The beginning of the end (for digital cameras?) - Olympus to sell digital camera business

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Sauron said:

What did I accuse you of?

Of not reading the article.  I believe the phrase was “if you’d actually read the article you’d..  “. I couldn’t have not read the article and posted the commentary I did earlier.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Of not reading the article.  I believe the phrase was “if you’d actually read the article you’d..  “. I couldn’t have not read the article and posted the commentary I did earlier.

It wasn't directed at you specifically. I wasn't assuming you didn't read it - I was saying that my point there relied on having read the article.

[D13H4RD]

Kind of inevitable unfortunately. Not because of phones but because Olympus hasn't really been able to fully distance themselves from the 2011 scandal, methinks.

 

It's a shame because barely anyone knows about this, but Olympus has been sort of the king of computational photography on dedicated ILCs for a while now. There aren't many camera bodies able to do keystone correction, in-camera focus merging and all that kind of stuff on the camera body itself. My Fuji X-T3 can do focus bracketing but requires a separate program (Zerene Stacker in my case) to properly merge the result to create a single focus stacked image.

 

IMO, I think Olympus has kind of failed to give a concrete reason for people other than M43 enthusiasts to buy their cameras over, say, a Fuji X-T30/X-T3/4 or a Sony a6400. They do have a size advantage with the smaller lenses and of course, their well-regarded weather sealing, but they've also been quite behind in terms of video, something that fellow M43 partner/rival Panasonic capitalized hugely for the GHx series. And like it or not, video features sell cameras, which is why Canon is only hyping video features for the EOS R5, and nothing was mentioned about the photo aspect.

[sora.sky]

Unfortunate for Olympus and the fans of their camera lineup.

 

I vehemently disagree on the notion that the end of digital cameras as OP's title is nigh. Smartphones have virtually deleted the market for dedicated cameras with sensors smaller than M4/3 yes. But today's camera buyers are not typical consumers - the market has shrunk to mostly hobbyists, prosumers, or professionals. Those that either make money or want a more capable device for taking photography. There's still situations, albeit niche, where a smartphone isn't going to cut it.

[dizmo]

Digital cameras are far from disappearing. Their market will shrink, probably drastically over the next decade, but they'll always exist. There aren't that many companies, so it's also unlikely that we'll see many of them actually go under. As long as they continue to innovate and improve. 

 

On 6/25/2020 at 2:16 PM, Zodiark1593 said:

“Some”?

 

An older (2016) 1” format sensor wallops my iPhone 11 in quality. Doesn’t require a full frame sensor to flatten phones on image quality. 
 

Think the thing is most people simply don’t care about the quality metric (within reason). 

Next year we'll see phones gaining 1" sensors, and once that happens I think we'll see more camera centric phones come to market. If they finally do well, there will be even more investment and who knows, maybe we'll see a phone with M43 in 5 or 6 years. 

On 6/25/2020 at 10:55 PM, poochyena said:

The ONLY advantage phone cameras have is convenience.

That's a massive decider for most people. 

[Zodiark1593]

8 hours ago, dizmo said:

. 

 

Next year we'll see phones gaining 1" sensors, and once that happens I think we'll see more camera centric phones come to market. If they finally do well, there will be even more investment and who knows, maybe we'll see a phone with M43 in 5 or 6 years. 

That's a massive decider for most people. 

You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve some doubts about 1” form factor (the actual size is about Super 16mm equivalent)  sensors becoming common on mainstream phones. The lenses required while not compromising aperture will be significantly larger. Given a crop factor of 2.7x, You’ll require a focal length of 8.8mm to achieve the 24mm equivalent that is so common on main shooters today. An aperture of F1.8 at this focal length requires an aperture diameter of 4.9mm.

 

TBH, even the lens system on my Canon isn’t able to project the image circle onto the entire sensor at 8.8mm as it’s probably undersized for the job. I don’t see how a phone will fare any better with much less space to work with. 
 

Giant camera bump is the likely result. Not to mention it would be entirely impractical to use an optical telephoto lens with a 1” sensor. Already, phones with a telephoto sensor use a smaller sensor, barring more exotic solutions such as the periscope. 
 

 

[dizmo]

38 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve some doubts about 1” form factor (the actual size is about Super 16mm equivalent)  sensors becoming common on mainstream phones. The lenses required while not compromising aperture will be significantly larger. Given a crop factor of 2.7x, You’ll require a focal length of 8.8mm to achieve the 24mm equivalent that is so common on main shooters today. An aperture of F1.8 at this focal length requires an aperture diameter of 4.9mm.

 

TBH, even the lens system on my Canon isn’t able to project the image circle onto the entire sensor at 8.8mm as it’s probably undersized for the job. I don’t see how a phone will fare any better with much less space to work with. 
 

