[RGlasel]

One swallow does not make a summer

Very true and I'll start with the first anomaly, production versus shipments of MILCs. Year over year, January production is +7% in units, +36% in value, shipments are -15% in units, +12% in value. If this was a trend, mirrorless manufacturers would have a terrible trend of oversupply (January 2018 was 6% of total 2018 MILC production, so January 2019's surplus of 50,638 MILC's would be almost 850,000 surplus MILCs by the end of 2019!) Even stranger, the average value of shipped MILCs in January was 84,390 Yen and the average value of produced MILCs was only 55,937 Yen. In fact, even though manufacturers built 50,638 more MILCs than they shipped, the value of shipments was almost 38 billion Yen more than the value of production. Not only are they building too many cameras, but they are building cheaper ones when everyone wants more expensive ones.

This is the first year that CIPA will break out China from the rest of Asia, but if January stats are any indication, China is a very small tiger. Of total shipments of all digital still cameras in January, China accounted for 9%, Japan alone accounted for 15% and all of Asia (including Japan) accounted for almost 42%. It isn't because of lower personal income, the average value of cameras shipped to the Chinese market is 53,493 Yen, the global average is 41,382 Yen. Crazy, rich Chinese? By the same measure, Europeans are the poorest, with an average value of 29,002 Yen.

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Last edited by RGlasel; 03-01-2019 at 08:18 AM. Reason: sentence about total value of MILC shipments compared to production was poorly worded

[ThorSanchez]

What if... they rather come up with a compact FF body with high MP count (e.g. 50 - so that crop mode mp count would be close enough to 24)? Wouldn’t that serve those with lots of crop lenses just as well as a “K-3 iii”, and in addition help them start migrating to FF?

I suppose if they came up with a FF camera with a good crop mode that offers the pixel density of the K-3 and the high ISO performance of the KP that would be good. Along with a $1000ish price, and the size and frame rate and other features of the K-3. And maybe some assurances that all new lenses won't weigh a kilo and have 82mm filter threads.

I plan on sticking with APS-C because it has features you can't get in FF, like price, and size, and throughput and price, and I don't have to buy a new computer to process the huge files. And price. And size.

---------- Post added 03-01-19 at 10:19 AM ----------

I also think they have something up their sleeve. I just do not believe they would develop and release the DFA*70-200/2.8, DFA*50/1.4 and DA*11-18/2.8 and rest on the (D800) K-1 and KP. They keep talking about lenses developed for future sensor resolution. Does that sound like they’re not planning a super camera - or series of cameras?

I'm sure the engineering team has all kinds of plans for all kinds of awesome stuff. But how much of that does Ricoh management have the intent and resources to bring to market in a timely fashion?

[Larrymc]

They could, well... you know... tell us what they're working on. Give us a plan. Tell us that our investment in a rugged, feature-packed APS-C camera line was a good choice not only now but in the future. That we'll be able to continue this with the additions of features X, Y, and Z in the next year.

Because what I have now is a four-year old K-3ii that was a slight upgrade from a six-year-old K-3 that has never been replaced and all we have are promises that sometime in the future we're going to have something really great. Promise. Seriously. It'll be awesome. It's right around the corner, only a year, maybe a year and a half or so. Probably. Don't quote me on that.

Sorry about the whining.

My friend, you need to get your facts straight. The K-3 was first announced on 7 October 2013 and the K-3II was announced on 22 April 2015 . I don't think either was in the hands of any customers on announcement date. So lets not exaggerate an already too long a period between bodies to make your point.

Whinning is OK if thats what you want to do.

[Mistral75]

Very true and I'll start with the first anomaly, production versus shipments of MILCs. Year over year, January production is +7% in units, +36% in value, shipments are -15% in units, +12% in value. If this was a trend, (...)

It's definitely a trend, in the sense it's something one can observe each year in January: production has to catch-up after the holidays.

