[surfar]

Sony camera menus drive me crazy and layouts they use.

The new menu came with the A7s3 but wasnt included in A7c.From what Ive read the new menu will be included in all future $ony bodies.

Canon has a lot of appeal in the R5/6. I do think the Z6/7ii is just as competitive though.

Dont back the wrong horse in the race,Canon will catch and overtake $ony in FF M/L.The lenses coming next year will see to that.Nikon arent out of the race but have a lot of ground to make up.

[Rondec]

Nikon is just fourth to the MILC full frame party and that's a tough spot to be in. Their cameras are fine, but they have done little to stand out from the others in the crowd.

Sony was first and Canon has some unusual lenses that stand out. It is expensive to develop new MILC cameras and at the end of the day if you continue to lose market share, you probably are best bumping your prices up and just settling for a smaller piece of the pie, but not losing money.

[luftfluss]

Poor Nikon. They are doing a good job with their new products and it still may not be enough.

[clackers]

Poor Nikon. They are doing a good job with their new products and it still may not be enough.

Yes, you could've said the same of Olympus - hit and miss, but much of it was good!

[Rondec]

Yes, you could've said the same of Olympus - hit and miss, but much of it was good!

I think different issues though, not? With Olympus, they tied themselves to a small sensor size and they rode it about as far as they could. The last ten years they couldn't turn a profit on their cameras -- people bought them, just not for prices that made revenue on the camera side.

Nikon, on the other hand, was late to the mirrorless party and launched a bunch of cameras at the worst possible time. They're too big to a make a go of it selling a fraction of the number of cameras as before and the process of launching their mirrorless lines had to take quite an investment in R and D. And how do they stand out from Sony, except with regard to ergonomics and their 58mm 0.95 (which at 8,000 dollars isn't too much of a draw)? Canon has created a whole line up of lenses that are unusual and stand out from Sony's.

I am sure Nikon will continue, but they may be a shell of their former glory by the end of the decade.

[surfar]

Nikon is just fourth to the MILC full frame party and that's a tough spot to be in.

Nikon were 2nd through the gate to the FF Party.Canon followed closely after and Panasonic were fourth in 2019.Nikon have probably sold more FF than Panasonic.

---------- Post added 11-13-20 at 11:45 PM ----------

Nikon, on the other hand, was late to the mirrorless party

They got to the M/L party same year as Pentax and Fuji.

[Mistral75]

Nikon were 2nd through the gate to the Party.Canon followed closely after and Panasonic were fourth in 2019.Nikon have probably sold more FF than Panasonic.

1. Sony (Alpha 7 and Alpha 7R, September 2013)
2. Leica (SL Typ 601, October 2015)
3. Nikon (Z 6 and Z 7, 23 August 2018)
4. Canon (EOS R, 5 September 2018)
5. Panasonic (Lumix DC-S1 and DC-S1R, February 2019)
6. Sigma (fp, July 2019)

[Rondec]

Nikon were 2nd through the gate to the FF Party.Canon followed closely after and Panasonic were fourth in 2019.Nikon have probably sold more FF than Panasonic.

---------- Post added 11-13-20 at 11:45 PM ----------



They got to the M/L party same year as Pentax and Fuji.

Canon and Nikon were essentially tied, but as mentioned, Canon's approach was very different.

As far as Panasonic goes, it really feels like they are comfortable being a niche player and gradually growing in their own way. For Nikon, camera sales are who they are and if those don't increase, they are in a lot of trouble.

But I'm not an analyst. Mistral75 has much more useful information than my speculations.

[ChristianRock]

As far as Panasonic goes, it really feels like they are comfortable being a niche player and gradually growing in their own way.

I've always been curious to find out if Panasonic ever made money from their camera/lenses business, since Olympus has never made and as far as I know Olympus has always had a larger market share than Panasonic...

[surfar]

Leica (SL Typ 601, October 2015)

Yes,but I specifically excluded them due to the fact they are LEICA!(that I dont lika).

[Rondec]

I've always been curious to find out if Panasonic ever made money from their camera/lenses business, since Olympus has never made and as far as I know Olympus has always had a larger market share than Panasonic...

Maybe Mistral has some input. They always have had a good name as the best video oriented of the ILCs. People would often recommend picking up a Panasonic as a cheap camera that would offer high quality video. As to whether that translated to a profit, I have no idea.

[Mistral75]

Maybe Mistral has some input. (...)

Sorry, I don't.

Cameras and lenses are part of the Smart Life Network business, of which TVs are the main sales and profit driver, itself included in the huge Appliances segment.

Profitability is only available for Appliances, not even Smart Life Network.

