-of-the-jungle, nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw free marketeer, would you be copacetic if, let's say, Canikon ends up driving Panasonic and Olympus out of the camera business? How about if they succeed to the point of dealing the death stroke to Sony and Leica? Would you be happy that happened?

I'm a little resentful, too, that there's so little real innovation in the camera sector these days (at least from Canikon), and that this probably ain't that. They're not addressing the smartphone juggernaut, the complexity problem, sharing (well, they're addressing sharing a little), or computational photography, among other things. This move might turn out to be just an exercise in Machiavellian, business-school, by-the-numbers market share manipulation. Probably. Maybe.

But then, I should shut up. Maybe I'm being bigoted, and anyway I'm asking you what you think, not what you think of what I think.

Mike

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Tom Currier: "Nikon has innovated its way to the best DSLR on the planet in the D850. I’m hoping they will apply their know-how to making the best mirrorless camera too. From what I’ve read, they will be introducing a couple of terrific cameras on the 23rd."

c.d.embrey: "Nothing would make me happier than for the über-arrogant Nikon to go out of business. When it comes to satisfying consumers' wants and needs Nikon sez eff-u, it's our way or the highway!!! From my POV Leica will be the last still camera company standing. The rest will pull the plug when profits drop beyond a certain point."

Kaemu: "We ought to consider the possibility that Canon and Nikon are making a move into FF mirrorless because other companies (especially Sony, which is not small) are aggressively going after their business.

"I submit that this is more the (usual) case of established players being forced to evolve by aggressive new entrants. After all, it's very possible that the large investment Nikon has to make to develop this new type of camera (and new mount, I believe) won't lead to a lot of new sales but rather stop or slow the loss of existing customers. In other words, they have to spend more to stay even.... Not something that excites investors.

"Also, I don't think there is anything wrong with companies that face declining sales volumes trying to adapt in order to remain relevant. Failing to adapt is the worse sin I would say.

"What we see in the camera industry happens in a many others. Over time a couple of dominant players emerge. They often reach market positions they are happy with, and even though they don't collude directly (it's illegal), they find ways to avoid costly price or feature wars. They become a bit complacent and innovation slows down. Customers are the one who lose the most.

"But this opens up opportunities for new entrants or innovative smaller players to shake things up (they have less to lose). Only when one of the small fry becomes successful and large enough to change the balance of power do the main players bestir themselves. I think that is what we are seeing happen (although in this case, the disruptors are themselves large corporations).

"Even if I never buy Sony product, I'm glad they decided to make a real push in this market and are forcing Canikon to think differently."

Barry Reid: "Fundamentally I don’t care as long as I can get what I need from some supplier at a sensible price. Which is why it’s good the one of the big boys is going to be muscling in on Sony’s overpriced little FF mirrorless patch."

Eric Rose (partial comment): "It boils down to value as I define it since I'm the one cutting the cheque."

Scott R.: "I am a longtime Nikon user and their cameras have always had a place in my camera bag—or, at least in the camera cabinet. The D800 was the camera responsible for getting me off film. Up until that camera, I still did all my 'serious' work with medium and larger film formats. I did fall in love with the image files out of the D800 and later D810, but never really fell in love with using the cameras. They always left me wanting. I wanted to not only love the image file quality, but the experience of using and handling the camera too.

"I started to look at Fujifilm and wish that they had a sensor geared toward landscape photographers. Their company was innovating, designing 'cool' cameras, and listening to their photographers. What a concept! I was sold on them a year before the Fuji GFX came out. So when it finally did come to market, I was at the front of the line and won’t look back. I have to say—the GFX is my all-time favorite camera over 20 years of using many different cameras. All the Nikon gear is currently collecting dust and will eventually get sold.

"With that all said as a lead up to my opinion on the matter—I really don’t want to see Nikon succeed with their new mirrorless offering. They’ve been dragging their heels for way too long. Not innovating. Not listening. Not caring. They should be losing some of the pie to Fujifilm and others. Personally, I can’t see anything they could do at this point to win me back to using their products going forward. And I suspect I’m not alone—it seems many photographers have switched off to Sony and Fuji and others over the past few years. It’s no longer enough to simply stay in the middle of the road serving the status quo. As a consumer with more options available than ever, I want to use products by companies that I align with. Companies offering innovative products that are a joy to use and at fair prices, who care about their customer and about maintaining that relationship.

"Nikon—it’s too little too late."

Jim Wolf: "I have little interest in this camera or any other mirrorless. I use digital for work, including shooting high school sports, so the DSLR works for me. When it comes to personal work, I shoot film and am moving backwards from semi-auto Nikons to thread-mount Leicas. Keep in mind that Canon and Nikon both got their starts in the photo field by imitating Leica and Contax. So having them imitate Sony, Panasonic, et al., is nothing new for them."

Roger Overall: "You're right about a lack of innovation. I mean, just look at the marketing. Gradually revealing the silhouette of a new camera. [Sarcasm dial up to 11] That's never been done before. [Sarcasm dial back down to 0]. I don't think this camera deserves to succeed. If it does succeed, I'll feel like money will be diverted away from companies that are interested in innovation. Instead it'll go to lazy companies. Less money going to the innovators means smaller R&D budgets and less innovation for us. That's how I'll feel, anyway. If it is a remarkable and revolutionary product, then it deserves to take over the world. (I have doubts it will be, though.)"

Matt: "Personally, I'm much more interested in seeing Nikon succeed than Canon (though I use neither). For one, I think it would be sad to see a company so interwoven with the history of photography as Nikon fail, especially after to so many other old brands have fallen away in the last few decades. But secondly, even though both companies have been slow to get aboard the mirrorless train, I think Canon in general has been far more guilty of complacency about innovation and their market position in recent years, and could use a good kick in the pants for once."

hugh crawford (partial comment): " I hope that Nikon and the other traditional camera companies at least make some sort of a splash in mirrorless if for no other reason than giving Sony some competition."

David Brown: "I'm a retired mechanical engineer and I've been using SLR cameras since 1966, so I've used a lot of them. I'd been expecting mirrorless FF cameras since the first digital SLRs appeared. Why? They're simpler and have fewer moving parts, and so should be cheaper to make and more reliable in use. And quieter, too."

Mike replies: I think I predicted about 10 years ago that SLRs would be gone in ten years. For just the reasons you state. Good thing people never check up on old predictions!  :-)

Eamon Hickey: "Just to be a noodge: Measured by overall sales (i.e. not limited to their camera businesses), Sony and Panasonic are significantly bigger companies than Canon and much, much bigger than Nikon. Ricoh (parent of Pentax) and Fujifilm are also much bigger than Nikon, although not bigger than Canon. Among current prominent mainstream camera manufacturers, Nikon and Olympus are, in relative terms, the spunky little guys (again, viewing overall, not just in cameras.) (Leica, as always, is a beast apart.)

