Canon thinks the camera market will drop by another 50% over the next two years

knight427

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That's pretty much defines the latest Olympus camera. The career page tells the story for Olympus, they're booming, but not because of photography.

I tried briefly to look at one of their quarterly reports several weeks ago. My impression was that cameras weren't something they needed to talk much about to inform shareholders what was going on.
 
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Does it still make sense, for Panasonic, to enter a declining market? Less cake, more slices...
Should Canon try to increase their market share with additional and competitive models instead of slamming the brakes on? Anyway, apart from Canon, nobody knows what their real strategy will be. Unlike most youtubers, they are market -experienced. We can only wait and see...and remain confident!
I think Panasonic wants to go FF for image quality, to separate from smaller sensors.
 
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knight427

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R&D dollars will follow. Advancements will slow.

The question is, how will CR fair. Since it is a rumor site and it takes longer between camera advancements will it be a boom or a bust?

There was a digital boom with DSLR's last decade, it has been a steady decline. Look at the traffic in TDP's forum over the last 10 years. Will the same thing happen here?

Who will be here at the end to turn off the lights when it is over? If there is a pool I am taking Neuro.

This reminds me, we are going to die someday. No sense in waiting for that perfect camera, the RP is looking better and better.
 
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Now watch as Indie filmmakers and journalists move away from clunky cinemaEOS type video cameras to mirrorless. The coming Panasonic S1/S1R is just the beginning.

Indie filmmakers and journalists. That is the market that you think Canon should target to maintain sales? Why do commenters keep thinking this is a significant market for DSLR's?
 
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In contrast, I was looking at Sony and their imaging division which is only <6% of their overall composition. By operating income, their imaging BU is a fraction of their financial services, music and picture, gaming and semiconductor business. ...

There are basically 2 types of companies in the camera space; imaging companies and electronics companies.

Sony and Panasonic are electronics conglomerates, cameras are just one of the many electronic products they produce.

Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm are imaging companies. Cameras are one of the related imaging products. For example, Nikon sells spectacle lenses and their claim to fame used to be steppers - equipment for making lenses.

Comparing both types of companies will give you a sense of who is in for the long haul. Sony and Panasonic can just discard their camera divisions if they lose interest in that segment, as per Samsung.

Canon's and Nikon's health is closely related to photography. If they cannot make it in cameras, they are in trouble. They will fight to the death to find a way forward with cameras. Canon's exit from photography will probably coincide with the end of photography as we now know it.
 
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the C EOS are NOT clunky at all. In fact RED copies canon in having a big grip on the right side of the camera, as did Sony with the FS5. C EOS is a very compact and light body compared to the past - RED ONE ( an 11lb aluminum brick with a lens port ), F16, F35, etc. FS7 is a bigger camera. Go shoot with a F55 and then get back to me about the C EOS bodies. Arri Mini makes nice pix but is NOT a user friendly camera to work with, its just a block of CF with a lens port and electronics inside with miserable micro connectors.

that said, I just bought a fuji XT3 as a B cam and for gimbal. I should of bought a new EOS R but when it cost $1k _more_ and had poorer specs, sorry but this 30+ year canon user just couldn't do it. Canon your sales are declining because there is little brand loyalty now because we are tired of being bled of cash for no good reason and getting very marginal updates. Canon is vastly to timid in features across all its cameras. Why they don't get is that users will simply go to another brand rather than spend 2X-5X in the canon product lines to get what they want.

OTH the ergonomics of canon are solid. your hands aren't getting smaller even if the camera bodies can. you can only make things so small before the bodies become very hard to work with, especially with gloves on in the cold or rain or snow. not everyone works in a 70F studio...

I will make a prediction for Mr Mitarai. You sir, bet heavily on the cinemaEOS system . That's why your EOS line had laughable video offerings compared to the competition. Now watch as Indie filmmakers and journalists move away from clunky cinemaEOS type video cameras to mirrorless. The coming Panasonic S1/S1R is just the beginning.
 
