[vwoolf]

I'm seeing a lot of people discussing sales numbers; here is one article showing the decline in terms of both lens and interchangeable lens cameras shipped: https://bythom.com/newsviews/real-camera-economics.html.

Lenses appear to have declined by about 66% from 2012 to 2022. Cameras, by a little under 50%.

This decline makes sense to me. I have a Fuji XT4 which I like a lot, but, also, starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good. Their automatic exposure in sunlight, for example, is often (not always) great. At the same time, the software quality in pretty much all cameras leaves much to be desired: I can go on a rant about the number of clicks necessary to wirelessly transfer from camera to phone but would rather not, and people have been ranting about that topic for at least a decade.

[mod50ack]

Phones definitely cannot compete with ILCs in the applications that photographers use. Phones fundamentally lack the larger sensors and specialist lenses that allow ILCs to produce the images they do. Yes, phones can blur stuff to fake bokeh, but even very basic things are not accounted for in phones.

What phones can do is replace dedicated cameras for the basic photography needs of many consumers. Point and shoot cameras have gone by the wayside. So have many cheaper consumer-oriented interchangeable-lens models. Many people bought APS-C DSLRs and just used them with the kit lens. That market has fizzled out. For one, most of those people now just use their phones. But even if they don't use their phones, DSLRs from the early 2010s still produce good images by today's standards.

But you know what a smartphone can't replace? My 135mm f/1.8 lens, just to name one. And full-frame sensors are way better than phone sensors. I'd much rather use my Canon 5Diii (from 2012) than my Pixel 6 Pro.

More than that, I feel that in their question to get bigger and bigger sensors, phone cameras have missed the mark with their actual purpose. The Pixel 6 Pro, for instance, has a larger sensor size to get a shallower depth of field. But this is NOT a welcome change when I am photographing pieces of paper and get the wrong focus in my images. The fact that you can't stop down the aperture on the lenses in 99% of phones is a major limitation. And that's just the beginning.

Now, I'm not saying I never use the camera on my Pixel. But I am saying that it's not at all useful for anything I'd use a real camera for.

[lmm]

> Phones definitely cannot compete with ILCs in the applications that photographers use.

That's overly broad. A lot of what photographers do doesn't need those capabilities (hell, some photographers work with literal children's toys), and the niches where you need them are getting smaller all the time. There are a few things you still can't photograph well with a phone (e.g. birds in flight), but that's a long way from being all photography.

> The fact that you can't stop down the aperture on the lenses in 99% of phones is a major limitation.

My last two phones have been able to do this, FWIW.

[throwaway290]

In Asia I see more people with cameras year after year. It is now at a point where striking a convo about a camera someone has is tired because the next person over also has a cool camera. I mean I saw a guy with TWO Leicas yesterday. Fuji's mirrorless are huge and medium format is now as frequent as those Fujis were 6-8 years ago.

It's not only about features, in which I still think cameras best phones any day. It's also about the process. I don't want to use the same hated device that pesters me with work and atrocious social media for something artful. Same reason film is big lately. Sadly DPR due to its name excludes film.

[schroeding]

> Same reason film is big lately.

Also Instax / Polaroid. AFAIK, Fuji makes the majority (or at least a very significant chunk) of their consumer camera sales with Instax cameras and Instax film.

[throwaway290]

Also cheap digital compacts are popular, which are smaller than those instant film ones but also have the nostalgic look and cost a fraction of a phone. And a number of niche hobbies like astrophotography, wildlife, extreme macro, all requiring digital cameras. Saying if the phone can take nice photos (for some values of nice because physics make it impossible to rival the quality) then cameras should be obsolete is like saying your phone can zoom so microscopes are obsolete.

[mod50ack]

> That's overly broad. A lot of what photographers do doesn't need those capabilities (hell, some photographers work with literal children's toys),

OK, but nobody is doing serious photographic work (professional or hobbyist) using children's toy cameras. Those are used for an occasional laugh. Now, yes, you can photograph most things with your phone. But my full-frame cameras produce WAY better portraits than my phone, which is supposed to have a fairly decent camera for a phone.

