> > With all the Digital Rebels and other Canons and Nikon DSLRs out > > there, you'd think I'd be seeing them out and about. I was walking
1) The numbers somebody posted said that in the last couple of years all the companies had sold something like 1.5 to 2 million DSLRs total, most of them to pros. Look at the pro photojournalists at any major event and you will see a lot of DSLRs (and no film ones). I do see D100s and digital rebels in my beat where rich parents who are sort of serious about photography buy them to photograph their children. Then they go and put Tamron 28-200 lenses on them... 2) Pentax made a about five million spotmatics, plus another bazillion ME supers, Super Programes, and K1000s. All the other companies likewise have produced millions of film SLRs since the 1950s. That leaves an awful lot of film SLRs still in service. Plenty of people haven't replaced their newer film SLRs let alone their older ones. DSLRs may be all the rage, but they are still not very common, and probably won't be for a while due to the expense. There aren't a lot of Nikon F100s, Canon EOS-3s, or Pentax MZ-Ss out there either (besides the ones pros use) because of the expense. Realistically 2 million DSLRs (many of which have since died, too, since photo-J is hard on cameras) spread over the whole world is not a lot. > > 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 got the distinct impression that Nikon had made PARTS for an awful lot of F3s because they were selling an awful lot of them to pros. At some point, they noticed AF cameras causing a drop in F3 sales and stopped the production line, simply assembling the heap of F3 parts to meet demand. It would seem to make sense on a low volume product to make a given number all at once and then retool for a new design rather than maintaining a production facility to make a handful a year. > 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 My point is that the average shooter probably bought a K1000 years ago and STILL HAS IT. They still work as well as they ever did. There are a lot more people in the K1000 market niche than the LX market niche, and those folks are not going to run out and buy a $1350 DSLR. They're going to get a digital P&S. Remember that P&S was really lousy until fairly recently, so anybody mildly serious got an SLR. This is no longer the case. > it would be unused after the first two or three rolls of film. low end film > SLR sales probably have plunged to near nothing. I suspect exactly the opposite is true. Canon and Nikon have not introduced a new high-end film SLR in years, but they are working very hard to capture the low-end market with a lot of new, cheap models. Look at the Canon Rebel (the best selling film SLR, I believe) and Digital Rebel and tell me that the companies aren't doing their damnedest to make them even flimsier, cheesier, and cheaper. Again, a lot more people will buy a $150 camera than a $1500 one. OTOH the $800-1000 semi-pro film SLRs are probably a lot less tempting to "advanced amateurs" these days than a cheap DSLR. If Nikon and Canon together have sold a dozen F5/EOS1V cameras this year I'd be surprised. Nikon has said that they will not make another "pro" film SLR (everyone buys F100s, or D1s). > > 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 Not quite. All the guys who now have EOS1s will have to upgrade to the EOS1mark12s with 16MP sensors and 15 fps, as will all the guys with Nikon DSLRs. Technology is moving faster, and it doesn't seem to be the case that a company can put out one pro SLR every 10 years any more. Last I looked, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a large daily, was still using original D1s. Most companies budget for replacements every 3-4 years, which leaves a lot of companies still waiting to buy this year's model. In 3-4 years, of course, there will have been two newer models to market. > and then the price > wars will begin on the $500 6MP DSLRs. the Minolta entry is just barely soon > enough to be relevant. I'm not sure it is in fact soon enough. I'm not sure the *istD was soon enough. A lot of guys I knew who used Minolta now use Canon. > the Leica one doesn't matter. neither does Contax. The Contax one died. Somehow it exceeded the user-community pain threshold. > 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. Again, if Leica doesn't move fast enough, a lot of those guys are going to buy Canon and discover that Canon lenses are good. > > Does this mean that pros are abandoning MF in droves? > > that's my reading. I must say a lot of wedding type shooters are now using D100s instead of Hasselblads. A lot of them also apparently tried that and went back to film because of the lousy exposure latitude of DSLRs. MF is cumbersome. All it seems to have going for it is resolution, and the cost in money and size is substantial. I suspect that good 35mm DSLRs will take over from most of the MF market. DJE
