from Hacker News

Smartphones wiped out 97% of the compact camera market

by joos3 on 12/2/22, 10:25 AM with 683 comments

• by pornel on 12/2/22, 2:07 PM

  Camera manufacturers are institutionally incapable of writing good software.

  I have experience with Sony, and their firmware barely changed in the last decade. Their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mostly doesn't work. Touch screens are from a bygone era: laggy, imprecise, and without multi-touch. They don't have resolution good enough to check if the photos came out sharp. Their phone apps are a clunky afterthought.

  Smartphones are running circles around them with computational photography. "HDR" mode on Sony cameras is slow and primitive. I'm not a pro photographer, so I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time.

• by probably_wrong on 12/2/22, 2:15 PM

  I have a mirrorless camera that I still use regularly. Three events in the last year have called my attention:

  * While I was taking pictures at night, two teenagers came to me and asked me to take a picture of them. Apparently one of them wanted to know what it would look like, since the fact that I had a camera clearly indicated that I knew what I was doing (it didn't). I didn't have the heart to tell him that it would look pretty much the same as the phone he definitely had in his pocket, but luckily he gave me a wrong Instagram address so that problem solved itself.

  * On that same night, one guy started yelling at me (pushing his head against mine) because he thought I had taken a picture of his car.

  * I was interviewed in a popular tourist destination, and the interviewer explicitly asked me about why I had a camera instead of a phone.

• by jleyank on 12/2/22, 11:38 AM

  Probably wiped out the gps market also. My map supplier for my phone gave up and I assume it was from trying to compete with google maps. Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline…. “Good enough” and only one thing to remember.

  Nailed the pager, voice recorder and related markets as well.

• by mstaoru on 12/2/22, 2:38 PM

  One word - bokeh.

  You can get a Fuji X-E4 + XC 35mm f/2 for ~US$1000 new, and I'm yet to see a phone camera that can shoot something like this https://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/fujifilm_xc_35mm_f2/... - it's an enjoyable setup that will continue being ahead of any flagship phones for years to come. Not to mention that it's a hell of a rabbit hole and a great hobby.

• by post_break on 12/2/22, 2:34 PM

  Fujifilm on the other hand is exploding in popularity. Sony took the full frame market and has incredible autofocus. Canon has shot themselves in the foot locking down their RF mount, Nikon is doing ok.

  I think we're going to see a slow gradual rise in small compact cameras making a comeback, just like vinyl. Phone cameras can only do so much, it's physics, and photography popularity has grown since kids now are born in a world where a phone has a great camera.

• by Damogran6 on 12/2/22, 2:26 PM

  Will nobody think of the Flashlight industry?

  No science fiction story I ever read said anything like "It was dark, but it was okay, because I had my personal cellular internet communications device"

• by ben7799 on 12/2/22, 3:01 PM

  I have a Canon 5D Mk III, 5-6 lenses, maybe 4 flashes, umbrellas, stands, a background, etc..

  I gotta sell it but keep procrastinating.. 99% of the time these days I just want to not carry stuff and use my iPhone 13 Pro, because 99% of the time nobody cares if I use the fancy camera stuff and the hassle and workflow is a PITA compared to just using the phone. My previous phone was an iPhone 8+ and it kind of started this and then the 13 Pro really really kicked it into gear with having the 3 lenses. It got hard for me to justify not shooting RAW if I was using all that expensive gear, and then I'd have to sit there wasting time "processing" files to justify using all the fancy gear. I came to really hate that time in front of the computer. (This is after about 15 years of doing it.)

  Actual compact cameras forget about it.. the last few generations I had weren't even as good as the phones, because they almost always had crappy zoom lenses. 3 Prime lenses on a good smartphone beats almost all the zoom compact cameras until the zoom compact cameras get annoying to carry.

  The phone cameras also have a massive advantage that people are not threatened by them and act more naturally. If you mostly value your pictures of people in your life this is a big advantage.

