[monochrome]

China is having enough problems just becoming a consumption economy. They need to convince their people not to save 40% of their wages. Maybe cameras aren't the lowest hanging fruit.

Oh - and Samsung.

[Digitalis]

In my correspondence with Michael Reichmann, It doesn't take long to realise he has more of an idea about products and marketing than your average photographer does. But he does typically cater to the high end of the market - but I wouldn't call them dilletantes - some of his readers are highly skilled working photographers.

I wouldn't flippantly dismiss his opinions, he is certainly entitled to them. There are many pundits in the industry with varied opinions and audiences in different market segments. The only person I would be wary of is Ken Rockwell. God help pentaxforums if I ever end up quoting him to defend an argument...

[Rondec]

I think it is easiest to blame the deficiencies in my photos on my gear. If I just had a better camera, full frame camera, better lenses, then my photos would be amazing. This is a real driver for the acquisition of new gear. And yet, eventually all of us come to the realization that more gear isn't going to make a big difference.

At this point there is not a big driver for folks to upgrade. If you have a D5200, what drives you to buy a D7100 or a D600? Maybe an increase in sensor size will drive some to buy new, but it feels to me like too many folks are stuck at good enough and don't see a particular benefit in buying something new and more expensive. Camera companies have made this worse by releasing too many models at too short increments and then fire sale-ing old stock.

[monochrome]

In my correspondence with Michael Reichmann, It doesn't take long to realise he has more of an idea about products and marketing than your average photographer does. But he does typically cater to the high end of the market - but I wouldn't call them dilletantes - some of his readers are highly skilled working photographers.

I wouldn't flippantly dismiss his opinions, he is certainly entitled to them. There are many pundits in the industry with varied opinions and audiences in different market segments. The only person I would be wary of is Ken Rockwell. God help pentaxforums if I ever end up quoting him to defend an argument...

When you post I read carefully and I think about it. When I read someting on LL I read carefully and I think about it. Every so often I have to force myself to step back and decide whether I am deluding myself or whether I should accept that I am included in the unwashed mass. I know gear doesn't really matter. I buy a lot of it anyway because it pleases me to have it. I know I'm not very good and I don't have enough time left to become very good. I'm very good at what I've done 50+ hours a week for 35 years.

I take offense at insensitive, unqualifed generalizations, beginning with the presumption to say 'What Matters.' For all his earned status, what entitles Michael Reichman to proclaim what should matter to me? Even if intended for a narrow, experienced and professional reader group, the arrogance and hubris is revealing. For instance:

• Camera better than me - yep, already know it. Working on it. Don't need to be told
• Frustratiing complexity - nope. I read the manual and revel in the opportunities or ignore the features I know I won't use. But i decide to ignore them.
• Flaws - yep, not just most cameras, all cameras - in fact everything - are flawed to each individual user. Buyers are unique; producers must be generalists. What Reichman means is cameras are flawed to him.
• Nothing worthwhile to say - that is an elitist conceit, whether written for high-end professionals or not. That's patronizing, offensive Harvard talk.
  • You poor ill-informed consumers have shown you have nothing worthwhile to say, but you buy expensive, feature-baubled cameras anyway, so I'm going to describe for the industry how to nudge you to make better decisions - or even how to not buy at all, unless you have something worthwhile to say. (Behvioral Economics is 'all-the-rage' in the credentialed elite circles these days.)
  • What really happened is there was a decline of new births about 6 years ago - right after the really scary global melt-down - so today there is a decline of 6-year-olds of which the principal buyers of dSLR's take pictures. But that's too easy an answer. There has to be somheting wrong somewhere.
• lenses and sensor size / Mp count are basic truths - nothing new there

The trump offense, though, comes in the Looking Forward paragraph. MR wants camera makers to ask 'real photographers' which features are appropriate for 'real cameras' and dispense with 'useless frills.'

Welll, OK then. I see. Photography isn't really something I should be doing. I'm an interloper. (You understand, or course - it's nothing personal. You're just not welcome here.) So I'll just sell off all this gear I've bought and go do someting else. Something where I'm a real whatever-it-is. Boy Scout Leader. Charitable Board President. OK - got the message.

Oh wait - how many cameras and lenses will the industry sell to all these real photographers?

---

Last edited by monochrome; 03-17-2014 at 11:43 AM.

