[Leica] [LRflex] Declining Camera production...

[Howard Ritter]

Although, to be fair, mediocrity is migrating upward, along with superiority. In the hands of a careful and knowledgeable user, contemporary cell-phone cameras are quite capable of making very nice images indeed. And thank God we’ve seen the last of the disposable cameras littering the landscape. It’s nice that what’s replaced them has superior capabilities to theirs.

—howard

> On Feb11, 2019, at 2233, Aram Langhans via LUG <lug at leica-users.org> wrote:
> 
> When I am on a trip I pay attention to the types of cameras people are using.  This last two trips, Fall and Winter, I was surprised at what I saw.  Nikon has the lion's share, which is different from previous trips where Canon and Nikon were more or less equally represented.  But what really surprised me was that mirrorless cameras were very rare.  I had expected from all I read that they are taking over the world.  Not so at Albuquerque balloon fiesta or Yosemite in October or December.  Those that I did see were mainly Sony, but I even saw a few Fuji and Olympus. I saw quite a few more old film cameras out and about in Yosemite.  Pentax for the most part and a few Leica.
> 
> Overall, not at all what I was expecting.  It will be interesting to see this Spring if any of the Nikon or Canon mirrorless are to be spotted. Of course, the most common was the cell phone. Mediocrity wins all the time.
> 
> Aram
> 
> On 2/11/2019 6:52 PM, David Young wrote:
>>  From today's 43Rumors.com ...
>> 
>>> The bottom line is very bad though. We are below 20 million units per
>>> year and mirrorless cameras don't gain as much traction as you might
>>> think (2% increase per year vs. 12% decrease in DSLR). For the first
>>> time, interchangeable lens cameras surpassed the sales of compact
>>> cameras (not surprising, to be honest). If you look at the entire decade
>>> you see an unbelievable drop of 84% from 2010 to 2018 in the number of
>>> cameras sold/made per year.
>> For interest I dug up the numbers for the best year film cameras had.
>> 
>> All I had to do was consult my "Brief History of Photography"  (cheap plug!)  to find that 1997 was the biggest year for film camera production, at 36.7 million units. However, I cannot find a breakdown to P&S vs SLR's for that year.
>> 
>> It seems total camera production was insanely boosted by the advent of digita,l as 2010 peaked at 121 million units (including who-knows-how-many P&S cameras).  From there, it has dropped to a mere 19 million units in 2018.
>> 
>> It's no wonder that cameras are rising in price, as the makers try to concentrate on higher value mirrorless & dSLR models, to keep their income up, as units slide.
>> 
>> David.
>> 
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