[Aristophanes]

I seriously doubt any post processing of photo files was being done on a fleet of utility company PCs.

As I previously wrote, I don't know of a single instance of someone replacing their home PC (the ones people put their digital photos on) with a tablet. Also, you don't need a faster PC to process bigger files... just some more RAM a bigger drive to hold them.

If businesses are substituting capital assets for utility by turning to tablets instead of PC's, it is even more likely home-based users are.

IN fact, I go into Best Buy today there are 3 sets of tables full of tablets completely blocking access to the (now) small PC area.

Go into an Apple Store and to even get tot he desktops you have to go through the iOS devices first.

RAM and hard drives are part of the PC package. Those are also stagnating and even declining in sales as both companies and homes eschew PC's for mobile OS's.

My point is pretty simple: if your RAW FF files requires a PC, and PC sales are stagnating or declining, then your potential FF market is also declining or stagnating.


And if certain developing markets will likely never buy home PC darkrooms, then the consumer camera base for those markets will have to have FF and APS-C camera products that have alternative processing.

You then have to consider not making FF because it will over-tax the computing power your users will use, or you have to consider moving processing to tablets or to the cloud in addition to in-camera. Suddenly Adobe's latest moves make more sense.

If this means a market even MORE dominated by smaller formats and resulting file sizes, then that's what will happen. Consumers may over-purchase for a phase and then the market comes back to its senses (like housing did recently). I bet there are a lot of FF purchasers lately who realize they are no better ahead with a D600 than they would have been with a D5200.

For Pentax, if the market is unable to grow for externalized reasons, this may mean FF will have to draw customers away from Canikon. Canon and Nikon each have over 50 in production FF lenses each. How will Pentax sell against that setup staring with maybe 8 lenses? Ouch.

At the most Pentax will put out a 24MP D600 clone as a replacement for their K-5. Pentax cannot count on an expanding consumer demand for FF but only a buy-up market in the main. Also, if one wants to access non-Western markets, then non-PC use has to be part of the mix. So all this emphasis on big RAW files and so on is actually shrinking the potential market base, not increasing it.

[IchabodCrane]

If businesses are substituting capital assets for utility by turning to tablets instead of PC's, it is even more likely home-based users are.

IN fact, I go into Best Buy today there are 3 sets of tables full of tablets completely blocking access to the (now) small PC area.

Go into an Apple Store and to even get tot he desktops you have to go through the iOS devices first.

RAM and hard drives are part of the PC package. Those are also stagnating and even declining in sales as both companies and homes eschew PC's for mobile OS's.

....

As I said already, I don't know a single person who has ditched their PC. Are they upgrading as frequently? No. Do they need to upgrade as often considering the acceleration of computing power (and the need for it) has come to a crawl? Of course not. That's why you see sales declining.

What happens at a utility is irrelevant. They naturally jump at any chance to get assets off their books.

[LaurenOE]

Since this thread has moved to talk about computers, I will say this. The demise of the home PC has been greatly exaggerated and whatever slump current statistics are showing, are about to take a severe upturn Why? Several things. The success of tablets and smartphones have left a crop of PCs that had to evolve and adapt and provide a value to the consumer. Tablets and smartphones are limited by their size and power requirements. Tablets and PCs are mostly relegated to consuming/receiving/playing and not really designed for real computational work.

PCs on the other hand have turned into amazing machines. The current desktop you can buy, for what you used to buy, is staggering. Lower-cost/high value hardware, with the advent of SSD drives, and ubiquitous internet connectivity, has given rise to PCs we only dreamed of owning a few years ago. PCs are not like they were just 5 years ago, and people are noticing.

As a tool, my recently built PC is finally catching up to what I wish it would do - and with the speed to match!

Another aspect of the PC resurgence is gaming. Ask any gamer about Steam, and you will hear how it has changed gaming forever.

If the argument/correlation for DSLRs is tied to PCs, then there is a bright future ahead for high end PCs and DSLRs.

[Kunzite]

If businesses are substituting capital assets for utility by turning to tablets instead of PC's, it is even more likely home-based users are.