[pinholecam]

Camera companies should come together and for a secret pact to slow down the camera release cycle.


There seems less real improvement to the sensor since K5 (ie. Sony exmor) and the heavy cost of the yearly product release cycle (with lowering returns) will kill off more and more companies.

[Digitalis]

I take offense at insensitive, unqualifed generalizations, beginning with the presumption to say 'What Matters.' For all his earned status, what entitles Michael Reichman to proclaim what should matter to me? Even if intended for a narrow, experienced and professional reader group, the arrogance and hubris is revealing.

In Michael's defense - I will point out that opinions, especially those on the internet are meant to be taken with a hearty pinch of salt. After all on the internet no-one knows if you are a dog - of even if you have actually held the camera you are reviewing ( Ken Rockwell will go down in infamy for doing this)

I wouldn't say Michael has an unqualified opinion, he has been a photographer for a considerable amount of time, and while he isn't exactly the greatest photographer he certainly can tell if something is going to help or hinder the creation of an image. For example, his complaint about canon burying mirror lock up in the menus or that the Fuji Xt-1 image review doesn't show a histogram or highlight/shadow blinkies - those are perfectly valid complaints to a photographer who needs to work quickly and be able to asses the variables that need to be controlled to produce quality work.

Flaws - yep, not just most cameras, all cameras - in fact everything - are flawed to each individual user. Buyers are unique; producers must be generalists. What Reichman means is cameras are flawed to him.

I have long fingers, as a consequence: I absolutely hate holding my Leica without a thumbs up grip. This was a clear ergonomic f*ck up by Leica not to include a grip area for the thumb on the digital M bodies. I find the design flawed - MR found it to be flawed as well and I'm sure you would too. In the end all Michael can do is provide an opinion, and that is exactly what you will get from him - as of yet it is impossible to get an accurate consensus on cameras because it is always going to be massively slanted by market share. it stinks.

The trump offense, though, comes in the Looking Forward paragraph. MR wants camera makers to ask 'real photographers' which features are appropriate for 'real cameras' and dispense with 'useless frills.'

Just about every camera maker has been guilty of this - for a recent example, just look at the Nikon D4s files shot at ISO 409,600 you couldn't print a decent 4X6 at that ISO.

[Clavius]

The camera industry is in the dumper because cameras are no longer a household requirement. Why would consumers buy a dedicated camera if they all have one in their pocket in the form of a cellphone that -in their eyes- already does a decent job? The IQ is good enough for Facebook. The small point and shoots supported the higher end section a long time, but now that that is disappearing too...

I even notice it when going out. Just two/three years ago I used to be one of so very many douches holding a big fat DSLR exactly like all the other dads (and moms) in an amusement park. Now, slowly but steadily, I'm becomming the one and only douche with a DSLR again. I don't mind the things going back to the way they should be. I'm just afraid it's also going to mean a slowdown of innovation in higher end cameras.

So the camera industry needs to re-create the need again for higher quality, higher mp, bigger format cameras for the common household. Something that really shows just how much the phonecamera "sucks" and lets the output from a dedicated camera really shine. There's many examples I can think of. Or maybe even just the right marketing focussing just on the advantages of higher end cameras.

[monochrome]

By unqualified I meant he didn't use subjunctive, he didn't qualify his statement. Luminous Landscape is the first website it was suggested I read. I read it. I'm just tired of condescension, particularly and generally, at least in the USA.

MR didn't write about the issues you used as examples. He wrote about REAL photographers having their needs met - that the industry has catered to enticing camera BUYERS, and now the industry is paying the price. He writes to fix itself the industry needs to pay attention to the needs of MR.

[Digitalis]

I'm just tired of condescension, particularly and generally, at least in the USA

Michael Reichman is Canadian.

[mecrox]

Isn't this all about a bubble that's now contracting rather strongly thanks a) to the migration to digital now being essentially complete, and b) the impact of the smartphone? See the following graphics which I have made up from the CIPA camera sales/production figures - no claims to accuracy, I am not an accountant. If they are wrong, I will correct them. Make of it all what you will. I think the Lula article has a fair degree of venting and entertainment and I enjoyed it, not taking it too seriously.

[monochrome]

Michael Reichman is Canadian.

