40 yrs. ago, did photographers switch brands or bodies every 2 yrs?

Especially on Youtube, I see a fair number of photographers switching brands like two years apart. I wasn't into photography more than 10 yrs. ago. But it made we wonder if photographers several decades ago, used to switch brands or bodies every two or three years, or if most just bought a camera and kept it for 5, 10 or more years.

It's almost like those youtubers have some ulterior motive.

Posting videos about cameras on YouTube isn't a photography business. The motivations of YouTube video posters are therefore not the same as the motivations of most people running photography businesses.

I doubt people were changing cameras very often in the film era because the sensor itself was divorced from the camera. And before the advent of AF, it's hard to imagine metering sysems getting users all excited about new cameras. If you think about it, we had all manual cameras for a very long time. Then we had manual cameras with meters. Then we had AF and auto film advance. Out of all that, I can't imagine anything but AF generating a changeover.

Canon deemed AF a big enough deal to obsolete their entire 35mm camera and lens line.

Starting with widespread adaptation of the dSLR in the early 2000's, I think you did see people changing bodies more often. A big part of this was because the technology was improving pretty fast. More recent cameras have slowed the pace. I still have a 5D Mark III that works well. I'm sure the 5D Mark IV is nice, but it isn't different enough to make me feel like I need it.

I added a Sony system along with my Canon, but it wasn't any kind of feature that made me want it. I got it specifically to assemble a small 35mm format system for backcountry travel by canoe and kayak. I really like some of the features, but other than being small, the system doesn't truly do a lot of things that I can't do with my Canon (and vice versa).

I think things were very different .. not too long ago.
There tends to be a bigger feeling of brand loyalty among older gen, not just cameras but in many areas.

as someone said already , back in those days the film is what gave the look so from what i've read / heard people kept the same body until it broke .

But today cameras are hi tech products and with the way hi tech moves , less and less people are worried about brand loyalty but more concerned about loyalty to their dollar to performance ration. especially as video is becoming more of a "must have" feature on cameras as new more video oriented consumers/proffessiona​ls join the club..


the youtubers are a different story of course , you cant help but be suspicious when they all make a review video on the same not even released to the public camera or accessory ..
But in any case they have certainly added fuel to the idea that you become less of a photographer or videographer if you dont have the latest tech.

the only reason I hold back from switching is due to investments already made, but I personally have no desire to be loyal to any brand.
I know for many(especially older gen) that is frowned upon.


i've just started getting comfortable with gh5 cameras for video and was about to add a gh5S and then black magic just dropped a new video camera that is blowing away anything in its price point and quite a bit above.. and its EF mount with a super 35 sensor..
but damn it I just sold all my L glass

its an expensive never ending battle if one chooses to fight it.

About 40 years ago, I switched from Minolta to Nikon, as a hobbyist. I stayed with Nikon until I entered the digital era. Then I switched to Canon.

mdvaden wrote in post #18908057
Especially on Youtube, I see a fair number of photographers switching brands like two years apart. I wasn't into photography more than 10 yrs. ago. But it made we wonder if photographers several decades ago, used to switch brands or bodies every two or three years, or if most just bought a camera and kept it for 5, 10 or more years.

40 years ago, 1979...compact SLRs had grown wildly popular with the advent of the immensely popular Canon AE-1 (1976-1984) which was inspired by the successful Olympus OM series (OM-1, OM-2). But just about every brand of SLR had a compact SLR line, too. Advances like TTL flash control had not yet been launched until it was closer to mid-1980's (Olympus OM-4, and the manual OM-3) AF did not even launch until 1987. So there wasn't the body trade-up frenzy and brand jumping seen now with a new model dSLR and mirrorless launched so often.

40 years ago: No, most likely not.
Professionals built up an inventory of high-quality lenses,
which still holds largely true today even for amateurs.
To change to another maker's system typically involved substantial investment
in new lenses, which always costs more than the camera itself.
Modern zoom lenses have closed the price gap with their pricing and versatility
in capturing results, but more than a lot of photographers still swear by using
dedicated prime lenses, which cost an awful lot for the best on offer for
any given system.

I used film years ago while in high school, as an absolute amateur.
This would have been the early 1980s.
At the time, I used an Olympus OM-1, which belonged to my mother.
I now own that same camera, as she has given it to me, and she herself
has long been using digital.