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We’ve decided everything has its season, and started singing around the campfire. Go buy what your heart desires while it still beats. Peace out.

It's a Fuji GFX50 with all lenses, and in theory I can buy it, but my wife will excommunicate me to an exile around a campfire with singing and dancing with the new camera. So no, I'd better stick to Canon for the time being.
 
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Popularity of taking pictures with a cell phone and ability to share in social media is huge and may have contributed to the shrinkage. However, there are many use-cases (e.g. wild life, macro, astro, long exposures, and photography in harsh conditions, etc.) require tools other than a cell phone with smaller sensor and limited reach lens.
Have you ever seen a pro photographer taking picture of wildlife in a safari trip, race cars, soccer games, wild animals in arctics, birds in fly, portraits using flashes and light modifiers, macro picture of insects, and 8 sec shots of fireworks using his/her cell phone? Have you ever seen a professional videographer shoot a blockbuster movie merely using a cell phone?
AI (the most abused technology term nowadays!) or whatever computation photography cannot replace the actual photographer/videographer and his/her dedicated camera. Yes, the market is shrinking but the genuine need for advanced cameras and lenses is there. Surprising trent indeed but not so much to worry about.

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As a matter of fact YES I HAVE...right here in Vancouver which is the 3rd largest film production centre in North America After LA and New York. In fact, multiple high end commercials, and photos of wildlife in a safari trip, race cars, soccer/football/hockey games, wild animals in arctics, birds in fly, human and animal portraits have ALL been shot and broadcast using iPhone AND Android phones! One of my film industry friends last year got paid over $250,000 to film a series of high end commercials (which you have seen!) for a major automotive company here in Vancouver shot ALL on iPhones!

It was VERY DIFFICULT to tell the difference and as a person with a well-trained, 30 years video experience eye I definitely had a hard time figuring out which was filmed with the iPhone versus the ones with the Arri! I am pretty sure the general public will ALSO be hard pressed to determine what type of camera shot what!

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I can't say what else is coming soon in terms of large sensor video-centric smartphone/tablet hardware from a certain high profile media company BUT I CAN SAY that Canon and Sony are ALSO working on large-sensor smartphones which in many cases WILL OUTPERFORM even mid-range DSLR's due to recent advancements in computational photography!

And I QUITE DISAGREE that computational photography cannot replace the actual photographer/videographer and his/her dedicated camera! OH YES IT CAN! That IS THE WHOLE POINT OF A.I. !!! As a long-time synthetic vision systems and autonomous object recognition systems programmer, I am more than qualified to indicate that there is NO REASON AT ALL that expert systems/neural net software CANNOT meet and even FAR EXCEED the imaging expertise of even well-experienced photographers/videographers!

Some of the software/hardware vision systems I have had the pleasure of consulting for CAN EASILY BEST even the most top-end photographic expert in terms of composition, speed, artistic value, etc. WHY? because THAT IS THE POINT OF TRUE General Artificial Intelligence --- to MEET and EXCEED the processing and executive function capabilities of most humans!

To put it from a systems perspective, IT ONLY TAKES 200 PetaFLOPS of CPU horsepower to actually MATCH and EXCEED the sheer hardware processing power of the human brain in terms of human neural synapse emulation and electro-chemical process simulation! We are ALREADY AT THAT POINT !!! We are just now in the process of SHRINKING that capability down to BasketBall-sized hardware from the current warehouse-sized hardware! Once you have the hardware and Neural Net software which emulates human reasoning, there really isn't ANY SUBJECT that system cannot get and be GREAT AT doing! Photography/Videography? EASY! Medical/Dental/Psych diagnosis and treatment? NO PROBLEM! Art and Design? ALREADY THERE! There is NO JOB or HUMAN ENDEAVOUR a decently powerful hardware box (i.e. 200+ PetaFLOPS) with a good neural net software system CANNOT DO !!!

