Time to lose the P&S's!

digirebelva wrote in post #12116712
And have one point of failure...no thank you...the more complicated you make something, the greater the chance it will fail...murphy is going to love the new gadgets

My stereo is broken in my car, but it still gets me to work. No biggie as long as the main function still works.

tkbslc wrote in post #12116774
My stereo is broken in my car, but it still gets me to work. No biggie as long as the main function still works.

?..I dont see the correlation...the 2 are not tied together & 1 can function without the other...a all-in-one electronic device that does everything is another matter....would your car still run if the onboard computer died..i.e. single point of failure...

A car is a bad example anyway...since you have mechanical & electrical devices that are & are not tied together..

Jon wrote in post #12116670
The people who are using their cell phones instead of spending money on getting a camera (that they would only have with them if they

• planned in advance to take pictures
• were prepared to carry a camera in addition to whatever else they might have

so would have left at home 99% of the time) are the people we see running around using the cell phones for everything. After all, they got their cell phone "free" from their carrier, right?

Anyone who's made the effort to get, and use, a camera is one of an ever-decreasing (and increasingly-demanding) minority who'd be better served by having functionality and features creeping down to the low end of the camera product line. The people who are using their cell phones are the same people who, in film days, would have to blow an inch of dust off the camera (if they even remembered where it was) in order to use it. The only hope the dedicated low-end camera market has is that some of those cell-phone snappers will eventually decide they want more camera features than their basic cell phone provides. At the moment, entry-level cameras don't offer much beyond optical zoom and more storage than cell phones - but don't offer the "send, on the spot, to a friend" convenience of the cell phone.

No. Again.

In the days of a roll of a film having snow at both ends and sand in the middle, the cost of the actual film was the thing.

That marginal cost has gone. The people I know who are green button users with point and shoot cameras - use them. Not as much as I use mine, but a heck of a lot more than once they would have used their wet-film camera.

digirebelva wrote in post #12116839
?..I dont see the correlation...the 2 are not tied together & 1 can function without the other...a all-in-one electronic device that does everything is another matter....would your car still run if the onboard computer died..i.e. single point of failure...

A car is a bad example anyway...since you have mechanical & electrical devices that are & are not tied together..

Makes perfect sense - as long as your phone still does what your primary use is (texting, these days), do you worry about replacing it? Doesn't matter if the camera's not working. Doesn't matter if the MP3 functionality doesn't work. But if the whole phone died, these days, you'd just head back to the mobile company and get a warranty replacement, which will probably have more features. Or pull out the old one you retired when the last "free" upgrade came along.

You are picking a bad example with me. I really like retro phones and I go to some trouble to keep them going. I have a bunch of Nokia 6310i phones. Me and SWMBO much prefer them. I’m going to be buried with one. They are just phones and that’s how we like it. (OK phones and text.)

I agree with the author for the most part, too...

PS are going to rapidly lose market share and eventually, all but go away. It's inevitable. Most people, even those who carry a PS now, are more than willing to give up some of the control options on a PS, in order to eliminate a device in their pockets. We're rapidly moving towards one device that will handle multiple things. Maybe not as well as their individual counterparts, but again, most people will be fine with that in order to carry one device. (I know I am!) I don't want to carry a wallet anymore either. So, with a new phone, I can eliminate my iPod, laptop, wallet, camera, etc... from my daily routine.

If I was selling PS cameras, I'd be really nervous right now.

digirebelva wrote in post #12116839
?..I dont see the correlation...the 2 are not tied together & 1 can function without the other...a all-in-one electronic device that does everything is another matter....would your car still run if the onboard computer died..i.e. single point of failure...

.

Would your cell phone stopped working if you smashed out the camera lens on the back?

I get what you are saying. If you had a phone and a camera and you dropped your phone into the toilet, you would still have your camera to take a picture of it and post it on facebook for chuckles. But then you had to buy two devices and carry them, which increases cost and complexity in your life.

I get what the author is trying to say and he is probably not talking to people like us anyway. My non-tech-savvy wife would prefer a laptop with a wireless internet connection and a nice camera-video-mp3-email-phone. I prefer higher quality discrete devices. So what will probably happen is that we will have high end devices and do it all devices and little in between.

Simon_Gardner wrote in post #12116901
No. Again.

In the days of a roll of a film having snow at both ends and sand in the middle, the cost of the actual film was the thing.

That marginal cost has gone. The people I know who are green button users with point and shoot cameras - use them. Not as much as I use mine, but a heck of a lot more than once they would have used their wet-film camera.

You're deliberately looking past the point. The people that the article was written about are the people who are using their cell phones to photograph everything. And it matters not what functionality you put in a camera, or how little the camera costs. They aren't going to get a new camera when they have a cell phone that will do all they need a camera to do. They may have an old digital camera at home somewhere, but when their last cell phone has more MP than the 2004-vintage P&S, what are they going to use? That's right: "My cell phone takes better pictures (by their standards) than ever my camera did". Sure - the camera was 1.5 MP; the cell phone is 5 MP. People may buy a camera for a "life event" (honeymoon, baby, or the like), but unless they catch the bug from that camera, they're going to revert to the cell phone once that seems to be better than the camera they do have.

Question - why do you carry the S95 when it's arguably less capable photographically than your DSLR? It's lighter, it's convenient, and that makes it possible to carry around. Right? The only reason I have a camera with me all the time is that I prefer the camera's functionality. If the phone had a stronger flash, I'd probably not need the SD990 on my belt alongside it.

