Is the DSLR going extinct?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432426
The end of the DSLR (and now mirrorless) has been circulating for 5 years or more. Yet here we have manufacturers still producing new products, so yes the numbers shrink for a number of reasons.

I think that is a good thing. That means my results might stand out a bit more for higher quality work vs my competition in the area. I saw the same thing when Rebels were on sale and people rushed to get them, and we had a rash of "I am a photographer for senior, event or family photos", only to see so many of them fail because they thought just getting a camera was enough. Ditto with phone users, and in many cases, the results are now even worse.

Fun archived threads on topics like DSLR is dead, mirrorless vs DSLR:
https://photography-on-the.net …read.php?t=1493​114&page=1
https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1399104

There are a few others too, but these were more active.

What I noticed with those sort of threads is the lack of sales stats to back up a lot of claims based on anecdotes made by persons whose business exposure is limited to services connected to photography within their town/city/state/countr​y.

You can easily ID them by their point of view.

Harvard Students made a study on the industry side of digital still camera market vs smartphones.

https://d3.harvard.edu …s-the-one-thats-with-you/

I see people on assignment with DSLR. Our town NP photog doesn't bother with mirrorless.
Nor Canon Canada ambassador. 5D MKIV.
Indoor sport international event I went few months ago was covered by many with DSPRs.

To me here is zero difference between young person in Toronto with DSLR and someone in the States wilderness chasing ducks and deer. Both are doing it for leisure.


I'm not downplaying mirrorless, but what I see in real life, urban and not, is completely different from English speaking photo gear forums' DSLRs doom declarations.

kf095 wrote in post #19432460
I see people on assignment with DSLR. Our town NP photog doesn't bother with mirrorless.
Nor Canon Canada ambassador. 5D MKIV.
Indoor sport international event I went few months ago was covered by many with DSPRs.

To me here is zero difference between young person in Toronto with DSLR and someone in the States wilderness chasing ducks and deer. Both are doing it for leisure.


I'm not downplaying mirrorless, but what I see in real life, urban and not, is completely different from English speaking photo gear forums' DSLRs doom declarations.

Odds are they may not be scheduled for an upgrade. Photo news agencies like EPA, AP, Reuters, etc have a schedule on when they'll buy. Hence the scheduled release of the 1-Series bodies during major sporting events like Olympics.

Best to see what ILC will be in use by year 2030 a decade after the last new dSLR body SKU would have been released by Canon/Nikon.

kf095 wrote in post #19432460
.
To me here is zero difference between young person in Toronto with DSLR and someone in the States wilderness chasing ducks and deer. Both are doing it for leisure.
.

.
To clarify what I said earlier, in the post that you replied to:

Most of the people that I see photographing wildlife here in the U.S. who are doing it professionally and semi-professionally are now using mirrorless, and have been doing so for 1.5 to 3 years. . Specifically, those who are traveling thousands of miles to known wildlife destinations, to take photos that they then market to publishers, are mostly using mirrorless now.

Many of the people that I see photographing wildlife for leisure are still using DSLRs. . These leisure photographers are generally those who only travel a few hundred miles from home for their wildlife photography. . Totally different mindset and demographic than those who plan their entire year's calendar around traveling to various wildlife venues at the perfect time fo year to capture peak breeding behavior.

A fair number of these leisure wildlife photographers have switched to mirrorless, but it is not an overwhelming majority like it is with those who sell their wildlife images to publishers and seek to profit financially from their wildlife photography.

.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432426
Sure would be nice to somehow know how many people ditched their cameras for a mobile device, these sales numbers hold no correlations today for that.

I can add my own experience. I have multiple photographic devices from phone to P/S to dSLRs to film SLRs. It seems I am migrating to convenience with more images taken with my phone but I recently picked up a Lumix ZS80 and have been taking that with me more often as the quality is much better than my phone. My (old fashion) camera as my grandson calls it still gets used but more for special occasions or if specifically headed out for a photo hike.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432426
It would also be nice to add preorder numbers to the camera sales numbers, since supply is so difficult over the past 2-3 years.

CPIA data does not show sales, it shows units manufactured and units shipped.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432426
All we have are marketing sales numbers of X vs Y, and no preorder numbers, or any metric at all that shows photographer A switched from camera to phone.

