[fsge]

Thank you Mistral for this useful sum up. This market is bleeding from everywhere... We more than ever need to support Pentax/Ricoh

[y0chang]

There are 3 types of lies: lies, d@mn lies, and statistics - Mark Twain

[dadengler]

Tough question to answer, the used market for camera bodies is probably much smaller than the market for new bodies (reluctance to buy something mechanical/electronic that could have expensive failures or that is lacking the newest features), combined with too many sales outlets to be reliably monitored, means that information is essentially unavailable to anyone. It definitely appears that camera buyers are not replacing their cameras as often as they did 5-8 years ago, so the supply of used cameras is probably dropping as well. Buyers of entry level DSLRs that end up taking most of their pictures with phones probably just leave their old cameras on the shelf. Other than "oddball" formats that aren't being produced anymore, like the Q or Nikon 1, the going price for a gently used digital camera that is more than a few years old is much less than half of its new price, which is not the case at all with used lenses.

Hmmm. I had noticed that used lenses are not cheap but used bodies are getting cheaper.

Maybe you or someone else can answer another question. Why hasn't the mirrorless market performed well? It sure looked promising a few years ago. Is it because the entry level camera sales are way down or is it that all price points for M43, APSC and FF are not doing well? Or maybe there's a glut of M43 camera models on the market?

[Rondec]

Hmmm. I had noticed that used lenses are not cheap but used bodies are getting cheaper.

Maybe you or someone else can answer another question. Why hasn't the mirrorless market performed well? It sure looked promising a few years ago. Is it because the entry level camera sales are way down or is it that all price points for M43, APSC and FF are not doing well? Or maybe there's a glut of M43 camera models on the market?

I think the biggest issue has to do with the mirrorless market maturing. Early on people had to replace their mirrorless cameras all the time because the initial ones had poor auto focus, the EVFs weren't that great -- basically similar to how digital SLRs were in the early 2000s. But starting about 3 or 4 years ago, the tech had hit the point where there wasn't that much point in replacing your camera every year. If you have an A9, the A9 II offers some (small) improvements -- for a price -- and most people seem to be deciding that they'd rather just keep shooting their A9s or A7 IIIs till they wear out rather than replacing them.

The same is true in APS-C and micro four thirds. SLRs fell off a cliff a few years before MILCs, but once again that feels to me more like the fact that SLR tech matured a little faster than MILC tech did.

[Mistral75]

Since 2012 the mirrorless market has been roughly flat in units and increasing in ¥: less and less entry models in the product mix (challenged by smartphones), more and more high-end cameras, in particular 24x36 cameras.

[RGlasel]

Why hasn't the mirrorless market performed well? It sure looked promising a few years ago. Is it because the entry level camera sales are way down or is it that all price points for M43, APSC and FF are not doing well? Or maybe there's a glut of M43 camera models on the market?

Digital camera sales (all types) really took off about 10 years ago; more than just displacing film cameras, people who had stopped using film cameras or weren't bothering to replace the film cameras they had discovered the benefits of digital cameras (free, unlimited developing; sharing photos via email, chimping, etc.) and the camera manufacturing business boomed. 5 years ago, the boom was over.

Cell phone manufacturers have been giving away mirrorless digital cameras for about the same amount of time, but as those free phone cameras became more capable, they displaced more than three-quarters of the compact (fixed lens) digital camera business. Today the demand for standalone digital cameras is roughly evenly split between compact and interchangeable lens cameras (MILCs and DSLRs) and the overall demand is so much smaller that there is a glut of sorts for all formats. No camera manufacturer is looking to add production capacity. The camera market was always fragmented, but now some of those fragments are too small to be profitable, especially for new models that require significant investment to develop. MILC sales have been relatively flat while DSLR sales declined (and even while DSLR sales were still climbing), so in one sense the mirrorless market has performed better in relative terms, but in another sense, in spite of getting the lion's share of upgrades, new models and R&D investment over the last 5 years, the mirrorless market has underperformed.

