Camera Companies are Designing Out Fundamental Photography and Their Own History

There is something increasingly strange happening in the camera industry. Manufacturers are pushing relentlessly toward mirrorless cameras, computational photography, AI autofocus, ever-higher resolution and increasingly sophisticated electronics, while at the same time a very different photographic economy is flourishing around the things they have largely abandoned: film cameras, DSLRs, old digital cameras and compact cameras.

I don't believe the camera companies are unaware of this. Quite the opposite. They know perfectly well that the used-camera market is growing, that film has experienced a remarkable resurgence, and that old "digicams" have become desirable again. They know what is happening on eBay, at used-camera dealers, in camera shops and among younger photographers discovering equipment from previous generations. The more interesting question is why they have continued moving so decisively away from those products.

I think the answer is largely corporate rather than technological. 

At the executive level, the decision probably isn't literally, "Let's kill DSLRs and traditional cameras." It is more likely to sound like this: New DSLR sales are slowing, film is a tiny market, compact cameras have been destroyed by smartphones, mirrorless has better growth potential and margins, and therefore development resources should be moved to mirrorless. On a spreadsheet, that makes perfect sense. The problem is that markets aren't spreadsheets, and consumer desire doesn't always follow technological progression. 

And most importantly, that live-in-a-bubble mentality means they are way behind the times.

The assumption behind technological obsolescence is that once something has been replaced by something technically superior, demand for the older technology should eventually approach zero. Photography has demonstrated that this isn't true, in fact, it's quite the opposite

A Nikon D700 doesn't have to technically outperform a modern Z-series camera to be desirable. A Canon EOS-1 doesn't have to compete with an EOS R-series body at all. A 3-megapixel CCD compact camera doesn't have to produce better files than a modern smartphone. A film camera doesn't need autofocus at all. These products offer something different from their modern replacements: a particular physical experience, control philosophy, optical design, mechanical character, rendering, limitation and history- a connection to something that camera companies aren't even talking about.

In other words, photographers don't always want the best technical camera. Sometimes they want a particular camera, or better yet, a particular experience. That distinction is becoming increasingly obvious and a very important one.

The resurgence of film is perhaps the clearest example. 

Film was supposed to disappear because digital photography was objectively more convenient, cheaper, faster and eventually technically superior in almost every measurable way. Yet film survived and even became culturally interesting again, including among people (young and old) who were never part of the original film generation. 

The same thing is happening with old digital cameras. People aren't buying old compact cameras because they believe a 2004 CCD camera produces technically superior photographs to a modern full-frame mirrorless camera. They like the flash, the colors, the little screens, the strange interfaces, the limitations and even the imperfections.

The limitations have become part of the product appeal.

And this creates an interesting problem for the manufacturers: they are not merely abandoning products; they have been abandoning the institutional knowledge required to make those products. 

A traditional DSLR involves an enormous amount of specialized knowledge: mechanical shutter systems, mirrors, optical viewfinders, phase-detection autofocus modules, secondary mirrors, mechanical tolerances and traditional camera ergonomics. Film cameras require another set of specialized skills involving film transport, pressure plates, shutters, rewind mechanisms and mechanical precision. Compact cameras have their own highly specialized knowledge involving tiny retractable lenses, miniature shutters, optical viewfinders and extremely compact mechanical assemblies.

Some of that knowledge exists in engineering documents and patents. A great deal of it, however, exists mostly in people.

When a company stops developing a product category, engineers retire, move to other projects, leave the company or are laid off. Younger engineers aren't necessarily trained in those systems because there is no longer a business reason to train them. BIG MISTAKE. Eventually, the company doesn't simply stop selling the product. It loses the ability to easily make the product again.

That is a much more profound decision, afterall, they are camera companies, not technology companies. 

Instead, once corporate strategy declares a category "dead," the organization eventually dismantles the ecosystem surrounding it. And this is where the growing used market becomes particularly fascinating. The demand continues to rise, much faster than the pace of growth of mirrorless cameras.  

Cameras that were once considered obsolete are now circulating through eBay, used-camera dealers, pawn shops, closets and estate sales. A photographer can buy a D700, EOS-1, 5D Mark III, A77, A99 or old PowerShot for a fraction of what comparable new equipment costs—and in some cases those cameras are becoming more interesting precisely because they are no longer current.

The manufacturers spent millions developing these cameras. Now the used market is doing something they cannot easily reproduce: keeping those cameras alive.

And the used market can actually become a gateway into photography rather than merely competition for new products. Someone discovers an old Canon or Nikon for $100, becomes fascinated with photography, buys lenses, accessories and eventually perhaps a new camera. Someone discovers film and begins buying film, paying for processing and scanning, and eventually becomes interested in digital photography as well.

The question isn't if demand is there, the question is whether or not camera companies are going to get off their laurels and actually do something about it. So far, just silence. Camera companies have painted themselves in a corner here.

The old market and the new market don't necessarily have to be enemies. In fact, the old market is actually helping keep photography culturally interesting, dare I say, alive.

There is also a deeper irony here. The industry spent decades teaching consumers that each new camera was better than the previous one. More megapixels. Better autofocus. Better dynamic range. Faster processors. Higher ISO. More sophisticated algorithms.

Eventually photographers began asking a different question:

Better at what?

If the objective is maximum technical performance, the newest cameras win. But photography isn't purely a technical activity, not even close actually. The camera is just part of a much greater experience, and photographers often develop emotional relationships with particular machines as their skillset and craft advance.

A D700 isn't merely a 12-megapixel full-frame sensor. An EOS-1 isn't merely an obsolete autofocus film body. A Contax N Digital isn't merely an early digital SLR. A CCD compact isn't simply a camera with inadequate resolution.

They are artifacts of particular moments in photographic history that produce an experience and look that new cameras cannot.

And that may be the greatest mistake the industry's corporate decision-makers are making: assuming that technological obsolescence automatically produces cultural obsolescence.

It doesn't.

The camera industry may have succeeded in making traditional cameras commercially obsolete while accidentally making them culturally valuable.

That is why the resurgence of film, the popularity of old digicams and the strength of the used market aren't merely nostalgic curiosities. They may represent a correction to the industry's assumption that photographers always want whatever comes next.

Sometimes they want what came before.

And if the manufacturers continue eliminating the engineers, manufacturing infrastructure and institutional knowledge necessary to make those cameras, they may eventually discover something rather uncomfortable:

They can invent the future, but they cannot easily recreate the past.

The strange irony is that the camera companies may be designing traditional photography out of their own product lines at precisely the moment when photographers are rediscovering how much they liked it. 

Stay focused.

-Carl

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