(...) Even stranger, the average value of shipped MILCs in January was 84,390 Yen and the average value of produced MILCs was only 55,937 Yen. (...)

You'll notice the same discrepancy each month for any and all categories: compact cameras, DSLRs, mirrorless cameras and lenses. That's because the reference price is not the same for production and for shipments. Production price is equal to the cost of goods sold plus a mark-up, shipment price is close to the Ex Works Incoterm and therefore higher.

[reh321]

They could, well... you know... tell us what they're working on. Give us a plan. Tell us that our investment in a rugged, feature-packed APS-C camera line was a good choice not only now but in the future. That we'll be able to continue this with the additions of features X, Y, and Z in the next year.

Because what I have now is a four-year old K-3ii that was a slight upgrade from a six-year-old K-3 that has never been replaced and all we have are promises that sometime in the future we're going to have something really great. Promise. Seriously. It'll be awesome. It's right around the corner, only a year, maybe a year and a half or so. Probably. Don't quote me on that.

Sorry about the whining.

Calendar age is not the question - if a ten year-old camera worked just as well as a new camera, then there would be no reason to purchase the new one.
The discussion needs to be about capability - what does the four-year-old camera not do that you expect from the one to be delivered next year {when the K-3ii will then be a five year old camera}

To be perfectly honest, I plan to still be using my KP five years from now, when the design will be seven years old, because I don't foresee my needing anything that it doesn't deliver.

[monochrome]

My friend, you need to get your facts straight. The K-3 was first announced on 7 October 2013 and the K-3II was announced on 22 April 2015 . I don't think either was in the hands of any customers on announcement date. So lets not exaggerate an already too long a period between bodies to make your point.

Whinning is OK if thats what you want to do.

I received my K-3 12/01/2013. I was early, but not first day of shipments. 645z was released in 2014. K-3ll was released mid-2015. I sold my K-3 a few weeks after I got my K-1, which was early March, 2016. Since then (3 years) RIcoh has released K-70, KP and K-1ll.

So in 5 1/2 years RIcoh has released 6 dSLR’s plus the GRll, GRlll, 3 Thetas and several rugged compacts. I don’t see the problem.

I’m selling stuff to buy new stuff, I think I’m going to buy the new Theta.

[Larrymc]

Very true and I'll start with the first anomaly, production versus shipments of MILCs. Year over year, January production is +7% in units, +36% in value, shipments are -15% in units, +12% in value. If this was a trend, mirrorless manufacturers would have a terrible trend of oversupply (January 2018 was 6% of total 2018 MILC production, so January 2019's surplus of 50,638 MILC's would be almost 850,000 surplus MILCs by the end of 2019!) Even stranger, the average value of shipped MILCs in January was 84,390 Yen and the average value of produced MILCs was only 55,937 Yen. In fact, even though manufacturers built 50,638 more MILCs than they shipped, the value of shipments was almost 38 billion Yen more than the value of production. Not only are they building too many cameras, but they are building cheaper ones when everyone wants more expensive ones.

This is the first year that CIPA will break out China from the rest of Asia, but if January stats are any indication, China is a very small tiger. Of total shipments of all digital still cameras in January, China accounted for 9%, Japan alone accounted for 15% and all of Asia (including Japan) accounted for almost 42%. It isn't because of lower personal income, the average value of cameras shipped to the Chinese market is 53,493 Yen, the global average is 41,382 Yen. Crazy, rich Chinese? By the same measure, Europeans are the poorest, with an average value of 29,002 Yen.

Sounds like there may be some MILC bargains in the not too distant future.

[RonHendriks1966]

Calendar age is not the question - if a ten year-old camera worked just as well as a new camera, then there would be no reason to purchase the new one.
The discussion needs to be about capability - what does the four-year-old camera not do that you expect from the one to be delivered next year {when the K-3ii will then be a five year old camera}

To be perfectly honest, I plan to still be using my KP five years from now, when the design will be seven years old, because I don't foresee my needing anything that it doesn't deliver.