The most mature mirrorless formats (1" or smaller, m43 and APS-C) have been the worst performers. That suggests that the novelty of larger format mirrorless cameras is what is keeping the MILC market afloat. Technological advances in MILCs are not game-changers in terms of taking pictures; they consist of narrowing the gap in usability between mirrorless and DSLRs and only at the expense of something else (battery life, compactness, price, etc.) There aren't any really compelling reasons to switch from DSLRs to MILCs and in the current environment, no format or category of standalone camera is going to show enough potential for growth to attract significant investment from manufacturers.

[y0chang]

I think the biggest problem for camera companies is this..even 5 year old DSLR are good cameras. Even if a family member has upgraded to something like say a d5600...they might buy a lens in the future...but I just don't see a lot of them making the jump to the 1.5k to 2k full frame bodies. entry dslr are like 500 bucks with 1 or 2 lens kits ...and really there is not a big reason for most families to upgrade to even the cheapest full frame camera.

[Mistral75]

Digital camera sales (all types) really took off about 10 years ago (...)

Actually they peaked about 10 years ago. Time flies...

[RGlasel]

Actually they peaked about 10 years ago. Time flies...

Go ahead, shoot me. This is what happens when I post from the hip, I should put a disclaimer in them that my statements have a 2.5 year margin of error, 19 times out of 20.

[Vaskebjorn]

I think the peak of photographic equipment sales has not even occured. The mix is different though. In my opinion the entire bottom end of dslr sales dropped out of the market and was displaced by smartphones. So dslr and even mirrorless are mainly used By professionals, “serious” hobby photographers and Pentaxians . I found a graph that might illustrate that. Phones are so ##€#@#€ convenient. You take a photo, slap a filter on it and post it on FB and you are done. You do not even have to worry about storage, as phones are massive these days and google and apple have you covered in cloudstorage. FB does the publications and voila. I just checked and even I do have 1809 photos on my phone and I do not even use it to take photos to be honest. Snapshot, yeah, but photos no.

[dadengler]

I think the biggest problem for camera companies is this..even 5 year old DSLR are good cameras...

Thank you! My K-50 is still amazingly capable.

[fsge]

There are 3 types of lies: lies, d@mn lies, and statistics - Mark Twain

Mark Twain was funny but particularly undereducated if I remember well?

---------- Post added 11-15-2019 at 09:36 AM ----------

I think the biggest problem for camera companies is this..even 5 year old DSLR are good cameras. Even if a family member has upgraded to something like say a d5600...they might buy a lens in the future...but I just don't see a lot of them making the jump to the 1.5k to 2k full frame bodies. entry dslr are like 500 bucks with 1 or 2 lens kits ...and really there is not a big reason for most families to upgrade to even the cheapest full frame camera.

Fully agree with your statement, I may add that taking pictures is also time consuming. I have less time than 10 years now that kids are here and had to adapt with a compact camera as I can not carry my DSLR all the time like I used to.

[redpit]

I think, and I might be completely wrong, that a lot of sales of the canons and nikons go to the “the guy or girl nextdoor” who wants to have a camera for general use. In my opinion this is the vulnerable market as this switches over to phones on a higher percentage.
As Pentax is already harder to get and people have to put more effort into it in to getting one it is more of a deliberate choice and makes you less prone to switching.

Just a wild idea, but hey, who am I

I like your rational and seems quite possible to be close to reality!

[Mistral75]

Go ahead, shoot me. (...)

I'd be careful not to, I'm too sharp a shooter to aim at a living creature.

Although, all things considered, a forumer...

[Mistral75]

(...) In my opinion the entire bottom end of dslr sales dropped out of the market and was displaced by smartphones. (...)

I'm not so sure since the average shipment price of DSLRs (as reported by CIPA) has constantly declined in the last few years, indicating a shift of the product mix towards entry-level cameras.

In the first nine months of 2019 this average shipment price reached ¥38,841 vs ¥44,902 in 2018 and ¥46,988 in 2017.

Such figures seem to point out that it's mostly the hobbyists (and may be some professionals too) who refrain from buying a new DSLR, in particular since Canon and Nikon entered the 24x36 mirrorless arena: they are waiting for the mirrorless vs. DSLR situation to settle. On the other hand, there seem to be plenty of soccer moms to still buy an entry-level DSLR to capture the feats of their latest and greatest.