Jeebus - I'm writing about Harvard-educated business managers and government know-it-all's and coastal elites declaiming what they want me to do better [EDIT: 'Good' is by their definition, so 'Better' is on their terms]. I don't care where MR lives.

All he had to do was qualify his statements so that he wouldn't sound like an elitist or an autocrat. Unless that's what he wanted to do.

I don't really disagree with most of his observations, just with his superior tone.

Besides, the decline in sales probably has more to do with something simpler and more structural like the reduced number of household formations and babies born in the west after the financial crisis (which at the margin might now purchase a consumer dslr to take acitivty photos of their tykes), or with the ageing of the Baby Boom out of its acquisitive phase into the preservationist phase, than it has to do with cameras or features or the photographic gear industry.

But that's the nature of conceit - it's difficult to see outside one's own world view to consider other possibilities.

You write with authority and from experience, and (apparently) only about equipment you own or have used. It seems clear you and your family have been at the top of your profession for decades. Yet you never seem to condescend to the rest of us - you just inform and move on. (Unless someone is really being an idiot).

[Winder]

The camera industry is in the dumper because cameras are no longer a household requirement. Why would consumers buy a dedicated camera if they all have one in their pocket in the form of a cellphone that -in their eyes- already does a decent job? The IQ is good enough for Facebook. The small point and shoots supported the higher end section a long time, but now that that is disappearing too...

I even notice it when going out. Just two/three years ago I used to be one of so very many douches holding a big fat DSLR exactly like all the other dads (and moms) in an amusement park. Now, slowly but steadily, I'm becomming the one and only douche with a DSLR again. I don't mind the things going back to the way they should be. I'm just afraid it's also going to mean a slowdown of innovation in higher end cameras.

So the camera industry needs to re-create the need again for higher quality, higher mp, bigger format cameras for the common household. Something that really shows just how much the phonecamera "sucks" and lets the output from a dedicated camera really shine. There's many examples I can think of. Or maybe even just the right marketing focussing just on the advantages of higher end cameras.

I think final output has more to do with this than the camera. People have stopped printing. I just finished a project for a commercial architectural company. All the images will be displayed on a wall of flat screens in the main lobby and there will be a 20-30 flat screens. Basically it going to be a giant slide show. The flat screens don't have anywhere near the bit depth and the HD resolution doesn't require much at all. The biggest challenge was composing so that my final aspect ratio worked with 16:9 for the flat screens. These are not high quality flat screens and the colors are over saturated. The convenience of the digital display is changing what people require and expect.

As we have shifted away from high quality printing and big prints due to cost and convenience we have lost the need for quality. I just about refuse to use a digital on-line portfolio. If people want to see my work they will have to sit down with a printed A3+ portfolio. The average person will be viewing your on-line work on an un-calibrated 8-bit display that is probably not even an HD monitor. I have walked in to the offices of buyers for publications who are looking at images on no name, office supply store quality monitors.

I even see people who consider themselves photo-enthusiasts download images from Image Resource (D800 & K-5 for example). They will then edit them on an 8-bit un-calibrated XGA monitor and print them on their 5 year old Epson All-In-One printer and proclaim that there is no difference in image quality. If you don't have the right equipment, then there is no difference. Printing is an art in itself.

One thing that I have noticed. Most people don't have any real exposure to high quality work. The average consumer has no idea what high quality work really looks like. They never see big prints. This has made it easier for me to separate myself from all the super-zoom Rebel users who simply hand out CDs or jump-drives with OOC JPEGs.

Its going to be interesting. We have a generation that grew up taking pictures with phones, not cameras. Will the market respond like Samsung with cameras that run Android and have the camera phone controls and filters? We have already seen the market turn to high volume, low quality photography. Will there be a revival of the large print?

[Clavius]

I think final output has more to do with this than the camera. People have stopped printing. I just finished a project for a commercial architectural company. All the images will be displayed on a wall of flat screens in the main lobby and there will be a 20-30 flat screens. Basically it going to be a giant slide show. The flat screens don't have anywhere near the bit depth and the HD resolution doesn't require much at all. The biggest challenge was composing so that my final aspect ratio worked with 16:9 for the flat screens. These are not high quality flat screens and the colors are over saturated. The convenience of the digital display is changing what people require and expect.

