Mirrorless sales down, DSLR sales up, QX a success

[Franglais]

A report from Reuters in the New York Times gives the tendancies for early December:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/....html?hp&_r=2&

Mirrorless down 20%, DSLR's up 1%. And the funny Sony QX lens-without-a-body is a success.

[bitflogger]

Interesting how they point out the connectivity part because that held weight when I recently assessed new mirrorless systems, switch to Nikon, or sticking with Canon.

Funny to see myself in the stats because I used my airline miles for a "deep sea" model which is a category mentioned, and my November 70D purchase would put me close to the slight uptick in SLR sales.

I'm out of the country now and very happy with my purchases. The Olympus TG-2 is a decent enough incremental upgrade from my earlier Panasonic waterproof model. I packed so light that I put my 70-200, 10-22 and fast prime in a suitcase but 70D and 18-135 STM pack a tremendous amount of capability by themselves.

The bigger problem of smartphone vs traditional camera firm is apparent on this trip. We're off the beaten path from most tourists but our trips to town and going out to a restaurant had me seeing mostly camera phones, a few SLR, and waterproof cameras. Earlier trips to same island going back 20 years had me seeing the yellow Minolta waterproof 35 mm back in the day, then digi P+S and lots of Canon Rebels. Now the camera phone if not specialty gear.

[mattb]

Interesting. In 2013 I bought two cameras, a Olympus P&S underwater model and a SLR (from a brand that wasn't even mentioned here).
I'm intrigued by mirrorless offerings but have yet to see one that meets my feature/value threshold and makes me pull the trigger.
So I'm part of the trend they see too. I still might get a mirrorless camera but I haven't seen "the one" yet.

[Greg McCary]

Interesting. I think the performance of the mirrorless cameras are still not as good as a DSLR and most advanced shooters expect more. Most novice shooters don't want to drop $1000.00 plus for a camera.

[Franglais]

The bit about people doing self-portraits using the QX way off camera controlled by a smartphone rather caught my fancy. I can see integration of a "real" camera with a smartphone application really appealing to John Q. Public. You shoot your pictures then you review them on the smartphone before putting one on Facebook.

So I looked into the matter and you can already do it with recent Nikon cameras. You just need a WiFi dongle (except for the D5300 which has it built-in)

Shooting Wirelessly with Nikon Digital Cameras and Wi-Fi Adapters from Nikon

Addendum: More research.. Most camera makers have integrated a Wifi mode into their latest bodies that work much the same way. Unfortunately you don't have much control over the camera from the phone/tablet - just when to release the shutter. The QX does give you more control.

[Photo-John]

Addendum: More research.. Most camera makers have integrated a Wifi mode into their latest bodies that work much the same way. Unfortunately you don't have much control over the camera from the phone/tablet - just when to release the shutter. The QX does give you more control.

With the Olympus OM-D E-M1 you can control almost everything with the mobile app. I am super impressed with it. Even the touch shutter works - so you can touch the live view display on your phone where you want the camera to focus and it focuses and takes the picture. I recently did a Christmas self portrait in the studio and the app made it really easy to get a good photo. In fact, it was the best self-portrait setup I've ever had.

[Franglais]

On the other end of the spectrum - if you just want to get photos from a (non-communicating) camera to a smartphone you can always use a WiFi card. No remote control but if you need to send a photo immediately then it's a cheap solution.

I had the case last night. I was with someone who was doing photos in a very dark bar on a Smartphone without flash and the results were - awful. I had the RX100 with me but I had to have the results immediately. I thought about a QX (same internals as the RX100ii) but there are a couple of important drawbacks for doing photos in bars:

- it's not as pocketable as the RX100
- it can't shoot RAW. I can get spectacular results in bars but only if I can rework the image afterwards

Anyway - full credit to Sony for having come up with something imaginative.

[Photo-John]

I agree about giving Sony credit for being creative. But personally, I keep coming back to a normal pocket camera being easier to carry.

There's also the question of optics. A camera phone just has a fixed, prime lens and I really like the versatility of zoom lenses. Having a point-and-shoot with Wi-Fi in my pocket gives me that option.

[Franglais]

I notice that the Samsung Galaxy Camera version 2 does not include a 3G/4G option, just a WiFi connection. So apart from the smartphone look and the Android user interface, it's just like any recent compact with WiFi to transfer the pictures to the smartphone.

You say that people didn't use the 3G/4G interface even when they had it on the version 1. It means paying an extra GSM connection. Well that's one new idea out of the window..

[cineguerrilha]

why mirrorless cameras don't come with the same funcionalites than dslrs w mirrors (e.g. wired remote shutter release)? that would pump up their sales.

[FGDCanon]

I agree. You would think that CSC would beat DSLR but its not.