  For me some of this is the ebb and flow of hobbies, but I really don't care about the snob value of the image attributes only possible with a DSLR/MILC anymore.

  Sony/Minolta one this game by getting their camera tech/products into most of the smartphones on the market. Kudos to Sony.

• by cat_plus_plus on 12/2/22, 5:00 PM

  Just like Tinder wiped out getting to know someone and taking them on a romantic date. Smartphones are perfect for taking a selfie against a landmark and sharing it on Facebook for likes. Just don't expect your grandchildren to hang it above a mantelpiece. For that you need at least a viewfinder/rangefinder to compose a good shot and a physical shutter button to take a bunch quickly and choose the best one later. Computational logic will also only get you so far without ability to gather and control sufficient light.

  At this rate, I see actual silver prints making a comeback for the same reason as vinyl. At least we know they will last a century while your selfie will be forgotten as soon as your "friend" starts a political argument on your Facebook feed.

• by MarkusWandel on 12/2/22, 3:22 PM

  In all this talk about why even bother with a dedicated camera any more - especially a small point & shoot that doesn't actually take any better pictures than a smartphone - one item is usually missed: The dedicated camera is made to be comfortably used one-handed. To me this matters a lot.

  Also, with dedicated cameras being garage sale fodder now, you can inexpensively get another feature that the smart phones just don't have: Zoom! My current "daily driver" is a Canon SX210 with pretty good picture quality at 14x zoom and image stabilization to make it practical. And still pocketable.

  That said, 50% of my photos are still with the phone these days, just for instant sharing or geotagging.

• by ballenf on 12/2/22, 2:10 PM

  Interesting how it's an accelerated version of the horse/mule population decline after introduction of the cars/tractors/etc.

  At its peak in 1920 the total horse+mule population was ~25M when the US population was 102M. Or 1 horse for every 4 people.

  Although counts vary, there are 9M horses in the US today which has 330M people. Or 1 horse for every 36 people.

  (population counts from US census)

  Horse numbers from: http://www.cowboyway.com/What/HorsePopulation.htm

• by roland35 on 12/2/22, 12:07 PM

  It wiped out my DSLR camera too. I'm no professional photographer but I bought a refurb Canon t5i rebel when my son was born back in 2016. Phone cameras were still pretty poor at that time, but have gotten much better to the point where I rarely take out the DSLR.

  It does take amazing portrait pictures! And better pictures using indirect flash in low-light conditions. But video is pretty bad unfortunately - mirrorless cameras fix the focusing issue but they were not as easily available back when I bought my camera.

• by nszceta on 12/2/22, 11:49 AM

  Their atrocious firmwares are responsible for some part of this. These devices poorly integrate into the lifestyle and workflows of smartphone users.

• by nradov on 12/2/22, 1:55 PM

  As a casual underwater photographer, it's sad to see the compact camera market dying. I like having compact cameras that I can put into (relatively) inexpensive housings and bring along on scuba dives. My current Olympus TG-6 works really well, but we might never see a new model in that product line.

  A few companies have tried to build underwater housings for smartphones but they don't work very well. Too hard to control the touch screen, and they don't work with external strobes.

  Larger mirrorless cameras seem to still be going strong (for now). But the underwater housings are much more bulky and expensive.

• by cainxinth on 12/2/22, 1:37 PM

  In my mind and in my car

  We can't rewind, we've gone too far

  Pictures came and broke your heart

  Put the blame on VCR

• by arnaudsm on 12/2/22, 11:55 AM

  I traveled to Japan recently with an middle-end smartphone (Samsung A72 with 12+35+60mm) & a middle-end DSLR (APS-C with 18-55mm), that I bought the same price.

  Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything. I sold my DSLR since.

  APS-C sensors aren't relevant anymore, only full-frames can beat smartphones nowadays.

• by codingdave on 12/2/22, 4:52 PM

  I love how powerful my phone's camera is. I use it, I love it, I love the apps to identify birds, plants, etc with it. It takes great snapshots, and is so quick to whip out and get a decent photo.

