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Friday, 17 August 2018

Are camera manufacturers missing the point?


As the years go by stand alone cameras, with or without interchangeable lenses sell less and less. At some point they will reach a level and stick there. My best guess is the levels at which people bought serious film cameras. Nobody buys cheap compact cameras anymore, that market has been taken over by smartphones which, lets be honest, these days are better than those nasty little plastic things anyway. My view about this is that the camera manufacturers are not helping the situation either. There are many things that they could adopt from the smartphone revolution that for whatever reason they don't.

SCREENS

Why do we still have to put up with small view screens that don't work in sunlight? Ever since smartphone screens got bigger and brighter I cannot for the life of me understand why something similar isn't on every new camera. The only camera I've seen with a decent screen is the Leica T/TL.

CONNECTIVITY

In virtually all cases if you want to post a picture to social media taken with a Mirrorless or DSLR camera, you have to transfer it to a smartphone. Why don't these cameras have the possibility to accept a sim card? How hard would that be to implement?

THE COMPUTATIONAL THING

The Huawei P20 Pro smartphone that I have just bought produces 40MP files from a tiny sensor and tiny lenses. These files compare very favourably with those taken on larger sensor cameras. Just look at the article I linked to in my previous post by PetaPixel. I read something recently that since smartphones were rapidly improving, 'real' cameras would follow suit. But I see no evidence of this. Surely with bigger sensors and better lenses we should be seeing huge improvements in image quality. Why, for example aren't Panasonic and Olympus using this technology to produce much larger and higher resolution files for m4/3?

PROGRAMME MODES

If only professionals and serious enthusiasts bought the highest spec. cameras then every camera manufacturer would go out of business. Why don't they realise that there is nothing to be ashamed of in putting scene and programme modes on their cameras. I use them and a lot of other 'pros' do as well, if they are well thought out. Photography shouldn't be complicated. Yes I know how to get good results out of a 100% manual cameras and I can guess exposures pretty accurately, but I don't always want to be doing that. I literally want point and shoot.

SIMPLIFICATION

It seems ironic that I have pay a lot of money to buy Leica cameras which are simple and ergonomically styled. Only those creepy geeks who populate the photographic internet like all those knobs, buttons and pages and pages of menu options, which nobody understands. There is absolutely nothing wrong with simplification. Sure the tech. nerds will love complication, but does anybody else? I suspect not.

STYLE & DESIGN

Let's face it, a lot of cameras are seriously boring. Is there any need for mirrorless cameras to look like DSLR's? Do designers think that's what everybody wants? OK it may keep my generation of baby boomers happy, but is that the only market that matters? What about all those young(er) people who drool over sleek smartphones? Again the Leica T was a step in the right direction, but still pretty conventional looking. Retro styling works, but all the mirrorless manufacturers who started that way have now run for the cover of the (D)SLR design. Yawn!! Let's see some innovation. And finally on this why doesn't every camera have a proper tilting screen like the Panasonic G's? It's SO useful and allows for all kinds of different positions for picture taking. Smartphones don't need it because they can be used in all sorts of ways because the screens are so large and sharp.

MULTI FUNCTIONAL DEVICES

One of the obvious attractions of smartphones is the number of options they offer. And yet cameras tend to be very centred on one thing. And yes I love my Leica M10 and it's pared down single purpose, but sometimes I want / need something more. It's not as though most cameras even cover what might be called the photographic basics. The best camera I own for creating panoramas and super stabilised video is my iPhone. It even has an app. that lets me shoot super wide screen cinematic video. The panoramic function on my Lumix GX9 is awful. The files are just too small to make taking them worthwhile. My iPhone shoots massive detailed pano's and if a camera that small can do it why can't a m4/3 camera?

So all in all, what's going on here (or rather what's not going on!!) is a mystery to me. If standalone cameras are going to continue to part of the photographic marketplace, then they have to evolve. I use smartphones a lot already and with the Huawei Pro P20 I suspect I'm going to be using them a lot more. It gives me a whole other range of creative options. It's small light and relatively cheap. I bought mine brand new, without a box on ebay for less than £500. Considering I've got something that does 40MP with an f/1.8 27mm lens (35mm equivalent) that's cheap. Just imagine how much Nikon, Fuji et al would charge for something like that. Add in what else the Huawei can do and it suddenly seems like a bargain.



Stock photography by david martyn hughes at Alamy

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