Industry News: Nikon to end camera production in Japan

[dolina]

Here's entreprenuer magazine saying the same thing

Smartphones Have Officially Crushed Digital Cameras | Entrepreneur

The drop off in camera sales in the last decade is precipitous.

www.entrepreneur.com

 

[privatebydesign]

And nothing I said disagreed with any of it. Only an idiot would argue that phones didn’t destroy the P&S market that didn’t exist in any profitable way before the production figures I referenced.

None of that contradicts my points. There are three times as many cameras shipped now as there were 20 years ago, the value of those cameras is much higher, and the world population has only increased 25% in the same time.

As for incentivizing stock and not relying on shipped units as a reliable figure, piffle. If the entire industry does the same and the same figure is used for comparisons any distortions are equalized. Further, the entire point of shipped units is the fact that eventually all those units are sold, by whatever circuitous route, and even if it isn’t that calendar year again the errors normalize each year.

 

[justaCanonuser]

Continue reading...

No good news for Nikon users, since Nikon's quality standards are already quite below Canon's - at least according to our experience. We have two extended gears from Canon and Nikon, shoot them side by side (mostly wildlife in rugged environments), and had substantially more failures and repairs with Nikon DSLRs and lenses than with Canon's: 3 Nikon cameras with massive failures and a broken AF drive of a Nikkor tele lens vs only one broken thumb wheel of the original 7D. Can't be bad luck only, I guess. Semipro Nikons are e.g. much more prone to rain, we found out the hard way, Canon's weather sealings overall are much better.

 

[AlanF]

No good news for Nikon users, since Nikon's quality standards are already quite below Canon's - at least according to our experience. We have two extended gears from Canon and Nikon, shoot them side by side (mostly wildlife in rugged environments), and had substantially more failures and repairs with Nikon DSLRs and lenses than with Canon's: 3 Nikon cameras with massive failures and a broken AF drive of a Nikkor tele lens vs only one broken thumb wheel of the original 7D. Can't be bad luck only, I guess. Semipro Nikons are e.g. much more prone to rain, we found out the hard way, Canon's weather sealings overall are much better.

I usually take seriously people's direct personal experience, but urge caution about drawing general conclusions from comments in forum threads. Here is what Roger Cicala writes about lensrentals teardown of Nikon's mirrorless (not made in Japan):
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2018/10/teardown-of-the-nikon-z7-mirrorless-camera/
“This is not marketing department weather resistance. This is engineering department weather resistance. Anything that can be sealed has been sealed. I’m impressed, and I will say for future cut-and-paste blurbs: this is as robustly weather sealed a camera as we’ve ever disassembled.”
“I’m just here to say this is a damn well-built camera, the best built mirrorless full-frame camera we’ve taken apart."

I hope my R5 is as good.

 

[privatebydesign]

I hope my R5 is as good.

Alan, I really like this guy, Morten Hilmer, and although he is a longtime Nikon user he has been trying out an R5. He isn’t a reviewer he just tries anything that he feels might give him more keepers and the gear to do that is secondary to technique and field craft. But his mentions of the gear at the end and the water and muck he gets on his R5 might make you feel good about your R5.

 

[AlanF]

Alan, I really like this guy, Morten Hilmer, and although he is a longtime Nikon user he has been trying out an R5. He isn’t a reviewer he just tries anything that he feels might give him more keepers and the gear to do that is secondary to technique and field craft. But his mentions of the gear at the end and the water and muck he gets on his R5 might make you feel good about your R5.

Great! Roger gives the R5 a nice write up in his teardown. Companies sometimes pull out all of the stops, and Canon did it with the R5.

 

[privatebydesign]

Great! Roger gives the R5 a nice write up in his teardown. Companies sometimes pull out all of the stops, and Canon did it with the R5.

Hope you like the video, it Is the kind of video that has made me come to the conclusion that the issues I have with MILC’s are down to me to overcome as the benefits really do out way them, and as you say it seems Canon pulled out the stops with the R5. I have decided to get one in the first quarter of next year and see how I get on with owning one rather than borrowing them.

 

[AlanF]

Hope you like the video, it Is the kind of video that has made me come to the conclusion that the issues I have with MILC’s are down to me to overcome as the benefits really do out way them, and as you say it seems Canon pulled out the stops with the R5. I have decided to get one in the first quarter of next year and see how I get on with owning one rather than borrowing them.

Thanks so much for the heads up. What a really nice video, and the complete antithesis of Fro, TN etc from someone without an axe to grind and taking beautiful photos. What field craft too, a real delight.

In the end, it's the eyeAF that's the key feature.

 

[justaCanonuser]

I usually take seriously people's direct personal experience, but urge caution about drawing general conclusions from comments in forum threads. Here is what Roger Cicala writes about lensrentals teardown of Nikon's mirrorless (not made in Japan):
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2018/10/teardown-of-the-nikon-z7-mirrorless-camera/
“This is not marketing department weather resistance. This is engineering department weather resistance. Anything that can be sealed has been sealed. I’m impressed, and I will say for future cut-and-paste blurbs: this is as robustly weather sealed a camera as we’ve ever disassembled.”
“I’m just here to say this is a damn well-built camera, the best built mirrorless full-frame camera we’ve taken apart."

I hope my R5 is as good.