  Yet at the same time, I hate holding it out to look at the screen to see what the photo will be as I take a photo. A camera with an eyepiece lets you hold it tight to your face, locking your arms at your side, and decrease any wobbling of the camera due to body position. That makes it easier to focus (and I actually can use a manual focus), zoom, and track moving targets, and gives you a bit more flexibility on settings for the shot.

  Not that compact cameras solved any of that particularly well, either. But I'm keeping my dedicated cameras until phones figure out better ergonomics for those of us who grew up being used to that level of control.

• by gernb on 12/2/22, 5:48 PM

  I'd be curious to know what other markets have diminished because of smartphones

  * Flashlights? Sure a smart phone is not a good flash light but it's often enough

  * paper notebooks? I'm just guessing the majority of people keep notes on their phone, probably cloud backed so they can access them on their tablets/notebooks/phones

  * video cameras? The article was about compact cameras but I have to imagine no one buys a video camera anymore

  * mp3 players

  * calculators

  what else?

• by sgerenser on 12/2/22, 11:53 AM

  It also replaced 13 of the 15 items on this radio shack ad from 1991: https://www.trendingbuffalo.com/life/uncle-steves-buffalo/ev... (one of which is indeed a compact camera)

• by chobytes on 12/2/22, 2:51 PM

  Im surprised by all the folks who always pop into these threads saying theyve replaced their XXXX-expensive-dedicated-camera with their phone. Outside of wide DoF, wide FoV, well lit shots I find my camera and iphone to be pretty incomparable.

  If apple starts letting us swap the glass out one day we might be have a fight but currently I just dont see it being one at all.

• by bachmeier on 12/2/22, 2:51 PM

  The title is inaccurate. "Compact camera" just takes a different shape. Most everyone has a compact camera these days.

  On a less nitpicky note, I think the failure to deliver a compact camera at a reasonable price in the 2004-2008 time period did a lot of damage too. The low-end models were junk, and the good ones cost, I believe, at least $250.

• by jmyeet on 12/2/22, 3:06 PM

  I remember seeing a chart of this a few years ago. Digital camera shipments peaked at >100M in ~2010 then fell off a cliff and 8-9 years later were <10M. The sad part is consumer digital cameras funded DSLR development so DSLRs have kind of plateaued as a result.

  It's a shame because digital cameras can serve some specialist purposes that phones simply can't. I have a camera that can shoot Full HD @ 960fps. I have another with a 200x optical zoom (this is not compact). And another that's waterproof to like 30 meters. I also have another compact camera with a 20x optical zoom.

  But I really feel like manufacturers have failed to innovate in the smartphone era. It should be trivial (ideally, seamless) to save photos to your phone. Various implementations for this are just bad like one camera I have is a Wifi AP and you have to connect to it. They usually require running custom software, which is typically just bad.

  I'd also like to be able to put a camera on a mount where I can remotely turn and tilt it, focus and zoom.

  For years photographers have said the best camera is the one you have and it's true. That's why smartphones destroyed this market. But manufacturers didn't really do that much to close the usability gap.

• by OJFord on 12/2/22, 12:22 PM

  I was looking for one recently, and yeah, it's slim pickings (and even slimmer in terms of reviews etc. on sites like The Verge compared to when I was last looking at cameras) - not helped by chip shortages limiting availability (and raising prices) of the models that do 'exist'.

  I wanted one because I don't want my nice-photo-taking tied to my phone, I don't want that to be a consideration every time I buy a phone, and I don't otherwise need an expensive phone (my last few have cost <£200 and been kept years each, I don't play games or do anything intensive with it). I'd rather have a ~£200 compact camera and a ~£200 phone, with independent replacement cycles, than a ~£400 phone (that would be a much less capable camera, though admittedly the software editing/ML stuff for amateur stuff (which I definitely am, I just want holiday/walk snaps etc.) is quite nice these days). I settled on a used but pretty mint condition Panasonic TZ100, and can keep using my Nokia 3.4 a while longer. (Though it does reboot itself multiple times a day, so its days are still numbered.)

