More closures

Recently I read about the closure of the DPReview website. This does not surprise me in the slightest. Ever since smartphones came out with ever larger megapixel counts and ever better image quality fewer people have been buying stand-alone cameras. 

In the world of photography, convenience is everything. A camera that can upload images straight to social media for instant display is a winner. The camera companies were far too slow to recognise this. Thus, ever fewer compact cameras were sold and why should they when people could get an adequate if not excellent photograph from a cellphone for which they paid just $50 or less. A compact camera offered zoom but cost four times that and images could not be uploaded without a computer.

The above image was taken with a cellphone and is a crop of the cellphone image. Certainly it's slightly blurry but it shows everything needed for this particular I2C board. This is not an artsy image but rather a utilitarian image. Many of the photography activists decried utilitarian imaging but that's because they had their craniums firmly inserted up their rectums. All images are utilitarian and for many utilitarian uses quality is secondary or not even a factor.

This is yet another utilitarian usage of photography. It's a photo I sent to my job after testing positive for Covid in August last year. 

I never did a lot of fancy fru-fru stuff with photography. It was all photography for a purpose. Many people lack that purpose. I record neat scenes, holidays and day trips then I document accidents and make YouTube videos with my cellphone. 

To be blunt, I have a DSLR that has not been used in several years. I have a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses and that too has not been used in a couple of years. I just opt for the camera on my phone most of the time. It's always there and ready for use. The image quality is super.

So, a website on cameras closing down when people are just not buying cameras any more does not surprise me at all. I am rather impressed that they kept going for so long. 

I did have a huge amount of camera gear which I should have offloaded far before I did. I got a pittance over what I paid but on the other hand I got something. I could still offload my old Canon XT but since I can buy the same camera for $25 on eBay there's no reason to try to sell it. When I had it new, I paid something like $800 for it. Now it's not worth even 5% of its original value. I've even seen one with two lenses going for $60 on eBay. I can rest pretty well assured that even the more modern camera would not fetch much but I'm very glad I bought it secondhand. I'm glad also that I reduced my "professional" level of kit to an occasional amateur level. I can't say that more than one camera and one lens is at all practical. Switching lenses mid hike is just an annoyance. 

I used to believe that I needed every lens possible on a hike and carried ludicrous weights of gear. There was no enjoyment of the hike but the pictures were good. Now I take something minimal and take a lot of pictures and enjoy the hike. If I can't zoom in close enough on the one thing then I have dozens if not hundreds of photos of other equally good things.

Now that cellphones are so good, I question whether I need to bring a camera when I go places. Most of the time I do not as the camera batteries are always flat. Always having a cellphone with a good camera changes a lot of perspectives.

As for the camera companies, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax and Minolta:

Nikon - still producing some film cameras but concentrating on mirrorless compacts

Canon - No film cameras but plenty DSLR and mirrorless compacts

Olympus - Left the room

Pentax - No film cameras but plenty DSLRs

Minolta - Bought by Sony, producing mirrorless compacts.

Nikon and Canon seem to be providing compacts for the growing trend of YouTube video making. Having said that I make 4K videos for my YouTube channel with my cellphone. I honestly cannot see the camera companies continuing ad infinitum. Indeed, the quotation I read about the Olympus exit from photography was this: the"extremely severe digital camera market" was no longer profitable.

Further contraction of the camera market is a certainty, not a possibility. As for camera review websites - fewer buyers mean fewer readers. Fewer readers mean less income from advertising. Less income means lower profits and lower profits mean fewer staff until such a point as it all becomes uneconomical as with many of the now gone review sites.

General camera companies are now circling the drain.

News filtered through the media void or Nikon abandoning full-sized cameras.

A few days ago I heard Nikon had abandoned its AI system for the new Z system having dabbled with their 1 system and abandoning that in the same way they developed cameras and lenses for their APS system about 30 years ago. Having seen the noisy results from the 1 system, they were probably right to abandon in when they did. Now, with advances in technology they need to give it a second look. There is a market for small cameras.

Having said that, I write an awful lot - books and blogs. I include a lot of photographs with my books and blogs. This photo was probably on some blog or other of mine. The quality is decent enough for books, magazines and websites. It's not top notch but who really cares? It does its job. 