Giant camera bump is the likely result. Not to mention it would be entirely impractical to use an optical telephoto lens with a 1” sensor. Already, phones with a telephoto sensor use a smaller sensor, barring more exotic solutions such as the periscope.

Samsung is already in the process of developing the sensor. I didn't say it'll be common, i said it's coming to phones, and we'll start seeing more camera centric phones once that happens. It also wouldn't be the first time a 1" sensor has been put inside a phone; Panasonic did it 6 years ago.

[Thready]

If you really want to know about how the camera industry is doing I suggest subbing to Tony Northrup on YouTube. He puts out videos about camera news and he says the smaller companies like Olympus are going to eventually fall off the radar, larger companies like Canon, Nikon, and Sony will survive as long as they continue to innovate.

 

One area where I believe there needs to be innovation is in image processing in camera. The reason why your phone photo can look so clean and sharp with such a high F stop and small sensor is because of image processing in the phone.

 

And in order to survive in the long run, there needs to be more innovation with user friendliness as well. There needs to be more accessibility for newbies and casuals if they want to sell enough cameras to survive as phones get more and more advanced. If they don't people will abandon real cameras for phone cameras. I know many people who can't navigate a real camera no matter how much time they put into learning and they just go with their phone. That should be a wakeup call to these companies to adopt user friendly OSes.

 

 Android is incredibly user friendly and instead of all these proprietary OSes on cameras, they could switch to Android based OSes and have the power of Android and Android friendly AIs behind the software. I've been a professional for 5 years and I can even get confused by some of the menu options on cameras. I did a studio shoot last winter and I have less experience in studio than outdoors and it took a bit for me to fiddle with the settings to get everything set up. User friendliness could be the camera automatically setting your exposure settings for studio lights. You input the wattage of the flash, etc. And your camera adjusts accordingly.

 

This also means you can potentially download apps to your camera that make things easier. For example, if you're wanting to do astrophotography, you could have an app on your camera that helps you along the way. It automatically sets your exposure settings and analyzes the night sky in order to get you the best results, then it can stack your images in camera and create a TIF file for you to export into your editing software.

 

And if you're doing portrait photography, an algorithm that recognizes people, like an algorithm that sees a white gown and automatically knows that's the bride, could help wedding photographers. These things are possible and it doesn't take much more power than is already in cameras now. 

 

In conclusion, quality of life improvements and accessibility is what can help companies stay in business in the next 10 years as phones become more advanced. Phones are the biggest threat to pro and consumer cameras. If you want people buying your products then you have to make them as easy as a cell phone.

 

[D13H4RD]

45 minutes ago, Thready said:

If you really want to know about how the camera industry is doing I suggest subbing to Tony Northrup on YouTube. He puts out videos about camera news and he says the smaller companies like Olympus are going to eventually fall off the radar, larger companies like Canon, Nikon, and Sony will survive as long as they continue to innovate.

Hate to be that kind of person, but us in the photographic community have not really been ones to really look at the Northrups as reliable "source" of information.

[Thready]

4 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Hate to be that kind of person, but us in the photographic community have not really been ones to really look at the Northrups as reliable "source" of information.

Really? I think he makes a lot of good points about the future of photography. He believes these companies need to adopt more user friendly and intuitive software for their cameras if they want to broaden their consumer base. 

[D13H4RD]

Just now, Thready said:

Really? I think he makes a lot of good points about the future of photography

There is that but he also spreads a lot of questionable stuff such as how he explains ISO along with how 4K video "failed" supposedly.

 

He has his rights to an opinion for the latter but it's just the way he explains stuff that makes us in the community really look at each other and go "This guy is popular?"

[Thready]

Just now, D13H4RD said:

There is that but he also spreads a lot of questionable stuff such as how he explains ISO along with how 4K video "failed" supposedly.

 

He has his rights to an opinion for the latter but it's just the way he explains stuff that makes us in the community really look at each other and go "This guy is popular?"

What do you think about the whole Android in cameras thing though? 

[D13H4RD]

Just now, Thready said:

What do you think about the whole Android in cameras thing though? 

It's been done before. Sony did it before with PlayMemories, which is actually Android-based.

 

The idea is noble but there is a reason Sony discontinued Playmemories. Great for consumer stuff but high-tier cameras oriented for pro use usually see these features shoved aside for better manual controls.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Thready said:

If you really want to know about how the camera industry is doing I suggest subbing to Tony Northrup on YouTube. He puts out videos about camera news and he says the smaller companies like Olympus are going to eventually fall off the radar, larger companies like Canon, Nikon, and Sony will survive as long as they continue to innovate.