• by thatBilly on 12/2/22, 12:22 PM

  I struggle to understand how mid range digital compact cameras are so bad. I have to use them for work (for reasons below) and usually at night with the flash.

  So the camera flash is obviously far superior to a phone flash but apart from that, my phone (Note 20 Ultra) dominates all the Olympus and Ricoh cameras I've had in recent years. When it's raining or foggy and I have to take a photo, I am forced to use my phone instead of the company supplied camera. If I need to do a video clip, again the phone is my go to. Looking towards the sun, same again.

  If I could use my phone for all the photographic records I take at work then I would but I still rely on the form factor of the camera which is more resilient amongst tools and dirt and on-screen display which shows a sequential photo/filename reference that I can quickly note down.

  How does a £1000 phone have such an incredible set of cameras which destroy the dedicated camera on a £300-400 digital compact?

• by victorvosk on 12/2/22, 2:45 PM

  I just got a Pixel 7 Pro. My photos look obscenely good. The new macro lens let me take a picture of a fly up close and you could see the individual hairs on its abdomen. It looks like it came out of a national geographic. I can't believe "normal" cameras even still exist for most photography.

• by ExMachina73 on 12/2/22, 5:44 PM

  This is the right move by camera manufacturers. The low end, compact camera has been replaced by people's smart phones and computational photography. All the innovation in the small compact market is on phone cameras. It's just not compelling or fiscally responsible to continue to spend money on R&D and manufacturing in the low-end compact market if you're one of the large camera companies. The money to be made is in the professional market. Higher margins, more expensive camera bodies and glass. Feels similar to what Ford did when they stopped making sedans/compacts and went full on trucks, crossovers and SUVs. The only real money maker that I've read about on the low end is the Instax line by Fujifilm, which fills that nostalgic, film based approach.

• by NaOH on 12/2/22, 11:11 PM

  I’ve always appreciated the numerous salient points in this 2012 Economist blog post comparing how Kodak and Fuji Filmfilm responded to the ascendency of digital cameras:

  https://www.economist.com/business/2012/01/14/the-last-kodak...

  or

  https://archive.ph/W9MMG

  The article succinctly captures the responses of the companies, consumers, and the stock market. The lessons demonstrated by the relevant actors are ones I’ve carried with me in my own business work and shared with others when appropriate.

• by jesusthatsgreat on 12/2/22, 6:42 PM

  The only thing they beat smartphones at is optical zoom. And that's pretty important and one of the few areas where smartphones still lag and can't crack due to their size. Add 10x optical zoom to a new iPhone and watch it crush all former sales records.

• by paulmd on 12/2/22, 6:47 PM

  for context though this is a market that mostly collapsed like 15 years ago, and smartphones were actually the second death of the market.

  When you hear "compact camera" think about like the Canon A40 and such - early 2000s. By the late 2000s they were already completely commodified with no margin left and the profit had moved to DSLRs (and later MILCs etc).

  There was and is still a niche for "premium" compact cameras (Nikon coolpix, Ricoh GR, Fuji X100, etc) but the commodity market didn't get anything out of a standalone camera that couldn't be done better by something else, and if you're already carrying a smartphone anyway...

• by jollyllama on 12/2/22, 3:51 PM

  For most of the last several years, I carried a flip phone, and I'd keep a compact camera in my bag. I just don't like smartphone interfaces in general. I really like camera interfaces; once you get good with it, it's very quick to set exposure, ISO, etc for exactly the kind of look you want. I also like being able to access files on my computer for editing, processing, and backup just via an SD card rather than having to send them through some 3rd party service.

  Generally, I agree though, that software for cameras is pretty poor compared to what it could be.

