The Changing Landscape

[Two23]

........ Camera companies have been whittled down to what Sinatra might have called these precious few.....

Well yes, and no.  Most of the major players from twenty years ago are still around in some form.  I can think of only a few that have actually disappeared, such as Bronica.  The sales of some of the older companies specializing in 35mm SLR cameras has faded, such as Pentax, but Minolta has flourished when reinvented as Sony.  There are new camera companies springing up all over the world now, too!  My favorite camera is a Chamonix 045n.  In the past year we've seen Intrepid come out with two models, and also two from Poland:  Chroma and Svdosky.  I lust for a new Italian brand's 8x10, the Light Hunter by Gibellini.  It's gorgeous!
https://www.gibellinicamera.com/light-hunter


"Exactly... good luck going forward... but no thanks or recognition for past accomplishments or role as CEO and Publisher for the last year and a half following Michael’s passing.  The snub is made more stark in contrast to the clear thanks expressed to Chris for his past contributions.  Common courtesy, especially on a public forum."  (Jeff)


I find myself agreeing with this sentiment more than not.  It could have been handled much better.



Kent in SD,
A lesser forum member

[amolitor]

The camera industry remains larger than it was in, say, the 1970s, by I think quite a bit. I looked the numbers up a while back, let me see if I can find them. Yep, here it is. In the 1970s, Polaroid is shipping something like 5M units/year, Japan is shipping something like 2.5M SLRs per year. All up the whole damn thing is maybe 10M units a year? 15M? In 2018 we're seeing 1.4M units a MONTH from CIPA, which doesn't include phones and also leaves out a handful of smaller sectors (MF, I think? Maybe all the European manufacturers? Film cameras, and probably a bunch of other little niches.)

Margins may be a lower, due to the vastly increased complexity of cameras, I don't know offhand. The contraction is not really from 20th century numbers, but rather from the massive explosion of growth in the early 2000s brought on by the transition to digital.

What is not clear to me is how large a company must be to successfully make a business out of digital cameras in this century. You could run a surprisingly small shop building the cameras of the 1970s, in the 1970s, and be successful by the standards or the 1970s. It's not the 1970s any more.

[Two23]

You could run a surprisingly small shop building the cameras of the 1970s, in the 1970s, and be successful by the standards or the 1970s. It's not the 1970s any more.

Maybe not digital, but you can certainly start up a successful small camera company today if you have a good product and are clever.
https://intrepidcamera.co.uk/about

http://svedovsky.com/about/

http://www.chamonixviewcamera.com/index.html

https://www.gibellinicamera.com/studio


Kent in SD,
A lesser forum member

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Maybe not digital, but you can certainly start up a successful small camera company today if you have a good product and are clever...

Imdeed. All you need is a shoe box and a needle.

I can already see hordes flocking to this site to read a review of an Italian, hand-made, 8x10 camera. I did mention “yesterday’s wars” earlier, but you seems to be taking us to the bow and arrow era

[Two23]

Imdeed. All you need is a shoe box and a needle.

I can already see hordes flocking to this site to read a review of an Italian, hand-made, 8x10 camera. I did mention “yesterday’s wars” earlier, but you seems to be taking us to the bow and arrow era

Oh, I'm well beyond that already.  I'm into the equivalent of rocks & pointed sticks.    I've been shooting glass plates using lenses made 1845-1862 this year.  My goal for next year is to learn how to make 5x7 wet collodion (wet plate) images with those same lenses and an ~1860s replica camera.   As for the hand made Italian cameras, they are things of beauty!  Art in themselves.  If they didn't cost $6,000 I would already have one.


Kent in SD.
A lesser forum member

[Peter McLennan]

Yes.

[Osprey]

Well, let's take your unit estimates as correct. 
Sounds like the camera market today is something like 18 million cameras per year, give or take.
And you think the 1970s was 10 million or so cameras per year.

Well, the population of the US in 1976 was 216 million, now it's 330 million.
There's hundreds of millions of Chinese who can afford cameras now compared to 1976, never mind large swathes of the rest of Asia.

So it sounds like the camera industry is at best keeping up the pace with the 1970s if you adjust for population and may well be falling behind, if your numbers are in the ballpark.

