The future of Cameras and Lens Mounts

[Tronhard]

This is a continuing debate that I see in the various fora to which I belong.  Just to add a bit of spice to the whole thing Tony Northrop has produced his take on what the future holds.  Now, I realize that he has some controversial views on elements of photography, but apparently he was a director of marketing for a fortune 100 company and accuratlely predicted both the challenges around 2000 and the demise of his own company.  Business analysis is his thing...

Anyway for what it's worth, here is a link to his presentation: Are DSLRs Dead?

Doubtless this will invoke some reactions from our own members

[Tronhard]

Several of my most recent camera purchases have touch screens, and while I recognize the benefits of the technology I turn the feature off and prefer to use the buttons and menus that are second nature to me now. 

I find that my nose or cheek will brush the screen while looking through the viewfinder which is an unnecessary distraction.  Doubtless that makes me some kind of ancient relic but it's what I like and it works for me.

[John_SD]

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@Tronhard wrote:

I feel pretty confident in Canon, a but less so about Nikon - their market share is much smaller overall, and certainly desite user loyalty some of the other brands face a bleak future.

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Their market share is indeed smaller than Canon's, but by all accounts, Nikon had a fabulous 2017-2018 and I hope the trend continues. That D850 seems to be gaining increasing favor among pros and enthusiasts alike. 

From DigitalTrends:

Nikon’s focus on high-end cameras as the company restructures appears to be paying off, and could mean more advanced cameras like the D850 in the company’s future. In its 2017-2018 fiscal year results, announced on May 10, Nikon posted more than eight times the profit of the previous year overall, with the imaging division posting a 76.2-percent increase over the previous year. With the D850 (shown above) driving much of that increase, the company says it will continue to focus on high-end cameras — and that mirrorless could be an opportunity for the company in the future.

From DPR:

Nikon restructuring and strong D850 sales lead to 8x increase in annual profit.
Of course, this reflects Nikon Corporation as a whole, but the news out of the Imaging division was also positive. While overall unit sales fell—due to the continued demise of the compact camera segment—strong demand for the D850 is said to have increased the sales of "high-class" cameras "significantly," leading to a 76.2% year-on-year increase in operating profit. Restructuring helped here, too.

[Tronhard]

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@John_SD wrote:

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@Tronhard wrote:

I feel pretty confident in Canon, a but less so about Nikon - their market share is much smaller overall, and certainly desite user loyalty some of the other brands face a bleak future.

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Their market share is indeed smaller than Canon's, but by all accounts, Nikon had a fabulous 2017-2018 and I hope the trend continues. That D850 seems to be gaining increasing favor among pros and enthusiasts alike. 

From DigitalTrends:

Nikon’s focus on high-end cameras as the company restructures appears to be paying off, and could mean more advanced cameras like the D850 in the company’s future. In its 2017-2018 fiscal year results, announced on May 10, Nikon posted more than eight times the profit of the previous year overall, with the imaging division posting a 76.2-percent increase over the previous year. With the D850 (shown above) driving much of that increase, the company says it will continue to focus on high-end cameras — and that mirrorless could be an opportunity for the company in the future.

From DPR:

Nikon restructuring and strong D850 sales lead to 8x increase in annual profit.
Of course, this reflects Nikon Corporation as a whole, but the news out of the Imaging division was also positive. While overall unit sales fell—due to the continued demise of the compact camera segment—strong demand for the D850 is said to have increased the sales of "high-class" cameras "significantly," leading to a 76.2% year-on-year increase in operating profit. Restructuring helped here, too.

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To me that is indeed good news.  I don't want to see either Nikon or Canon die out, but I would like to see them being a bit more agile... 

[RobertTheFat]

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@Tronhard wrote:

As I said: Doubtless this will invoke some reactions from our own members

Q.E.D. !!! :

For me this simply creates a focus on questions that were already there:

1.   Did the big camera companies drop the ball in improving camera interfaces (as has been suggested)

Possibly.

and has that had a significant impact on the camera market?

I don't think so.

2.  Is the disruptive dominance in the market of cell phones a function of their multifunctionalism and convenience, combined with the types of images that people are taking for social purposes in particular

Yes.

- and could camera manufacturers actually counter that?

Not unless they want to make their cameras function as cell phones. And the only thing that could conceivably make that a good idea is Donald Trump's trade war. And I wouldn't want to gamble on that if I were in their shoes.

3.  Did the big camera makers take into account the dramatic drop in market size of cameras (in this case DSLRs), when they decided to invest in a new tech - especially new lens mounts?

Maybe not, but I think it's largely beside the point. My take is that the drop in DSLR sales represents a hopeful enthusiasm for the new mirrorless technology. Perhaps too much enthusiasm, but that will work itself out in the long run.