I was interested enough in the process to enroll in a couple of classes,
and I did learn about some of the driving points of depth-of-focus
and some other basic techniques of the craft.
However, the classes were far more concentrated on developing and printing
of our own images for my liking. I hated the darkroom chemicals, as well as
recurring costs of the film. Outside of a lab such as that, I also hated the additional
expense of having film developed and printed.

Much later, I realized digital imagery was maturing, and becoming affordable.
I bought into the ecosystem with a Canon S3iS, loved it (still have it),
learned to use and exploit it, then moved to a DSLR after running into some
limitations. I've been Canon since the S3, simply because I'm familiar with
their control/setup/option functions.

I will only suggest that I have a brand loyalty in the sense that I have owned
a few Canon cameras - PowerShot S3iS, Rebel XTi(400D), EOS 40D, EOS 50D,
EOS 5D4 - in that I am not only familiar with them, but have found the ecosystem
of the maker's products to be physically comfortable and easy to use in my hands.

In my experience, I'd suspect the old-school folks similar to myself who claim
such a loyalty are likely to be the ones who have moved forward within a maker's
product line, moving up in the hierarchy of product offerings as their wants increase.
On the flip-side of that coin, I suspect the brand-jumpers nowadays are either
money-making professionals who want the best of the market's offerings,
tech-obsessed people who are never satisfied with what they own, or all the others
who are easily persuaded by whatever Tube video they happen to come across.

I bought my first real camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, around 1970. Photo gear was very expensive then and I managed to acquire 3 Takumar prime lenses. I used the Spotmatic until around 1995 when it developed a light leak around the shutter rollers. I replaced the defective Pentax with a Spotmatic F and used it until going digital in 2006.

During this time I had much disdain for newfangled developments like AF and zoom lenses. Manual focus with the microprism was fast and accurate, and zooms were inferior optically. The Takumar primes were considered top gear and couldn't really be improved upon. I saw digital the same way when it first appeared. Why not continue with negative film which has better highlight latitude? One could always scan the negs to get a digital version - the best of both worlds.

Most folk I knew had similar thinking. Buy the best and enjoy it for life.

So it was quite a revelation when I went into digital to experience the improvements and innovations that had taken place over the decades.

Digital improved rapidly in the decade after 2006, and there was benefit in upgrading often.

Now, 13 years later, I agree that we are probably near the top of the S curve (further improvements are smaller), and there is less need to upgrade. We still have that upgrade culture, though! So we eagerly await the next models. But seriously, the improvements are not going to be big.

So in my opinion the answer to the subject question is no, at least for those whose cameras kept working.

mdvaden wrote in post #18908057
Especially on Youtube, I see a fair number of photographers switching brands like two years apart. I wasn't into photography more than 10 yrs. ago. But it made we wonder if photographers several decades ago, used to switch brands or bodies every two or three years, or if most just bought a camera and kept it for 5, 10 or more years.

I'm sure some did. There were real camera stores back then. There were also more things to be religious about.

(My brother worked in a camera store in the 1970s and bought a Minolta SLR. He had a dark room and did b&w printing. My first SLR was a Pentax K1000, bought in 1981.)

On camera bodies, if you were into quickly shooting photos and had a basic SLR, you might upgrade to one that could accommodate a motor drive, a little device that could quickly and automatically advance your film after taking a shot, probably giving you a frame a second. Unless you loaded your own canisters, you were typically limited to a maximum of 36 exposures. (Loading your own probably didn't get you much more than that, given the size of the canisters.) Zoom lenses sucked back then. Primes were mostly it. All lenses at the time, at least the ones I used, were manual focus. There were however magazines such as Popular Photography, now dead, that made their money by advertising and enticing people to buy camera gear. If Brand X had some feature beyond what your brand had, and you could afford to switch, you might just consider the switch.

The religious arguments of the time covered different things such as film (Kodachrome was *the* film, even though most people didn't use it the way it was intended) and paper (textures, finishes). There were arguments over different versions of black and white film, film grain and dynamic range (Kodacolor 1000 was new and extraordinarily fast for color print film in the early 1980s). If you wanted to change the feel of your photos, change your film or paper; change the lab you use to process your photos. There was the heretical Kodak versus Fuji film argument! Good luck if you admitted to shooting from the green box. And the proverbial penny drops... If you want to change your recording medium today, you must change cameras. If you want a look in digital that you can only get with another camera brand, you must change brands.

What are the economics of all of this?