"But I guess that is neither here nor there; I understand your point. One of the things I've really lamented since the early days of the digital era is how limited our choices are. I miss the wildly varied ecosystem of the film era, especially the 1950s–1970s; so many fundamentally different kinds of cameras from so many interesting, if ill-starred, manufacturers."

Sharon: "I recently bought a Fuji GFX and love it. I hope everybody buys Fujis so they keep making them. 😀 "

Andrew Molitor: "I have no particular enmity toward Nikon or Canon, and so no particular opinion on whether or not they deserve to succeed. I do think they're well positioned to earn your respect back, though.

"In rough terms, Sony has proved out the market in the so-called Early Adopter space, with a classic strategy for Early Adopters. They have a bunch of products, they're always tinkering, and to be blunt their products appear to be buggy and weird. Nobody loves their menus, and they keep running in little annoying bugs that get their target market up in arms (star eater! Arg! no uncompressed RAW files! arg!).

'"Nikon and Canon have clearly decided at the same time that this is the moment the Mainstream market jumps in. All they have to do is build solid dependable cameras that employ this new technology (yes, I know, mirrorless isn't 'new' but to the mainstream market the idea of a DSLT class camera with an EVF is still 'new') and deliver whatever the Nikon/Canon experience is.

"I don't think Sony is dying at the 'whole product' concept, but it still feels far more like they make widgets, not products. Nikon and Canon know how to deliver 'whole products,' they have a clear idea of whatever it is that the Nikon experience is, and what the Canon experience is, and they ought to be able to deliver it, if they have the will behind these products.

"And that's what I mean by an opportunity to earn your respect. They might well fumble it, but they're definitely positioned to make the leap, to do it right, and to step up to the next generation of photographic tech. They won't do it with innovation, they'll do it by building a good plan and executing it.

"This is literally straight out of Crossing the Chasm and it's the moment of truth for Sony. If Canon and Nikon execute well, it's lights out for Sony.

"Remember, Kodak built the first DSLRs."

Eric Brody: "Maybe Apple or Google will come up with a 'real' camera. That will be the end of all of these companies who are rehashing old ideas. It's pathetic that we have to buy cards to put into cameras, they should all have built in memory and lots of it. Perhaps a card as overflow. It's pathetic that we have to go through complex menus to get these things to do what we want and it's really pathetic that doing something as simple as transferring images to a computer (Airdrop anyone?) is such a big deal. Bring on the competition; let's see some real innovation. What I mentioned above should have been available 10 years ago!"

Thom Hogan: "Who cares who's baking the pie? All a photographer should care about is that the pie is better. Having more cooks experimenting with pies is good news, period."

Mike replies: I understand your hands are tied because you no doubt know all about the new products but can't discuss them yet, while I know nothing about them and can wander around babbling like a brook.  :-]

But...not necessarily. The backgrounder here is that I was shocked at how easily Canon overtook Sony and Olympus for the number one rank in mirrorless cameras in the Japan home market in 2017, with the introduction of a couple of not bad but hardly market-beating cameras and a few lenses. That's enough to take the top spot?! Solely because it's Canon. A few years earlier, Samsung had a much better camera than Canon's M5 or M6, and Samsung got chased off into the tall grass. I don't know how anyone can take Canon's 2016 and 2017 mirrorless ILC offerings and put them on one side of the balance scale, and then put all of Sony's on the other side, and then consider it rational when the scales tilt in Canon's favor. Photographers won't be better off if energetic companies with full (albeit somewhat haphazard) product lines can be poached so effectively with that much ease and that little effort.

Que sera, sera, of course....

Al DaValle: "Yes...I certainly hope both Nikon and Canon succeed and thrive. Sony, Panasonic and Fuji are great companies making great cameras. But I definitely don't feel these guys need protection or sympathy. These are huge international corporations doing what they do best...innovating and serving the market with great products. The more suppliers the better for everyone...especially us photographers.

"I am a longtime Nikon customer and feel they have served me very well over the years. I have no animosity for them given the fact they do not have a meaningful mirrorless offering yet. My mirrorless kit is Fuji which I love and will likely stick with.

"Nikon has consistently delivered top quality, professional and dependable gear that I have loved using. I'm not caught up on who is best at any given moment. That's a moving target. Chasing that with our purchasing decisions is a fools errand. I simply know Nikon has served me well for many years. From a pragmatic point of view I have thousand of dollars invested in Nikon and Nikon-compatible lenses. I plan and hope to continue to use those lenses for a very long time. I suppose I need Nikon to do well if I can be assured this will be possible. And I have many friends who feel the same way about Canon.

"I applaud Sony, Fuji, Panasonic and Olympus for their innovation and creativity. They have helped establish a new market segment defined by real needs. They have done this knowing full well the DLSR market leaders would eventually enter this new segment when they felt the time is right. These innovators are strong enough and large enough to maintain a meaningful piece of this market as long as they continue to innovate and provide great customer service."

Jim Richardson: "Rooting for Nikon here. For all of the five decades of my career Nikon has been building cameras for professionals—and supporting professionals, responding to their needs, making new pictures possible. No other single company has the history and longevity of commitment. Foibles? Perhaps. Heart? Plenty."

Good Company

I assume most people around here are visual, and like visual representations of information. I know I do. You might be interested in a recent infographic at NYT—it creates a bucket for Apple's trillion-dollar net worth and then drops in various combinations of various companies until it's full. It's very interesting to see visually the relative sizes of all sorts of companies, well-known and little-known. I searched in vain for camera companies, although that doesn't mean they're not in there. Maybe they weren't big enough to be useful. I am definitely not schooled in business or qualified to write about it, but as near as I can tell, I believe the total global digital camera market revenue is about US$20 billion, or roughly 1/50th the size of Apple. [UPDATE: But see Bill's Featured Comment below. My bad! And thanks to several other readers who also corrected me in the Comments. —Ed.]

It takes this many multi-billion-dollar companies to (almost) equal Apple. Some of the better-known ones in this graphic include Xerox, Western Union, Advance Auto Parts, News Corp., H&R Block, Whirlpool, Gap, Kohls, Macy's, Snapple, Viacom, and Harley-Davidson. Screen-grab from NYT.

That 50X behemoth is squatting pretty heavily on the camera industry. As one analysis puts it, mildly, "The global digital camera market is negatively influenced by the availability of superior camera functions on smartphones." (And then adds, rather startlingly: "apart from this, minimal customer engagement by the camera manufacturers and complex specifications have diminished the growth prospects of the market." But that's another discussion for another post.) I've always been curious about what's going to kill TOP, and it appears it might be something simple: I can't sell iPhones. If that's it, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Access: If you never visit the NYT, you get ten articles a month for free. Recall, of course, that TOP officially recommends a subscription to the NYT for its photographic content, which is excellent (I also contribute to the Guardian for photo content). Finally, if you cannot see it, my apologies. It's just fun, not crucial.

