Originally posted by philbaum Not sure if i'm correct in my conclusions, thought i would throw it out there.
This is somewhat off topic, but real FF news is pretty scarce, so I'll follow your lead.
A: Agree with this, my wife only brings out her point & shoot for vacations, family reunions and Christmas morning, everything else is recorded with her phone. She is the last P&S user that I know personally. The other camera owners I know treat it like a hobby and don't bring their equipment along unless they intend to dedicate time to taking pictures. Even my son, who can't afford car insurance because he ran up his credit card buying photographic equipment and who would like nothing better than to become a professional photojournalist, uses his smartphone for all his "social" photography.
B: There is a market for "fine art" photography, but it seems to be primarily as part of gallery/framing/art boutiques, and realistically, other than a few "known" artists, anyone, anywhere could be producing the art that the customers of these boutiques are buying as home decor. A proverbial "sweat shop in Vietnam" could flood the market if run by someone who understands this market. The stock photo market is already oversupplied with content and almost all of it is warehoused by a very small number of distributors/agencies. Which doesn't auger well for someone hoping to make a living doing this. Event (mainly weddings) and portrait photography is the only growth market left out there. Barriers to entry for new "professionals" are very low, but it is a service industry, so higher quality professionals should be able to thrive doing this. It's the main reason Pentax hit a home run with the 645Z, in the past a photographer might differentiate herself from the competition by using a Hasselblad, now there is digital MF for less than the price of a new car.
C: Don't belong to one, but the local paper ran a feature on the 50th or 75th anniversary of the local club and there was a comment that current membership is well below what it had been in the past. Not just photography clubs are suffering, service clubs have been in decline for a couple of decades as well and the net result of social media is that people socialize in person less and less.
D: Professional level equipment is priced within reach of hobbyists and hobby photographers are in it for the experience, part of which is the feel of holding a camera, using a viewfinder and building a collection of lenses and accessories. Give it five years (or less), no one will know what a Light 16 was. The hobby market isn't threatened by new ways to take photographs, it is only threatened by people dropping photography as a hobby and the rest of the world is happy enough with the free camera that came with their smartphone they aren't going to spend money to buy a new type of camera.