Will point and shoots soon be extinct?

I have kids in there early 20's....they all have iPhones, take pictures, hit a button and it goes to facebook, or whatever other stuff they post on. I was at a family event this weekend, all the kids had there iPhones, galaxy something's, all taking pictures.
We are going on a family trip next week, I am thinking do I take the rx100, the g1x, the 7d.......they don't care, they take there phones. It seems like us baby boomers are the only ones dropping $600 on them.

As all these kids get older, will the point and shoot market be completely gone?

As phones become more resistant to abuse it is possible. I don't care what kind of case I have on my phone or my DSLR, I'm not taking them into the pool to shoot pictures of my daughter the same way I do with my Olympus waterproof camera.

Fernando wrote in post #16736178
As phones become more resistant to abuse it is possible. I don't care what kind of case I have on my phone or my DSLR, I'm not taking them into the pool to shoot pictures of my daughter the same way I do with my Olympus waterproof camera.

My wife has a Lifeproof case on her iPhone. Lots of underwater shots with no issues. I don't think it is rated for ocean dives, like some waterproof cams are, but for the pool it seems very solid.

I dont think extinct, but the market will diminish and consolidate. As canon, sony, and other big players drop out of the market there will be room for somebody to specialize and feed the need. There are still some folks who still want that sort of camera, just not enough to support all the current manufacturers.

mark2009 wrote in post #16736155
I have kids in there early 20's....they all have iPhones, take pictures, hit a button and it goes to facebook, or whatever other stuff they post on. I was at a family event this weekend, all the kids had there iPhones, galaxy something's, all taking pictures.
We are going on a family trip next week, I am thinking do I take the rx100, the g1x, the 7d.......they don't care, they take there phones. It seems like us baby boomers are the only ones dropping $600 on them.

As all these kids get older, will the point and shoot market be completely gone?

I think the hope for the hobby is that some percentage of those phone shooters will want more from their cameras some day. The good news to me is that almost everyone is now a photographer at some level, so we only need a small percentage to want to upgrade to keep the interest level where it is today.

10 years ago the pool of people taking photos was significantly smaller, so a much higher percentage had to get interested and want to upgrade to drive the hobby.

I think that what ultimately will drive the continued existence (or not) of the established P&S market, just as it does the more advanced dSLR market, is how society views
CONVENIENCE vs. QUALITY/VERSATILITY

We have already seen, for example that so much of the society is content with the
[CONVENIENT & PORTABLE yet INFERIOR QUALITY]

MP3 rather than CD/DVD quality
Bluetooth speaker vs. conventional full size speakers+amp
Smartphone cameras with digital zoom vs. cameras with optical zoom

...and this convenience factor does not merely extend to only portable situations, but we see dinky speakers playing MP3 in the homes, too!

Great point Wilt. It's the ongoing battle of "Good" vs "good enough".

Wilt wrote in post #16736222
I think that what ultimately will drive the continued existence (or not) of the established P&S market, just as it does the more advanced dSLR market, is how society views
CONVENIENCE vs. QUALITY/VERSATILITY

We have already seen, for example that so much of the society is content with the
[CONVENIENT & PORTABLE yet INFERIOR QUALITY]

MP3 rather than CD/DVD quality
Bluetooth speaker vs. conventional full size speakers+amp
Smartphone cameras with digital zoom vs. cameras with optical zoom

...and this convenience factor does not merely extend to only portable situations, but we see dinky speakers playing MP3 in the homes, too!

Yea, it's funny, remember the days when we use to go get our film developed, and wait a week, then came the 1hr processing. Now people don't want to plug there camera into the computer, they need wifi transfer.

mark2009 wrote in post #16736276
Yea, it's funny, remember the days when we use to go get our film developed, and wait a week, then came the 1hr processing. Now people don't want to plug there camera into the computer, they need wifi transfer.

Or they simply use their phone as storage. I have an acquaintance who was bemoaning, on facebook, that she lost all the photos from 3 of her child's formative years because her phone failed. It took all my restraint not to ask her whose fault she thought that was, but held my tongue.

gonzogolf wrote in post #16736288
Or they simply use their phone as storage. I have an acquaintance who was bemoaning, on facebook, that she lost all the photos from 3 of her child's formative years because her phone failed. It took all my restraint not to ask her whose fault she thought that was, but held my tongue.

As much as I like big sensors and IQ that comes out of them, having a phone with cloud storage is great.

As I take a picture, it gets uploaded to a server, and then on two of my desktops. Backup problem is solved immediately. And social media shows pictures to more people than prints or hard drive storage does.

So if you look at it objectively, it does more with less effort. The only thing to bemoan is image quality, which is not needed nine times out of ten.

And those lifeproof cases make the camera swimming friendly.

Yep, P&S cameras are in steep decline, and that will continue. They may not disappear completely, but they will be a tiny market.

Well, camera phones have been around for quite a while now, but the market for P&S still seems to be surviving. At least there are still a lot of them around, with different models and different feature sets. When someone wants actual photographs rather than just snapshots, even a decent P&S will out perform a phone. It will probably be a long time before a phone camera does RAW (like never in the foreseeable future).

My new Fuji XP 200 has a 16mp sensor, is waterproof to 50 feet - not a real dive camera, but more than just splash-proof. It does a decent job and I can take it to the beach and into the surf without any worries. If I needed it, I could put a 64gb SD card in it, and either transfer from the card, or use the built in WiFi to download to my laptop or tablet.

For people who don't care, the phone will usually work. For those who care a little, they'll usually want the added features that a phone just doesn't have.

What's missing for my cellphone is a small tele converter. I want a 1.5 tele converter to get a normal lens. 30mm is great, but just a tad too wide for a lot of the stuff I like to shoot.

Preeb wrote in post #16736340
Well, camera phones have been around for quite a while now, but the market for P&S still seems to be surviving. At least there are still a lot of them around, with different models and different feature sets. When someone wants actual photographs rather than just snapshots, even a decent P&S will out perform a phone. It will probably be a long time before a phone camera does RAW (like never in the foreseeable future).

But up until recently, the cams in cellphones had pretty bad quality and interfaces. Starting around ipod 4 and decent speed 4G connections the landscape changed.

Now it's a responsive camera with an instant connectivity. And a big user base and software that enables sharing.

Personally, if i'm not likely to hang it on the wall, I won't take a photo at all. I'm not interested in large volumes of crummy photos i'll never look at again. That also means I don't own an P&S, but I do carry a DSLR most of the time in case opportunity for something good presents itself.

The trouble with P&S cameras is that their image quality is far enough infront of a phone for your average user who doesn't now how to compose or light a decent shot, to make much difference. At least a badly lit and composed shot with a shallow(er) DoF and low noise out of a DSLR look 'better' to the layman than a phone shot.

Optical zoom is ahead of digital in terms of quality, but most P&S camera have such horrbile motorized zooms that by the time you've framed your shot the moment has passed. Might as well not bother.


If I was going to use something with a smaller sensor than m4/3, I probably would just use my phone -- it's got optical image stabalisation, proper flash, selectable ISO, selectable WB, selectable exposure compensation ... it's amazing how phones have progressed.