Our experience is restricted to Nikon DSLRs: D300, D300S, D700, and D500. The D500 so far works without flaws, and it is indeed made in Thailand. But we did not yet take it to really rugged environments. I do hope of course, that Nikon can improve their quality onto the level they had in the 1960s-90s - we have a collection of e.g. FM-2's that never let us down, even not in Siberian winter. The D300 was highly praised and needed an exchange of the mirror box at only 80.000 actuations, my old from the same time 7D still works, an artist friend uses it. Plus, all symbols were wiped off most used D300's buttons after a few years, not with the 7D (not an issue but fits to its lower quality). The D300S then lost a part of button functions after a tour in heavy rain, despite my wife tried to protect it much more as I did with my 5D3. I didn't care much about the water, and the 5D3 didn't have any failures... The D300S never recovered completely, even after years. I can extend this list, but this would be as boring as this experience is annoying for us.

Btw I watch a wildlife German documentary just at the moment. There they showed a Canon 5D3 (I guess) with an EF 24-70mm that was stolen from another German photographer three months before, by a lion, the photographer used it remotely. Now the wildlife filmers found it by accident, lying on lens' front element in the dirt, overcast with dust and dirty. They started the camera - and it worked! They could see that first the lion, later an elephant played with it and hit the release button. I am really no fanboy, but this story didn't surprise me. I had some severe accidents with my Canon gear, but it never stopped working. My oldest frequently used EF lens is a 25 years old EF 500mm F/4.5 which must have now done some Millions of shots. It is battered like an old weapon but works perfectly.

 

[StoicalEtcher]

Alan, I really like this guy, Morten Hilmer, and although he is a longtime Nikon user he has been trying out an R5. He isn’t a reviewer he just tries anything that he feels might give him more keepers and the gear to do that is secondary to technique and field craft. But his mentions of the gear at the end and the water and muck he gets on his R5 might make you feel good about your R5.

Great video pbd - many thanks for posting the link. But now I need to see where I can find a ground pod like Morten's!

 

[AlanF]

Our experience is restricted to Nikon DSLRs: D300, D300S, D700, and D500. The D500 so far works without flaws, and it is indeed made in Thailand. But we did not yet take it to really rugged environments. I do hope of course, that Nikon can improve their quality onto the level they had in the 1960s-90s - we have a collection of e.g. FM-2's that never let us down, even not in Siberian winter. The D300 was highly praised and needed an exchange of the mirror box at only 80.000 actuations, my old from the same time 7D still works, an artist friend uses it. Plus, all symbols were wiped off most used D300's buttons after a few years, not with the 7D (not an issue but fits to its lower quality). The D300S then lost a part of button functions after a tour in heavy rain, despite my wife tried to protect it much more as I did with my 5D3. I didn't care much about the water, and the 5D3 didn't have any failures... The D300S never recovered completely, even after years. I can extend this list, but this would be as boring as this experience is annoying for us.

Btw I watch a wildlife German documentary just at the moment. There they showed a Canon 5D3 (I guess) with an EF 24-70mm that was stolen from another German photographer three months before, by a lion, the photographer used it remotely. Now the wildlife filmers found it by accident, lying on lens' front element in the dirt, overcast with dust and dirty. They started the camera - and it worked! They could see that first the lion, later an elephant played with it and hit the release button. I am really no fanboy, but this story didn't surprise me. I had some severe accidents with my Canon gear, but it never stopped working. My oldest frequently used EF lens is a 25 years old EF 500mm F/4.5 which must have now done some Millions of shots. It is battered like an old weapon but works perfectly.

I responded to your comment that: "Semipro Nikons are e.g. much more prone to rain, we found out the hard way, Canon's weather sealings overall are much better." with Roger Cicala's tear down of the Z7. As interesting anecdotes as they are, the performance of a 25 year old lens or a lion with a 5D3 are somewhat tangential, although they do emphasize Canon's high standards.

 

[privatebydesign]

Great video pbd - many thanks for posting the link. But now I need to see where I can find a ground pod like Morten's!

Glad you liked it, there are some real gems on YouTube if you can cut through the utter garbage!

I thought he said he made the ground pod, nice idea and not difficult to replicate, you could even come up with a refinement or two like make the front two legs joined in an arc etc.

 

[StoicalEtcher]

Glad you liked it, there are some real gems on YouTube if you can cut through the utter garbage!

I thought he said he made the ground pod, nice idea and not difficult to replicate, you could even come up with a refinement or two like make the front two legs joined in an arc etc.

Yes, he did say he made it - said they made 50 of them apparently, but he seemed quite adamant that he wasn't going to make any more!

Not too hard to replicate - as long as you have access to a pole bender and a welder - not things I tend to have lying around unfortunately. I busy googling sledge runners - but being in the UK, these aren't as common as they are in the States

Thanks anyway.

Cheers, Stoical.

 

[slclick]

Alan, I really like this guy, Morten Hilmer, and although he is a longtime Nikon user he has been trying out an R5. He isn’t a reviewer he just tries anything that he feels might give him more keepers and the gear to do that is secondary to technique and field craft. But his mentions of the gear at the end and the water and muck he gets on his R5 might make you feel good about your R5.

This is the type of message I wish more shooters would heed. Too much crutch on brands, GAS and charts. Thanks for sharing.

 

[erader]

sony has become the new Nikon and Nikon is fighting for survival.

 

[erader]

That is such a distorted view of the market.

Yes it has been in decline for a decade, but it underwent unprecedented growth before that. In reality the market is returning to historical norms.

Canon have diversified very successfully. Sony sensor division was spun off years ago and has nothing to do with their camera division.

Corporations moving production to leverage cheaper facilities and labor is a time tested tradition, nothing particular startling or surprising in the announcement at all. Nikon are only talking about consolidating production in Thailand where the bulk of their manufacture ring was already done anyway.

not only that it's largely BS

 

[erader]

sony has become the new Nikon and Nikon is fighting for survival. I think anyone new to the market with no bias would either pick canon or sony these days.