Even a poll just here on POTN wouldn't give that number, because if someone has moved to a phone for photography and ditched their gear, they likely would have left the forum, and in fact many already have for "greener pastures" of other social outlets, even if they still use their gear.

Like so many other statistics, 10 people might be able to draw up 15 different conclusions, with none being completely right, and maybe all being slightly right.

I'm speculating that no one simply ditches their equipment for a phone, or at least very few. I would suspect that more simply migrate more of their photo tasks to a phone and use the tool best suited for the job.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432426
The end of the DSLR (and now mirrorless) has been circulating for 5 years or more. Yet here we have manufacturers still producing new products, so yes the numbers shrink for a number of reasons.

I think that is a good thing. That means my results might stand out a bit more for higher quality work vs my competition in the area. I saw the same thing when Rebels were on sale and people rushed to get them, and we had a rash of "I am a photographer for senior, event or family photos", only to see so many of them fail because they thought just getting a camera was enough. Ditto with phone users, and in many cases, the results are now even worse.

Fun archived threads on topics like DSLR is dead, mirrorless vs DSLR:
https://photography-on-the.net …read.php?t=1493​114&page=1
https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1399104

There are a few others too, but these were more active.

I'm not in the camp that believes that all of a sudden, the cameras will die off but more a gradual movement to newer technologies. I'm sure at some point still images will become a much smaller market but I don't think it's any time soon. But there is a downside to the market shrinking overall. We loose choices as camera manufacturers start dropping out and companies invest much less into the advancement of the product.

So the supply issues and covid issues manifest even there then. If chips are unable to be obtained, or workers aren't able to show up to do assembly work or fab work, then the numbers are obviously going to be low.

Whether we look at manufacturing numbers or sales numbers, they have been influenced by new factors greatly over the past few years. Hopefully this evens out over time, but all indications are that it will not. If only we would stop funding chargers every 50 miles on a road and instead put that into helping the chip manufacturers build their chip factories in the states... (cough cough, the two that are supposedly going into Arizona)

Shell and China already have plans on putting chargers at all Shell owned gas stations, that should work pretty well I think. Of course Elon will continue to build their own dedicated network with some supporting other EV vehicles despite my own objections to that. Perhaps Elon should get into the camera business, they already have a ton of AI with the 6-8 cameras on my car now, so imagine the AF systems they could create for the stills/video industry.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432473
So the supply issues and covid issues manifest even there then. If chips are unable to be obtained, or workers aren't able to show up to do assembly work or fab work, then the numbers are obviously going to be low.

Very true. We have no idea what demand truly is but I think that the assumption is that production is following demand.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19432473
Whether we look at manufacturing numbers or sales numbers, they have been influenced by new factors greatly over the past few years. Hopefully this evens out over time, but all indications are that it will not. If only we would stop funding chargers every 50 miles on a road and instead put that into helping the chip manufacturers build their chip factories in the states... (cough cough, the two that are supposedly going into Arizona)

Shell and China already have plans on putting chargers at all Shell owned gas stations, that should work pretty well I think. Of course Elon will continue to build their own dedicated network with some supporting other EV vehicles despite my own objections to that. Perhaps Elon should get into the camera business, they already have a ton of AI with the 6-8 cameras on my car now, so imagine the AF systems they could create for the stills/video industry.

Just read a article where Tesla is dropping all of the ultrasonic sensor in favor of visual sensors. Seems that there is some software update percolating through Teslas right now prepping for the change.

gjl711 wrote in post #19432479
Very true. We have no idea what demand truly is but I think that the assumption is that production is following demand.

Just read a article where Tesla is dropping all of the ultrasonic sensor in favor of visual sensors. Seems that there is some software update percolating through Teslas right now prepping for the change.

Yes, I believe my vehicle is part of all of that. The screen now shows barrels, cones, all kinds of things due to the visual nature of all the cameras.

If we were to have a discussion about EF lenses, I think they are going to be around for quite some time. This is the a graph of the RF lens prices currently with all the various sales already included. Too salty for me to move from EF to RF...