As we have shifted away from high quality printing and big prints due to cost and convenience we have lost the need for quality. I just about refuse to use a digital on-line portfolio. If people want to see my work they will have to sit down with a printed A3+ portfolio. The average person will be viewing your on-line work on an un-calibrated 8-bit display that is probably not even an HD monitor. I have walked in to the offices of buyers for publications who are looking at images on no name, office supply store quality monitors.

I even see people who consider themselves photo-enthusiasts download images from Image Resource (D800 & K-5 for example). They will then edit them on an 8-bit un-calibrated XGA monitor and print them on their 5 year old Epson All-In-One printer and proclaim that there is no difference in image quality. If you don't have the right equipment, then there is no difference. Printing is an art in itself.

One thing that I have noticed. Most people don't have any real exposure to high quality work. The average consumer has no idea what high quality work really looks like. They never see big prints. This has made it easier for me to separate myself from all the super-zoom Rebel users who simply hand out CDs or jump-drives with OOC JPEGs.

Its going to be interesting. We have a generation that grew up taking pictures with phones, not cameras. Will the market respond like Samsung with cameras that run Android and have the camera phone controls and filters? We have already seen the market turn to high volume, low quality photography. Will there be a revival of the large print?

Can't agree with you more! (Btw your assignment with the flat screen wall does sound like a lot of fun though!)

But that's why I said that the camera industrie needs to re-create the need for high IQ cameras.

Maybe with very high quality large digital photoframes. Current models available on the market have abysmal quality at best. Maybe even in E-ink? I don't know all the possibilities there though.

Or maybe by introducting very high IQ photoprinters that really demand the output of a good camera. Pentax's new boss could prove very usefull there.

Obviously I'm no engineer. People actually working in R&D/marketing can probably come up with a pletora of options that can re-create the need for the extra quality. I just don't understand why they don't.

[jon404]

This is a wonderful thread. Monochrome -- starting with LL ... on a first visit, I wanted to like it, to learn about landscape photography... but found myself immediately put off by the conceited tone... weird, silly, and basically infantile. Reichmann may be one of those rare folks who go from infancy to senility without a period of maturity.

As for the seachange hitting the camera industry, well, that's life. Or at least life for the last 200 years, since the industrial revolution. I retired several years ago from the cellphone chipmaker company Qualcomm -- and, let me tell you, if our customer Samsung had wanted to put a high-quality camera in a smartphone, the engineers would have figured it out very, very fast. Rapid change is normal in these new, software-based industries. There is no equivalent to, say, a Chevrolet 327 cubic-inch engine staying in production for 50 years, under one name or another. The new products are so easy to drastically re-configure in response to consumer demand.

But that's not exactly right. I think actually the rapid change comes from the engineers -- they dream up a new feature, then hey, let's make it! And next, like Apple, run some great advertising so that everybody wants it.

The posts above about increasing image quality in a DSLR are right to the point... if we add a 50 MP sensor, then what can we use to show the improved image, to get that consumer demand going? Maybe bundle the DSLR with an 11 x 17 paper-size printer? Surprised Canon hasn't done that, or Ricoh. As for screens, you can plan on approximately 300 ppi screens moving from tablets to laptops and desktops. And new home TVs are catching up... and will probably be the main way to show your photos in the future. But whether you would see a real difference between that 50 MP DSLR image -- and an 8 MP image from a smartphone -- on a near-future TV... I don't know.

So Clavius -- I agree that we need much better photoframes -- but I think that the new TVs will fill that role. We just bought a new low-end Samsung TV... inexpensive... and it connects to the internet, and has a place to plug in a USB flash drive. Now -- if Samsung built near-field-communcation into that TV, and also into a camera -- well, you could just put that camera next to the TV and watch your pictures. Nothing else for you to do... no card transfer, no USB anything. Just NFC for your camera...TV... laptop... tablet. Lastly, I don't think e-ink is the way photo-display will go. The IQ is such a long, long way off. But it is sensational for b/w text... the simple basic Kindle is a reader's delight!

[monochrome]

Pentax's new boss could prove very usefull there.

Surprised Canon hasn't done that, or Ricoh.

Stick around for a few quarters.

the simple basic Kindle is a reader's delight!

Paperwhite is awesone. Even an iPad (too heavy) is a good way to read. As I like K lenses I still like ink on paper, though.