things to come

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Jeff
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are we as photographers that use cameras instead of phones heading for extinction , we have olympus basically selling up and re-structuring later this year , colchester camera repairs have shut down , nikon and possibly others are rumoured to be in difficulties . is the end in sight for further development .

the wildlife side of the hobby has been constantly fed by upgrades to sensors , bodies , lenses and software for the last several years with prices steadily creeping up to meet demand but that then sells to a ever smaller market place by merit of price .. I cant really comment on other aspects i.e landscape and people as it holds no interest .

but have we now reached a peak where the only exit is down hill ever faster ,would you could you cope if the equipment you have now has to last for ever ..

things used to be linked to the pound/dollar having a good purchase value over the yen , but these days we all seem to be on parity , you can still get good deals but only on Chinese made products of dubious quality
 
I may be wrong but I think there'll be proper cameras for quite some time to come. They may become ever more niche though which may mean higher prices.

I've got film era lenses in Nikon, Canon FD, Minolta Rokkor and Olympus mounts so hopefully even if most of the marques go bang I'll be able to use them on something until my eyesight fails.
 
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but have we now reached a peak where the only exit is down hill ever faster
It's not down hill though is it? At worst it's levelling off technologically and probably paying much more to get smaller increments. My hunch is that we will be fine until the capability to fabricate physically large silicon chips is killed off by the accountants but even then surely it's possible to imagine a "full frame" sensor that is made up of a lot of small chips and some software. Or I suppose the grinding of large lenses may become unaffordable for hobby/stills use, its hard to imagine that the movie industry will not continue to want large high quality lenses.
 
It depends what you buy Jeff I paid £6000 for a 1dx mkII a great camera I paid around £4000 for a a9mkII the focus system is far better as is the main parts of the camera I use yet its about 4 years newer and £2000 cheaper .

"would you could you cope if the equipment you have now has to last for ever " yes if i had to but will get a a9mkIII when it comes out if it has a few more MPs only because there handy for birding .

Rob.
 
It's not down hill though is it? At worst it's levelling off technologically and probably paying much more to get smaller increments. My hunch is that we will be fine until the capability to fabricate physically large silicon chips is killed off by the accountants but even then surely it's possible to imagine a "full frame" sensor that is made up of a lot of small chips and some software. Or I suppose the grinding of large lenses may become unaffordable for hobby/stills use, its hard to imagine that the movie industry will not continue to want large high quality lenses.

but can ANY of say in all honesty that we saw digital coming.. even back in the mid 90s the latest developments in
35mm SLR cameras were drooled over , my first digital camera was half a mp with no view screen you had to download the photos to a windows 95 computer to see them .. things have moved on in giant leaps since then .. so will something we can’t yet envisage take over .. I have to admit that yes it could happen .. a Wall in your house that turns into a screen you touch the side of your head to activate the chip linked to your eyes that downloads it the screen to view .your whole house is connected to the internet of things so it’s automatically shared to family and friends .. science fiction ..maybe but so was what we have now 50 years ago ..
 
could you cope if the equipment you have now has to last for ever ..
We coped well enough ten years ago with the current tech then. And IMO even that was better than 35mm film! So I'm sure I could cope if what I use now wasn't improved on. The concern is more - will what we have now be replaceable in the future? For old farts that's not much of a worry, our gear could see us out so long as it keeps working!
 
I doubt it will be an issue for me, and the second hand market will easily scratch any GAS itches I get. However I do see the need for optical chips ie sensors only growing as the need to satisfy better quality augmented reality games and other entertainment grows, probably moving from silicon to graphene and nanotechnology. I actually think that it is entirely possible that companies like Sony and JIP who just bought Olympus have this in mind and are looking to have built up the best R&D departments to develop new technologies for the visual market.
 
At the 'top end' I don't see a time when phones will replace a dedicated camera. However, technology only moves in one direction......and that is forwards!

For a 'snapper', phones already offer great images, but even the very latest phone cameras don't come anywhere near my personal requirements.

The only limit that we have to progress, is our own imagination, so prepare to upgrade very soon!

.
 
would you could you cope if the equipment you have now has to last for ever ..