The camera industry remains larger than it was in, say, the 1970s, by I think quite a bit. I looked the numbers up a while back, let me see if I can find them. Yep, here it is. In the 1970s, Polaroid is shipping something like 5M units/year, Japan is shipping something like 2.5M SLRs per year. All up the whole damn thing is maybe 10M units a year? 15M? In 2018 we're seeing 1.4M units a MONTH from CIPA, which doesn't include phones and also leaves out a handful of smaller sectors (MF, I think? Maybe all the European manufacturers? Film cameras, and probably a bunch of other little niches.)

Margins may be a lower, due to the vastly increased complexity of cameras, I don't know offhand. The contraction is not really from 20th century numbers, but rather from the massive explosion of growth in the early 2000s brought on by the transition to digital.

What is not clear to me is how large a company must be to successfully make a business out of digital cameras in this century. You could run a surprisingly small shop building the cameras of the 1970s, in the 1970s, and be successful by the standards or the 1970s. It's not the 1970s any more.

[amolitor]

You are not counting phones. You have to count phones to make sense of the market for picture making devices.

[Osprey]

Sony's about the only traditional camera manufacturer I can see that helping, unless someone else is making phone cameras or sensors for them. 

You are not counting phones. You have to count phones to make sense of the market for picture making devices.

[Alan Klein]

It's not unusual for a son to take over the family business.  It's now up to Josh to direct its fortunes.  I can see why Kevin and Chris couldn't stay. How do you have two sets of leaders with differing opinions on policy and direction?   I'm sure Kevin and Chris will be alright and land on their feet.  I wish them the best of luck as I do for Josh as well. 

[32BT]

Maybe they should start a videoshow called "Top Gear", then invite a celebrity each week to talk about their first camera and let them shoot a reasonably priced camera. Then do a stupid camera challenge where they race a top of the line Nikon Z7 against a shoebox with a hole in it and see who comes back with the better streetshot.

Come to think of it, you don't even need a change of the old guard. Presentors are best kept overdate, old, and curmudgeon. (and on that bombshell...)

[Rob C]

You are not counting phones. You have to count phones to make sense of the market for picture making devices.

No, you are mistaken. Cellphones and iPads are not cameras from bona fide camera companies, which was what I was thinking about when I wrote. Those devices are killers of camera companies. And why do you choose the 70s as your datum line? Camera companies were banging 'em out decades before that. My first reasonable little camera was a Voiglánder Vito B, followed by an Exakta Varex 11a followed by the 11b. Before any of those I had a little Bakelite/plastic? Kodak Brownie Reflex tlr using 127 film.

Because Cosina buys the brand name for another company does not imply that company still exists as a healthy producer of cameras. Go ask the Europeans who used to work in those factories.

Rob

[KLaban]

Turning back the clock would probably win the approval of a few here on LuLa, but to thrive the site would need to win the approval of the many, expanding the appeal to a new, younger, audience.

[Rob C]

Maybe they should start a videoshow called "Top Gear", then invite a celebrity each week to talk about their first camera and let them shoot a reasonably priced camera. Then do a stupid camera challenge where they race a top of the line Nikon Z7 against a shoebox with a hole in it and see who comes back with the better streetshot.

Come to think of it, you don't even need a change of the old guard. Presentors are best kept overdate, old, and curmudgeon. (and on that bombshell...)

That's a wonderful idea!

A friend just sent me an e-mail with eight silly photos of nudes beside sunny snowmen. I would have sworn they were Kodachromes, and as the boobs look beautifully natural, that might even be the case.

But hey, the point is - oops! - that LuLa could develop an improved version of this theme for itself: instead of, as in the past, trips down south to disturb the natural ecology of the planet, LuLa could provide alternative guided (gotta be guided - wouldn't want any LuLanders getting lost, would we?), reasonably priced specialty photo tours and become the numero uno company in the world providing the ultimate photo "experience" for which all photographers lust: two-week camera testing shoots at Sandals Babados, nude models provided at no additional cost, and equipment supplied by Phase and Leica. An on-site boutique would allow any convinced photographer the opportunity of buying his very own camera of choice right there and then, thus enjoying the added value of VIP status in bypassing any queue that might exist in the real world off piste. Win win! I wish I'd thought of it first!