So, with phone cameras getting ever better and just about everybody and their dog owning a phone with a decent camera, the market really has vanished for both cheap compacts and for expensive compacts. There aren't even many of the kid-proof cameras any more as people give their kids an old phone to use for taking photos and if it gets broken they trash it and give the kid the next old phone.

Videography is heading the same way. Decades ago cameras of questionable quality cost thousands. Now their quality can be eclipsed in a simple cellphone. Indeed I shoot video for one of my sites. I shoot in 720p because that's the maximum the camera on the screen side of an old iPhone will do. It's good enough for the moment and well representative of what's new on YouTube anyway. Some videos go to 4K or even 8K but for viewing on a tablet, phone or computer screen, the extra expanse of pixels at high cost is not merited. 

A year or two back I met a couple of people out with cameras. They had big gadget bags with just about everything under the sun inside. I had a camera on a strap around my neck, under my jacket, a longer lens in one pocket and a spare couple of batteries in the other. I was good. We chatted and then they noticed my small Olympus PM1 and asked how many megapixels. They were not impressed when I could not remember and why should I remember? It produces excellent images at all the sizes I am likely to want to use. I'm not going to buy a super duper camera just do that I can produce the biggest ever prints. That's just plain stupidity. In fact I think most cameras these days produce images way in excess of most people's needs or desires. All that does is clog up storage with bulky image files.

There were people who poo-poohed the smaller camera formats because the image quality "wasn't there". A photographer friend in Columbia commented that he had both the big Canon system and the little Olympus Micro four thirds system. His opinion was that while he could see a very slight advantage with the bigger sensor, it was so slight that it would be totally lost when it came to printing or displaying. 

The world is getting smaller. Fewer people are buying big bulky camera systems because they are big and bulky for no real gain. The smaller systems seem the way to go. I'm very glad I jumped ship from Canon to Olympus and very glad I decided to stick with one camera and two lenses. Of those two lenses, I use the standard zoom the most as it covers 90% of what I want to do. The longer lens was a disappointment to be honest. A much longer lens would have cost so much more that it was not worth the money for the amount it would be used. The bigger lens I have is not used much either.

Looking back at the photos I've taken and used the most, over the past 3 years they have all been cellphone images. I recall many instances of people with expensive cameras poo-poohing everything taken with a smaller sensor but I see plenty photographs. I never wonder what camera was used now what lens nor even who the photographer was.

Cameras have become cheaper and more utilitarian just as photography has become cheaper and more utilitarian. I hear people claiming to be photographers claiming they charge hundreds if not thousands. That's simply laughable. Most product catalog pages on websites are taken with simple, small cameras like cell phones. Nobody deliberately goes all out on ultimate expense when cheap will do. Somebody criticized one of my images for being blurry and they could shoot it better. My answer - well go back in time do it and I might look at it.

It is not surprising that Nikon has gone for smaller cameras. What is surprising is that they are still making cameras given that they have become such a small niche market. 20 years ago even newspapers were turning away from cameras and going toward cellphones for photography. Perhaps the niche is now people making youtube videos who use the cameras for video making. While I have not ventured beyond a cellphone for making my YouTube videos, perhaps one day I will. Perhaps one day I will use a Raspberry Pi camera and software to record video onto USB memory stick. 

As far as any dreams of people making money out of photography are concerned, they're dreams and that is all. Everybody and their dog has access to a perfectly adequate camera for videos and for stills that will produce a perfectly adequate resolution. Out of 100 wedding guests all taking pictures of the bride and groom, some will take really nice images that the couple will cherish and share them, free.

Is this the last posting?

I have not updated this blog in a very long time - two years by the looks of things! I moved on from photography with a camera and started using a smartphone. 

When I realised that just about any phone now produces excellent quality images and that it really doesn't matter whether an image is taken on a phone or a camera because people are interested in the image rather than the perceived quality of the image it was very releasing. I went over to smartphone photography and haven't looked back.

Meanwhile I went back to my  roots - computing and electronics. Having taken a long break from them, I picked up a Raspberry Pi microcontroller and started using my skills.

I might still update this blog but don't count on it. I had a whole load of fun writing it and had an absolute blast doing the April 1st posts. In recent years I would remember to do an April 1st post a few days into April so there really wasn't much point then.