Doesn't it depends on the usage? A home-based user who's only browsing the web, watching movies and playing games on his console could very well replace a PC with a tablet; but a photography enthusiast which needs to process and store lots of images, less so.

My point is pretty simple: if your RAW FF files requires a PC, and PC sales are stagnating or declining, then your potential FF market is also declining or stagnating.

Yes, but you can't show there is a link between PC sales trends and the FF camera market. Because there isn't.

You then have to consider not making FF because it will over-tax the computing power your users will use, or you have to consider moving processing to tablets or to the cloud in addition to in-camera. Suddenly Adobe's latest moves make more sense.

Sounds just like an excuse to promote the idea that Pentax should stay away from FF DSLRs. Not very convincing, IMO... I'd like to see Canon, Nikon or Sony giving up on FF because of this.

If this means a market even MORE dominated by smaller formats and resulting file sizes, then that's what will happen.

In the meantime, the resolution is increasing steadily, and the higher margins are in the more advanced products.

For Pentax, if the market is unable to grow for externalized reasons, this may mean FF will have to draw customers away from Canikon. Canon and Nikon each have over 50 in production FF lenses each. How will Pentax sell against that setup staring with maybe 8 lenses? Ouch.

There will be no new FF customers, at all? Doubtful; the camera market is not made from the very same people, buying cameras each year.
Camera manufacturers were able to start new systems with less than 8 lenses.

At the most Pentax will put out a 24MP D600 clone as a replacement for their K-5. Pentax cannot count on an expanding consumer demand for FF but only a buy-up market in the main. Also, if one wants to access non-Western markets, then non-PC use has to be part of the mix. So all this emphasis on big RAW files and so on is actually shrinking the potential market base, not increasing it.

Wrong, Pentax can do better than a 24MP D600 clone, and it wouldn't be a replacement for the K-5.

[Aristophanes]

Doesn't it depends on the usage? A home-based user who's only browsing the web, watching movies and playing games on his console could very well replace a PC with a tablet; but a photography enthusiast which needs to process and store lots of images, less so.

Driving DSLR sales in North America is the soccer Mom and Dad.

Are they going to revamp their computer just to buy a home darkroom and keep the DSLR, or are they going to admit they really need a tablet next they'll adjust their camera needs to that reality.

It would be utter foolishness for Pentax to assume that people who buy FF cameras and larger file sizes are also going to throw more disposable income at PC's. Market data says they are not,so DSLR sales will follow that trend or be forced to make a break from the home PC darkroom.

Sounds just like an excuse to promote the idea that Pentax should stay away from FF DSLRs. Not very convincing, IMO... I'd like to see Canon, Nikon or Sony giving up on FF because of this.

It means that the FF market can only grow as as a subset of the overall consumer electronics market. It's like saying you'll sell more speakers even if audio units themselves are in steep decline. Or tires if bicycle sales decline.

What we do see in the latest data is a strong slowdown in camera sales, and one of the oft-quoted reasons is smartphones; but that is not necessarily causal in a replacement context. What the data seems to say is that the real slowdown is caused by the inability of the current cameras to play nice with the cloud and how most people are now using their devices.

This will reverberate all the way up the chain. People will hesitate to blow $2,000 on FF DSLR's not just form Pentax but form any company that does not drive the finished image directly to the consumption medium. Saturation and model confusion are key contributors to the overall slowdown (not tsunamis) but the real drag is the Japanese company's inability to grasp the new sharing system for images.

Those who wish to tinker with RAW and do extensive PP are relegating hem, and their camera sales, to the same place the tiny, niche, hobby darkroom crowd went in the days of film. If the main place to discuss the joys of FF and PP are PF and RFF and FredMiranda, and not Facebook, Flickr, etc. you have a market reach problem.

In the meantime, the resolution is increasing steadily, and the higher margins are in the more advanced products.

And lower gross revenues because smartphones ate your lunch. That's what's happening here. IN the long run that's less $$$'s to camera makers and more to Android and Apple, Samsung, and HTC.

There will be no new FF customers, at all? Doubtful; the camera market is not made from the very same people, buying cameras each year.
Camera manufacturers were able to start new systems with less than 8 lenses.

The FF market cannot defy the market rules here PC's can no longer be counted on to facilitate the market for your FF camera. Buy a Pentax FF and get a Dell for free?