The infographic is titled "Apple’s Value Hit $1 Trillion. Add Disney to Bank of America and...You’re Halfway There."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Stephen Scharf: "The seminal work on this of course, is Prof. Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Rated by Amazon as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th Century, if I recall correctly."

Mike replies: My brother once said that this book should be on everyone's coffee table, because it's so elegant and shows good taste better than more ostentatious titles.

Bill: "You are confusing market cap (how much all of the stock of the company is worth) with sales. Apple sales this year will be something like $250 billion, about 12X what camera sales are if you don’t include phones in camera sales."

David Boyce: "Plus one for The Guardian. Some great photo essays and photojournalism."

Canon and Nikon To Go Mirrorless: Rumors

According to the sites Canon Rumors and Nikon Rumors, either Canon or Nikon or both will introduce either one or two serious new mirrorless system cameras either before or after Photokina in September.

In other words, the two industry leaders will now validate the business strategies and technical innovations of their more enterprising but less powerful competitors by horning in on those guys' markets. Sorry, is that too cynical a slant on the news? I guess so.

Anyway, the expectation has created a certain amount of furor as various interested parties hither and yon speculate on what, exactly, is coming.

Predictions. Great fun for some. Thom H. is one of the few who does it well, although he mainly succeeds because his discussions are interesting and enlightening whether the prediction is correct or not. Anyway, as they say about academe, the arguments are cutthroat because the stakes for the participants are so low.

I've personally never had much enthusiasm for the prediction pastime, although I know it's popular. One thing that drives me bonkers about American pool matches on YouTube is that the commentators are forever going on about what the player is just about to do. Why not just wait quietly until they do it? And then make whatever sensible comments it might be germane to make. It's such a mannerism that it comes off as slightly nutty, to this viewer at least. I never mention the sport of pool here, though.

But I don't see the point of nattering too much over rumors of future photo products, either. I do like to ruminate about what should be, but that's my "idealist" personality type coming to the fore—it's Utopianism rather than the gypsy fortune-teller urge. As to what people will do, well, I don't see much point in that crystal ball stuff. Just wait till it happens and then we'll talk about it.

All that aside, let's get back on track. If people like predictions, here are mine:

First, Canon and Nikon will follow each other, not necessarily Sony or Fuji or Leica or the Micro 4/3 consortium in all particulars. My theory about Leica in recent years is that it's been following the lead of Sony (it already has its A7[x] product in the form of the SL), but, culturally, Japanese companies tend to take their cues from their major Japanese competition. So whatever Canikon do, they'll both do it, and they won't do it just because Leica or Pentax etc. are doing it.

On the other hand, I think one of the new products from each company (if not right away, then following on) will be at a deluxe, high priced, carriage-trade price tier. As you know, the postwar fashion of Western countries aiming to be mostly middle class is over, and world economies are splitting into dual markets—not so much the haves and have-nots but the have-way-too-muches and the hoi-polloi, AKA the rest of us. Because we apparently all want to be like, say, Egypt. Accordingly, companies need to chase the discretionary dollars of the have-too-muches in order to maximize profits. So for example there were ten SUVs that cost over $100,000 in 2017, led by the 6-liter, 12-cylinder Bentley Bentayga for $230,000—that's a "have-too-muches" product right there. Whether Canon and Nikon choose to do this at the $6k level like Fuji or the $20k level like Leica remains to be seen, but one of their mirrorless products will probably leave ordinary working-stiff enthusiasts shaking their heads about excessive, out-of-reach cost.

And whatever they do at that level will mainly follow Chinese tastes. Which I don't really know anything about. Over the years it's been interesting to watch the reception in products made for specific places in the world and/or specific markets, and note how people outside of the target markets tend to evaluate those products as if they were made to appeal to them. For example, sometimes Japanese companies target mainly their home market, or women, or Japanese teens, and beardy grumpy white-male American and British enthusiasts argue over these products just like the development teams for those products gave a flip about their opinions. No no, Grampa.

Anyway given that both Leica and Fuji (and even Pentax) are making it rain from China with oversize-sensor cameras, it's possible we'll see medium-format mirrorless options from Canikon. My weakness as a prognosticator is that I don't know the size of those markets, or their profits, and Canikon will ignore any market it thinks is too small to bother with even if it's profitable.

Oh, and the new cameras will be ugly, because it's been a long, long time since we've seen a handsomely designed new Canon or Nikon.

That's, let's see, four predictions: Canikon will mirror each others' strategies, they'll be after the slice of the market that aren't price sensitive at least with some of their options, Chinese tastes will play a big part, and the cameras won't be pretty.

Techy questions remain. What formats? Dual formats? (In which case I predict the Fuji strategy, APS-C and medium format.) Or just one? (In which case I predict the Sony strategy, full frame.) Which lensmount? My guess there is that there will be new lensmounts from both makers with shorter flange distances than SLRs but with AF-enabled adapters allowing the use of the company's SLR lenses. They're unlikely to hobble themselves technically by sticking with currently lensmount specs—takes away too much of the edge.

I'm outta here now for my regular weekly date playing pool at the Moose Lodge with my buddies. (Sorry, did I just mention pool again?) After that I have a meeting. But when I get back I look forward to being soundly schooled by those of you who are much more up on the state of the rumors than I've bothered to be. Maybe some of the things I'm wondering about are already known. (All I know is that whenever we're talking about things nobody actually knows about, a lot of people always know much more than me. Then again, I predicted on the Miata Forum that they're wouldn't be a fourth-gen MX-5, so I'm clearly no good at predictions.)

I still say the best idea is wait and see. But insofar as gypsy predictions are fun, let us have at it, my friends.  :-)

Mike

UPDATE Monday evening: My buddy Loyle Egger, age 89, about to attempt a four-ball combination this morning at the Moose Lodge. He made this shot, but unfortunately scratched in the side pocket. (He was not the oldest guy playing with us this morning.)

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San Warzoné: Seems like everyone is raving about the Sony mirrorless cameras and the great image quality, fast focusing, 4K Video and the EVF (electronic viewfinder). What is missing for me are the intangibles: ergonomics, ease of use, buttons and controls, the way the menus work, and the actual touch/feel handling. Nikon cameras have always had that hands on feeling of the way a camera should work. I have tried to 'like' my Sony A6300, but the tiny buttons, awkward menus and especially the EVF make me go back to my Nikon DSLRs. To my view the EVF is artificial looking and even harder to enjoy because of the non-circular eyepiece. I get that you can 'see' the image that will be captured in real time, but even after trying to modify and adjust the EVF settings to match my reality, it is not the same as a 'mirror image' on my Nikon DSLRs. Yes, it is smaller, lighter and produces quality raw files...but it's still not my cup of tea."

