What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2016?

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=mXB4DSgBLbg

https://www.mirrorless​rumors.com …reports-sales-still-lame/

dolina wrote in post #18473664
https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=mXB4DSgBLbg

https://www.mirrorless​rumors.com …reports-sales-still-lame/

Lies. Damn Lies. Statistics.

It is quite possible to prove just about anything you want with the appropriate interpretation of the appropriate numbers.

It wasn't all that long ago that someone 'proved' that it is quite impossible for a human being to use a baseball bat to hit a baseball thrown by an MLB pitcher. It simply can't be done. Unless you're a Chicago Cub, that happens on a regular basis.

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In the video you linked us to, he doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. . Interchangable lens cameras have been on a steady decline for years and years. . The decline just continued in 2016. . That's not really anything worth making a video about. . It's just the same old trend continuing on as it has for years. . In fact, I wonder, why did he even bother making this video?

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For the prophets who said mirrorless was knocking dSLRs off their throne:

• Yes, mirrorless is taking over the photography world...from 9% share to 13% share.
  
• But the numbers reflect something else...9% of 35M = 3.15M mirrorless in 2015, 13% of 23M = chart says 3.1M mirrorless in 2016, a difference from year to year of -50k!
  

Phones are much more useful than cameras. They can be used for video and voice calls, messaging, email, browsing, music, video. word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, photo editing, photo sharing, dating etc.

In 2016 overall, smartphone sales to end users totaled nearly 1.5 billion units, an increase of 5 percent from 2015.

A lot of end users receive their phones through 1/2/3 year cellphone contracts with their carrier.

For iPhone, carriers have the largest share, at 77% in the twelve months ending September 2017.

Apple Has Sold 1.2 Billion iPhones Over the Past 10 Years.

Of which an estimated total iPhone installed base hit 715 million, including 228 million of second-hand devices, in December 2016, with year-on-year growth of 20%.

So smartphones with camera improvements is "pushed" as a bundled feature to end users rather than "pulled" by end users when we buy a compact, dSLR or mirrorless.

For consumers (aka non-working photogs) with extra money probably buy one IL-camera with one lens and keep it until it becomes unserviceable at which point they make a choice to buy another IL-camera, compact or stick with smartphone.

For us whose passion or profession is photography we find smartphones and even compacts too limiting in our field of interest.

Press news agencies like EPA or Reuters upgrade on a cycle as a competitive advantage mirroring the release of the latest and greatest from Canon & Nikon. I'm sure other photography businesses follow this business practice so long as revenue supports it.

I was able to buy a brand new Android One smartphone for the equivalent of USD50.00 with sales tax. For that amount I'd only be able to buy a memory card.

dolina wrote in post #18478154
Phones are much more useful than cameras. They can be used for video and voice calls, messaging, email, browsing, music, video. word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, photo editing, photo sharing, dating etc.

In 2016 overall, smartphone sales to end users totaled nearly 1.5 billion units, an increase of 5 percent from 2015.

A lot of end users receive their phones through 1/2/3 year cellphone contracts with their carrier.

For iPhone, carriers have the largest share, at 77% in the twelve months ending September 2017.

Apple Has Sold 1.2 Billion iPhones Over the Past 10 Years.

Of which an estimated total iPhone installed base hit 715 million, including 228 million of second-hand devices, in December 2016, with year-on-year growth of 20%.

So smartphones with camera improvements is "pushed" as a bundled feature to end users rather than "pulled" by end users when we buy a compact, dSLR or mirrorless.

For consumers (aka non-working photogs) with extra money probably buy one IL-camera with one lens and keep it until it becomes unserviceable at which point they make a choice to buy another IL-camera, compact or stick with smartphone.

For us whose passion or profession is photography we find smartphones and even compacts too limiting in our field of interest.

Press news agencies like EPA or Reuters upgrade on a cycle as a competitive advantage mirroring the release of the latest and greatest from Canon & Nikon. I'm sure other photography businesses follow this business practice so long as revenue supports it.

I was able to buy a brand new Android One smartphone for the equivalent of USD50.00 with sales tax. For that amount I'd only be able to buy a memory card.

I have only been working for a newspaper for about 5 years now, but have already seen the trend. The reporters that are writing the story pull out their cell phones and snap a few stagnant shots of the athlete(s) they are writing about. This is mostly during practice, training camps, or press conferences. Still, taking a job away from a photographer. Many photogs use them during the games. Not for shooting, but recording images from their cameras that have wireless capabilities. In the age of social media, editors want images as quickly as possible. Now photogs can transmit images without having to go back to the media room and miss some of the action.