Wrong, Pentax can do better than a 24MP D600 clone, and it wouldn't be a replacement for the K-5.

Not at the price Pentax requires to sell any volume at all.

FF is not a product line a company can lose money on for years to eventually make a profit...maybe. Sony tried originally and lost their shirt and went 2 years with no FF production as a result.

Volume to price is what will drive any Pentax FF effort. They have no pro speedlight system, no L-glass, no tethering, no pro network, sub-par warranty, and no advanced support system, and virtually no major marketing system. Pentax is a consumer company active mostly in Asian markets where PC penetration is far, far below Western levels and being bypassed by mobile OS investments. So you will see a consumer level product aimed at those markets. By the time Pentax puts out their D600 equivalent it will be close to the Nikon D600 Mk II.

[Aristophanes]

Since this thread has moved to talk about computers, I will say this. The demise of the home PC has been greatly exaggerated and whatever slump current statistics are showing, are about to take a severe upturn Why? Several things. The success of tablets and smartphones have left a crop of PCs that had to evolve and adapt and provide a value to the consumer. Tablets and smartphones are limited by their size and power requirements. Tablets and PCs are mostly relegated to consuming/receiving/playing and not really designed for real computational work

And consumers have evaluated their time and home economics and realized that, aside from the occasional home budget spreadsheet, etc. they no longer need a dedicated productivity home computer. They consume photos on Facebook. What will be required is a DSLR-to-Facebook interface with no home PC darkroom intermediary investment required.

The market data shows a very strong shift away from home PC's and discretionary $$'s shifting strongly to mobile OS devices. For many a home PC upgrade may never occur or never happen in the first place at all. Why waste the money on a "computational device" when 90% of the use a tablet can do. For the price of one PC I can still buy 3-5 tablets.

[LaurenOE]

And consumers have evaluated their time and home economics and realized that, aside from the occasional home budget spreadsheet, etc. they no longer need a dedicated productivity home computer. They consume photos on Facebook. What will be required is a DSLR-to-Facebook interface with no home PC darkroom intermediary investment required.

The market data shows a very strong shift away from home PC's and discretionary $$'s shifting strongly to mobile OS devices. For many a home PC upgrade may never occur or never happen in the first place at all. Why waste the money on a "computational device" when 90% of the use a tablet can do. For the price of one PC I can still buy 3-5 tablets.

I don't doubt that current market data shows this. I don't think marketers are tracking correct data.

What I am saying is that PCs and their development have not stood idle.
While "marketers" look for current trends and such, the tools have evolved in such a strong way, that new techniques and uses for PCs are coming into their own.

I count myself on the cutting edge, as I seem to always be 2 -3 years ahead of what others seem to do. I've gone through smartphones/tablets/Gaming consoles/The Cloud - you name it. I'm not a hipster who just buys stuff. I just go with the best tool.

Tablets are great for what they do.
Smartphones are great for what they do.
PCs have been maligned as being "obsolete" and they are far from it.

Digital darkroom or not.

In someway, I suppose I am happy that folks are going towards phone-photography and tablets. It leaves a margin that did not exist before, where I can once again think about making money in Photography.

The more iPhone reporters that need to get closer to Police/events to record their activities - and get arrested - the more the need for large bright lenses to keep distance will be in demand.

When Facebook/YouTube/Vimeo become too restrictive on content, I will look to open up my firewall and configure specific ports to broadcast directly from my own PC.

When websites become overrun with too many advertisements from hosting companies, I will host my own sites from a PC running Linux.

When a blog I write needs to be uncensored is when I will use my own PC to host it.

When I need to......(fill in the blanks)...a PC will provide the technical solution.

Phones and Tablets are consuming devices and sure, for the majority of folks will serve them fine.

Personally I think the future for Photographers will align with PCs and Fauxtographers the rest.

[Kunzite]

Driving DSLR sales in North America is the soccer Mom and Dad.

Are they going to revamp their computer just to buy a home darkroom and keep the DSLR, or are they going to admit they really need a tablet next they'll adjust their camera needs to that reality.