John Camp (partial comment): "A ~50-MP FF sensor in a small body with smaller lenses (but perhaps also taking F-mount lenses with an adapter) would be really interesting. Even more interesting would be a 4/3 aspect-ratio FF sensor with multiple aspect ratio options, but that ain't gonna happen. What I really fear (think) is going to happen is we'll get routine, boxy ~24mp cameras that'll be functionally no better than my Micro 4/3 Panasonics and that will be more or less blown off by the picture-taking world.

"I gotta say, though, this is the first time in perhaps six or eight years that I've really been curious about upcoming cameras."

PaulW: "This was a well thought out and fun read. I'm much less interested in what Canikon will announce than I am in how it will affect the rest of the camera industry. With two 800-pound gorillas jumping into the ring, things are gonna change. Interesting times ahead I think."

Thom Hogan: "In terms of 'mimicking strategies,' it sort of depends upon definitions. But I'd say that Nikon is likely to mimic Sony's strategy, while Canon will continue on the strategy path they are on. Canon appears to be doubling down on EOS M (APS-C), while about to offer a 5D Mark IV type of camera in mirrorless. Nikon appears to be about to duplicate the Sony A7/A7R strategy, with APS-C (DX) now relegated to a later date and a lesser role. But it's been difficult to pick out the details as both Canon and Nikon have prototyped/muled so many variations. We'll see soon enough. Both Canon and Nikon have Photokina press conferences scheduled (back to back), so you'd have to guess that the mirrors will be off come October."

Rumors of DxO's Demise Exaggerated?

The latest news from DxO, the French software maker, is that the company is merely reorganizing under Chapter 11 protection and will not abandon its customers. So what does that mean?

Well, there's probably no way of knowing. "Bankruptcy" seems to mean a variety of things for different companies in different circumstances. I've been trying to follow the bankruptcy proceedings of our local supermarket chain (it's the only store in our town, and would drastically affect quality of life here if it closed), and the more I read about it the less I can tell you about whether our store is safe or endangered.

However, DxO made the following announcement today:

We are very confident that this procedure, which should not last for more than a few more weeks, will not affect our customers in any way. In fact, we are pleased to announce the following upcoming product releases:

• In June, we will release a free update (version 1.2) of our flagship software, DxO PhotoLab. Recently awarded the TIPA 2018 Award for Best Image Processing Software, this latest version of DxO PhotoLab will include improved local correction features, and will add support for 7 cameras, including the Canon EOS 2000D and the Sony A7 III. This release will also be an opportunity for us to reiterate our commitment to the “perpetual license” model (as opposed to a subscription model) that allows our customers to update their products according to their needs, rather than in a constrained manner.

• In June, we will release the new version of the Nik Software Collection, which DxO acquired from Google at the end of 2017. Much awaited by the Nik software community, this first “by DxO” version focuses on fixing bugs that up until now could disrupt the user experience, as well as on ensuring full compatibility with the latest Mac OS and PC platforms.

Encouraging as these statements are, it's worth noting that news about corporate restructuring from the corporations themselves could be strategic and might not necessarily be reliable. But at the moment, at least, things certainly look less than dire.

Also worth noting is that according to Wikipedia, DxOMark is a separate company.

If anyone knows more about this, feel free to jump in. Also, if there are any users of DxO PhotoLab out there, let us know what you think of it.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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adamct: "For what it's worth, in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the assets of the debtor are sold to satisfy the debts. That would effectively mean the end of DxO as an independent entity. In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the debtor strikes a deal with its creditors to try and restructure the debt. This is why the debtor in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is often referred to as the 'debtor in possession'—the debtor gets to hold onto their business and assets while they try to repay the restructured debt.

"But as Mike says, this can mean wildly different things in practice. Sometimes debtors are able to reorganize, pay off the negotiated debt amount, and move on with a successful and stable business. Other times, the reorganization is a failure and the debtor ultimately winds up in Chapter 7. The third option is that the debtor just manages to hold on, repeatedly restructuring its debt, never getting rid of it, not fully failing, but really not all that successful, either.

"Fingers crossed that this is just the first step toward making DxO more stable and setting the framework for future growth and success."

Ilkka: "I am not a lawyer and I am not French, but I believe there is no 'Chapter 11' in France. But when an American newspaper or other news organization reports about it, they may well use the common US term. It just means tbat the company is reorganising under some sort of protection from banks and other creditors."

ScotInDortmund: "French law has a similar provision to Chapter 11, protecting the company while negotiations with creditors proceed. —Ron Preedy."

[See Ben Marks' comment in the Comments Section for more background about bankruptcy and reorganization. —Ed.]

Bahi: "I use both Lightroom and Capture One heavily (and provide support and training for users of both). Despite that, I still have a soft spot for DxO's PhotoLab and its predecessor, DxO Optics Pro) and continue to happily pay for PhotoLab. (Sadly, only one person has ever asked me for training on DxO products in about a decade.)

"DxO's converters have an interesting and overlooked feature that makes me hope for the survival of DxO—and it's not the much lauded Prime noise reduction, which can be useful but gives results that look impressive in some ways but often seem a little unnatural to me.

"The feature I like is the method used by DxO to correct heavy barrel distortion in mirrorless lenses. I use it for the 17mm Olympus ƒ/1.8 but it applies to many mirrorless zooms and wide-angle primes.

"Even quite expensive lenses rely on software corrections, perhaps to help keep lenses smaller and lighter. For Micro 4/3 cameras, these lenses carry their lens-correction profiles internally. The camera embeds the profiles in the raw files. The distortion is usually corrected automatically by the camera for JPEGs.

"Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw [ACR], of course), Capture One (C1), and the in-camera corrections will all give you automatically corrected images when they read the raw files. However, the results will have substantially narrower fields of view than the results from DxO PhotoLab. That can be a big deal.

"The DxO correction algorithm presumably uses some kind of image stretching to achieve its corrections—I don't know. It's perfectly good, with no visible artifacts to my eye; straight lines do indeed come out straight and the results are sharp and detailed. The great thing it is that the odd hand or foot at the edge of the frame will be included in DxO's output but cropped out by Lightroom and C1. This has saved otherwise good pictures that were taken at events or on the street, where you have little control of your position.

"Photolab's interface feels a little clunky and slow but it's also clear that the output quality can be very impressive and that the software has been built by people who care about image quality. For me, though, the killer feature is its clever lens correction.

"I was pleased to read the article, Mike–I'm hoping for DxO's survival and am also hoping that diehard fans of Nik Silver Efex 2 (I'm not among them) will pay the upgrade cost to keep the company in business."

huw Morgan: "I think it's a little ironic that a bankrupt company is touting its software licensing model while Adobe records record profits after adopting a subscriber model. I'll put up with the minor annoyances of a subscription model if it's the price that has to be paid to keep my vendor solvent."