Jon wrote in post #12115715
That doesn't necessarily follow. Why should Joe Average spend a couple of hundred dollars for a camera he may use once a year (assuming the batteries haven't gone flat in the interim), if that? With us, it's a hobby. We're willing to carry that extra device around with us. But for most people, the pictures they take will get shoved away in a virtual shoebox and forgotten, or shown to others via that same cell phone that they took the picture with. Remember back in the film days when people might find 2-3 vacations and the intervening Christmas celebrations on the same (12 exposure) roll? How many of the people at the Auto Show, snapping madly away with their cell phones, will bother to look at those pictures after the next Monday at school/the office when showing their buddies what they thought was "cool". Even a 3 MP cell phone camera has plenty of resolution for computer wallpaper. For anything more than that, there's the Web and the manufacturer's site.

I think the author's right, in general. What the "entry level" digital cameras are going to have to evolve into are the gateway devices for the hobbyist; with more control and more expandability. They're certainly not going to move into everyone's pocket, no matter how much you may push the price down, not when your cell phone company "gives" you a new camera/phone/MP3 player/game station/browser/mapper​/ereader/message center every 2 years. By way of analogy, look around at the number of people here whose automatic solution for geotagging their photos is to use the cell phone, despite the clear advantages in battery life and accuracy of a dedicated GPS receiver.

Not commenting directly on some of these statements, but...

Per the authors own statistics, 82% of households currently have P&S cameras. Whether or not they ever buy another is irrelevant--they've already invested $100+ in a dedicated camera. Why not use it? From the rates I'm seeing at major events, it would lead me to believe that these 82% of americans are being vastly underrepresented. Everyone and their mother seems to be using a cell phone.

I do NOT believe that all of these people simply don't own a P&S camera--these people either don't care about image quality, or have never taken the time to compare shot-for-shot what looks better. The benefits of dedicated GPS vs cell GPS is obvious of course, but I think the benefits of having a decent dedicated P&S should be a must for any person who attends special events on a regular basis. Cell cameras are advancing, but they'll never be anywhere near as good as your standard entry-level $150 P&S.

When it comes down to it, I think I just feel bad for these people who are suffering bad images when they have a perfectly good P&S waiting in the wings. It's my personal belief that most cell vs camera users simply aren't aware of the major differences in image quality at this stage of the cell-camera revolution, and they might kick themselves years later when they realize how poor their past photos were...

It seems like it wouldn't be terribly challenging to put a real zoom lens and sensor on a cell phone. Look at cameras like the Fuji Z700EXR. It's a fairly high end compact with a flash and a 5x zoom and the lens doesn't even extend from the body. My wife's Canon Sd1400 is actually smaller than our cell phones.

Maybe instead of designing camera phones, someone should design a phone camera. I care more about the camera part than the phone. Hell, if I could make calls on my S90 I would leave my cell phone at home.

I agree, I have an S95 and while its a great camera more often I will use my Iphone just because I always have it. If I am going out to shoot chances are I will grab a DSLR. Same goes for camcorders, I ditched mine about a year ago and never looked back.

tkbslc wrote in post #12117135
It seems like it wouldn't be terribly challenging to put a real zoom lens and sensor on a cell phone. Look at cameras like the Fuji Z700EXR. It's a fairly high end compact with a flash and a 5x zoom and the lens doesn't even extend from the body. Maybe instead of designing camera phones, someone should design a phone camera. I care more about the camera part than the phone. Hell, if I could make calls on my S90 I would leave my cell phone at home.

Hmm, a cell phone with optical zoom? That'll be the day. I'd have to imagine that there's still glass moving around--so that would add a mechanical factor to the cell phone design. No matter how you look at it, it would add an unacceptable level of thickness (even if it is only a handful of millimeters) and cost to implement--both of which would likely be unacceptable to the cell phone company's marketing types.

MOkoFOko wrote in post #12117061
Not commenting directly on some of these statements, but...

Per the authors own statistics, 82% of households currently have P&S cameras. Whether or not they ever buy another is irrelevant--they've already invested $100+ in a dedicated camera. Why not use it? From the rates I'm seeing at major events, it would lead me to believe that these 82% of americans are being vastly underrepresented. Everyone and their mother seems to be using a cell phone.

I do NOT believe that all of these people simply don't own a P&S camera--these people either don't care about image quality, or have never taken the time to compare shot-for-shot what looks better. The benefits of dedicated GPS vs cell GPS is obvious of course, but I think the benefits of having a decent dedicated P&S should be a must for any person who attends special events on a regular basis. Cell cameras are advancing, but they'll never be anywhere near as good as your standard entry-level $150 P&S.

When it comes down to it, I think I just feel bad for these people who are suffering bad images when they have a perfectly good P&S waiting in the wings. It's my personal belief that most cell vs camera users simply aren't aware of the major differences in image quality at this stage of the cell-camera revolution, and they might kick themselves years later when they realize how poor their past photos were...

. . .as your current standard entry-level $150 P&S. But as your 5 year old entry-level P&S? Again - when the phone company, or your employer, practically gives you a new phone with all the bells and whistles every 2 years, why spend another $200 for a camera? Your current cell phone is "at least as good" as that old camera to the average user. And the cell phone's something they're going to carry anyhow. So why not put that $200 into something "useful"? The average household may have a digital camera, but it also has several camera-equipped cell phones, and, especially the younger family members, they're out getting used while the camera is sitting around with the batteries going flat.

Cell phones are quite literally changing the way the public at large uses photography. Ever sent, or received, a photo/video MMS message from a friend? Can you do that with your P&S? Do you do FaceBook? Sent, or gotten, "Mobile updates" on there? My wife, about as non-photographic a person as you could imagine, has actually taken pictures of a rug and messaged me with it to get my opinion.

Tommydigi wrote in post #12117163
I agree, I have an S95 and while its a great camera more often I will use my Iphone just because I always have it.

Oh dear. Not only do I always have my S95 - whether I go out or not - but I always have my SX210 in the other pocket. I’m clearly very sad indeed.