ACJC.S
Raining in Dotonbori
Handheld shot, from under the umbrella.
Colorful even during a downpour but kinda gloomy, just like the state of the camera market currently.
Interesting comments from the Sigma CEO Yamaki-san during his recent interview with Imaging Resource, in particular on the future of the imaging market. Sigma is a family owned business so there’s less B/S yada yada like those from division heads of public listed companies in Japan.
“I guess the market would shrink in 2020, even if we didn’t have coronavirus. Probably the coronavirus issue will escalate the problem. Without coronavirus, I assumed that the market would shrink but probably toward the end of this year to next year, I expected it to hit the bottom, and then level out.
Last year, the quantity of interchangeable-lens system cameras sold in the market was 8.5 million units. But actually, the peak time was 17 million units. So last year was about half. But before digital cameras, film SLR sold about 4 to 5 million units. So it was originally a very small market. So I think it was kind of a boom economy starting from mid-2000 to the beginning of 2010, and then it’s going down to the normal level.
I think probably 5 to 6 million is a good number to be stable.”
From Yamaki-san’s comments above in inverted commas, the market has already halved from peak as of 2019 and is predicted to shrink down to around 1/3 of peak sales.
The trend in m4/3 of using the same sensor in successive bodies or just add on dual processors have started to show up in some FF brands. Less sales result in less R&D budget with minor iterative updates which may well lead to even lower sales, a death spiral.
Another interesting tidbit from Yamaki-san is;
“I'm pretty sure that the FLD has almost the same characteristic as fluorite. Because we have studied several times if we should use fluorite, because many people said fluorite is good. But after many studies, we concluded that there is no reason to use fluorite because the cost is high, but the character is the same. So if we used fluorite, probably it would just be for the marketing purpose. We could not tell the difference between fluorite and FLD in terms of the optical performance.”
Some of the “advertised” exotic features we paid extra for may very well be a marketing ploy to differentiate the product rather than give us any qualitative advantages.
Sony’s 1st new Bionz XR processor in 7 years will hopefully herald a true leap forward, finally after all the minor iterative upgrades!
Raining in Dotonbori
Handheld shot, from under the umbrella.
Colorful even during a downpour but kinda gloomy, just like the state of the camera market currently.
Interesting comments from the Sigma CEO Yamaki-san during his recent interview with Imaging Resource, in particular on the future of the imaging market. Sigma is a family owned business so there’s less B/S yada yada like those from division heads of public listed companies in Japan.
“I guess the market would shrink in 2020, even if we didn’t have coronavirus. Probably the coronavirus issue will escalate the problem. Without coronavirus, I assumed that the market would shrink but probably toward the end of this year to next year, I expected it to hit the bottom, and then level out.
Last year, the quantity of interchangeable-lens system cameras sold in the market was 8.5 million units. But actually, the peak time was 17 million units. So last year was about half. But before digital cameras, film SLR sold about 4 to 5 million units. So it was originally a very small market. So I think it was kind of a boom economy starting from mid-2000 to the beginning of 2010, and then it’s going down to the normal level.
I think probably 5 to 6 million is a good number to be stable.”
From Yamaki-san’s comments above in inverted commas, the market has already halved from peak as of 2019 and is predicted to shrink down to around 1/3 of peak sales.
The trend in m4/3 of using the same sensor in successive bodies or just add on dual processors have started to show up in some FF brands. Less sales result in less R&D budget with minor iterative updates which may well lead to even lower sales, a death spiral.
Another interesting tidbit from Yamaki-san is;
“I'm pretty sure that the FLD has almost the same characteristic as fluorite. Because we have studied several times if we should use fluorite, because many people said fluorite is good. But after many studies, we concluded that there is no reason to use fluorite because the cost is high, but the character is the same. So if we used fluorite, probably it would just be for the marketing purpose. We could not tell the difference between fluorite and FLD in terms of the optical performance.”
Some of the “advertised” exotic features we paid extra for may very well be a marketing ploy to differentiate the product rather than give us any qualitative advantages.
Sony’s 1st new Bionz XR processor in 7 years will hopefully herald a true leap forward, finally after all the minor iterative upgrades!