Richard Barbour: "DxO PhotoLab is my primary raw converter these days since jumping off the Adobe subscription bandwagon. It's good for what it does but of course isn't Photoshop, so I find myself often invoking the 'export to application (Photoshop CS6)' function to finish processing a photo. PhotoLab is hard to beat if you want to keep up with the latest camera updates, want a very good default rendering of your raw files (with numerous presets to give one-click satisfaction) and excellent global editing capability. The imported Nik functionality is also useful for local edits, although not quite as well implemented and integrated as one would like. I'm hoping they will fix that in the upcoming release. I also hope DxO is able to solve the current crisis and continue to be a good processing alternative."

The Problem of Aging-Out

The bike pictured on Harley-Davidson's home page might be aspirational for riders, but the rider pictured is aspirational for the company. He's not a member of the major demographic for the company's products.

Harley-Davidson, the American motorcycle maker based in my old hometown of Milwaukee, might be going downhill. Registrations of on-road bikes fell 6% last year, and it's been several years since H-D made its shipping targets. Sales of Harleys have mirrored, in advance, the decline in the number of non-Hispanic white males aged 45–49 who make decent incomes.

Two more trends have spelled trouble for H-D: people under age 30 have shown less interest in large motorcycles in general, and Harleys in particular, than predecessor generations; and there is reportedly a glut of used Harleys flooding the market as older riders transition to the gentler activities of advanced age. Harley's CEO, says Barron's, "knows that Harley can’t just make bikes—it has to create demand."

When I was (briefly) at Model Railroader magazine, it faced a similar problem. Model railroading is a huge, if quiet, hobby (most of it literally happens underground—or at least below ground level, in basements). In 2000 there were believed to be roughly 500,000 active model railroaders in the United States and Canada. The trouble has been that the peak of the demographic are middle-class males who were ten years old in 1950, when an electric train set was the number one most popular Christmas gift for boys. Individuals in that peak group are now 77 years old. Creating interest in the hobby among younger generations has been problematic, with only sporadic success. It's a time-, money-, and labor-intensive pastime. And it's generally only available to people who have enough extra room in their house or living quarters to set up at least a 4x8' sheet of plywood and leave it there.

(Many layouts are much more elaborate than that. At a workshop with model railroading gurus Bob Hayden and David Frary, we visited an avid model railroader in Houston. With his wife he had raised four daughters, each of whom had her own bedroom upstairs. When the eldest daughter went away to college, Dad requisitioned her room for his model railroad. When daughter no. 2 left, Dad knocked down the wall between the two bedrooms and enlarged the layout. The pattern held with the third daughter, and shortly after the last daughter left home the entire second floor of the house, by then one huge room with no walls, was entirely devoted to one enormous HO-scale layout.

...And then some: at one end of the house the exterior wall didn't allow enough room for a desired radius of track, so the fellow cut a big hole in the side of the house and built a bump-out, a sort of box attached to the outside wall of the home. He said when a train derailed in the bump-out, he had to get up on a ladder on the outside of the house and access it through a trapdoor. He claimed this was only inconvenient when it was raining! 

I don't recall the guy's name; someone out there might know. He was a rangy older guy with white hair who looked a lot like the late actor Jack Palance in the latter's later years.)

I'm not sure there are any identifiable demographic worries for the photographic industry quite yet; the digital transition involved such wholesale changes in habits and buying patterns that statistical trends have gotten swamped by the tsunami. Further complicating the picture is that the "digital era" is not steady-state; we haven't seen the last of the changes in the market, and it's even possible that we haven't even seen the major changes yet. But I'm sure cameramakers have been closely watching demographic patterns—at least since 2012 when the camera market peaked. What will happen when those of us who grew up shooting film start to drift out of the pool of buyers? Is the popularity of big DSLRs generational? What kind of cameras will smartphone snappers want if they get serious, as some percentage of them will?

My great-aunt Dickie, who died at age 101 and ten months, took her first ride on a Harley at age 95—she donned a helmet, climbed aboard a much younger friend's hog, and off they went. She reported it was "fun." One thing is probably true—while I'm guessing there are precious few 95-year-old Harley-Davidson riders out there, there's not yet any known upper age limit to the enjoyment of photography.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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scott kirkpatrick: "General aviation (small planes) also has an aging problem. But few pilots last as long as Captain John Miller, who flew until the age of 100. He kept his twin-engined Baron at Dutchess County Airport in Poughkeepsie, where I would hear about him. He barnstormed, flew early airmail routes, lived through the whole era.

"His sister, Lee Miller, was a photojournalist, friend of Man Ray, and one of the first to come back with photos of the Holocaust at WWII's end. John Miller is not the fictional character who saved Private Ryan."

David Comdico: "There is something a bit hypochondriacal about the incessant anxiety concerning the impeding death of the DSLR. Is it a side-effect of our ubiquitous neophilia? Amongst other cameras I own an F100 and a D810. Those two cameras have 18 years between them, shoot to different media, but are still remarkably similar to one another (the F100 viewfinder is nicer, but I digress). For sure, the F series is much older with the current modern shape arriving, as I understand it, in 1996 with the F5. That's over a 20-year iteration of a single industrial design in a product category that has seen massive disruption. That's pretty amazing. To me, the story should be instead about the improbable longevity of the DSLR."

Tim Bradshaw: "I think that big DSLRs are indeed generational, because I think they have become absurd. I use film almost entirely (because I like making prints in the darkroom). I have three Pentax MXs, and a few lenses. Every once in a while I think I really should start taking the whole digital thing seriously and I look at DSLRs. Well, Ricoh/Pentax make a DSLR I could use my lenses on now...and it weighs a kilogram. That is twice the weight (and probably more than twice the size) of the MX: it's two thirds the weight of my view camera (OK, discounting mandatory tripod, spot meter etc., so this is unfair). That's absurd. I can carry the MX with a 50mm lens in one hand all day and have done so many times. With a lens hood to keep rain off the lens it is small enough to be covered by the sleeve of my coat so I can do this in heavy rain, all day. I can do the same with the Ricoh GXR. I can't do that with the K-1, not even nearly: it's too big, and too heavy. If I bought one it would take lovely pictures but I would never use it."

Mike replies: The Pentax MX with a 50mm ƒ/1.4 M lens was very close to perfection, no? Funny how we move on, even from the near-perfect. But if you enjoy the darkroom work (I'm probably one of the few people who appreciates that, as I always loved working in the darkroom), what's not to like?

