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.