You can't stop progress! I remember working with video cameras with three or four tubes that cost as much as today's cameras and the images were, well, you know what they were. I looked at a professional video/TV camera back then and thought that one day the entire camera would be smaller than the rear lens cap on it. Today we have those cameras and they take better videos, under lower light, etc.

A mirror does not make a camera "professional". IMHO, what does is the array of features that provide the control over the image making process that is needed to create images that are striking or artistic or historic or some other such adjective that the user wants. I would argue that manual focus is more important than a mirror. That manual iris control is more important than a mirror. And there are others.

Will mirrors go away? Probably. And when they do, few will complain.

As long as we have film… no.
Well there are Rangefinders… lol

I don't think DSLRs are going to go extinct anytime soon. Sure, mirrorless cameras have been getting a lot of buzz lately, and they do offer some pretty cool advantages over DSLRs - things like smaller size, electronic viewfinders, and faster burst rates.

But at the same time, DSLRs still have a lot going for them. For one thing, they tend to be a bit more affordable than mirrorless cameras, especially if you're looking to get into photography on a budget. Plus, a lot of photographers just prefer the feel of a traditional DSLR - the big optical viewfinder, the reassuring clunk of the mirror flipping up, etc.

So yeah, I think DSLRs will stick around for a good long while yet. That being said, I do think we'll start to see more and more mirrorless cameras coming onto the scene, and eventually they might start to become the dominant format. But for now, I don't think DSLRs are in any danger of going extinct.

gjl711 wrote in post #19432470
I'm not in the camp that believes that all of a sudden, the cameras will die off but more a gradual movement to newer technologies. I'm sure at some point still images will become a much smaller market but I don't think it's any time soon. But there is a downside to the market shrinking overall. We loose choices as camera manufacturers start dropping out and companies invest much less into the advancement of the product.

I believe that there was an inherent demand for cameras by a core group, and this was reflected in the SLR sales volume in the 1990s. Then the dSLR came out, and repeat buying by digital camera adopters occurred with subsequent generations of cameras going launched. That market churning induced by technology evolution has ceased, and mirrorless and dSLR volumes have plummeted...back to the volumes seen in the 1990's SLR volumes.
The P&S market has disappeared largely due to smartphone cameras. But a very small residual P&S market exists, by the users of mirrorless and dSLR who want a more portable/pocketable alternative that photographically is better suited to a wider range of circumstances that the smartphone (and its limitations) is simply not good enough.

Is the dSLR becoming extinct? The manufacturers are steering us to such obsolescence in not developing dSLRs. Yet mirrorless have some inherent limits remaining, which make dSLRs better suited for certain circumstances (EVF really slows down in very low light, trying to put together the 'as shot' simulated view, for example)

cablik wrote in post #19502907
I don't think DSLRs are going to go extinct anytime soon. Sure, mirrorless cameras have been getting a lot of buzz lately, and they do offer some pretty cool advantages over DSLRs - things like smaller size, electronic viewfinders, and faster burst rates.

But at the same time, DSLRs still have a lot going for them. For one thing, they tend to be a bit more affordable than mirrorless cameras, especially if you're looking to get into photography on a budget. Plus, a lot of photographers just prefer the feel of a traditional DSLR - the big optical viewfinder, the reassuring clunk of the mirror flipping up, etc.

So yeah, I think DSLRs will stick around for a good long while yet. That being said, I do think we'll start to see more and more mirrorless cameras coming onto the scene, and eventually they might start to become the dominant format. But for now, I don't think DSLRs are in any danger of going extinct.

But what DSLRs are still being manufactured? Scale of production is with mirrorless, and there are several mirrorless now at the prices of the previous generation DSLR.

Mirrorless is already the dominant product being sold these days, the sales numbers show it, at least for all the remaining major players. This happened two years ago.

Already is extinct. No one is manufacturing them any longer. The savings alone on mirror assemblies, less cameras going back for servicing due to AF issues, etc. I can’t see them rushing back to release DSLR’s.

digital paradise wrote in post #19503032
Already is extinct. No one is manufacturing them any longer. The savings alone on mirror assemblies, less cameras going back for servicing due to AF issues, etc. I can’t see them rushing back to release DSLR’s.

Someone's still making a few. A quick peek at CIPA data shows that there have been 142,900 manufactured in Jan and Feb 2023. Not a lot, but not yet zero.