Who needs chat shows online about Nikon and Sony (Canon? Wot dat?) and Fuji when you can cut to the chase and do what you secretly wanted to do all along?

There is a bright future ahead, handled right!

;-)

[KLaban]

That's a wonderful idea!

A friend just sent me an e-mail with eight silly photos of nudes beside sunny snowmen. I would have sworn they were Kodachromes, and as the boobs look beautifully natural, that might even be the case.

But hey, the point is - oops! - that LuLa could develop an improved version of this theme for itself: instead of, as in the past, trips down south to disturb the natural ecology of the planet, LuLa could provide alternative guided (gotta be guided - wouldn't want any LuLanders getting lost, would we?), reasonably priced specialty photo tours and become the numero uno company in the world providing the ultimate photo "experience" for which all photographers lust: two-week camera testing shoots at Sandals Babados, nude models provided at no additional cost, and equipment supplied by Phase and Leica. An on-site boutique would allow any convinced photographer the opportunity of buying his very own camera of choice right there and then, thus enjoying the added value of VIP status in bypassing any queue that might exist in the real world off piste. Win win! I wish I'd thought of it first!

Who needs chat shows online about Nikon and Sony (Canon? Wot dat?) and Fuji when you can cut to the chase and do what you secretly wanted to do all along?

There is a bright future ahead, handled right!

;-)

Rob, no doubt those speciality photo tours already exist.

:-(

EDIT: Here's a thought, you could lead that Sandals Barbados tour! Nice little earner.

;-)

[hexx]

As long as it doesn’t end up in the same poo as petapixel, it should be fine.

I’ve been reading LuLa since 2006, bought several videos and am active subscriber. I come here for great articles and good reviews of the gear but lately there wasn’t much of that, some Fuji, some Sony and what felt like sponsored Canon article.

Quality needs to come back and please make forums responsive, it’s almost 2019

[Bob_B]

It's not unusual for a son to take over the family business.  It's now up to Josh to direct its fortunes.  I can see why Kevin and Chris couldn't stay. How do you have two sets of leaders with differing opinions on policy and direction?   I'm sure Kevin and Chris will be alright and land on their feet.  I wish them the best of luck as I do for Josh as well.

Well said.

[kers]

It's not unusual for a son to take over the family business.  It's now up to Josh to direct its fortunes.  I can see why Kevin and Chris couldn't stay. How do you have two sets of leaders with differing opinions on policy and direction?   I'm sure Kevin and Chris will be alright and land on their feet.  I wish them the best of luck as I do for Josh as well.

" the change of this landscape"is not the point;
It is the rude way Kevin and Chris are set aside in this proclamation without giving them a chance to saying goodbye themselves and without thanking them in a proper way for the good work all these years.
So here i would like to thank them both for being the corners stones of LULA for so long and being responsable for keeping LULA up and alive all these years.
I read Josh may wish to continu the good parts and spirit of Lula and improve others, but this is a bad start and not in the spirit of LULA as i know it.

[jeremyrh]

Exactly... good luck going forward... but no thanks or recognition for past accomplishments or role as CEO and Publisher for the last year and a half following Michael’s passing.  The snub is made more stark in contrast to the clear thanks expressed to Chris for his past contributions.  Common courtesy, especially on a public forum.

Jeff

Well since neither you nor I know what happened or in fact either of the parties involved, it's a little hard to judge what's right and what's wrong. Bit like getting involved in a domestic dispute.

[Bill.D]

" the change of this landscape"is not the point;
It is the rude way Kevin and Chris are set aside in this proclamation without giving them a chance to saying goodbye themselves and without thanking them in a proper way for the good work all these years.
So here i would like to thank them both for being the corners stones of LULA for so long and being responsable for keeping LULA up and alive all these years.
I read Josh may wish to continu the good parts and spirit of Lula and improve others, but this is a bad start and not in the spirit of LULA as i know it.

Exactly right!  I wish Jeremy good luck, but this is not an auspicious beginning.