 

One area where I believe there needs to be innovation is in image processing in camera. The reason why your phone photo can look so clean and sharp with such a high F stop and small sensor is because of image processing in the phone.

 

And in order to survive in the long run, there needs to be more innovation with user friendliness as well. There needs to be more accessibility for newbies and casuals if they want to sell enough cameras to survive as phones get more and more advanced. If they don't people will abandon real cameras for phone cameras. I know many people who can't navigate a real camera no matter how much time they put into learning and they just go with their phone. That should be a wakeup call to these companies to adopt user friendly OSes.

 

 Android is incredibly user friendly and instead of all these proprietary OSes on cameras, they could switch to Android based OSes and have the power of Android and Android friendly AIs behind the software. I've been a professional for 5 years and I can even get confused by some of the menu options on cameras. I did a studio shoot last winter and I have less experience in studio than outdoors and it took a bit for me to fiddle with the settings to get everything set up. User friendliness could be the camera automatically setting your exposure settings for studio lights. You input the wattage of the flash, etc. And your camera adjusts accordingly.

 

This also means you can potentially download apps to your camera that make things easier. For example, if you're wanting to do astrophotography, you could have an app on your camera that helps you along the way. It automatically sets your exposure settings and analyzes the night sky in order to get you the best results, then it can stack your images in camera and create a TIF file for you to export into your editing software.

 

And if you're doing portrait photography, an algorithm that recognizes people, like an algorithm that sees a white gown and automatically knows that's the bride, could help wedding photographers. These things are possible and it doesn't take much more power than is already in cameras now. 

 

In conclusion, quality of life improvements and accessibility is what can help companies stay in business in the next 10 years as phones become more advanced. Phones are the biggest threat to pro and consumer cameras. If you want people buying your products then you have to make them as easy as a cell phone.

 

I am actually going to vehemently disagree on the need and use of Android on dedicated cameras, certainly not in it’s current form anyway.
 

The reason is two fold. Photo moments can come and go within seconds. Boot up times for cameras must be fast. My Canon can be up and running in about 3 seconds after pushing the power, and even that isn’t fast enough at times. 
 

Implementing a standby is an option, but leads to my second point. Standby power consumption must be minuscule to nonexistent. 
 

Again, using my Canon as an example, the 3 second boot time is from a cold boot. The camera doesn’t implement any sort of standby. If the battery had been removed overnight, you can expect to put it in, push the button, and have a ready camera in that 3 seconds. 
 

Smartphone boot times are quick nowadays, but are nowhere near as fast. For professionals that have to swap batteries during a shoot, a few seconds are very crucial. 
 

Further, due to the lack of standby, battery life remains constant over extended periods of time. As in, if you use the camera sparsely, you can go multiple weeks before having to charge a battery, with battery sizes often coming in well below 2000 mAh. If I left my camera at my desk at half battery two weeks ago, I can grab my camera and easily expect a couple hours of use before needing a charge/swap. Even smart watches are not as frugal. 

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I am actually going to vehemently disagree on the need and use of Android on dedicated cameras, certainly not in it’s current form anyway.
 

The reason is two fold. Photo moments can come and go within seconds. Boot up times for cameras must be fast. My Canon can be up and running in about 3 seconds after pushing the power, and even that isn’t fast enough at times. 
 

Implementing a standby is an option, but leads to my second point. Standby power consumption must be minuscule to nonexistent. 
 

Again, using my Canon as an example, the 3 second boot time is from a cold boot. The camera doesn’t implement any sort of standby. If the battery had been removed overnight, you can expect to put it in, push the button, and have a ready camera in that 3 seconds. 
 

Smartphone boot times are quick nowadays, but are nowhere near as fast. For professionals that have to swap batteries during a shoot, a few seconds are very crucial. 
 

Further, due to the lack of standby, battery life remains constant over extended periods of time. As in, if you use the camera sparsely, you can go multiple weeks before having to charge a battery, with battery sizes often coming in well below 2000 mAh. If I left my camera at my desk at half battery two weeks ago, I can grab my camera and easily expect a couple hours of use before needing a charge/swap. Even smart watches are not as frugal. 

This is the problem I always had with digital cameras in general.  SLRs fired like a gun (with a big clunk but still fast) digital cameras fired like a musket: fizz whoosh bang.  The delay was enough to make good portraiture impossible for me. 
 

I kept hoping I could get back that speed but it never happened.  Might be here now but these days I got no reason to take pictures.

[atxcyclist]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

This is the problem I always had with digital cameras in general.  SLRs fired like a gun (with a big clunk but still fast) digital cameras fired like a musket: fizz whoosh bang.  The delay was enough to make good portraiture impossible for me. 
 