> My last two phones have been able to do this, FWIW.

Good! Hopefully this will become more common. The fact that the Pixel 6 Pro expands the sensor size but keeps a fixed-aperture lens made the camera worse, as far as I'm concerned.

[lmm]

> OK, but nobody is doing serious photographic work (professional or hobbyist) using children's toy cameras.

Some serious artistic photographers do do serious work with them, taking pictures to show in galleries and the like. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone was out there doing professional e.g. wedding photography with one, for customers who want photos that look a bit different. Of course it's a stylistic choice, but camera choice often is.

> But my full-frame cameras produce WAY better portraits than my phone, which is supposed to have a fairly decent camera for a phone.

Now that's interesting - well-lit, no motion or anything, but still much better portraits? Would be interested to hear some more details about what's different/better.

[mod50ack]

> Of course it's a stylistic choice, but camera choice often is.

OK, I guess I mean to exclude this kind of work which is done because the cameras are of much worse technical quality — these are by definition not applications for which traditional dedicated cameras are used.

In other words, the toys are not replacements for more capable equipment. Yes, you can shoot with a Barbie camera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkmrFguxgS0). But nobody could seriously claim that it replaces any standard ILC. We're not discussing whether or not phones (or Barbies) can take photos; we're talking about whether or not they can replace ILCs, and in what applications.

> Now that's interesting - well-lit, no motion or anything, but still much better portraits? Would be interested to hear some more details about what's different/better.

Well, of course, also, we don't always have good lighting or a lack of motion. Often, I am photographing people in motion, or in poor lighting, or both. And that's not a super niche thing. Imagine photographing an actor who is in the middle of a rehearsal (which I've done many times). A dedicated camera is just the right tool for that job, with the appropriate lens attached. Not to mention, of course, you want to have a somewhat telephoto lens for that — and one area where phone cameras have been, to my eyes, mostly marketing bluster is that of "super-zoom."

But looking back just at the same gear example I mentioned earlier: I often use my Sigma 135mm f/1.8 lens on my (full-frame) Canon R5. Now, I'll concede that this lens itself is much, much larger than anything you could slap on a phone, and the full-frame sensor is also far bigger than what you'd find on any phone, so you'd EXPECT something larger.

Now, to be fair, this is one of the lenses you can buy (tied with a Canon and Sony of the same spec) with some of the shallowest possible DOF on a full-frame camera. I don't always shoot wide open, but sometimes I do. In the ideal situation, I'd be shooting at ISO 100. And a 45MP FF sensor at its base ISO is just going to be ... really good. Admittedly, the iPhone (more than the Pixel, to my eyes, by a LONG shot) can produce some OK fake bokeh. But I suppose that my eye is good enough to know real bokeh from fake. My R5 will focus perfectly on the point I want and get the shot I am looking for every time. And AI-based trickery won't work equally well with all subjects; pure optics stays the same no matter what you're shooting.

The Pixel, though, in my opinion, produces pretty bad photos. Everything is NR'd, sharpened and HDR'd until it looks like a watercolor. I much prefer to apply (in most cases) pretty limited adulteration to my photos (which I shoot in RAW). I can shoot RAW with my phone, but I've never been anywhere near satisfied with the results. I will confess that the RAW results from the iPhone are significantly better, though still nothing like what I get from my dedicated camera. (I won't use an iPhone for reasons unrelated to photography.)

[Krisando]

Not the grand parent.

> The Pixel, though, in my opinion, produces pretty bad photos.

I've had the opportunity to play with iPhone 14, it has 12 megapixel cameras, but I find that the image quality is no difference to 8 megapixels of detail, and if you use third party applications that can take pictures without post processing, it's often closer to 6 megapixels and the grain in the image is not great. Smart phones don't appear to be resolving the detail advertised.

> I shoot in RAW

Shooting raw on my Android phones (since the iPhone 14 won't let me) shows there is clearly very little dynamic range, which when trying to do beautiful processing on skin tones or such, come out very flat (regardless if going for natural or unrealistically perfect).