Pigpen101 wrote in post #18478186
I have only been working for a newspaper for about 5 years now, but have already seen the trend. The reporters that are writing the story pull out their cell phones and snap a few stagnant shots of the athlete(s) they are writing about. This is mostly during practice, training camps, or press conferences. Still, taking a job away from a photographer. Many photogs use them during the games. Not for shooting, but recording images from their cameras that have wireless capabilities. In the age of social media, editors want images as quickly as possible. Now photogs can transmit images without having to go back to the media room and miss some of the action.

On October 12, 2017 Canon manufactured it's 90 millionth EOS body and 130 millionth EF lens.

That comes out as 1.4444 lenses for every 1 body.

This tells me that the majority of body owners probably own 1 lens. This lens is probably the bundled kit lens hence the popularity of body kits from as high as a the 5D series to the entry 200D/SL2.

The minority own more than 1 lens.

I vaguely remember that the 1-Series bodies make up 1% of the annual production run of EOS bodies of Canon. I have never seen a 1-Series body kit bundle offered since I kept track of dSLRs in 2003.

This would be similar to Nikon as well.

So at most 1-Series bodies will not exceed 1 million units in its whole production run.

Having said that sales numbers of mirroless and dSLRs are correcting itself to how it was always been the province of the working photogs like yourself, serious photographers like myself and people who buy everytime they cannot repair it anymore.

Compacts are leveraging their focal length zoom and larger image sensor for better image quality to complement any smartphone.

A great time to be a camera user and challenging times for camera dealers and makers to keep relevant.

I expect compacts to bottom out as being 20% of the camera market while mirrorless and dSLR will become 80% at lower sales figures.

It seems that manufacturers are trying to sustain buying quantities that FAR EXCEEDED the heyday of the film SLR, when the market is showing that the digital heyday of 2012 is probably not sustainable, especially when another product -- the smartphone -- displaces a lot of demand for a bulky dSLR or even slightly smaller mirrorless, because BOTH take too much room and weight (vs. a small, slim smartphone) I can't even convince our oldest daughter to bring a really compact and small digital P&S, she has her smartphone for shots of her kids!

The context is poor. If it were possible to not just lump total sales, where the bulk of sales are the entry level kits for people looking to dabble, versus the higher end kit with mostly experienced shooters (some skip straight to this point, that's fine). If you compared the number of 1D sales to Rebel sales, you'd wonder why they bother making the 1D series economically. Same with Nikon and everyone else's version of that comparison.

The bulk of those sales are largely exactly that, entry points, and cellphones compete there handily and are getting even better at mimicking it. Consider everyone who bought an entry kit dSLR and some fast aperture lens trying to do shallow depth of field portraits, and how a cellphone can now mimic the look with software, without all the kit, without processing on your end, and it's already ready to share. The cellphones win.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #18478503
Consider everyone who bought an entry kit dSLR and some fast aperture lens trying to do shallow depth of field portraits........

I believe that the vast majority of those who have bought DSLRs have no idea what "shallow depth of field" even means. All they know is that the DSLR is supposed to "take better photos", and that's all they know. And it's all they will ever know. I believe this is true for at least 95% of all DSLR buyers.

And this is why it sounds ridiculous to me when people complain about Canon's sensors, compared to Sony and Nikon, with regards to dynamic range or high ISO performance. The vast vast vast majority of the camera buyers out there have no idea what those things even mean, and wouldn't care even if they did.

So no, Canon does not have to "get it's act together, or risk losing it's marketshare". . Because the market doesn't care. . At all. . Except for the very very few "camera geeks" out there like those of us who hang out on photography forums and read camera reviews. . And we are so small in number, and our voice means nothing to the "regular people" who buy cameras, so that we really don't matter at all to Canon or Sony or Nikon. . And our purchases don't mean anything to them either because of the extreme smallness of our collective numbers.

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18478579
I believe that the vast majority of those who have bought DSLRs have no idea what "shallow depth of field" even means. All they know is that the DSLR is supposed to "take better photos", and that's all they know. And it's all they will ever know. I believe this is true for at least 95% of all DSLR buyers.

I think they do know about blurry backgrounds and I agree they expect better photos from a big, real camera. They consume media all day, every day, and today's media both from cinema, commercials, ads, hordes of images in social media, have tons of elements of portraiture or scenes with blurry backgrounds. Regardless of them understanding that as depth of field, or just as a blurry thing that better cameras can do (for lack of a better way to put it for example), they like that, they want it. So looking at the devices that are literally taking over photography for a lot of people, like smart phones, especially the latest iphone stuff, they've introduced two things, one is a blurry background algorithm called "portrait" mode, that uses two shots and creates the simulated effect of shallow depth of field (and does a good job actually for what it is), and two, they've started introducing the concept of lighting, also from a software standpoint, which also works fairly well considering it's literally just processing on the fly and instant for both. Don't have to know how it works. Just works. Push a button. And you get a portrait with a blurry background and different lighting options, one touch, and instantly shareable. People are eating it up. And the photos do look quite nice, compared to the typical bad cell snaps from a few years ago. This kind of technology progression is what nukes the camera world that we know it as, as the next generations have things in their hand that do it without any learning curve, nor gear requirement to achieve it. And these are the people that probably produce more photos in a year, and circulate them, contributing to the probably billions of photos being produced daily and consumed daily in the world of social media.