Winwalloe: "Your mention of this Harly Davidson ad campaign cracks me up: a casting for the campaign occured at a bar in L.A. I was in with friends (I was offered to take a shot at it but didn't). Who knows, it could have been a picture of me on this post haha. Elsewise, here's what this casting for Harley looked like:

Ade: "Apropos toy trains, I spent years trying to cultivate an interest in model railways, and gave it a 'proper' go once I achieved a decent disposable income and, due to living alone, a rental with sufficient space and nothing better to do with my spare time—only to discover that watching 'electric mice' still held little appeal for me. I found what was missing once I did what everyone was always telling me to do—went outside. I sold all my miniature engines and started again with slightly bigger trains in the garden. True, you need a garden with some space but the kits are reasonably priced and you can do as much or as little scenic modelling as you like (nature takes care of the rest). For a modest investment, you can even propel your trains with real steam. I guess this was the 'large format' equivalent of the modelling world - seems like more work with bigger kit but actually simplifies a lot of things and brings you closer to the original spirit of the hobby."

Mike replies: You know this, certainly, but for others who didn't know this was a niche, Kalmbach Publishing, which publishes Model Railroader, also publishes a magazine called Garden Railways for outdoor train layouts.

mike plews: "I suspect the demographic HD is looking to recruit is more likely to favor something like this. It is also worth noting that I am seeing more scooters and mopeds out on the street lately. Not the majority by any means but they seem to fold nicely into the hipster lifestyle."

Mike replies: That is the coolest thing ever.

Ernie Van Veen: "I took up motorcycle riding at the tender age of 10, and I haven't been willing to get onto another motorbike in the last 30 years (since my youngest was born). On the other hand, I took up photography in 2011 at the tender age of 54, and I just can't see a time where I would lose interest in photography or cameras (of whatever configuration). I can't image the arrival of grandchildren changing that."

Cliff R.: "Well you have wide appeal, Mike. I started reading TOP when I was in my 20s (33 now) and my 70-year-old dad also loves your blog. I was a young subscriber to Model Railroader in the early to mid '90s. Never could afford any sort of decent layout as a kid, of course, and as an adult I've been bitten by an even worse bug than model railroading or photography—flying!"

Robert Roaldi: "If people just bought motorcycles and rode them, the way people do in the rest of the world, as convenient and efficient transportation, I'd have no problem with them. But every neighbour I've ever had who owned a large bike seemed to think that it was their duty to put on aftermarket loud exhaust systems and make as much noise as possible. As far as I am concerned, their demise cannot come soon enough, and I'm an ex motor-head. For some reason, in North America, motorcycles seem to be a fetish, not a reasonable method of transportation."

Mike replies: This is a sore spot with me, as I'm sensitive to noise. I don't mean to be, I just can't help it. Not only are there laws on the books governing vehicle noise that are simply ignored in the case of big street motorcycles, but the mantra "loud pipes save lives" drives the logical part of my brain slightly to distraction. The idea is that being noisy alerts car and truck drivers more effectively to the motorcycle's presence on the road. The contradiction is that most of the same people who say "loud pipes save lives" are also against laws mandating the use of helmets.

I'll be quiet now.

Joe Massey: "Mike, I read your blog most days and very much enjoy doing so. Today, especially so. I just got back this afternoon to my computer after spending a couple of pleasurable hours running large scale trains on the outdoor layout of my friend John Carl. These are 1:20.3 'G scale' trains that are more than 2x the scale of the Lionel "O gauge" trains of my youth and much larger than the HO trains that have come to dominate the pages of Model Railroader (which I've been reading since 1952) so 77 year olds like John and I can see what we are working on when something goes wrong or a locomotive needs being put back on the track.

"John and I fit your description to a T: both born in 1940. We're like most men I know and like: we grew old but we did not grow up; we still play with trains. And I still play with cameras, another thing I've been doing since I had a Brownie that I valued almost as much as my Lionel 2-6-2 way back in the early '50s. And like cameras the digital age has come to trains which nowadays have digital controls and sound systems that provide digital downloads of the actual sounds of the prototype engines. Which just adds to the fun of being a 77 year old kid."

JohnMFlores: "If I had a nickle for every time someone talked about the graying motorcycle industry, I'd have approximately $88.35. Seriously, it is a topic of conversation at nearly every moto industry gathering that I've been a part of for the last five years. It's true and it's not just Harley Davidson. I see it at rallies and events all the time. Barring some miracle, motorcycles seem doomed to the margins as a hobby that the old people used to do, like scuba diving and rollerblading. And you know what? That's OK. As long as I can continue to ride and share my stories with whoever wants to read them, I'm OK.

"And what about photography? I don't know about you, but I see an awful lot of grey hair at photo events these days, and any time three photographers get together, the fourth couldn't make it because of sciatica or some other ailment that young folks (damn them) don't have. The iPhone is the gateway drug, of course, but are the young talents stepping up to DSLRs or mirrorless or drones or 4k video cameras or 360/VR rigs? I don't know. Just like motorcycles, as long as I can continue to learn and grow and share as a photographer, I'm OK."

Ed. Note: Motorcycling journalist John Flores is a regular contributor to RoadRunner magazine. He visited TOP World HQ last Summer—riding a motorcycle that was blissfully completely silent!

Mark Sampson: "Around 1977–82 or so I had a friend who was the director of a small and under-funded transportation (trolleys mostly) museum. His statement was 'Why should I play with toy trains when I can play with real ones?' Which we did."

Mike replies: I really don't know the story, but I believe Rod Stewart, the singer, who is a rail fanatic, has both a model railroad and a real steam locomotive which he plays with, down to the engineer's hat. He was the ultimate "get" for MR at the time I was there, but he wouldn't cooperate for an article. I gather he eventually relented and an article about him appeared, but I've never seen it.

Jeremy E: "DSLRs, mirrorless, and their ilk depend upon computers to process, and purchase of computers of all kinds is also in decline—people have computers for work, but not necessarily for personal use. If you look at active development of photography software at places like Adobe, it's going to heavy lifting/processing of images in a datacenter (the cloud) with enough UX in an app or a browser to present a face to the processing service and move pictures over the wire.

"There is always a place for professional work and equipment—I understand a lot of Instagram posts are big-time marketing and those 'amateur' pics are not from a smartphone."

Eric Brody: "Never forget that emergency room docs refer to motorcycles, all of them, as 'donorcycles.' In my day, working in a small southern Alabama hospital, I saw some impressive wrecks—people wrecks—whose lives, if they survived, would be forever altered."

A. Dias: "Harley-Davidson is trying to buy Ducati."

John McMillin: "The same aging-out peril is being discussed regarding electric guitars, which were declared dying in a recent Washington Post feature story. Besides the obvious issues of arthritis, hearing loss and a lack of contemporary guitar heroes in popular music, there's this, which relates to the Harley situation: the big guitar makes are so wedded to the past. Walk into any big guitar store—you know, the big nationwide chains under rumors of financial failure—and you'll see rows and rows of Stratocasters, Telecasters, and Les Pauls, and not much else. New designs must not sell as well as recreations of the 1950s innovations that rocked the world so long ago. By aping the past, manufacturers increase the mystique of old models, furthering their own problem."

