The world has changed a lot since 1966 when I dug my Dad’s Brownie Hawkeye out of the closet, read the crinkly manual in the box and rode my bike down to Gemmel’s Pharmacy to spend my allowance on a roll of B&W 620 film. I graduated to a WWII era Leica C3 (Dad’s) after a couple of years then bought my first SLR at 15. I learned to use a darkroom in high school and read every photo magazine available to keep track of all the new stuff. I never owned a compact camera other than a family-friendly instamatic or two. Daily shooting was something most people just didn’t do. It could be expensive, and the pictures usually just ended up in boxes in the closet. After I went digital in 2002 and film was no longer a budget item, I started carrying a compact digital camera for daily use. Compact camera sales boomed as people discovered easy, affordable photography. Around 2010, my phone upgrades started featuring a camera that took photos in good light that were great for email and looked pretty good posted to the web. I started to see more people using their phones to take photos while we were travelling. Having a phone myself, I silently mocked them for their lack of dedication to image quality even though I realized that their pictures were destined for web and email viewing and that they were going to be perfectly happy with the results. I continued shooting with an advanced pocket camera until mid-2014 when I picked up a Lumia 929 Windows phone with a rather remarkable 20MP camera that produced images of “acceptable” quality. It was a turning point for me. That was the last year that I upgraded my compact camera and the last year of my silent mocking of phone shooters (iPad shooters were and still are fair game). That was when I started noticing compact P&S cameras were becoming less common in the wild. On trips, I still saw a fair number of DSLRs and an increasing number of mirrorless cameras, but pocket cameras were becoming rare and the ones I saw tended to be older models. Occasionally I would see an advanced bridge camera, one of the slick Lumix compacts or a Sony RX100 mark something but by 2018 or so, even the number of ILCs (interchangeable Lens Camera) were giving way to an increasing number of phones. Upon returning to travel after the pandemic started to lift, I can’t recall seeing more than a couple people with compacts and fewer ILCs that before. The ILCs seem to have become rarer, but the units that show up are more often mirrorless and the typical models more advanced than before with expensive glass more common as a percentage. It looks like phones have become the de facto tool for casual and travel photography. It makes sense even though the upper end of the remaining compact camera models surpasses the image quality of the current batch of basic smartphones, but when you get past about $600, the phones start providing equal or better image quality with the exception of zoom range. Once you get to about $800 or $900 (Pixel 6 Pro) or above (iPhone 13, Samsung S22), multiple cameras with expanded optical zoom ranges and near magical image processing match or exceed the capabilities of all but a few compacts (that also cost over $1000). When it comes to buying tech for travel photography, more people than ever are choosing an advanced phone that can take excellent photographs and is way better at browsing the internet, map navigation and making phone calls. The enthusiasts are still lugging the full kit along but the second-string casual camera for everyone I’ve talked to for years is now a phone. The numbers seem to support what I have seen.
As illustrated, discreet camera sales are down 87% from 2010 to 2019 and took a further hit during the Covid era. Manufacturers have reduced forecasts on fixed-lens camera sales every year since about 2009 when the first significant smartphones with cameras came out. Most people that take pictures don’t consider themselves photographers but just want a picture. Smartphones with cameras not only allowed that but offered instant sharing with a growing number of apps and social media sites. This decimated the compact camera market almost overnight. The chart shows that the more sophisticated interchangeable lens cameras fared better since the image quality of even the best early smartphones was significantly less that DSLRs of the same era. Some “picture takers” who fell in love with the process shooting with their phones bought ILCs and kept that segment fairly strong. Competition for those dollars supported the rapid evolution of photographic technology and in the last half-decade, sensor and image processing improvements have boosted the capability of the advanced ILC cameras and smartphones to incredible levels. This came at a cost. That tech was more expensive and with the overall market for discreet cameras reduced to a fraction of what it once was, the cost of manufacture and retail went up. People who need or appreciate the quality afforded by interchangeable lens cameras have always spent more than the average on equipment and are willing or at least, resigned to accepting the increased cost. For the low end of the compact camera segment and even a chunk of the entry-level ILCs, producing new models with new tech for a shrinking market just isn’t economically viable. The volume just isn’t there. Smartphones also went up in price but adding new tech and functions to smartphone cameras was supported by sales demand and even the average bargain smartphone is now a pretty darned good daily shooter. Did I mention demand? In 2019 15.2 million cameras were sold. In the same year, 1.5 billion smartphones were sold, and people are taking more pictures every year. It is estimated that over 1.5 trillion photos were taken in 2022 and 92.5% of them were taken with smartphones.
Is the camera industry dying? No. Not even close. It is, however, going to continue to change. Smaller companies will fade away or get absorbed by others but people who do photography for a living and those who just love the process and taking photography past where smartphones can go (for now) will still buy cameras. Forecasts are even showing that discreet cameras are making a bit of a comeback with most of the recovery in ILC units, mostly for the same reasons that the ILCs didn’t take as big a hit during the mid-2010s. People introduced to photography and videography on their phones are inspired to up their game and are buying more sophisticated equipment…because the world needs more 4K video of cats being startled by cucumbers in slow-motion. There will still be compact P&S cameras for a while yet, and they will get better, though less common. The technology will continue to evolve. Prices will continue to rise but if you consider what the cost of a 10 frame-per-second 60MP camera that can track a subject’s eye and keep it in focus while they are running at you would have cost in 2000, the cost/benefit equation works out to be a relative bargain.
Things have changed and change will continue, but those changes make it a great time to be a photographer.