Let's say a 24 exposure film will cost you US$18 to purchase and process. That's US$1.50 per shot. If you take 10,000 photos in one year, that's US$15,000 in film and printing costs. On the digital side, if you did the Adobe photographer subscription, that would be US$120 for the year, and you'd have a very personalized lab - you! Digital is less than 1% of the cost of film in this case. Of course with film you wouldn't be shooting so much, in part because of the cost. All things being equal however, with film you're spending money each time you shoot. With digital it's free. It really isn't free of course, and there's a cost in time when reviewing and processing photos, but on the money side it's essentially free. With film, you pay a small up front tax in camera gear and the ongoing film tax every time you shoot. With digital, you pay a hefty up front tax with no ongoing tax as you take and make endless photos.

So, did photographers switch brands or bodies every 2 years? Probably some did but the technologies and economics were different. You might change from Kodak to Fuji film, and all it would cost you is essentially nothing; the prices were similar, and I believe they used the same or similar processing for the film. That kind of change today means changing camera systems. Perhaps all it needs to mean is adding a new camera system... Hmmm...

Leica...

So far, the replies have been better than anticipated, and almost like a history lesson.

From Youtube, certainly I find a wealth of good information. But when it comes to camera reviews, I find the reviewers to be quite a bit different from most photographers I know, or meet.

I wasn't around back then, but I think something else to be considered is the availability of information now as compared to then. Couple that with camera manufacturers that are releasing new models at a blistering pace, and I think the climate may be a bit more ripe now for people to switch brands.

I've mulled the idea around a few times, but ultimately, my investment in glass is what will keep me with Canon.

40 years ago cameras didn't become obsolete as fast as they do now. I used to see pros using gear that looked really beat, like "bgn" stuff from KEH, but in good functional condition.

About 15 or so years ago I had my Spotmatic CLA'd at a repair shop in Philadelphia that had a reputation as the go-to place for area pros. The owner told me that a big part of his past business had been doing regularly scheduled annual CLAs on cameras from the local newspapers, as well as other pros. All that business went away with digital. The shop has since closed.

rantercsr wrote in post #18908082
I think things were very different .. not too long ago.
There tends to be a bigger feeling of brand loyalty among older gen, not just cameras but in many areas.

as someone said already , back in those days the film is what gave the look so from what i've read / heard people kept the same body until it broke .

But today cameras are hi tech products and with the way hi tech moves , less and less people are worried about brand loyalty but more concerned about loyalty to their dollar to performance ration. especially as video is becoming more of a "must have" feature on cameras as new more video oriented consumers/proffessiona​ls join the club..


the youtubers are a different story of course , you cant help but be suspicious when they all make a review video on the same not even released to the public camera or accessory ..
But in any case they have certainly added fuel to the idea that you become less of a photographer or videographer if you dont have the latest tech.

the only reason I hold back from switching is due to investments already made, but I personally have no desire to be loyal to any brand.
I know for many(especially older gen) that is frowned upon.


i've just started getting comfortable with gh5 cameras for video and was about to add a gh5S and then black magic just dropped a new video camera that is blowing away anything in its price point and quite a bit above.. and its EF mount with a super 35 sensor..
but damn it I just sold all my L glass

its an expensive never ending battle if one chooses to fight it.

The EF mount is a huge step backwards IMO, they should have went RF mount. I think I know why though, heating issues.

Going EF mount means the lack of M43 lenses, lack of ability to use speed boosters.

Is 1.6 vs 1.9 crop a big deal? The black magic 6K has a smaller than normal crop sensor while the 4K has a larger than normal m43 sensor. You’re giving up a lot of lens flexibility and I would think glass and FOV matters more than resolution.

The Leica 10-25 f1.7 looks to be one of the most useful video lenses in existence, wont work on the 6K.

Nikon F:1959-1974
Nikon F2:1971
Nikon F3:1980-2001
Nikon D4:1988
Nikon F5:1996
Offcource there where where improved versions and changes in finders ( e.g. F2 photomic) etc but cycle time was a lot longer back then

I don't think that the film-digital comparison works well. With a digital camera, all of the technology that would go into improving the final image is part of the camera. With film cameras, the body is not a whole lot more than a box needed to hold the sensor (film) and lenses. There were a few innovations, like auto metering, auto focus and such, but that's about it. Nothing like today with the plethora of features, and the sensor itself. It makes more sense today to upgrade more often than it did with film.