IF what I have now keeps working, it'll do me just fine for my wants/needs. It's far more than I really need as it is! I have little want or need for fast, long primes and my assorted systems have most "normal" situations covered fairly well as it is. My GAS seems to be under control too.
 
but can ANY of say in all honesty that we saw digital coming.. even back in the mid 90s the latest developments in
35mm SLR cameras were drooled over , my first digital camera was half a mp with no view screen you had to download the photos to a windows 95 computer to see them .. things have moved on in giant leaps since then .. so will something we can’t yet envisage take over .. I have to admit that yes it could happen .. a Wall in your house that turns into a screen you touch the side of your head to activate the chip linked to your eyes that downloads it the screen to view .your whole house is connected to the internet of things so it’s automatically shared to family and friends .. science fiction ..maybe but so was what we have now 50 years ago ..
I'm pretty sure photography will become mostly software based, and maybe phones will be the go to camera for everything. With the development metalenses that are as thick as a layer of paint you'll be able to have huge reach telephoto lenses on phones, and to get around noise and low light issues they'll probably be multiple lenses. You'll basically take the shot and then decide how you want it to look in terms of DOF and focus point afterwards.

Metalenses might not be mainstream in my time, but I think something like this will be the future. I'm not sure people will want to use digital cameras as we know them, I don't think they'll have around like SLRs. In fact I can see SLRs outlasting today's digital cameras.
 
The trend towards video rather than stills is growing daily , on t.v ,Facebook, etc And the popularity of I.pads is there for all to see as Toby says a development in lenses will be the game changer plus ever smaller better chips and not the ones from maccies either .personally I find a lot of the offerings boring and lacking in quality but that can only improve with time and better equipment ,a lot of today’s DSLR bodies are already there but still big and bulky . All this is of course as long as humanity survives
 
My crystal ball unqualified predictions... The way I see it is that there is still a requirement for high end gear whether that is for Pro use or high end amateur use. Maybe something will come along to make big sensors and in particular big glass obsolete but that doesn't seem to be on the horizon just yet. That market will obviously be small and maybe get smaller still but if it's there someone will make products to exploit it just like any other niches. There will not be the same relentless development pace or if there is it might come from copying tech from phones where the development costs are justified. Inevitably fewer companies will sit in this market sector. Could maybe see this whittling down to 3-4 main players pretty quickly. I can't help but think that some more merging of camera businesses might help some or a bit of partnering up with tech firms but we'll see.....
 
but can ANY of say in all honesty that we saw digital coming.. even back in the mid 90s the latest developments in
35mm SLR cameras were drooled over , my first digital camera was half a mp with no view screen you had to download the photos to a windows 95 computer to see them .. things have moved on in giant leaps since then .. so will something we can’t yet envisage take over .. I have to admit that yes it could happen .. a Wall in your house that turns into a screen you touch the side of your head to activate the chip linked to your eyes that downloads it the screen to view .your whole house is connected to the internet of things so it’s automatically shared to family and friends .. science fiction ..maybe but so was what we have now 50 years ago ..

Yes, I was dabbling in digital processing in the mid 90's and was aware of the potential before that. At that time I scanned film as the early digital camera were very low resolution. Few computers could handle digital processing and I owned an Acorn computer which by the late 90's were the fastest desk top computers available. The software I used was Photodesk v2 which was comparable to Adobe Photoshop also v2 at that time. There were many rumours about a product that could fit into the back of your film camera and capture the image digitally. By the time these actually appeared, several digital cameras were available. A similar type of product was successful for large format but I think the 35mm version never caught on but might have if it had been marketed 12 months earlier. In these early days digital processing gave me an enormous edge in competitions though home printing was a problem then. I did not actually buy a digital camera until 2005 when the EOS 20D was released. At 8.2 M p it was still rather less than I wanted and had to wait for the 5D Mkii until I was reasonably satisfied. I still have the 20D but converted to Infrared. Predicting the future is always very difficult. If you make lots of predictions, I am sure a few will turn out to be true.

Dave
 
I doubt the (D)SLR will disappear. However I wouldn't be surprised if the rate of development slowed to almost nothing, nor would it surprise me if DSLRs became relatively more expensive then now.

However I can't see Canonikon going away soon. Both have extensive other interests and both seem to do well from them
 
but can ANY of say in all honesty that we saw digital coming.. even back in the mid 90s the latest developments in
35mm SLR cameras were drooled over , my first digital camera was half a mp with no view screen you had to download the photos to a windows 95 computer to see them .. things have moved on in giant leaps since then .. so will something we can’t yet envisage take over .. I have to admit that yes it could happen .. a Wall in your house that turns into a screen you touch the side of your head to activate the chip linked to your eyes that downloads it the screen to view .your whole house is connected to the internet of things so it’s automatically shared to family and friends .. science fiction ..maybe but so was what we have now 50 years ago ..

We keep reading about flat lenses and maybe one day it'll happen. Sensors as we know them today may be replaced by something else too but I'll be happy enough as long as I have a camera and even happier if I can still mount my at least some of existing lenses on it via an adapter which I think is probable unless the image quality will be poor because the "sensors" are now curved.

As I tend to keep gear for years I think I'll be mostly ok.
 
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