Originally posted by Mistral75 12 December. Back to normal hours.
1986: PENTAX ZOOM 70 – This camera ushered in a new era of 35mm photography. The world's first zoom compact camera is equipped with a 35 to 70 mm focal length lens and offers more creative options by adjusting the angle of view. It also has an integrated flash unit. The Zoom 70 is the mother of all modern zoom compact cameras. Pentax set standards in compact camera manufacture in the Zoom Series (later Zoom 90, Zoom 105 and Zoom 90WR).
Kodak, Fuji. Konica Agfa,etc and the camera manufacturers spent billions developing the APS film format as a road into the future featuring small compact cameras for everyday use. They were great cameras too. BUT.............................. the camera manufacturers also released these compact 35mm cameras at the same time. Up to that point, 35mm film was not the #1 consumer film. Enthusiasts used it but the masses preferred the cartridge cameras as they were so convenient and foolproof.
The autoloading compact 35mm camera market took off like a rocket and sales of cameras and film in 35mm format went sky high. It also crippled the APS format cameras right out of the gate. They never really stood a chance against the 35mm compact camera onslaught. People were enjoying image quality that they had never gotten before from 110 and 126 format cameras.
The 35mm compact camera was the last great hurrah for film. To me the APS film format was the Ford Edsel of the automobile world. The most heavily market researched format ever developed. It contained everything that people said that they wanted in a consumer camera system. That is until it came time to actually purchasing the camera and film.
Steve Jobs never did much, if any, market research. He just put out products that people did not even know that they would want.