Digital Revolution Is Pushing Out Film

[EOSX]

Interesting business article about digital camera and Canon...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060409/ap_on_bi_ge/farewell_to_film_1

Here's a short excerpt on Canon. Read the rest of the article for details.

One key exception is Canon Inc., which successfully made the transition from film by investing heavily in digital technology.

Canon shipped about 12.6 million digital cameras in 2004 to lead the world with a 17 percent market share, according to U.S. market researching company IDC.

The company has leaned on marketing to make sure consumers don't forget its well-established brand name amid the onslaught of digital newcomers, IDC analyst Chris Chute said. Thus, Canon's camera division accounted for only 35 percent of the company's overall sales last year, but 42 percent of total operating profit.

That performance has helped Canon record six straight years of record earnings and boosted its president, Fujio Mitarai, to cultlike status in Japan, where he was recently tapped to lead Japan's most powerful business lobby.

[tim]

Interesting. I hope Nikon keeps their R&D up, just to keep the pressure on Canon, and keep the costs down for evryone. Competition is a Good Thing.

[Carzee]

Interesting. I hope Nikon keeps their R&D up, just to keep the pressure on Canon, and keep the costs down for evryone. Competition is a Good Thing.

Hope their owner, Mitsubishi Group, keeps Nikon open for business -even if they operate at a loss.

[Carzee]

Wiki extracts:

Canon---
Products Business machines, Cameras, Optical and other products
Revenue 3467 billion Yen (2004)
Employees 100,000+ Worldwide (Non-consolidated, as of 30 November 2005)

Nikon---
Products Precision equipments, Digital imaging equipments and cameras, Microscopes, Optical measuring and inspection instruments, Lenses for glasses
Revenue 638 billion Yen (Business year ending March 31, 2005)
Employees 16,758 (Consolidated, as of March 31, 2005)

[Lightstream]

Even before I'd read halfway through the article, I was thinking "Well, digital doesn't seem to have put much of a cramp in Canon's style.." and then the second half of the article said exactly what I was thinking, better than I could have said it.

[DocFrankenstein]

I like the part about market saturation next year. Should be good for prices.

[elTwitcho]

I think it's unfortunate really. The amount of money invested in development for CMOS sensors and CCDs means that the market is going to be extremely difficult to get into for startup companies now that Canon has already put so much in and gotten such a decisive lead. Before with film, everyone used the same physical image recording medium (or had access to the same range rather) so all that had to be designed was the camera. Now, I see it becoming more and more of a closed market.

Much of the reason Canon is so popular is because the CCD and now CMOS technology they use is so much better than the competition, how is someone supposed to compete with this? Konica Minolta had a BRILLIANT idea in having Image stabilization built into the CCD, and on a design feature basis they'd be actually one of the better cameras on the market, but it was impossible for them to produce images as nice as Canon and Nikon because the CCD technology just wasn't there.

It's a bitch really

[DocFrankenstein]

I think it's unfortunate really. The amount of money invested in development for CMOS sensors and CCDs means that the market is going to be extremely difficult to get into for startup companies now that Canon has already put so much in and gotten such a decisive lead.
It might have nothing to do with image quality. IMO pentaxes give almost as good quality as canon CMOSes do.

It's all in the marketing.

And let's face it - canon is able to provide the bodies very cheaply. 550 for 300D -even now on BH and XT fro 750

EDIT:
In film there's patents too. Fuji and Kodak had them and you paid premium for the processing and few "serious" film shooters trusted other brands. Same with canon I guess.

[cjm]

In two years the only film cameras still being made will be large format cameras. Don't quote me on this though but that seems to be the trend.

Drop off a roll of film? Takes 1 min.
Drop of Digital Prints at a Picture maker? Takes a line up of 10 people and about 1 hour!

Just two years ago it seemed to be the other way. Even my mom who is 61 has switched to digital and she doesn't even know how to put the pictures on her computer.

Digital Revolution Is Pushing Out Film I think its better said Digital Revolution has pushed Out Film.

[StealthLude]

I guess you can say im from the "New School"... With how I stay organized and edit.. I know ill be digital from Day 1 till i die. Its computers and photoshop that got me intrested in photography... I store . backup , and edit all my photos on computer, so why take an extra step of scanning the film into a digital format. Now im at the mercy of the film scanner, and if its not a high end unit, why even bother...

Personally, I think digital is the next best thing since sliced bread. Film is fine and danny... I still have my Dads Canon AE-1 Program that i shoot with. But I still use that old camera with my L-358, and a 580ex haha. It looks funny to have a flash into form 2006 sittin on a old camera, but it works for me.

[Tee Why]

I was reading an article about the same topic on the current issue of Popular photography.
Whenever a revolution occurs in an industry, there is always uncertainty and lot of shake up. When the auto industry was realtively new, there were many more automakers and now look, we have even less and less as GM buys up Subaru, Saab, Ford buys up Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar, etc etc.