I do a lot of photography in poor lighting, I over expose a lot so I can the details in the shadow, and then bring it back down in post processing in raw. Try to do anything similar on phones, terrible grain. Leave it to the phone processing, it does some really bad approaches at AEB with post processing and not very good handling on the HDR merge, plus the exposure time is huge, meh.

> But I suppose that my eye is good enough to know real bokeh from fake.

It's not convincing to me because you can see stuff like the background between strands of hair in focus. I imagine it's only going to get better at that.

The biggest problem with phone photography is sensor size currently and it seems unlikely we're going to have larger sensor sizes when it requires more flange distance for the optics.

[WWLink]

"starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good"

-exasperated sigh-

I wish I could agree but I just can't. I feel around that point pictures taken by phone cameras stopped looking real. They started forcing stuff like HDR and AI correction and very heavy handed noise filtering.

Looking back at my old pictures from the 2010s, I think my canon digital elph took better pictures than my phones do now lol. I realize how stupid that sounds.

[numpad0]

To me they do seem to be getting “better”, in air quotes, I think due to ILCs supplying ground truth data…

IMO the real problem is that there aren’t much connection between that photos you like and people. “If we take the S.D. Card out of the proper camera and insert it into a proper Computer…” just don’t cut it anymore.

They only have a phone each. You have to be able to get the photo to the phone to social media before the flash unit finishes recharging(on fresh batteries of course). Else they’ll lose interest.

[ge0rg]

The companion apps provided by ILC manufacturers are just horrible, broken, useless. I was really glad that I could hack the in-camera "send email" function of the Samsung NX500 to send the picture to a VPS which then forwards it to my favorite photo sharing chat instead.

[mrelectric]

No, you're right. Pictures taken by my one plus one (especially the raw ones) were much much better than my new latest Samsung.

[georgemcbay]

> starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good.

ILC cameras also got really good.

I'm not at all doubting that smartphones are the primary cannibalization vector, but even for people who prefer to use cameras with significantly larger sensors than can be put into a smartphone I think the cameras themselves reached a point years ago where it became difficult even for ILC enthusiasts to justify upgrades on a regular basis because what people already owned was "Good Enough". I reached this point with the Sony A7R Mk3 and other people probably reached this point sooner.

For years it felt like Canon and Nikon were kind of aware this would happen with ILCs and were dragging their feet on camera body tech making incremental upgrades behind where the technology should have been if they were competing full speed, and then other vendors like Sony just came smashing in without being part of this implicit agreement and pushed camera body tech along extremely quickly for a few years (with Canon/Nikon having to follow along to some degree to keep up) and it didn't take many iterations of this pushing the technology to where it could be for ILC camera bodies to be something you feel no itch to upgrade from year to year because the shiny new thing is an extremely marginal upgrade.

So the cannibalization of the market probably had two fronts, the larger one from smartphones, and a smaller but still significant one from "Good Enough" (which is an issue smartphones are starting to run into as well).

[bdavisx]

Yep, my wife and I used to do wedding photography and from that period we have 2 Canon 5D Mk II's and 2 40D's along with 3 L lenses, some primes and a few cheaper zooms. There's absolutely no reason we would ever need another camera. Even people with a single body wouldn't ever need another one unless they broke it.

[tagrun]

I'm guessing you don't record videos then.

In terms of video capabilities, Canon 5D Mk II is limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 1080p H.264 recording at 30fps, maxing out at 12 minutes of recording. That is a far cry from 10-bit (or 12-bit) 4:2:2 4K, 6K or even 8K RAW or ProRes at 120fps or higher with unlimited recording from a similarly priced camera in today's money.

(It's also limited in terms of RAW photo as well though: the best recording option is 8-bit 10MP RAW)

No phone comes anywhere near that either, not to mention the lenses for phones can't compete with the real interchangeable lenses. The difference probably doesn't matter to someone who is just going to record his baby walking around and watch it on a 7 inch screen, but of course that's not the target audience for those cameras.

