At a garage sale the other day, my daughter asked if I would buy her a camera. There were two for sale, entry level film bodies about 15 to 25 years old, one a Minolta, the other a Pentax.
A professional photographer myself, I picked them up and fiddled with them. Manually focusing using the lost art of lining up two image half of the split screen and ground glass, it felt like the day in 1992 when I bought my own first camera at a garage sale in Yorkton. What things I could do with this, I thought at the time.
The lady said the Pentax had only been used a couple times. The price, including a lens and flash, was $20. That may have even been too high. I told the lady this film body can take 36 pictures on a roll. My current camera can take 1,600 on a card.
I pay my bills and mortgage with my Nikon digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. About two years ago I had acquired enough gear and expertise to become a member of the Nikon Professional Service, a perk for working professionals ensuring access to top level service and first dibs on new pro cameras when they are launched. In 2012 I was one of the first on the planet to get hands on the new flagship, the D4. It's arguably the best camera of its type in the world, but that will change in a few months when an update comes out. The question is, how many more updates will there be in the future?
As many have predicted, the camera phone is eating the point-and-shoot camera's lunch. In an Oct. 5 article entitled "Point, shoot, collapse. Why big camera companies are the next Blackberry," the National Post spelled out the supposed coming doom of purpose-built cameras and their makers.
Almost every point-and-shoot camera on the market these days will outperform a camera phone, even the much-vaunted iPhone. They have superior lenses, larger sensors, better low-light sensitivity, real flashes, and this wonderful ability to zoom in. But for much of the public, the convenience of not carrying around a somewhat bulky point-and-shoot in addition to the camera phone you already have 24/7 outweighs the benefits that camera offers.
According to the National Post, it's not just the point-and-shoot, but the DSLR as well. The big camera companies are seeing substantial drop in sales. It stated, "Canon has sold 23 per cent less cameras than a year earlier, Nikon is down 18.2 per cent, and Sony and Fujifilm are each off about 35 per cent."
That's the part that's got me worried. I need them to keep making high-end cameras to keep me in business.
The DSLR is the descendent of the old 35 mm film bodies that pretty much everyone had, like the ones I found at the garage sale. They simply replaced the film plane with a digital sensor.
The last professional film body Nikon made was the F6, launched in 2004. It's still available for the hardcore pros who insist on using film, such as perhaps some National Geographic photogs. Could the upcoming D5 become the F6, the last of its breed?
Why do I need Nikon to stay in business and make new cameras? Physics, really. The top of the line cameras have the ability to shoot in conditions that your soccer mom and her camera phone will never capture. Bigger cameras, with bigger sensors, capture more light, making for better pictures. That, combined with skill and experience, is what differentiates a pro photographer from the rest of the pack.
When I hemmed and hawed about buying my first DSLR in 2003, my mom told me point blank, "Brian, it's your tractor." Having grown up on a farm, that made sense. The problem is, my tractor company is in trouble. How do I metaphorically farm five or ten years from now if they stop making top-end tractors?
In some ways, being a pro photographer feels like being a dinosaur looking up at the comet that's about to wipe out your existence. You know it's coming, you just don't know when. To that end, I've experimented with some video work, and picked up some rudimentary equipment to do that.
In the end, however, our world is being filled with more images, not less. We have hundreds of TV channels, thousands of businesses and millions of websites. Plus most people get married, have babies, and want family pictures. There will always be a market for high-quality images. The question is, if Nikon and Canon become the next Blackberry, how will we capture them?
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