• by Someone on 12/2/22, 6:36 PM

  Only 97%? That would mean one in every 30 compact camera owners still uses one regularly. I realize the market for “small cameras that you can always have with you” grew tremendously, so “3% of the number people who used to own a compact camera” is a lot less than “3% of the people who know have a smartphone or a compact camera”, but still, 3% seems high to me.

  I wouldn’t know anybody who still uses a compact camera (but then, did I know 30 people who did in the time before smartphones?)

• by bitL on 12/2/22, 1:17 PM

  This is bad for privacy. Now every single photo a person takes will be stored on someone's cloud forever and potentially used by someone against folks threatening their mafia.

• by unethical_ban on 12/2/22, 7:21 PM

  I suggested a few weeks ago on this forum that DSLRs should strive to be like smartphones with better lenses. Make real computational photography accessible on-device like a phone would, with its power and its UI, but with programmable hardware buttons and DSLR performance.

  I have an Olympus E-M10 Mark III (terrible naming) and while the photos are obviously of a higher quality than a camera phone, camera phones can do wonders with photo stacking and HDR/night shots that would be even more amazing with a proper camera.

  "But that's what photoshop is for", the naysayers say. I say, bollocks to that. If a budget smartphone can make these filters/optimizations accessible to the masses, then a DSLR can as well. Besides, they already try. My Olympus has an art filter menu, a "scenes" menu and so on, but they are opaque in what they are actually doing, not very flexible in adjustment, and overall can't achieve the customization of a smartphone.

  If Sony et al bolted a detachable lens to an android device with a few programmable knobs and buttons, with wifi (not hotspot based) for instant uploading, I daresay it would be a hit.

• by almog on 12/2/22, 3:32 PM

  I don't expect futures phones, in their current form factor to ever match any dedicate (future) camera that can accommodate a better sensor and optics.

  What I would have liked to see smartphones makers match is option for removable battery in a flagship like phone.

  Some vendors (Samsung included) have their line of rugged phones with removable batteries, these phones tend have a not so great screen, camera and often processor as well.

• by cooperadymas on 12/2/22, 6:02 PM

  The "compact" camera market is a lie.

  I have wanted to get rid of my smartphone and downgrade to something smaller and simpler. The one thing tying me to it is the camera. I use it on a regular basis to take quick photos of family or events around me.

  If there were a compact camera on the market, I would happily carry around a phone and a separate camera in my pocket.

  No such thing exists. Every so called "compact" camera is significantly larger, bulkier, and heavier than any phone on the market. I get it, they have optical zoom lenses and that takes up space. Most of the time I don't want that but there are no options for it. But even the body of the camera without the zoom lens is significantly thicker than a phone.

  Near as I can tell, the dimensions of the compact camera have not changed since the last time I bought one, which would have been around 2006. The one thing I can say is that camera still works just as well as it did 16 years ago. Maybe new ones take better photos, but in the meantime, I've gone through probably a dozen different cell phones.

  Sure would be nice to have a truly compact option though.

• by mjburgess on 12/2/22, 12:22 PM

  After selling my A7S I was at a loss for a F2C recording... thought about a Brio, in the end used the front-facing iPad Pro camera.

  With lots of natural light (etc.) quality at non-Fullscreen, typical viewing resolution&size, was 'unnoticeably good'

  I was very very surprised. I think a lot of people don't realise just how far tech has come (+the right photo/video-ography skills).

• by elif on 12/2/22, 3:01 PM

  I bought one recently because when I'm snorkeling etc. I don't want to risk losing something with access to my accounts, auth etc.

  I really think we need to start separating our crucial digital identity/value from the thing we use to translate a menu or call 911 in an emergency or hand to a stranger to take a photo. Right now I use 2 phones to keep I kinda separated.

• by fleddr on 12/2/22, 11:26 PM

  Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements.

  But only the beginning. We're going to be debating the question of "reality" a lot in the coming years. Surely, the next step in computational photography will be AI to fix your questionable shots.

  You photograph the Eiffel tower, but there's a lot of people obfuscating it, the horizon isn't straight and the light ugly. One tap and it's fixed, if it even requires a tap.