To give you an idea of the size of the different businesses, during the last quarter the revenue of Appliances amounted to ¥646bn and the revenue of Smart Life Network to ¥122bn whereas the revenue generated by Canon on the one hand, Sony on the other hand, with their still and video cameras and interchangeable lenses amounted to ca. ¥90bn.

Then there was Nikon (¥39bn), Fujifilm (¥16bn) and Olympus (¥8bn). Panasonic shipping roughly 25% less cameras than Olympus (possibly with a slightly higher unit price), good luck with finding profitability data for a business that might have represented 0.35% of the group's revenue during the last quarter...

[LeeRunge]

Nikon is just fourth to the MILC full frame party and that's a tough spot to be in. Their cameras are fine, but they have done little to stand out from the others in the crowd.

Sony was first and Canon has some unusual lenses that stand out. It is expensive to develop new MILC cameras and at the end of the day if you continue to lose market share, you probably are best bumping your prices up and just settling for a smaller piece of the pie, but not losing money.

The luminous landscape article made a pretty good point about Nikon’s standing with mirrorless. They sold 280,000 Z6 and Z7’s all of which are pretty expensive 2-3k cameras. Sony/Olumpus and Fuji have a array of cameras that are “mirrorless” some like the A6000 are pretty inexpensive. So of course they’ll sell a bunch of those and have higher numbers. I wonder how many A7iii’s sold vs Z6’s for example.

We’ll see very quick in the next few years if Nikon manages to sell a bunch of Z cameras or if people will just hold off and use the DSLR’s they have for a long time. Keep in mind the Z camera aren’t that attractive if you have a D850/780 already. I saw an article the other day that said Nikon should have just gone the D780 route and developed mirrorless advantages through live view, or having a hybrid display like x100’s and stuck with DSLR to be different. I kind of think that would have been a good route to go and it would have cost them far less not having to develop lenses. The D850 or pro body D6 are not lacking in Autofocus compared to mirrorless anyway, so just add that into liveview like the 780 and you have both worlds. (780 has Z6 AF in liveview, it’s just as fast. )

So when they say Nikon’s not doing well I would say keep in mind why that’s the case. I have a D750 and it’s hard to really find a reason to upgrade other than it looks fun to try a mirrorless system? (Maybe for the sync IBIS?) The images will be the same. Honestly the D780 looks like a good compromise with the super fast liveview.

---------- Post added 11-13-2020 at 12:46 PM ----------

Yes, you could've said the same of Olympus - hit and miss, but much of it was good!

Yes, OMD’s are really great cameras to shoot with. I think they just got stuck in the middle with people opting into FF or larger sensors because the EM1’s were pretty expensive, as were the lenses. The compact size was only an advantage compared to the FF mirrorless in the OMD EM5/10 which didn’t have all the performance of the 1. So in that sense they weren’t attractive.

The EM 5/10 with some of the primes are extremely compact. But the pro lenses are not really much smaller in many cases then FF mirrorless giving up it’s advantage. Although the telephotos were.

Livebulb/Livecomp and Live composite as well as pro capture were all extremely useful modes unique to Olympus.

Nikon is sink or swim in the coming few years if they can get traction with the Z cameras. Despite the D850 and 780 being excellent DSLR’s they are stuck with half the market and growing only considering mirrorless at this point and many Nikon users with those mentioned cameras have no reason to upgrade. So it’s a pickle for them.

[ChristianRock]

Panasonic shipping roughly 25% less cameras than Olympus (possibly with a slightly higher unit price)

Coming to think of it, the Panasonic average price is probably a lot higher than Olympus - the little cheap E-PL9 and E-PL10 outsell the rest of the Olympus line by a large margin (from what I could tell). The E-M10 line does alright as well, but they have a huge problem with selling their more expensive cameras, and that is part of their issue - that is where their higher margins would come from.
Panasonic seems to sell more of the more premium bodies due to their focus on video.

Of course I was just curious, to have an idea if Panasonic would stay in M4/3 especially, in the long term. Just a curiosity...

...in fact it's just really none of my business.

[texandrews]

With respect to Nikon and Panny, above....

I think it's very important to understand the difference between Panny, Sony, even Ricoh, and a company like Nikon. Nikon is mostly an imaging/optics company. Imaging and optics must work for them.

Panny and Sony are huge and very diversified. They can probably afford to run their non-video imaging at modest losses or break even levels and still be happy, just because they are keeping their hand in an important tech field. Ricoh's a bit more of a question, but they seem to be OK as for now.

Canon's market share and printers help them stay afloat. Nikon's situation seems to me to be the dodgiest. If it gets dire, I'm certain they'll get bought, probably by some other more diversified company---so I don't think we'll see them disappear.

Oly, unfortunately, might.