4.  The new FF DSLRs are coming in at an expensive price point, does that mean that the target market for this tech is the much smaller prosumer market rather than the previous one where for example Canon dominated in the lower-end units (and seems to still do so within its shriking boundaries).   In Canon's case we have the M series and EF-M lenses, but to look at Nikon: they gave up on the Nikon 1 mount fairly quickly.

Did you mean to say "FF mirrorless cameras"? (If not, I don't understand the question.) If so, I think the answer is a qualified no. I think the high price point indicates that they're very serious about making the R series good enough to be accepted by professionals. But I don't think they expect the R to be a major success; I think they're looking toward the R Mark II.

I've got my doubts, though, that the M series will survive very long in its present form. An APS-C mirrorless camera series is probably a good idea, but I think it has to natively accept the R's lenses. It can't do that now, can it?

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[altco]

>>> asking if he had ever seen a light meter with a crop factor compensation

As i understand it, Northrop claims that the physical measure of interest is the amplification of the signal from the sensor, while ISO is just an indirect indication of this measure.

It stands to reason that, for example, an x2 crop sensor (with 4 times less area, as compared to the area of a FF sensor) needs to amplify the signal 4 times more, as compared to the amplification needed on a FF, for a given sensitivity. For a constant signal amplification, the x2 crop sensor needs 2 stops more light.

A light meter gives an indication in terms of ISO sensitivity and, because the ISO sensitivity is in fact just calibrated amplification for the particular sensor/crop, the light meter does not need further compensation.

[kvbarkley]

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@altco wrote:

>>> asking if he had ever seen a light meter with a crop factor compensation

It stands to reason that, for example, an x2 crop sensor (with 4 times less area, as compared to the area of a FF sensor) needs to amplify the signal 4 times more, as compared to the amplification needed on a FF, for a given sensitivity. For a constant signal amplification, the x2 crop sensor needs 2 stops more light..

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You need to recalibrate your reason. The above is not true at all. For the purpose of our discussions, each pixel is independent of the other. It does not matter whether you have 100,000 or 100,000,000 or whether it is .1" square or 10" square. The amplification to get a particular intensity level just depends on the light hitting the individual pixel. In our case we use a constant amplification factor ("ISO") to adjust the overall exposure. In fact a constant ISO over the chip is not required, and you could conceive of a sensor that adusts the ISO of each pixel based on the intensity of light hitting the pixel. This is practically what Highlight Tone Priority does, though in a crude fashion.

Where size of the pixel matters is noise, but that is a discussion for another day.

[altco]

Right, the term ‘amplification’ is a bit sloppy in this context; the electronics used to measure the electrical charge generated by a pixel is not your classical amplifier. The electrical charge generated by the photosensitive  area needs to be transformed into something that can be measured by a DAC, and tuning the level of this ‘something’ to the level expected by the DAC is not usually referred to as amplification

However, the energy of the signal coming from a pixel is still a function of the area of the pixel; for a given illumination, a small .1’’ pixel generates 10^6 less electrical charge as compared to a 10’’ pixel. Whatever the electronics employed within a sensor, a smaller pixel needs more light if it is to measure an equal amount of electrical charge

[ebiggs1]

"...  a smaller pixel needs more light if it is to measure an equal amount of electrical charge"

Which has nothing to do with sensor size.  It is possible to have smaller photo sites (pixels) on any size sensor. 5Ds and 4.1 vs 5D Mk IV with 5.3.

[kvbarkley]

As far as our purposes go, amplification, gain and sensitivity are all equivalent.

[altco]

As far as our purposes go, amplification, gain and sensitivity are all equivalent.

I was thinking more about the capacitance used to integrate the signal from the photosites; the fact that you can get the same voltage from smaller pixels, by using smaller capacitors, does not prevent one from enjoying the wonders of measuring weaker signals.

What matters is the size of the photosite, which has nothing to do with the size of the sensor.

I don’t fully understand how this work but, for a certain size of the sensor, the larger number of smaller pixels seem to offset the decrease in signal quality from each smaller photosite.

Drawing conclusions based upon only sensor size leads to conclusions that have little to no basis in fact

Talking about wrong conclusions... One of Tony’s YT videos just popped on my recommendations; without the equivalence proposed by him, not so long ago i would have had a hard time rejecting the idea that a 300mm f4 lens on M43 is totally equivalent to a 600mm f4 on FF.

Unfortunately i don’t have the equipment to test whether, using one FF and one APSC cameras from the same generation, a lens gives similar results when attached to the FF through an 1.4 teleconverter vs. when attached directly to the APSC (aperture wide open, same shutter speed, auto ISO)