The output of the KP (noise and so on) is much better then from the K-3. So yes there is much to gain.

[eddie1960]

My friend, you need to get your facts straight. The K-3 was first announced on 7 October 2013 and the K-3II was announced on 22 April 2015 . I don't think either was in the hands of any customers on announcement date. So lets not exaggerate an already too long a period between bodies to make your point.



Whinning is OK if thats what you want to do.

when i made my move to fuji the k3 was the flagship fall 2014. no ff. i had suffered a breakin that facilitated the move. i bought an xt1 (about same age as k3) since there has been the xt2 the xh1 and the xt3 . (and quite a large line of other bodies) if the k1 was in shops i may have stayed but no regrets now on apsc front . i still get the ff temptation occasionally but now am really drawn to medium format so if i was to add or change that would be my direction . it is tempting to sell everything and put together a 3 lens mediim format kit .. (if i have another breaking i may well do that )

[Gianclaudio]

Since then (3 years) RIcoh has released K-70, KP and K-1ll.

So in 5 1/2 years RIcoh has released 6 dSLR’s plus the GRll, GRlll, 3 Thetas and several rugged compacts. I don’t see the problem.

I’m selling stuff to buy new stuff, I think I’m going to buy the new Theta.

Don't forget the K-S2.....

[RGlasel]

You'll notice the same discrepancy each month for any and all categories: compact cameras, DSLRs, mirrorless cameras and lenses. That's because the reference price is not the same for production and for shipments.

I was intending to use this as an example of how misleading statistics can be without reference, but I didn't say that was my intent, so my bad. I did some more study and this "mark-up" is also not consistent when looking at only one month. The markup for all cameras declined from 34.3% in Jan. '18 to 25.6% in Jan. '19, even though average value per unit shipped increased 6.5%. If I look at MILCs, markup increased slightly from 31.5% to 33.7%, but average value ballooned by 31.6%. In other words, looking only at CIPA stats, it became much more expensive to manufacture cameras in January 2019 compared to January 2019, even when the technology isn't changing (markup for DSLRs declined to 28.8% from 37.6%, in spite of a 2.3% price increase) .


Because CIPA's stats represent almost all of the total population of new cameras, every statistic comes with a very high probability, even though the period being sampled only represents one-seventeenth of the period being analysed (a full calendar year). The point I am trying to make is that this statistical validity has absolutely no practical validity. Unless one has more information (such as a particular manufacturer's product mix, for both production and shipments) January's statistics are meaningless because they fail so many tests for reasonableness.

it's something one can observe each year in January: production has to catch-up after the holidays.

In general, yes, in detail, no. Total camera production in Jan '19 exceeded shipments by 6.4%, in Jan '18 by only 2.5%. For DSLRs, shipments exceeded production by 0.25% (810 cameras) in Jan '19, in Jan. '18 the opposite occured with production exceeding shipments by 2.6%. For MILCs, Jan. '19 production exceeded shipments by 18.6%, Jan. '18 the opposite occured, shipments exceeded production by 2.1%. If we had a breakdown by model for every manufacturer, these discrepancies with common sense could be explained, but only CIPA staff have that information and if that level of detail ever became available outside of CIPA staff, CIPA members would stop contributing their data.

Yet Another Postscript: I used "markup" because that is what it is (the difference between the "trade" price and the "out the factory door" price), but I calculated it the same as calculating margin. In other words, the result is the ratio between the difference in prices and the "trade" price. For a retailler, 50% markup is the same as 33% margin, but manufacturers are selling to distributors who then apply their own markups and the distributors' customers apply markups, so whatever this CIPA markup is, the manufacturers aren't getting it. Did anyone tell me that the value of production given by CIPA is the "out the factory door" price? No, but there has to be some consistency and suggested retail pricing and trade channel discounts are much more widely disseminated (and vary less between manufacturers) than internal cost accounting. Also, I correlated changes in this markup ratio to changes in manufacturing costs, which isn't necessarily the case, but trade channel discounts don't change dramatically (quite the opposite, in fact), so whatever is being observed here is a result of changes in product mix (both in production and shipments), which we have no way of knowing.