It would be utter foolishness for Pentax to assume that people who buy FF cameras and larger file sizes are also going to throw more disposable income at PC's. Market data says they are not,so DSLR sales will follow that trend or be forced to make a break from the home PC darkroom.

Market data? You have no market data to support your claim.
And people who want to process/store their RAW images would not do it on a tablet. They would do it on a PC, because they need to, while not caring about your precious trends.

It means that the FF market can only grow as as a subset of the overall consumer electronics market. It's like saying you'll sell more speakers even if audio units themselves are in steep decline. Or tires if bicycle sales decline.

Do you even know the PC sales in 2012 surpassed the total camera sales, more than 3 times? Which means, 20 times the total DSLRs. Aren't 20 PCs for each DSLR enough for you?

What we do see in the latest data is a strong slowdown in camera sales, and one of the oft-quoted reasons is smartphones; but that is not necessarily causal in a replacement context. What the data seems to say is that the real slowdown is caused by the inability of the current cameras to play nice with the cloud and how most people are now using their devices.

This is irrelevant, as the camera affected are the compacts. There's quite a difference between a FF DSLR and a compact, you know?

And lower gross revenues because smartphones ate your lunch. That's what's happening here. IN the long run that's less $$$'s to camera makers and more to Android and Apple, Samsung, and HTC.

Smartphones vs. FF DSLRs... yeah, right.

The FF market cannot defy the market rules here PC's can no longer be counted on to facilitate the market for your FF camera. Buy a Pentax FF and get a Dell for free?

Wrong. And people who needs a PC will buy one.

Volume to price is what will drive any Pentax FF effort. They have no pro speedlight system, no L-glass, no tethering, no pro network, sub-par warranty, and no advanced support system, and virtually no major marketing system. Pentax is a consumer company active mostly in Asian markets where PC penetration is far, far below Western levels and being bypassed by mobile OS investments. So you will see a consumer level product aimed at those markets. By the time Pentax puts out their D600 equivalent it will be close to the Nikon D600 Mk II.

What are you saying, that they should give up and not go higher than the K-5II?
And you insist again that Pentax would do a D600 equivalent...

[Aristophanes]

And people who needs a PC will buy one.

And people who need a camera may not buy a PC. That's a lost sale.

People should not "need" a PC to buy a camera. That's like saying you need a darkroom to buy a film camera.

Link the camera purchase to the PC and your future camera sales will start to decline. Higher-end camera are far too tied to PC use and it's going to hurt. In fact, it already has. Even MS is trying to transition users away from desktop PC's. The entire computing industry is rationalizing along more discrete lines where application is tied to appropriate processing power with networking holding the storage and accessibility. Unfortunately for the camera industry, those big RAW files require the opposite. That makes the big file market more and more niche, relegated to hobbyists who like to spend time doing PP (the new darkroom).

What happened to P&S cameras will happen to DSLR's. It's a reason why mirrorless sales have stalled as well....the lack of connectivity, lack of an easy transition from shot to consumed image. The market and demand for PP is actually going down...not up. Look at Adobe. They are dumping their casual PP base in PS precisely because the market is too small to support it. You have no idea how niche and tiny the community of LR and Aperture and similar users is. I'm a tester for one of those software groups and the user base is astonishingly small in reality. I suspect less than 10% of all DSLR users actually process RAW. By far the vast majority of photos taken on DSLR's are done in JPEG. And those JPEG shooters drive the DSLR market. If they took the JPEG engines out of the cameras and made the usable only if you had a PC with a RAW processor the DSLR market would crash.

From 3 days ago:

KLA-Tencor forecasts weak revenue as PC sales slump | Reuters

Hunders more stories like that. And businesses are by far the largest purchaser of PC's.

[Kunzite]

And because businesses, which (mostly) don't do image processing, won't buy as many PCs as in the past, the FF DSLRs are doomed? Really?

[rawr]

For many a home PC upgrade may never occur or never happen in the first place at all. Why waste the money on a "computational device" when 90% of the use a tablet can do. For the price of one PC I can still buy 3-5 tablets.

Try running Lightroom on a tablet. Or a decent game. Or storing all your gigabytes of MP4's and MP3's and furry porn on a tablet.