Smart phones are becoming more and more centered around media generation (photos & video; your smart phone will damn sure get 4K video and the latest dual-camera tech that can produce blurry backgrounds and auto-HDR composites from one image long before the super duper dSLR ever had that stuff). They're hardly phones. They're media generating wands. Their sales are steady and rising. The tech is advancing crazy fast. The software is insane. It lets people just produce media that looks quite good, without hardly any work. So camera sales are just going down and down and will continue to do so. We live in the world of still photography. But that time is fading away. I don't like it, but I can't deny it either, the statistics and market show it vividly.

Very best,

dolina wrote in post #18478431
On October 12, 2017 Canon manufactured it's 90 millionth EOS body and 130 millionth EF lens.

That comes out as 1.4444 lenses for every 1 body.

This tells me that the majority of body owners probably own 1 lens.

While that is almost certainly true, there's no way to actually reach that conclusion based on those numbers alone, which perfectly illustrates why statistics should rarely be taken at face value. You've completely failed to account for the life cycles and the average consumer retention time for two very different products. I'm actually a bit surprised that the average isn't less than one lens per body produced... I'm curious what you would have deduced from that scenario?

dolina wrote in post #18478154
Apple Has Sold 1.2 Billion iPhones Over the Past 10 Years.

Of which an estimated total iPhone installed base hit 715 million, including 228 million of second-hand devices, in December 2016, with year-on-year growth of 20%.

Ah the lies of Statistics!

• Apple sold 1-2 Billion phones
  
• There are 714 million uses, of which 228 million became users by buying second hand phones
  

But stats do not well account for folks like me, who have three Canon bodies currently but have had five different models, and have largely kept the lenses unchanged over the years, shared between the bodies. 5 bodies, 5 lenses (1 lens per body)

Or the fact that I have 3 Canon lenses AND 2 more non-Canon EF/EFS-mount lenses. 5 Canon bodies, 3 Canon lenses (0.6 lenses per body)
If I sold off two of the Canon bodies, I would keep all 5 lenses. (5 lenses per Canon body)
But considering only the Canon branded items: 1 Canon body, 3 Canon lenses (3 lenses per body)

And complete uncovered is the fact that I have two 'specialty' lenses which I use with my Canon, but are adapted OM lenses. (7 lenses for one Canon body)
...so which statistic to believe?! '[0.6 or 1 or 3 or 5 or 7] lenses for one Canon body'?

I think the average soccer parent is disappointed with the dslr. They felt their photo's would improve greatly with the expensive camera. Fact is, the cell phone takes just a better NOW picture, especially indoors where 90% of folks want a nice picture. Advertisers work these great outdoor images to sell the bodies, but fail to explain what it takes to get a great indoor shot. They don't mention the slower kit lens and the pop up flash aren't going to cut it. The cell phone gives them what they need for that, and the dslr sits with a dead battery on the shelf collecting dust probably missing it's lens and body cap.

Had the dslr been able to pull off amazing indoor low light capabilities 5-10 years ago and continue to improve, sales today would reflect that. For now only hobbyist and Pros will continue to carry the sales as dslr sales decline. Cell phone is king, and getting better everyday. At least as far as the average Joe/Jane is concerned.

Chet wrote in post #18481510
I think the average soccer parent is disappointed with the dslr. They felt their photo's would improve greatly with the expensive camera. Fact is, the cell phone takes just a better NOW picture, especially indoors where 90% of folks want a nice picture. Advertisers work these great outdoor images to sell the bodies, but fail to explain what it takes to get a great indoor shot. They don't mention the slower kit lens and the pop up flash aren't going to cut it. The cell phone gives them what they need for that, and the dslr sits with a dead battery on the shelf collecting dust probably missing it's lens and body cap.

Had the dslr been able to pull off amazing indoor low light capabilities 5-10 years ago and continue to improve, sales today would reflect that. For now only hobbyist and Pros will continue to carry the sales as dslr sales decline. Cell phone is king, and getting better everyday. At least as far as the average Joe/Jane is concerned.

lot of average joes are ok with mediocre prints as well as no prints. Plenty of folks use cell phone images as wall hangers, sometimes, even next to their stunning wedding photos.

it is what it is. SOOC can look good on a phone as SOOC on a Large sensor, so why bother?