AND for emulating just high end vision recognition and high-level photography/videography skills, I only need the equivalent of FOUR 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845/855 SoC CPU's to do that with a real-time high level software-based expert system to do that! That means by 2020 to 2022, when 32-core Qualcomm Snapdragons 865/875 or Apple A13/A14 chips come out THEN we will TRULY have reached that hardware threshold of our SMARTPHONES being MUCH BETTER PHOTOGRAPHERS AND VIDEOGRAPHERS than 99.75% of the population!
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To put it from a systems perspective, IT ONLY TAKES 200 PetaFLOPS of CPU horsepower to actually MATCH and EXCEED the sheer hardware processing power of the human brain in terms of human neural synapse emulation and electro-chemical process simulation! We are ALREADY AT THAT POINT !!!

Sorry Harry, that's all just a sequence of pseudo-scientific statements; neural networks are very useful and powerful when applied within certain narrow areas but unfortunately not even close to simulate the actual human brain. Moreover they cannot even simulate a behaviour of a simple worm with 300 neurons.
 
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I gues that explains the super high prices of the RF lenses. Same profit in a shrinking market.

Canon has been competitive on lens prices (usually cheaper than Nikon and almost always cheaper than Sony), and I don't expect that to change.

Sony's 24-105 is $1399 vs the RF for $1099. Nikon doesn't even have a comparable lens yet, but even their 24-70 is $999. BTW, the RF has the same MSRP as the 24-105 f4L IS II ($1099)

Nikon's 35mm 1.8 is $849 vs $499 for Canon. Sonly wants $450 for their APS-C version! (I couldn't find an exactly comparable full-frame lens, but I'm sure somebody will correct me).

Right now RF looks more expensive than EF because the RF lenses are selling at their MSRP, while EF usually has some kind of discount. There's also a huge used supply of Canon lenses which makes them much cheaper to acquire. Neither of those will happen with RF for a while, so there will probably be a price disparity for a while. That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.

The 28-70mm f2 and 50mm f1.2 are exotic lenses, and it's really hard to compare them to anything else. Those you're paying a premium due to the exotic design and low volume.
 
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knight427

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Sorry Harry, that's all just a sequence of pseudo-scientific statements; neural networks are very useful and powerful when applied within certain narrow areas but unfortunately not even close to simulate the actual human brain. Moreover they cannot even simulate a behaviour of a simple worm with 300 neurons.

But his flux capacitor is nearly to 1.21 jigawatts! There’s no stopping him now, all your photos are belong to him ☹️
 
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With all talk of doom and gloom, I thought I’d go look to see what is actually happening at Canon. They have not released Q4 2018 yet, so this is based on Q3 estimates for 2018 (meaning these numbers are what Canon gave to shareholders as estimates using 3 quarters of actuals, and one quarter of estimates).

I had no idea what to expect, so this was illuminating for myself. Canon makes just under half of their revenue from Office, and about a quarter from Imaging. Ignoring the fact that imaging includes inkjet printers, we can expect that slice to be greatly reduced over the next two years. However, it will then be close to parity with Medical. However, if you look at profitability, Imaging is nearly twice as profitable as Medical (which was not at all what I had expected).

So if Canon hopes to offset a declining camera market, they can offset this on a dollar by dollar basis if they increase Office sales (roughly equal profit ratio). But if they want to offset it with increased Medical sales, they will need roughly $2 of new medical sales to offset every $1 lost to cameras. This also shows that Canon will still care a great deal about cameras, even at half-size, the market is still large and very profitable. Frankly, they can’t afford to just walk away.

Of course, cameras will have diminishing prestige within the company as they focus on other business units to find growth and this will impact development of new products.

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Canon's big Medical push isn't in full swing I'd say. They've only owned Toshiba a short while and they were in a lot of trouble in Japan for how they went about the deal. Medical revenue will increase dramatically going forward in the 2-4 year timescale.