[dane.dawg]

Aristophanes, my new PC cost me 400.00 to build in December..
I5 processor, 8gb ram, 1.5tb drive and 1gb graphics card.
I know its not much but its enough to run two screens and any photo software I need..

[Uluru]

And because businesses, which (mostly) don't do image processing, won't buy as many PCs as in the past, the FF DSLRs are doomed? Really?

Of course not. With so called 'reviewer websites' all around, judging JPEG output from a mid-range DSLRs, and making out of it a "make or break it" deal, and have no clue how to pull out maximum from a RAW file, we know the 'art of photography' has gone beyond absurdity. It's ridiculous, and what such reviewers are talking about isn't photography at all — it is Pointless and Shoot mentality.

We live in a dumbed down world, and Aristophanes is aware of it, so that is why I think he says what he says above.
But we shouldn't fall for dumbness. If we kill RAW by going pointless and shoot, we could as well burn all the film negatives from museums and image libraries around the globe.

[Aristophanes]

Aristophanes, my new PC cost me 400.00 to build in December..
I5 processor, 8gb ram, 1.5tb drive and 1gb graphics card.
I know its not much but its enough to run two screens and any photo software I need..

You just made my point.

If PC's have got so much cheaper and more powerful, how come prices are falling and demand is down, down, down?

Reason: Even at $400 they're not needed. A desktop PC ties you down to a location and doesn't fit well with the mobile, networked lifestyle. Google, Apple, and Microsoft created and are playing the market towards a post-PC world and DSLR cameras have to go there as well. Or sales will stagnate into the same niche as the home darkroom crowd.

Furthermore, a 1.5TB hard drive with a D800 and Photoshop isn't going to last you long. So that's more expense for more storage, and if you're really into it you now need to add offsite storage, but Flickr has 1TB for free...but it's all JPEG...so why did I just spend all that time and money on RAW PP? And on it goes....

So you go on a 1 week cruise and your friend brings their smartphone and you bring your DSLR. Your friend updates the grandkids everyday on FB with his shots at each port of call via ubiquitous wi-fi, but you, lugging your FF DSLR are a week late even seeing them on the big screen, and to top it all off you have to plunk down and be part of a "workflow" (who wants to work?) just to get your images viewable. And you have to add the amortized cost of the $400 PC in. Was it all worth it? In this case, which is the smarter, superior tech?

For the same reason people are not buying new PC's, they are stalling on camera purchases. If you are Pentax you need to watch this carefully. If you go in on the wrong end-user model you are fried. The system camera market is beginning a stall as sticker shock kicks in on the high-end (lots of people dumping FF cameras), the size factor weighs in, and the portable camera has non-portable image files starts to weigh down the user experience.

Sales are sliding because the ability to enjoy and share the photos from systems cameras has not kept up.

[Digitalis]

For many a home PC upgrade may never occur or never happen in the first place at all. Why waste the money on a "computational device" when 90% of the use a tablet can do. For the price of one PC I can still buy 3-5 tablets.

If you are going to spend as much as it would to own 3~5 tablet PC's you aren't doing it right. My PC systems and NAS systems cost a considerable amount of money - but it is only an initial investment. Some components are able to be of service for years after you buy them and are able to survive multiple upgrades without becoming a bottleneck to system performance*. Then there is any additional hardware, Graphics tablets, Networking infrastructure, External storage, and the monitor you work with. With PC's there is a level of customisation that Tablet PCs simply do not have. Tablet PC's, like laptops are stuck with the technology they were built with - PCs and to a lesser extent, MAC's can be changed or completely overhauled to suit changing requirements. And they will change - of that we can all be certain.

1.5TB hard drive with a D800 and Photoshop isn't going to last you long

I agree - Personally I use an 8 bay DROBO NAS for keeping my images, connected through ethernet transfer speeds are excellent and hardware monitoring and reliability is managed through the device internally. I usually store the images that i'm working on contained on a RAID mirrored 4TB volume. I transfer the RAW images to NAS when I have finished working on the files.

*though the CPU,RAM, and MOBO are by far the most important aspects in any upgrade - these three items simply have to be at least on equal footing with each other in terms of I/O capabilities.