  You zoom in digitally to produce some blob of what is supposed to be a bird. Tap to fix it. And there you have it, a pro level shot without the 5kg 600mm lens.

  Just like AI art generation, photography will be going through some deep questions. Did you actually photograph that? And if anybody can photograph anything with zero skill, what is the point?

• by tppiotrowski on 12/2/22, 3:22 PM

  Someone said to me a long time ago that the best camera in the world is the one you have with you. It turns out they were right.

• by WaitWaitWha on 12/2/22, 3:46 PM

  In my experience I recover low level storages (think dd or lower) in consumer and professional cameras, and cell phones.

  I still find errors in FAT32 implementation when it comes to cameras, while phones have moved on to get specialized formats depending on the storage chips' design.

  Cameras' firmware are decades behind.

• by yamrzou on 12/2/22, 11:43 AM

  https://archive.ph/M1i4k

• by softwaredoug on 12/2/22, 3:16 PM

  There is a similar thing happening with car stereos.

  People just want Apple CarPlay. Not your manufacturers crappy radio UX.

  Quality software is a discipline not every company gets right. And TBH, you see the difference between those that focus on software and UX as a craft, and those that don't.

• by herf on 12/2/22, 6:06 PM

  For sure, HDR and AI noise removal are pretty good. But there's one more thing that's less visible, which is that smartphones are not very friendly to standalone cameras.

  Cameras have always depended on PCs to do capture. And since smartphones did not provide ways to do fast wireless transfer, it made a separate device even harder to use. My Sony mirrorless takes about 30 seconds to connect to iPhone using ad-hoc WiFi, and it's a bunch of work on both sides. So while I can sort of get from the camera to Instagram, it's way harder than it should be if the mobile device makers wanted it to work.

• by 0xakhil on 12/2/22, 3:44 PM

  After I used a dslr camera for few months, I notice small ugly artefacts in my iPhone 12 mini’s pics. Along with that, smartphone pics has a weird distortion which is very noticeable with the wide angle lens, but it is noticeable now to me with even the regular lens. Sort of like background compression, which i find pretty ugly. I think this is a physical limitation of a small sensor and lens. Not sure why nobody has fixed that with computational photography. All I want is to have my pics look like a shot with standard 50mm lens. I don’t care about bokeh actually.

  You won’t notice these things until you are familiar with pics from a dslr camera.

• by qikInNdOutReply on 12/2/22, 4:22 PM

  Its a strange thing. You need a stable society with a social safety net to unleash such creative destruction, but a stable society has a tendency to develop structures like guilds that prevent just this creative destruction.

  The guild of map makers allows to ship in materials that allow for the creation of a machine that provides maps for free, but would try to prevent the construction of said machine by legislation influence at all cost.

  Which is begging the question, how does one ensure that the "protective" legislation always remains ineffective or gets devoured? Should protective laws always have a "lifetime"?

• by pmontra on 12/2/22, 5:07 PM

  I own a Sony DSC WX500. I bring with me when I go on vacation with a 30x zoom I can get great pictures of animals and with my phone I can't. I transfer pictures from the camera to the phone over its own wifi and a Sony app (not very good) to have a backup and to send some of them to my friends with whatsapp or telegram.

  A camera with an open API is be great. Sony would only have to provide a basic app and somebody would create a great one for profit or for the fun of it. Sony would keep the money from the hardware sales. No idea if they have some cloud offering for cameras and if they profit from it.

• by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung on 12/2/22, 6:05 PM

  Give me the product I want, at a reasonable price, and I will buy it.

  I am specifically annoyed at how cameras have been sold in tiers, the same tech with upgrades as a different model.

  Sell me instead a modular camera, upgradeable like a PC.

  Barebones camera, no WiFi, no Bluetooth, basic screen, basic memory.

  Expansions: Better case, wireless connectivity, memory upgrayyedd, better screen, optics module, bayonet adapter for lenses of your brand choice.