Same is happening with digital cameras in my view. I agree with the article, Canon jumped early and big into digi cams and perhaps much more importantly into digital SLR's which are much more profitable. According to PopPhoto, the makers really make their money on lenses, grips, and accessories as they have higher profit margins. DSLR's also have a higher profit margin than digicams as well. Acooriding to PopPhoto, in the DSLR market, Canon has something like 52% share and Nikon has 34% share of the market with KM, Pentax, Sigma, Fuji, Olympus fighting for the rest. I think Canon gambled big and won. They till about now had better cameras with more features and better IQ with less noise than others. I would even argue that although the gap in IQ is small, Canon still leads others. Obviously the market agrees. Just look at all those sports and photojouranlists. They usually all have one or two $4000 camera bodies with several L lenses. Probably $10,000 worth of camera/lenses/flashes for each one is a great way to make profit, not to mention hordes of folks now shooting with 20D and XT's.
We'll see what happens now, that consumer giants like Sony and Samsung are entering the dslr market.

[lakiluno]

But in a different way, companies like Sigma and Tamron will be around for a while as well - although I can see Sigmas SLR business folding, leaving them with just a third party lens manufacturing business...

[NYC2BGI]

Digital has now caught up to and passed film as the sales tell you. 1st the consumers switched over now most of the pros have made the switch. Things change in life and maybe down the road digital as we know it now will evolve into something even better.

[ducdubbq]

I still love shooting film. nothing beats looking at a well made slide. It has the same analog feel of touching an old LP. My ipod rocks but it doesn't have the same hold as taking out and playing Quadrophenia or Abbey Road.

The advantage of digital is two fold and my recent trip to copperstown bore this out. 1. I took over 1,000 photos in the basbeball Hall of fame alone. I took some 1600 photos on the trip.

cost nothing.

I also shot digital backups for a few people who asked me to take photos of them in front of stuff with their film cameras. Just to make sure they got a good photo, I shot them with my camera, we looked at it and then I emailed it to them later that day.

2. digital allows for immediate review. too dark. shoot again, but at least I know it. I know I missed it. So do it over. no worries.

xxx

still, I just reacquired an eos IX aps camera (because its cool) and got a bulk of aps film off ebay ( i wish canon would make a digital camera with that body, i'd buy that in a second). I have bulk rolls of b/w film from tech pan (iso 25) and agfa apx (iso 100) -neither of which is made anymore - to neopan 1600 shipped from japan. and, in terms of sheer coolness, my 20d has nothing on my eos 1n with the power booster.

but when i want to impress the girls, I whip out my bronica etrsi and the 110-200/4.8 super lens.

And i never had to worry about dust on the sensor with film.

[ducdubbq]

example. picture one too dark. take another. get it right. also the advantage is that with a film camera I would have had to change film. take out my 400 iso everwhere film and replace it with 3200 black and white film and then had to develop it properly, probably not till days or weeks later.

here i was able to show them the photo and email it out later.

[DocFrankenstein]

I have bulk rolls of b/w film from tech pan (iso 25) and agfa apx (iso 100) -neither of which is made anymore
I shot APX 100 and 400 exclusively because it was nice and cheap. It's too bad they folded. And I didn't stock up - only have 2 rolls of 400 in the fridge.

Ilford and kodak are monstrously expensive.

[Hellashot]

So basically Canon has BIG profit margins on their digital cameras. That's quite believable.

[Tee Why]

Yup, finacially they are doing well right now, thanks in large part to dslr's and digicams.
I think they make really good products. Now if they'd reduce the price a bit....

[Poe]

If the world's population is about 6.6 billion and manufactures are going to be shipping out 92.7 billion units, where are those 86.1 billion other units going?

Maybe this will encourange rapid development in super inkjet technologies to produce finer and finer resolution prints. I wouldn't mind having lower priced ink cartridges too if I'm going to be doing a lot more printing from my computer instead of taking my film to a photos shop to have it developed or developing it myself.

[scattashot]

digital vs film

is there still an advantage of film over digital, i am unaware of any such

[lakiluno]

It depends what film your talking about.

Film has much more tonal range, meaning it can take non-washed out pictures with huge contrast. Some B&W and high end films can offer incredible tonal range, and some B&W film can get pretty sensitive (ISO). Again, some film has millions of grains, and has (essentially) a higher "pixel" count than digital cameras. Some film is terrible. For most purposes, digital is better than film though.

Leo

[Citizensmith]

I still love shooting film. nothing beats looking at a well made slide. It has the same analog feel of touching an old LP. My ipod rocks but it doesn't have the same hold as taking out and playing Quadrophenia or Abbey Road.

Thats because iTunes uses too low a sample rate. :) Play a CD on a computer with an X-fi card in it and it will upsample back to the same qaulity as the digital master recording. For modern stuff thats as good as you are going to get. Not sure there will exactly be a digital master of every album though. Abbey Road for instance. A friend of mine bought a record player with a USB port on it. Nice way to get your older albums onto that ipod.

[Tee Why]

For me, photography is just trying to capture the shot in your mind to a physical medium.
Digital, film, silver plates, I don't care too much about it. I like digital b/c it's cheaper, easier, and more convinient than the other formats for me.

Films are generally more dynamics than digital but overall they are costly to buy and develop. The feedback is slower as you have to wait for the development and have to write down your parameters so you can see how you shot the film.

To me the medium has changed and made it easier for more to get into, just as word processing and publishing programs have made it easier for the average Joe to publish stuff. But that's all in my view. A shooter with a film or a digital SLR isn't better or worse due solelyl to the equipment. Every medium has it's advantages and disadvantages. A guy I know hates computers and shoots film. For him to shoot digital and print from his CF card straight may produce worse shots than he can get with film. It's all an individual thing.

As long as your shooting, it's all good in my view.