[t0bia_s]

10bit and 4:2:2 is only for editing in post, majority of consumers don't need that.

[tagrun]

If you read the last sentence of the post that you're replying to, I already said that it won't matter to most people.

That being said, "is only for editing in post" (which is not really true, banding is an issue in scenes with high dynamic range with 8-bit, not limited to sky but also with strong lights or deep shadows) doesn't mean people won't want it. Around 10-15 years ago, in the age of single-digit-GB slow SD cards and weaker camera/phone processors, that's what people used to say about RAW photos repeatedly. Now it is mainstream in even in phones, with built-in editing apps and easy to use desktop programs with few knobs. This means editing itself in post isn't a barrier for mainstream adoption, the issue is video editing currently has a high barrier as it is essentially impossible on portable devices, the programs have their learning curves, and the whole stack requires some financial investment.

[t0bia_s]

Majority of displays are 8bit and it will probably stay as standard for while.

Btw, over 10 years old Canon 5DMIII can shoot RAW video with MagicLantern. Manufacturers should open/update code to their old cameras that are capable do this. Its really disappointing when marketing ruin whole product. No wonder that camera market dying.

[lmm]

Videos are not what most people mean by "photography", 10-bit is mostly a gimmick (there are situations where it gives a real advantage, but they're niche), and higher-than-1080p resolutions are honestly pretty marginal a lot of the time. 30fps is pretty awful though.

[irrational]

I'm still a bit interested in buying a ILC camera, but I assumed at some point the prices would start dropping, but they really haven't. Demand has gone way down and supply isn't really limited. There is even competition. But the prices remain fairly constant.

[Zak]

Used is the budget option. Cameras aren't in the kind of rapid development cycle where an older model isn't competitive, but it's often half the price of new, or less.

[re-thc]

The prices will go up as the products become more a niche. Less demand = lower economies of scale.

[stephen_g]

I wouldn't expect that to happen... Especially with lenses (full of expensive bits of glass) but new cameras will always be sold at a premium. Firms set prices for products, supply and demand mostly doesn't come into it (except pushing prices up perhaps when availability of components are constrained).

[cameldrv]

Look again at that chart. It's even worse for cameras. It's almost a 75% decline.

[numpad0]

> I can go on a rant about the number of clicks necessary to wirelessly transfer from camera

Yeah this is a huge unaddressed issue that must be hemorrhaging users out of cameras. It’ll need a substantial rework in cameras and perhaps phones too, but I’ve seen enough times that the display of LCD taken and uploaded on social media and they must know that’s being done.

They could make a phone-camera hybrid, with or without in-camera Lightroom, TransferJet, USB cable transfer, anything in those direction that were attempted low-effort and forgotten.

People aren’t going to appreciate current hours-long delayed gratification that current ILCs require. No way.

[throwaway290]

These android-based cameras you talk about exist but not sure why any serious photographer would use one. When I need the camera I need it now, not wait for the camera app to decide to boot. Also, posting the result on social media as is is a thing of the past, people do post processing now and pros use raws. To develop a raw well you gotta use a proper big screen.

[t0bia_s]

Cameras made after 2016 are so good in terms of image quality that you will not see any improvement in newer cameras. So upgrading is reasonable option only for those, who need better functionality, which majority of amateurs don't need.

[stephen_g]

It depends for what. There are still ways to go with video, but mostly only for people who care to colour grade their footage. I expect a significant proportion of people now are buying mirrorless cameras now almost entirely to shoot video so I expect it is a major consideration. Things like in-camera 10-bit raw video recording which is still fairly rare. Probably mirrorless cameras will start being able to shoot 5K or 6K too, which is useful (for reframing by cropping in, otherwise downscaling to increase visual quality).

[t0bia_s]

It is pointless for casual consumers and professionals usually use cameras dedicated for video (Arri, RED), not hybrid camera.

Sure, there is specific group of enthusiastic folks on youtube that promote products consumed... by youtubers I guess?