  That sort of thing.

  If you do it right, it will result in longevity of the brand, if you do it like Sony has done with all their cool products, then it will be limited and expensive, and nobody will really use it.

• by brezelnbitte on 12/2/22, 1:59 PM

  I hate iOS color rendering though and I tried RAW. I ran the TMB (100mi in Alps) with phone and compact film camera and only 1 iPhone photo made the cut. The colors are too saturated esp the sky with the fake polarizer effect and the color transitions more abrupt. Everything looks way too cool in tone and muddy when I try to warm. And this is on a 13pro. My damaged film (noisy from X-rays at airport) was still far better with softer color gradations and better overall rendering. Fuji XE4 is also far better than phone. I hardly use my phone camera.

• by standardly on 12/2/22, 4:42 PM

  Camera manufacturers should've built a compact camera that fits in the pocket, has a digital screen, and can make phone calls / send messages. They would've hit it big.

• by ymolodtsov on 12/3/22, 8:51 AM

  This makes total sense. Most people are far better off with a smartphone. Easy to use, photos are right there, preserved in the cloud, etc.

  What Apple and others killed is the lowest possible segment. There's still a pretty healthy ecosystem of small-ish mirrorless cameras and, of course, DSLR, which you could buy if you need one.

  I really like my Fujifilm and all the nice buttons it has. But one of the key advantages is that its photos simply look different from an iPhone.

• by N19PEDL2 on 12/2/22, 4:16 PM

  I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability.

  In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in modern cameras is only the possibility to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, where I need to install an app to provide the coordinates to the camera for geotagging.

  Then I see cheap low-end smartphones that have built-in support for GPS+Galileo+GLONASS+Beidou and I wonder how much would it cost to insert such electronics into a camera.

• by FeistySkink on 12/2/22, 11:45 AM

  Sony hasn't updated their compact lineup in years, which is sad because many people love those cameras. Especially the RX and HX series. I always carry a compact with me.

• by dawnerd on 12/2/22, 3:16 PM

  I do know a number of people that went out and bought one specifically to use as a webcam. And they work amazingly well for that. Expensive, but you can’t beat the quality.

• by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on 12/2/22, 4:10 PM

  It seems like the big camera manufacturers have accepted that they will not be going after consumers anymore. They concede.

  I wonder if there is still room on the edges of the prosumer market though to push more people into the big dedicated cameras.

  Could a better camera OS, more digital photography, and quicker, sexier results, along the lines of what we see on iOS, combined with amazing sensors and glass, convert some people over?

  Or are those numbers too small to be worth a try?

• by novaRom on 12/2/22, 2:06 PM

  Most people even stopped making landscape mode fotos an videos. Portrait mode is the king today. No rotation needed, shareable, full screen area utilization.

• by obmelvin on 12/2/22, 8:39 PM

  Don't worry, gen z will bring them back with their quest for "vintage" photos

  https://petapixel.com/2022/12/01/tiktokers-are-obsessing-ove...

• by happytiger on 12/2/22, 2:29 PM

  In other news, software continues to eat the world.

  Join us for our panel discussion later where we will cover software eating everything.

• by jwmoz on 12/2/22, 12:06 PM

  I'm actually looking at buying a nice simple older compact to maintain the look and feel of older digital pictures.

• by afavour on 12/2/22, 2:45 PM

  I miss my old DSLR but yeah, it's too much to carry around. I wonder if there's a market for some kind of "clip-on" DSLR that sits on top of your phone, uses the touchscreen etc for interface, Wi-Fi direct for communication (perhaps?)

  I have to assume there's a good reason to not have done this.

• by psychomugs on 12/2/22, 4:09 PM

  The Ricoh GR and the sprinkled offerings from Fujifilm have been the only worthwhile point-and-shoots for a long time. I still take my Fuji XF10 with me everywhere because it's unobtrusive and will archive better than anything a small-sensor phone could.