With the P&S market extinct and the advanced compact next to go, I'd like to know where people think Canon will get their R&D dollars from for their higher end gear. The huge volume low margin P&S market once supplied about 70-80% of their camera revenue and was why they had a huge R&D budget for their DLSRs and L glass. I worked for Canon research for 4 years from 2011-2014 and post GFC they slashed R&D and our workforce dropped 70% in 3 years, despite having only increased for the previous 20 years. Every single project we worked on was ultimately canceled and these were in medical and camera areas and other divisions shut down. Things were grim then and have only gotten worse

I wonder how much money Canon will be prepared to siphon off from other more profitable divisions to prop up consumer imaging. Don't forget R&D costs don't shrink even as the market does, less sales, means ever higher prices to amortise costs. This is what Olympus has been doing for about 4 years now, pushing prices up and up to keep their bottom line the same form smaller sales. We are rapidly approaching a time when we've come full circle and only well healed folk will afford thew good gear. L glass superteles have skyrocketed about 125% since 2010, thanks top amalgamation of 1 series line, entry into that system has jumped 33% or so from 1D4 days, Canon mostly only releases high priced L glass, how many non-L lenses been released in last 5 years?
 
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It was VERY DIFFICULT to tell the difference and as a person with a well-trained, 30 years video experience eye I definitely had a hard time figuring out which was filmed with the iPhone versus the ones with the Arri! I am pretty sure the general public will ALSO be hard pressed to determine what type of camera shot what!
If it is VERY DIFFICULT to tell the difference please try to make a documentary or take picture of lions in a safari trip with your cell phone. Your insurance agency can EASILY tell which video/picture was taken by a cell phone --- to your next of kin!! :p
 
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The number of Canon dSLRs sold every year is huge, and it is orders of magnitude above the number of photographers doing these rather special types of photography. There will always be a need for dSLRs, but the numbers sold to this market segment may or may not support the business model of producing them, much less the research required to push the envelope of technology.
Actually, there are four categories of human users who use cameras, of some kind: Artists, Businesses (wedding, journalists, etc.), Enthusiasts, and finally, Documentarians who use the camera for documenting their life and surrounding. The artists and businesses will always be there and their number may grow proportional to the population and state of economy. I guess, shrinking of the market is mostly because of those Documentarians who are using cell phones instead of cameras for various reasons.
Canon's approach to replace diminishing human users by virtual ones (i.e. surveilance and medical imaging users) is smart and will guarantee cash-flow to save the business. Meanwhile, I guess they will try to find a way to create a sustainable stream of Documentarians to move to the other three categories by showing them innovative use-cases for which only cameras can be used. A few of those concept cameras and innovative usages are usually on demo at various photo shows by Canon.
 
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If you can't tell the difference between arri and iphone footage then I doubt your video experience is in the market bm, arri and red and higher up canon cine are aimed at. If you've ever edited anything or been involved with lighting complex scenes you'd know a phone can't do what cine cams can. Sure they may look the same for certain situation and lighting when operated by the youtube content creator types but imho they are barely scratching the surface of the capabilities and would be just as well served with a dslr.

Fwiw I am not a serious video guy, although have actual independent cine folks in my family on fathers side (although he is still guy himself but got out at the end of film). None of the cine members in the pro world use dslr's (in my family I mean) never mind phones for a reason. Good luck getting your iphone to output something that has enough editing headroom when they are all compressed 422 at best I imagine. Bet some of my relatives can tell sitting at their grading desk. These cameras are not aimed at the likes of you and I and those that NEED them know why and it isn't meaningful OOC files at same settings look the sameto us posted on facebook compressed to hell. Not to mention phones don't have any choices on lenses, high DR demands of some scenes, flexibility of settings, accessories and compatibility with them and how they fit into lineup with other cameras used on set and so on.
 
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As a matter of fact YES I HAVE...That means by 2020 to 2022, when 32-core Qualcomm Snapdragons 865/875 or Apple A13/A14 chips come out THEN we will TRULY have reached that hardware threshold of our SMARTPHONES being MUCH BETTER PHOTOGRAPHERS AND VIDEOGRAPHERS than 99.75% of the population!
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Sounds like it's time to scale back on the psychotropics Harry. Have the doc check your meds, soon please.
 
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