I kept hoping I could get back that speed but it never happened.  Might be here now but these days I got no reason to take pictures.

They've gotten faster, but yes there are some things that make them a different experience than a film camera. I bought a Fuji X-T100 some months ago and it's about as close as I would pay for to a 35mm "equivalent" digital camera. Things that make it slower in some instances are that there are no traditional controls on the lenses I have, though the higher-end ones get them. I usually leave it in aperture priority so this isn't much of an issue, I have a thumb knob for aperture control and the camera does the rest.

 

I still love film, and have a safe full of 35mm, 120, and even a 4"x5" large format camera, but they don't come out very often. I can put the X-T100 and both lenses in a small bag, and have enough battery and SD storage to take as many frames as I want. Maybe some day a Fuji GFX50 will be in my hands, but they'll have to get a bit older (and cheaper) first. Maybe regular mirrorless cameras will be above the 50 megapixel mark soon enough, who knows.

[Zodiark1593]

12 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

They've gotten faster, but yes there are some things that make them a different experience than a film camera. I bought a Fuji X-T100 some months ago and it's about as close as I would pay for to a 35mm "equivalent" digital camera. Things that make it slower in some instances are that there are no traditional controls on the lenses I have, though the higher-end ones get them. I usually leave it in aperture priority so this isn't much of an issue, I have a thumb knob for aperture control and the camera does the rest.

 

I still love film, and have a safe full of 35mm, 120, and even a 4"x5" large format camera, but they don't come out very often. I can put the X-T100 and both lenses in a small bag, and have enough battery and SD storage to take as many frames as I want. Maybe some day a Fuji GFX50 will be in my hands, but they'll have to get a bit older (and cheaper) first. Maybe regular mirrorless cameras will be above the 50 megapixel mark soon enough, who knows.

Medium Format film is very appealing, but the logistics of it (buying the relatively niche film, sensing it out for development, scanning) kind of make it difficult to choose. The ongoing costs of film and development deter shooting on a whim as well. 
 

Medium format digital is probably more my speed, and while technically I have the money to buy one (or a Sony A7S III for that matter) right now, there’s other things pretty pressing that my money needs to go to before I can consider a new camera. My G7X mkii will hold me over for awhile longer anyway.

 

[GDRRiley]

On 6/25/2020 at 3:44 PM, divito said:

They never really got the same kind of love compared to the Big 3 (4 for the Fuji die-hards). I always had a soft spot for Olympus based on some of their models and felt they never got enough credit. That being said, I moved on to an RX100 for my non-phone camera. 

I think the other manufacturers are still on solid footing despite what is happening with Olympus. 

I think it is the big 5

Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pansonic, Fuji.

 

I've never found any digital Olympus other than maybe their waterproof line to be any interest.

[exetras]

On 6/27/2020 at 2:28 PM, Thready said:

 

 

One area where I believe there needs to be innovation is in image processing in camera. The reason why your phone photo can look so clean and sharp with such a high F stop and small sensor is because of image processing in the phone.

 

That's a big no no, you do not want any processing from the camera on a DSLR. You want the image to be as raw as possible and process the image yourself later.

 

From a consumer side it might be appealing, but I think its too late to save the consumer DSLR market.

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, exetras said:

That's a big no no, you do not want any processing from the camera on a DSLR. You want the image to be as raw as possible and process the image yourself later.

 

From a consumer side it might be appealing, but I think its too late to save the consumer DSLR market.

Don’t think abandoning the consumer segment will be a positive, as prices will likely have to rise on pro and hobby equipment to compensate.

 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Don’t think abandoning the consumer segment will be a positive, as prices will likely have to rise on pro and hobby equipment to compensate.

 

They will.  And have.  It’s not a question of it being a positive though.  If consumers aren’t buying theyre not buying.

[Metal_HorseCrab]

As if people think only 1 brand make cameras.

 

Lockdown has destroyed braincells.

[ThePointblank]

On 6/29/2020 at 1:19 PM, Metal_HorseCrab said:

As if people think only 1 brand make cameras.

 

Lockdown has destroyed braincells.

Considering that there are effectively two companies that actually make CMOS sensors for cameras, with one taking the lion's share of the market, it is effectively one brand making almost all of the camera's sensors.

[Drama Lama]

I mean you could have seen this coming 

imagine how many people bought cameras 20 years ago and how many now.

it‘s a bit like amplifiers : once almost everyone had one but now most people are just happy with their phone, their spotify subscription, AirPods and cheap Bluetooth box.

 

Digitalcameras won’t „die out“ in the near and mid future but they will shrink to a smaller group of consumers