The Endangered Point and Shoot

[poker]

From Endangered-tech-species

Digital Cameras

With Android phones up to 8 megapixels and the iPhone 4 boasting pixel-free resolution at 5 megapixels, even the digital-camera industry sees the impending slowdown. The Camera and Imaging Products Association -- a consortium formed by Nikon, Olympus, Canon, Sony, Panasonic and other Japanese camera makers -- forecast only 2.9% for this year and 2011 after double-digit growth until 2008. The growth of standard point-and-shoot models is more modest at roughly 2.5%.

"We're just now starting to see handsets come on board with 5- to 8-megapixel cameras, and that's where we saw digital cameras really start to take off," Rubin says. "Unless the consumer has a need for optical zoom or some of the things that are more difficult to accommodate with software, we'll see more users take pictures with their handset."

This suggests a widening schism between the average tourist shooter and the guy trying way too hard to take pictures of trees in his local park. Shipments of high-end interchangeable-lens SLR cameras are expected to be much more robust, growing 8.6% in 2010 and 7% in 2012. The large size of current SLR lenses will keep them from becoming just another smartphone snap-on, but their small market share may reduce cameras to the domain of die-hards.

"You have to look at what you want to do really well and where you want to just get by," Dulaney says. "If you just want to get by, then an iPhone's all you need, but if want to see an email on a large screen or take pictures of your dog in really high quality, you'll get an iPad and a camera as well."

We shouldn't fear change although I have always been annoyed with people taking photos of precious moments with a camera phone. I know they will probably not save the files to a computer or may never even print the memory. I hope camera phone quality does surpass the typical point and shoot the soth equality is worth keeping and reproducing.

Long live the interchangeable lens camera user :thumbsup:

[Franglais]

From Endangered-tech-species



We shouldn't fear change although I have always been annoyed with people taking photos of precious moments with a camera phone. I know they will probably not save the files to a computer or may never even print the memory. I hope camera phone quality does surpass the typical point and shoot the soth equality is worth keeping and reproducing.

Long live the interchangeable lens camera user :thumbsup:

Facebook! The photos go directly from the phone to Facebook via the application on Android/iPhone and gets kept in an online album which is visible by all your friends. It's Cloud computing..

It's spontaneous and fun. It's not serious photography, but the quality is getting better. And some of my friends have done really interesting things with this very limited material. I think it's rather like using a Holga.

The people who do a lot smartphone photos:

1. Don't make a lot of prints, if at all
2. Probably don't have a computer anyway

[poker]

Social networking sites like Facebook will come and go. All the photos uploaded to FB will end up going nowhere once the there is a new trend on the Internet.

[Speed]

So very true. I held out on going digital, waiting for the quality and the price to come together to an acceptable level. To me, the D70 was it. Before I bought one, the D200 came out, so that's what I went with. With the prices coming down as low as they have, it is rare to see someone shooting film anymore.

I have also seen more and more people with DSLR's. It used to be rare to see someone bring an SLR or DSLR to a soccer game. Now, you'll see a dozen or more of them. With the advent of cheaper DSLR's and modern photo-processing programs, I've seen a lot more "pro" photographers crop up in the past few years. I've seen some of their work, and it's heartbreaking that people actually pay them for what they get. I'm just waiting to see my first wedding shot by a pro photographer with an iPhone. "Hey, your pictures are already up on Facebook." ;-)

[Sebastian]

My iPhone 4 takes spectacular photos, even HDRs with third-party apps (pre-iOS4.1). To me, it's not a phone camera, or a camera phone, it's just a camera with a fixed wide-angle lens. The spontaneity, compact size and image quality have cause me to shoot MUCH more on a daily basis than I have in years.

Taking pictures is good. Ergo, iPhone camera is good.

[Sebastian]

Double post.

[Anbesol]

I think its implications are only the expansion of photography into more laymen culture, more so than an eradication of the point and shoot market. There is still a major jump between even lowly point and shoots and the best camera phones.

I do make use of my iphone camera, but it obviously is chalk full of limitations. Mega pixel schmega schmixel, if 14 mega pixel point and shoots haven't shown us already - "mega pixel" is far from being the primary bench mark. But marketing teams and sensor manufacturers (Sony) would sure like people to continue thinking that. Why upgrade that terrific 7 Megapixel A620? Oh boy! More pixels!