For the benefit of anyone who is able to make all the way through my post, the bottom line is that CIPA's statistics for January 2019 are meaningless without further data.

[reh321]

What if... they rather come up with a compact FF body with high MP count (e.g. 50 - so that crop mode mp count would be close enough to 24)? Wouldn’t that serve those with lots of crop lenses just as well as a “K-3 iii”, and in addition help them start migrating to FF?

My original idea was to make use of the engineering practice "re-use" to quickly implement something by taking pieces from already-existing products.

[eddie1960]

Is there something wrong with what you have? I mean, when I got my KP it was the greatest thing ever. Has anything changed in two years or am I just jonesing for a new toy?

this is a trap we all fall in wanting latest greatest . for last 4.5 years I have used mostly my XT1 and a used Xpro I acquired along the way. I did pick up an infrared model but it is rather specialized . last year i picked up around this time a used X100T since the series was what initially drew me to fuji when i was shopping to replace my stolen gear. I ended up using it almost exclusively for the last year. when they launched some of the newer items things started dropping in price and i was tempted by and xpro2 and an xe3 , both lovely in their own right and i will eliminate the older ones, , I may also sell on the x100 and the xe3 and get the smaller prime set and go back to 1 body for a while,. while a more advanced body etc is nice good glass has had more impact on my shooting than new camera features . If I still shot pentax i would be bankrupting myself with the new lenses not looking for more bodies (the DFA8 and new DA*50 make me itch to run a second system lol, even though my current lenses are pretty amazing

[monochrome]

@eddie1960 DFA*50/1.4 is jaw dropping good. DFA*70~200/2.8 is right there. I hear the new DA*11~18/2.8 is also right there. Pentax is doing great stuff and get no credit.

FWIW the new Theta is pretty awesome too.

[mee]

I suspect there will be an over abundance of mirrorless bodies in the near (next few years) future... right now Sony, Nikon, and Canon are each entrenching themselves, footing position in the market with their new mirrorless systems (around new mounts).

Canon just launched a 1300 USD FF mirrorless body

Nikon is rumored to have a competitor of sorts soon

They already have competition at the 2000 USD bracket in the Z 6, A7III, and the R.

Canon is also 'confirmed' in rumor (haha yeah I know..) to be introducing IBIS in their next gen body.. so they are already seemingly in the fight. Working on being more comparable..


This feels somewhat similar to around 2010 when there was a wealth of similar, entry DSLR bodies on the market at plummeting prices, trying to woo the soccer moms and dads and momtog entry shooters. It is a battle for marketshare.. to strike a foothold for the next decade and beyond. So profit probably isn't foremost in their minds currently...


Which probably also means a few more bodies, pushing of current bodies into lower tiers, and price wars..



Well.. without the huge demand that we saw for dedicated, 'big' cameras as we did a decade ago. Which is going to, imo, make this interesting..


They could get away with K-m K-x K-r K-whatever or D3000, D3100, D3200, D3300, etc because there was enough revenue generated from these due to the high demand of beginner photogs at bottom barrel pricing.

But when the starter FF mirrorless is 1300 bucks... that's a tall order to fill in selling those to entry photogs and consumers.

I don't know where Ricoh fits into this, but I'm guessing they were OK with losing current Pentax shooters in the short term in exchange for not spending tons of cash in releasing a large wave of new products. With the expectation that they could, on the end, pick more new customers with a fresh wave of products at a later date, once the dust as settled. That could be entirely off, I admit, but I'd like to give Ricoh the benefit of the doubt despite how it looks to me....