Accelerated market contraction for DSLRs

RDKirk wrote in post #18856266
I said "hell of a lot of casual snapshooters."

I did not say "almost everybody."

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Right. . I never said or thought or implied that you said "almost everybody". . I was just heading off the possibility of someone illogically coming to such a conclusion.


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I think y'all are making a mistake that either one is a serious photographer using serious equipment or you are a snap-shooter using a phone. It is possible to be both.

gjl711 wrote in post #18856290
I think y'all are making a mistake that either one is a serious photographer using serious equipment or you are a snap-shooter using a phone. It is possible to be both.

No, I'm not making that mistake. Serious photographers have usually also used fun equipment for the same reason snap-shooters do.

My point is that the last twenty years of the 20th century was an anomaly in photography in that a great many people who were not serious photographers bought SLRs and thus created a bubble.

I'd go farther to say that perhaps Canon instituted the bubble. The AE-1 certainly broke SLR records and made Canon the broadly known name that it has become, as well as making SLRs mainstream.

But I'd say that the SLR bubble been an anomaly and that now people who are not serious photographers have found a more satisfactory tool in cell phone cameras.

gjl711 wrote in post #18856290
I think y'all are making a mistake that either one is a serious photographer using serious equipment or you are a snap-shooter using a phone. It is possible to be both.

Right! If I am out birding and have my tele lens on my camera but want a photograph of my companions or the landscape, then out comes the cell phone camera to take care it that.

gjl711 wrote in post #18856290
I think y'all are making a mistake that either one is a serious photographer using serious equipment or you are a snap-shooter using a phone. It is possible to be both.

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I don't know that anyone made that mistake. . I think that we all fully realized that all along. . I mean, nobody really thinks that serious photographers use serious equipment all the time, do they? . What you wrote makes it seem as if some of us had been thinking that way, which of course we hadn't.

There are plenty of times when a serious photographer just needs an image to document something for future reference. . In these situations the serious photographer will usually just use the easiest method, which is typically the cell phone camera.

When you tell someone that they have been making a mistake, then it's best to first make sure that they really did make the mistake that you are about to accuse them of, before going ahead and accusing them. . Just because someone differentiates between serious photographers and snapshooters does not mean that the person making that differentiation believes that the two are mutually exclusive at all times.

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TeamSpeed wrote in post #18855919
If this is the case, then that means all those remote triggers that folks use too won't work, correct?

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I don't know. . I am not really familiar with the kind of remote triggers that you are speaking of. . I mean, I have researched them a bit when I needed a way to remotely trigger my 6D, but I haven't actually used one because I decided to go another route for my remote-triggering needs (the remote trigger was far too limiting in its method of operation).

But I do have one thought on the issue. . This removal of the center pin is a new thing, implemented on newly released camera bodies, right? . And new interchangeable-lens Canon bodies all have WIFI capabilities, right? . If that is so, then it wouldn't matter to people whether their old remote triggers worked or not, because they would be using their cell phones to trigger the shutter, right?


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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18856626
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I don't know. . I am not really familiar with the kind of remote triggers that you are speaking of. . I mean, I have researched them a bit when I needed a way to remotely trigger my 6D, but I haven't actually used one because I decided to go another route for my remote-triggering needs (the remote trigger was far too limiting in its method of operation).

But I do have one thought on the issue. . This removal of the center pin is a new thing, implemented on newly released camera bodies, right? . And new interchangeable-lens Canon bodies all have WIFI capabilities, right? . If that is so, then it wouldn't matter to people whether their old remote triggers worked or not, because they would be using their cell phones to trigger the shutter, right?

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They'd care when they can't trigger their manual flash or wireless strobe trigger from the hotshoe. This is like removing the headphone jack from a phone and telling people it's a courageous decision. No, you're breaking compatibility with decades worth of equipment for your own selfish needs.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18855685
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Wow, Wilt - that is old school!

I am simply curious - why the CD/DVD instead of just emailing the photos to them?

I had someone put photos on a CD for me a few months ago, and have no idea how to get them on my computer. . My new computer doesn't have a built-in CD/DVD drive, and I am too lazy to bother ordering one and plugging it in. . When I called Apple and asked why they no longer put CD/DVD drives in their latest, greatest computers, they told me that it is because nobody uses CDs or DVDs anymore.

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'old school'

• to share photos of high quality (no data compressions / pixel count reduction) by cloud sharing sites
  
• to permit relatives to take a CD anywhere they want to print full resolution images, rather than using printing services offered by photo sharing sites
  

Jeff_56 wrote in post #18855722
I'm sorta in the same boat. I'm taking photos others want but they don't want to invest in the equipment to get those photos. I do post to social media but not in the "look at me" sort of way. I post photos of local significance and I have quite a few people who want to see those photos and copy them. I don't do it by CDR the way I did a while back. I post them on my web site and link to those photos from my social media accounts. I can share much better quality photos that way.