• by adav on 12/2/22, 11:56 AM

  Which model is considered by photographers as the last "best" compact camera?

• by Xeoncross on 12/2/22, 3:16 PM

  I'm still waiting for the ability to use my off camera flashes from my smart phone. That is the missing piece for those amazing camera portraits sculpted from light when you don't have the right natural environment.

• by college_physics on 12/2/22, 3:15 PM

  from the comments it feels already the case that carrying a camera is nowadays a signal that you are not a "casual" photographer but a prosumer (or worse :-)

  stands to reason, though, that for any given form factor if the device is dedicated to one task it will do it better than a similarly sized multi-purpose device (and one that, nota-bene, is primarily designed for and busy with collecting and sending user data back home).

  both optics, ergonomics, battery life and compute / software could be far superior in a compact compared to a phone. so the 3% niche market remaining might evolve into some really cool cameras.

• by ubermonkey on 12/2/22, 3:15 PM

  Yeah, and the market / use case for "serious" cameras is dwindling, too. I can see a time in the near future where only the most serious hobbyists and pros use a "real" camera.

• by tqi on 12/2/22, 3:34 PM

  I remember thinking the Sony Ericsson w810i was the perfect phone + camera form factor. Of course I also invested heavily in MiniDisc so clearly my sense for these things was not good...

• by Tepix on 12/3/22, 8:57 AM

  Meanwhile, 360° cameras are being discovered by more and more people and achieve awesome pictures unlike any traditional cameras. Also, the subject is always in-frame.

• by Kaibeezy on 12/2/22, 4:41 PM

  You want bad software/UI? Flash triggers. OMFG. I have one flash. M on the screen means two opposite things in two different places. Etc.

• by pzo on 12/2/22, 2:00 PM

  Smartphones wiped out probably even more markets:

  -alarm clocks

  -calendars

  -calculators

  -compass

  -mobile gps

  -flashlights

  -mp3s

  -voice recorders

  -camera recorders

  -pocket cameras

  -pagers

• by irrational on 12/2/22, 8:13 PM

  I honestly thought that the price for mirrorless cameras would drop as demand dropped, but that didn't happen.

• by visarga on 12/2/22, 3:43 PM

  I see a parallel, the smartphone ate the other devices, the language model is eating human tasks by the thousands.

• by jamesliudotcc on 12/2/22, 3:03 PM

  The astonishing thing is, compact cameras have 3% market share remaining.

• by barbariangrunge on 12/2/22, 4:21 PM

  Is this the future of the art and writing markets once ai gets better?

• by xvector on 12/2/22, 12:00 PM

  XR glasses will do the same to the smartphone, and I can't wait.

• by somat on 12/2/22, 11:00 PM

  Would it not be fair to say that compact cameras gained network connectivity and are now more popular than ever? I mean we call them phones but transferring sound is pretty much the least of their duties anymore.

• by ant6n on 12/2/22, 2:51 PM

  And I thought smart phones are the compact camera market.

• by fabiensanglard on 12/2/22, 4:45 PM

  Amusingly, Android project started as a camera OS.

• by DonHopkins on 12/2/22, 2:10 PM

  They certainly did a number on the PDA marker.

• by dboreham on 12/3/22, 12:13 AM

  Article is paywalled so I haven't read it, but surely the reason is not that smartphones are better than cameras as being cameras. The reason is that a) smartphones are good enough cameras for most purposes (e.g. people were happy with 110 film cameras in the 1970s) and b) people already paid for and are carrying a smartphone so they need a compelling reason to also buy and carry a camera (see (a)).

• by medo-bear on 12/2/22, 2:10 PM

  also in news today, automobiles wiped out 99.99% of horse carriage market

• by codeulike on 12/2/22, 8:42 PM

  What about torch market?

• by ChrisArchitect on 12/2/22, 8:27 PM

  FYI: Story from August

• by avazhi on 12/2/22, 3:53 PM

  There is or was a compact camera market? What is it, 10 people? 5?