Originally posted by philbaum Right on! I think they have managers that are so used to post processing images afterward, they they can't conceive of anyone wanting to do it in-body. Adobe is another company, IMHO, that doesn't "get it".
I'm not sure that's entirely correct, (though I do agree that Adobe has lost some credibility with their latest Photoshop arrangements) because I do wonder how many people use the existing in-camera effects. I know that I don't, and the only people I know who do any of that confine it to monochrome conversions. If that's the case generally, then why would you bother adding another feature that virtually no-one uses? Perhaps panoramas could be the exception to that, though.
Originally posted by philbaum This differs from my impression about the numbers of professionals. Does anyone know what the percentage of pros out there in PF membership, or maybe some other statistic. With photojournalists being laid off by some national media outlets, I'm guessing that the number of professionals is declining, but i could be totally wrong since i have no statistics
I wonder how membership numbers are running year to year in the professional associations?
In a sense, what we may be seeing is a return to the situation that pertained at the start of the rise of popularity of film SLRs, in the late 1960s, when the dominance of the Leica for photographic reportage was overturned principally by the Nikon F. Then, the SLR began to be used by enthusiasts as well as professionals, while most people shot with rangefinders or Instamatics and the like. The DSLR has enjoyed popularity with many casual photographers since prices began to fall, presumably because purchasers either thought they would instantly make them better photographers (like buying a sporty car makes you a better driver) or because they were symbols of success or social superiority (like buying a German car symbolises your "arrival" amongst the elite). What we may be seeing is the waning of that popularity, possibly because small is the latest trend in many things (except Samsung phones, perhaps) but possibly also because people are discovering that competence and prestige aren't dependent on big and showy equipment.
So, what we may be seeing is a return to the dominance of enthusiast and professional ownership of DSLRs. If that's the case, we can possibly expect prices to rise, as sales continue to fall, and lengthening of product cycles, neither of which is necessarily a bad thing.