Will point & shoots be a dead product soon?

PMCphotography wrote in post #11890275
Well, I don't think you're "most" people.

Imagine if you could have a P&S with a 3G data connection ( as opposed to a 3G device with a camera attached.) That would open up a huge market if you could upload your P&S pics straight to your social network of choice

Yeah, I'm not like most people. I like some technology, but dislike most of it. lol I may eventually get one, but it won't be an Apple and it may take another 10 years before I do.

You can get a Eye-Fi wi-fi card to go in your camera. It will upload your pictures directly to the site of your choice. You just need to find a wireless hotspot it can connect to. The Pro version will even upload your RAW pictures to your computer via wireless (a great way to shoot "tethered"). But an 8GB card runs about $100. The JPEG version is cheaper though.

I don't think P&S cameras will go away, but like others have said, they numbers of them will drop.

I thought about getting one of those Wi-Fi cards. That would be pretty convenient at a wedding to upload your pictures right to your laptop while you're shooting.

My wife has a P&S cause a phone doesn't have 10x zoom and it's smaller than a DSLR. I have a P&S for when I'm underway and don't want to use a DSLR if I'm doing random stuff and want some simple self shots or shots with friends. I love it!

I have actually read an article stating that P&S sales are slumping DUE to cell phone cameras.

I'm somewhat amazed at this talented group of people talking about pixels on cell phones as if that implies quality. Per my original post, cell phones are pinhole cameras and jamming 5mp or 8mp or more is silly - the image would suck. I was hoping this group of people would know that pixels without a good lens is a gimmick. Imagine an Instamatic loaded with the best film Kodak could make...would it matter?

BestVisuals wrote in post #11904511
I'm somewhat amazed at this talented group of people talking about pixels on cell phones as if that implies quality.

I'm somewhat amazed that anybody would summarize the content of this thread as a discussion of megapixels. Did you bother to actually read any of the responses?

There are only 5 posts in this thread that reference MP. Two of them are yours and the only statement I see that attempts to correlate MP with quality is from you. " Some are approaching 5mp..."

I own a P&S and a Flip cam. Both have sat on the shelf for the last 8 months and have been replaced by my iPhone 4. Reason being, my iPhone is ALWAYS with me, the photography apps are incredible, sharing is super fast, editing is fun, Instagram (iPhone photo sharing community like twitter/flickr), etc... It also takes amazing video and with the iMovie app, I can shoot and edit with transitions and music and upload to facebook, youtube, whatever. My iPhone is way more convienent and more fun than any camera I've owned (including my 5dmk2). Cell phone companies would be foolish not to see this coming. The iPhone will surely improve with each generation as well. It will be tough for P&S's to compete with that.

Watch what is happening now -- P&S is sitting on a price point 3-8X a phone and under 1/2 the cost of SLRs. Features are increasing, price is rising, in-camera gadgets are making 'specialty' effects....

If we have a member who works for a major camera manufacturer in their marketing or product management group, s/he could tell us what will happen in the next 2, 3 years, because those plans they already have.

Just a guess, but what you see as a trend is well thought out; they're after money and they know how to make it.

Phones may be a threat to P&S like pencils are a threat to pens.

I think in the next 5 to 10 years or so, we will see:

- The entry-level point'n'shoot camera market being slowly replaced (but not completely) by mobile phone cameras
- The compact camera market moving more towards super-zooms and/or higher-end models like today's S95/G12
- The "consumer-DSLR" market being mostly replaced by mirrorless systems
- At least a few attempts at mirrorless pro-bodies
- Longer development cycles on DSLRs

But I don't think any of this will happen overnight.

Do any phones or hand held devices like ipod, itouch, ipad, gaming devices actually have an optical zoom? Or are they all fixed focal length. What sets the P&S apart is optical zoom and the reach is has.

Cameras in phones may be fine for high school and college kids, but it's usually when people get married and have kids that they want to be able to take better pictures.

There are very few phones with optical zoom and physics will probably never allow for a superzoom camera in something the size of, let's say an iPhone for example (unless the sensors get even more tiny).

That's why I think superzooms and high quality compacts will be the way to go in the compact camera market. Or in other words: Things that you just can't physically fit inside a phone.

It's the crap-tastic ~$60 point'n'shoots that will suffer, IMHO.

Will phones be a dead product soon so there won't be any camera phones either? Most of the time I use my phone for something else than talking.

I'm quite sure our multipurpose devices will soon be able to take good enough photos for most uses. Their still & video capabilities will get much better. Their manufactures are not as blinded by the film legacy as the traditional camera manufacturers are. We might finally get real digital cameras.

The need for professional equipment doesn't go away. They will be much more expensive than the "mobile phones" so I'm quite sure we'll get plenty of products in the middle as well.

Maybe eventually the smart phone will evolve into a compact camera, communication device that darn near does it all. My smart phone does most of that already anyway.

If I want a cheeseburger, I order a cheeseburger

If I want a decent photo, I use a real camera...not a phone, just as I don't make phone calls on my camera

Bosscat wrote in post #11925732
If I want a cheeseburger, I order a cheeseburger

If I want a decent photo, I use a real camera...not a phone, just as I don't make phone calls on my camera

True, but totally missing the point.

i think people will always prefer actual cameras than camers on their phones.