I think the camera market will always be around for people like me. I made some money doing video a while back but again optical media is all but gone and it isn't easy to distribute good quality video now. So I don't do it. But stills are another story. I can host my own stuff a lot easier with stills. I don't see that demand drying up for a while. And others will be able to do the same which will require a better than consumer grade camera. Without the better camera I'm not offering anything people can't do themselves.

I find it is expeditious to share via sharing sites when the photo count is 'reasonable'...a dozen, and/or the groups are spread into different states. But when I shoot events for relatives (like a grandaughter's First Communion over this past weekend), the photo count was 60 and waiting for 350MB of files to download is burdensome compared to burning them to DVD! And dropping the DVD in a DVD mailer via USPS is hardly burdensome in effort or cost.

DVDs declined because of tiny MP3 players (with inferior-to-DVD sound quality), and the capabilities of smartphone which are always in the pocket/purse, and because of the demand on thin and lightweight laptops. But there are clear advantages that should not be forgotten. It is a bit like SD in lieu of CF...folks have become ignorant to the inferior speed capability of (serial, one channel) SD compared to CF (parallel, 8 channel) yet our video is ever increasing in resolution and frame rate, and our pixel count is ever higher...taxing SD more and more!

Wilt wrote in post #18856635
'old school'

• to share photos of high quality (no data compressions / pixel count reduction) by cloud sharing sites
  
• to permit relatives to take a CD anywhere they want to print full resolution images, rather than using printing services offered by photo sharing sites
  

...I guess 'old school' is a good thing, as it give the maximum freedom of choice in quality/price/variety of services

I gave all of our kids (adults) external USB 3 DVD players because I knew they all had laptops with no ability to read DVDs.
DVD players also reduces the inconvenience of buying programs online download only, and then having to resurrect proof of ownership rights to install the same software on a new PC purchased a few years down the road after something in the old PC fails or gets too slow!

The 'progress' of all this online dependency is NOT all GOOD necessarily!

You could accomplish the same thing with a Dropbox/OneDrive/Googl​Drive link to a zip file containing the images. I use Smugmug for showing images and they allow downloading single images or the entire gallery at whatever resolution I choose. There's really no need to be mailing plastic discs around in 2019.

Wilt wrote in post #18856638
I find it is expeditious to share via sharing sites when the photo count is 'reasonable'...a dozen, and/or the groups are spread into different states. But when I shoot events for relatives (like a grandaughter's First Communion over this past weekend), the photo count was 60 and waiting for 350MB of files to download is burdensome compared to burning them to DVD!

Are they on dialup?

mike_d wrote in post #18856641
Are they on dialup?

I meant 'upload' ...sometimes I do not have the available time to wait for the task to complete, I have other things to do. Upload is not nearly as fast as downloading!

As for 'dial up', the world is NOT all wired for really fast internet. Until about 6 months ago, I was limited to a rather slow DSL service because AT&T had not strung our area for optical fiber, and I live only TWO MILES away from the Oracle world headquarters! And I have some friends who indeed still rely upon dial up modem because they live too far from 'civilization' in their rural setting in Pennsylvania.

mike_d wrote in post #18856640
You could accomplish the same thing with a Dropbox/OneDrive/Googl​Drive link to a zip file containing the images. I use Smugmug for showing images and they allow downloading single images or the entire gallery at whatever resolution I choose. There's really no need to be mailing plastic discs around in 2019.

Well, if I really had a need/use for something like Smugmug it might be 'worth it' to me to pay $48 annual cost! I could mail 48 DVDs to relatives for the same money, but I mail fewer than 5 DVDs on a year timeframe.

Wilt wrote in post #18856646
I meant 'upload' ...sometimes I do not have the available time to wait for the task to complete, I have other things to do.

As for 'dial up', the world is NOT all wired for really fast internet. Until about 6 months ago, I was limited to a rather slow DSL service because AT&T had not strung our area for optical fiber, and I live only TWO MILES away from the Oracle world headquarters! And I have some friends who indeed still rely upon dial up modem because they live too far from 'civilization' in their rural setting in Pennsylvania.

If you're trying to send pictures to people on dialup, that's a very small crowd today. Even uploading 350 MB on crappy DSL is faster than the USPS. I bet if you're 2 miles from Oracle's HQ, you have cable Internet available.

Wilt wrote in post #18856649
Well, if I really had a need/use for something like Smugmug it might be 'worth it' to me to pay $48 annual cost! I could mail 48 DVDs to relatives for the same money, but I mail fewer than 5 DVDs on a year timeframe.

There are plenty of free services for transferring files. send.firefox.com. Done

I only mentioned Smugmug's capability because that's what I use to share images with friends, family, and other parents.