comments inline. Herb.... ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 12:43 AM Subject: DSLR sales
> How many did they SELL? Last I looked you could still buy NEW Nikon F3s, > but I doubt they have been manufactured in recent years. Perhaps they are > all held by dealers and are counted as "sold" by the manufacturers. if they don't sell 95-99% of what they make, they are going to be out of business very quickly. new F3s were sold already to a dealer who then has the problem of selling. that's a sold camera and revenue to Nikon. > I wonder what proportion of camera sales are pros? Advanced amateurs? > Pros in many fields are switching to digital, and they tend to buy new > cameras often. Advanced amateurs also seem to be slowly moving to > digital. Most of the new film cameras introduced have been at the bottom > end of the market, and of course the cheapest of the DSLRs is more > expensive than any of the companies' film cameras except the > top-of-the-line pro model. This all suggests that DSLR sales are > primarily to pros, advanced amateurs, and rich people who buy "quality" > (despite often not being able to use it) and the average shooter is > either buying a film SLR, a digital P&S, or most likely is still using > that old K1000. the average shooter will have nothing to do with a K1000. all-manual means that if they did somehow buy it without having to take a photography course, it would be unused after the first two or three rolls of film. low end film SLR sales probably have plunged to near nothing. > Interesting numbers, although I wonder if they are a "one-time" thing. > The market is flooded with used film cameras, and most photographers > probably have a film camera. Eventually, most folks who want a digital > camera may have one, and the sales of digital may taper off. I've seen > DSLRs penetrating into the lowest levels of the professional market > locally. Eventually, there will be a noticeable number of used DSLRs, > too. it is a one time thing, but any manufacturer who is not part of it in the next two years it won't be there at all. i figure in 3 years at most, the serious amateur and pro DSLR market will be saturated and then the price wars will begin on the $500 6MP DSLRs. the Minolta entry is just barely soon enough to be relevant. the Leica one doesn't matter. neither does Contax. their volumes are going to be so low that their cost per unit will be very high. fortunately for them, Leica and Contax owners seem to have a pain threshold of 4 or 5 times as high as other vendors for selling price. however, 4 or 5 times higher, still may not cover the development costs since developing a digital camera is a lot more expensive than developing a film camera. > Who else makes MF and LF? All the MF Japanese manufacturers should be > Pentax, Mamiya, Bronica, Fuji? That leaves what--Hasselblad, Rollei? > > Does this mean that pros are abandoning MF in droves? that's my reading.