Hotspur Closser: "Had I been a middle-aged white guy 20 years ago, I would have bought a Harley in a heartbeat. But being a middle-aged white guy in 2017, living in a busy college town in the age of smartphones and distracted driving, they couldn't pay me to ride one of their bikes. It doesn't matter how skilled or defensive a rider you are—it's only a matter of time before some eejit messing around on their phone takes you out."

Brief Speculations on Nikon and Mirrorless

Written by Eamon Hickey

There's been a bit of buzz in the past week over Nikon's future plans for mirrorless cameras. The good folks at Digital Photography Review even managed to wrangle an official statement from Nikon that the company is "currently developing new mirrorless products," although no details were provided, of course. Three random points on this general topic have been circulating in my mind recently, and I feel like getting them off my chest…er, mind…whatever!

1.) In the general Internet commentary, there seem to be two factions regarding the lens mount. Some want a Nikon mirrorless lineup that uses the current F-mount, ensuring the continued usability of the 100 million or so Nikon F-mount lenses still focusing light in the world. Others insist that Nikon should not cling to "old" technology and instead go with a new mount that specifies a shorter distance from lens flange to focal plane (a.k.a. flange back distance), which will allow somewhat smaller (mostly thinner) cameras for those, like me, who wish photography was less burdensome. Literally.

I honestly think this one is pretty easy to predict: Nikon will do both. (Same for Canon, by the way.) It's the only believable business decision. So my prediction is that by some point in the not-too-distant future there will be Nikon mirrorless camera models, including full frame 35mm models, that natively use the F-mount and other Nikon mirrorless models that use a new mount with a shorter flange back that can work with both APS-C and FF sensors. Of course, there will also be an adapter (or adapters) to stick F-mount lenses on the new mount bodies. (Nikon already has a fully modern short-flange-back mirrorless lens mount for the Nikon 1 series cameras, but that lineup is clearly not, nor was it ever intended to be, the platform for future success in the higher-end interchangeable-lens camera segment, a segment that Nikon must aggressively pursue.)

The fully waterproof AW1, usable underwater, is part of Nikon's
mirrorless 1-series of consumer 1" cameras

It should go without saying that Nikon will also continue to develop and sell DSLRs as long as there is a healthy market for them. (DSLR sales are, for the time being, still much bigger than mirrorless ILC sales.) This approach has some definite drawbacks—market confusion and effort fragmentation being the biggest—but all the alternatives will be judged by Nikon to have even greater drawbacks. I'm pretty convinced of that.

Canon will do this, too. They are already halfway there with the EF-M mount. There will be native EF-mount mirrorless cameras alongside the current EF-M mount mirrorless cameras and almost certainly even FF EF-M mirrorless cameras, eventually.

In a way, Sony already does this—the short-flange-back mirrorless E-mount supports both APS-C and FF cameras, and Sony also continues to support the old (Minolta) SLR A-mount with cameras that, while they still have a vestigial mirror, are, in fact, electronic viewing cameras and operate like mirrorless models in every important way except their autofocus system.

2.) Now, some people at this point will posit that Nikon can't afford a development effort like the one I'm describing. But that's just not true, which is easy to see if you take the time to read Nikon's financial statements and know a little about how to understand them. Nikon has a lot of cash and a healthy balance of assets and equity versus debt—in plain language, they are worth a lot more than they owe. Nikon could spend $1 billion (with a "b"!) on R&D tomorrow and still have a very solid solvency profile. (Their equity ratio, one common indicator of solvency, which is now about 50%, would still be about 35–40%, much better than either Sony or Panasonic, for example. Speaking loosely, anything above 20% is considered solid.) And a billion dollars is way more than enough to develop several mirrorless camera systems, plus, oh, I don't know, a talking toaster. Nikon does have important long-term growth and profitability worries, but that's not the same thing as current financial troubles, and it's also not the topic of this ramble of mine.

3.) Finally, a lot of people are convinced it's too late. Game over. Ship sailed. Other people, including Thom Hogan in a comment at Nikon Rumors, have explained why that's not necessarily true at all. I'll just add my two cents that I think that many people overestimate the value of being a first-mover in a market. There are literally thousands of examples of latecomers succeeding, and even overtaking, the early birds. There's a huge example just in the recent digital camera era: Canon was very late to embrace digital cameras seriously and badly trailed the market behind Sony and Olympus (the big first-movers), and even Nikon (the third mover). I well remember the "dinosaur Canon is doomed!" wailings on the Internet in 1999/2000. Then the dinosaur bestirred itself and started moving, and it crushed everyone under its big dinosaur feet, dominating all levels of the standalone digital camera business for almost 15 years now. I could cite many other examples (for many companies, not just Canon) over the course of camera business history.

Now, it's obviously true that you can't catch up if you execute badly. For those anxious to comment thusly, I'll say it again: yes, catching up is a challenge, and bad execution will doom the effort. I'm not overlooking that little wrinkle. So that's the crux of the matter. If Nikon (and Canon) want to do really well in mirrorless cameras, it's not too late, but they do need to execute well. (Canon is actually already doing decently well with its EF-M cameras, especially in Asia.) Maybe they won't execute well. Nikon in particular has had a few bad strikeouts lately, to be sure. But they have a perfectly good chance, if—note the "if"—they do the job right.

On the question of whether they will in fact do it right, my prediction machine is broken.

Eamon

Longtime camera industry analyst Eamon Hickey is a Contributing Editor of TOP.

©2017 by Eamon Hickey, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Dennis: "I think you (and Thom) make sense saying it's not too late, but Nikon's running out of time to make any mistakes. (I think Nikon 1 was poorly conceived as a half high-end, half dumbed-down hybrid that was too expensive for its sensor size. I also think Sony, Olympus and Panasonic all did mirrorless poorly with their initial systems aimed at 'point-and-shoot upgraders' but had time to pivot).

"I'm not so convinced on what we'll see in the way of a mount. I would expect to see either F mount or something that works seamlessly with F mount (a really well done adapter solution) but have a little bit of a hard time seeing them do a new mount with new lenses. Recent new F mount lenses look like they're geared towards mirrorless use.

"Any take on the likelihood of seeing IBIS incorporated in future mirrorless models (now that other brands' 'dual IS' is getting rave reviews)? In the past, IBIS might have seemed like an admission by Nikon or Canon that lens-based IS might not be superior. But now the IBIS manufacturers also offer lens IS (and make the two work together)...and IBIS makes more sense with live view where it stabilizes the viewfinder image (where only lens IS does that in a DSLR). It seems like if they had any thought of doing IBIS, a new mirrorless system might be the right time/place for it. The problem I see is that they have excellent lens-based VR already and might have to pay to license IBIS patents from Sony and/or Olympus."

rosuna: "Hello Eamon: Early birds have to invest a lot in R&D and assume a lot of risks. Late comers show up when all technologies are mature, the costs are low and the risks are negligible. Any company can develop a mirrorless system now with a low investment effort and an assured level of quality, just using standard components.

