Marketing Consultant: Reason camera sales are collapsing

[Damphousse]

I watched a video of Mayflower Concepts' presentation at CES regarding their thoughts on why camera sales are collapsing.  It is a 50 min long presentation and brings up some good points.  The presenter attempted to debunk two concepts I believed to be true but his solution is a concept I happen to think has some merit.  Interestingly he did not mention video even once and only made a passing mention of mirrorless to say it wasn't marketed well.  He doesn't think mirrorless, video, nor 4k is going to be the savior of the industry.  His main gripe was cameras need to be easier to use.  I do agree with that.  I don't know if that will solve all the industry's problems but for lower end consumer cameras it couldn't hurt.  He also mentioned camera makers should work together and standardize certain things like memory cards and file formats... even lenses!  Obviously the lenses thing will never happen because... Canon.

 

 

[Cas1]

People don't like work.

They like to have fun (experimentation).

So having a simple, workless, work flow would help.

Like my parents, they like to carry a compact zoom, point and shoot, because in automatic the camera does all the thinking for them. (thinking = work).

The difficult part, like the presentation said, is offloading and printing or viewing the photo's. - let alone editing them...

My dad recognises my cam's lens is better then his, but still is happy with his image quality of his point and shoot.

If I where to make a camera for my dad, it would have a few big buttons, and big touch focus screen, favourite button, nfc,wifi, big battery, sturdy easy to hold semi compact weather sealed design, with superzoom lens, m43 sensor like size. The camera would shoot raw, but has in camera processing to adjust exposure and apply instagram like filters, before uploading to TV/PC/print service.

Basically making a tool for kids, not for people who like to make a study out of it.

With such a popular line, they could keep funding the fully manually controllable camera's, for those who want 100% control, and the highest quality. Such enthusiast camera's could still benefit from a quick in camera raw processing ability, favourite button, and share button. With buttons arranged in such way that the main functions can be used without shifting the position of the hands and fingers. Because, repositioning them takes time.

 

About smart phones camera's taking over camera's, I still believe there is a partial truth to this, in exposed in the intent of the photograph taken. When the intent is to record a simple memory of one in a certain situation, a phone level of camera is sufficient. It shows the Eifel tower, and the recognisable faces. Dedicated camera's are now only for those that care about image quality, more then just a simple reminder. In the past dedicated camera's where the only available tool to have a reminding image, besides drawing. Now the the smart phone camera can do this easy, and it comes for free with the phone everyone has. Buying a dedicated camera is then for a different person. Why would a person owning a smart phone buy a dedicated camera? And why not?

We do not need to despair about photography going away, as according to the lecture 1.500.000.000 people have now a camera on them all the time. A smart phone IS a camera! However the dedicated camera will go through chances to make them more accessible for people who do not like or do not want or cannot to think, thinking = work, but still want more ability then a smart phone camera provides. And then for the pro's, who love to have control over their image, and always work on their photo's in post, I think speed and quality is their basic need. Personally I would love to have a raw focussed camera, that shows me the flat high dynamic range raw picture to check for focus, clipping, framing. Then later in post I adjust may favourite photo's for things like exposure, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness, cropping, cloning, etc. Post processing in camera, or via an camera app on a bigger screen would be ideal during that coffee break, or flight.

I think this is a very good discussion, and we users should tell manufactures what we need and want.