"For Canon and Nikon mirrorlesses are only a part of the cake. They will go for it, minimizing risks and investment. At this moment there is not much income in the camera business. The most innovative companies are forced to do that, or disappear. The big ones' strategy is to preserve. The mirrorless systems by Canon and Nikon will be deployed slowly, in a conservative way, without innovations, looking at particular market niches. Well made products, but unexciting."

Ilkka: "Re 'Canon was very late to embrace digital cameras seriously.' Really? I thought their D30. (Or was it 30D?) was among the first 'serious' consumer DSLRs on the market? And the 1Ds among the first full frame pro bodies? They did lag badly in mirrorless but I think in DSLRs they have always been quite advanced."

Eamon replies: Yep, really. It's a tangent to the point I was making, but many people nowadays are understandably surprised by it. So just for the record, here's what the Chairman and CEO of Canon said about it in an article in Electronic Engineering Times in May, 2000: "Canon introduced a digital still camera in the early '80s, but it was too early and was not successful," said Fujio Mitarai, president of Canon. "Since then, we have been concentrating on analog cameras and have let our competitors get ahead in the digital still camera market. But while we were behind, we used the time to develop key components, and now our digital still camera strategy is in good shape," he said.

The digital camera business really started getting serious in 1997, with Sony and Olympus way out in front of everybody else; Canon didn't get into the top four until 2001. So strange as it may seem, Canon napped through the first few years of the biggest market shift in at least the last 100 years in the camera business. But Mitarai was 100% right about their ability to come roaring back. They took the lead in 2002 and have never lost it.

IBIS Coming to Fujifilm Cameras?

Speaking about shutting up, as I was in the last post, this is the second-to-last post I have planned about Fuji for a while. I see I have lingered on them too lovingly lately. One more post after this and then we'll move on.

But I thought this was worth a separate mention—Patrick at Fujirumors says he is "100% certain" that adding in-body image stabilization (IBIS) to its cameras is part of "Fujifilm's (current) plans." Yes, despite the fact that the company has said in the past that it will not do so. Check out his article at the link.

IBIS is one of those things that either is or is not important to people. Some (incl. yours truly) like and appreciate it; some (more, perhaps?) don't care. But it does seem to be becoming standard in the mirrorless universe. Everything from the Sony A7RII ($2,700) to the Olympus E-M5 Mark II ($900) has it. Fuji is quickly becoming an island in that regard.

One thing seems likely: we probably won't have to wait three years to find out. Fujifilm moves fast.

Mike
(Thanks to several commenters in the previous post)

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Stephen Scharf: "My guess is we'll see it. Primarily for the same reason that Fuji was an island when it came to video, let alone 4K video. Then they saw the writing on the wall, and not only upped their game with the X-T2's video, but did an excellent 4K implementation, so much so that serious videographers are now using this system.

"One of the things I've learned about Fuji is they tend to really think things through. Like any company, Fuji doesn't always get it right the first time, or get it perfect, but they really do actively think about things, even what appear to be the little things.

"This thoughtful approach was apparent to me the first time I shot the new GFX at a camera store. it was very clear they did a lot of engineering to ensure the shutter mechanism was well very damped so as not to induce any shutter shock (sidebar: damping is what engineers do to minimize or attenuate vibration or oscillation; dampening is to moisten something). The other thing they did (and actually wrote a 'white paper' about, which virtually no one talks about or discusses in reviews), was the considerable engineering that went into making the GFX lens mount stiff enough and rigid enough to maximize optical quality from larger and longer medium-format lenses.

"There are sound engineering reasons why Canikon implemented optical image stabilization (OIS) rather than in-body image stabilization (IBIS), reasons that Fuji agrees with. One of the reasons is that it is considerably more difficult to control lens vibration on long, heavy, telephotos (like a 300mm ƒ/2.8 or 500mmƒ/4 or 600mm ƒ/5.6) with IBIS than with OIS. Think about it. A 500mm ƒ/4 is a pretty damn long lens with a pretty damn narrow field of view. Very small movements at the body result in a much larger movement at the front of the lens. This why OIS is a more effective engineering solution for controlling vibration at the front of a big, long, heavy lens than IBIS. One of the reasons Olympus had been so successful with IBIS is because the majority of their first series of Micro 4/3 lens were, by comparison, short (in absolute length), small, and light.

"However, now that Olympus getting serious about penetrating the pro/sports PJ ranks with the E-M1 Mark II, they are also using OIS for their big, fast, telephoto primes (like the wonderful Olympus 300mm ƒ/4). Hmm....

"Olympus is utilizing OIS in their big long telephoto lenses for the very same reasons that Canikon and Fuji did: because it's best engineering solution for long lenses. What Olympus did that was innovative was to design the E-M1 Mark II to use OIS and IBIS synergistically. Pretty cool.

"If Fuji does decide to implement IBIS, my expectation is they will do so for the reasons Mike P. points out above and why they implemented 4K video: to remain competitive, and to not be an island of 'no video and no IBIS' in a sea of competitive offerings that offer these features. But my guess is that they will be thoughtful, in their typical Fuji fashion, and engineer IBIS to mitigate any instrinsic 'downsides' they thinks it causes, and work hard to synergistically integrate IBIS with the stabilization of their existing OIS lenses."

Henning Wulff: "In the mid '90s I had been using Nikons for my SLR work and play for a couple of decades, but Nikon seemed to be lacking innovation and Canon was on the rise. I had been waiting a while for Nikon to introduce a 24mm or wider shift lens, but although the Nikon rep said one was coming, it never did. And then, Canon came out with the 28–135mm optically stabilized lens and shortly thereafter with the lens I really wanted, the 100–400mm. Between the 100–400 IS and the 24mm TS-E I decided to switch systems. I stayed with Canon until a year ago.

"When Micro 4/3 came out, I got a Panasonic with three lenses, two of which were stabilized. Then, when Olympus introduced the E-M5, I started to get Olympus cameras at any renewal cycle. IBIS is great because it works with all lenses, and Olympus' system is outstanding, in part because the sensor is small and IBIS is easier to implement at a high level of performance with smaller sensors. I don't use Canon bodies anymore, but a number of my Canon lenses, including the TS-E lenses, continue to live on a Sony A7RII which convinced me in good part because of IBIS.

"Recently I took a series of pictures of fireworks, handheld and freestanding on a beach, at speeds between two and five seconds using an E-M1 Mark II and 17mm lens. All 60 shots were what I would term 'sharp.'

"After I got my first stabilized lens, I told people that in my opinion stabilization was one of the greatest advances in general photography, equivalent or maybe greater than autofocus or through-the-lens metering. It allows you to get shots you otherwise couldn't."