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Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

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Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#161

Post by detaro »

dsego wrote: post #131
bee_rider wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty wild to think that, like, 20 years ago digital camera had relatively nice little screens on them and relatively good processing, while phones had those silly little green-and-black LCDs. I wonder if there's an alternate universe where people are saying "Nokia seems to be really doomed. This is sad but not surprising -- smartcamera antennas have gotten good enough that you can get reception almost anywher…

The camera manufacturers seem to be set in their ways. Wouldn't it be cool if you could load a sim card into your smart-camera & use android apps for cool features, like proper HDR (not the manual bracketing stuff), maybe apply some casual third-party filters, or instant streaming and sharing on social platforms. But maybe the target market, the professional photographers, are also the older generation that care more…

IMHO, no. What would be a great would be even better live integration with phones and other devices (although you can do quite a bit with tethering etc with many modern cameras). They're better devices for editing-like things from an UI perspective, have independent battery and heat budgets (already an issue with cameras with the move to mirrorless), have ecosystems better designed for regular updates, ... whereas in a camera, for me this is all an add-on. I want the core of the camera to be simple and fast, and only move whats necessary for efficient capture in them (e.g. accelerometers for stabilization in post-processing would be something that would need to be added to the camera). And for pros, the reliability etc is even more important, and for the majority of their use cases, capturing and editing are clearly split. You're not going to sit down at a wedding, conference or in the wilderness and try tweak a picture on the back of the camera - and for doing it later a tablet or computer is better suited. And in the studio they tether to a full-size computer with larger screen etc, again the more powerful option.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#162

Post by markn951 »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #137
varjag wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, as well as a gigantic portfolio of patents. They aren't going away. Kodak would like to have a word.

Nikon sells much more than just cameras. I only know their excellent microscope product line ( https://www.nikon.com/products/business/biomedical/ ), but it looks like they are also in the lithography business https://www.nikon.com/products/#ps-biz Kodak had what, printers?

Kodak made scientific and technical optics and imaging equipment too, for years. Not to mention film for just about everything. They've made X-ray machines and other medical imaging devices. They had huge chemical plants and research facilities that didn't just make photographic chemicals. They even made hand grenades during WWII.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#163

Post by TheRealPomax »

And yet I fully expect them to still not bother actually innovating but just making the same kind of thing in different form factors because no one is willing to make a product that might break the market wide open. Better let Sony keep eroding that market, even when Sony isn't reaching for the stars either.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#164

Post by analog31 »

bgrsgeg wrote: post #138

I think cameras are done. And not because of cellphones. I think Lytro did them in. First a cop out to what I'm about to say. My arguments are specifically for geometric optics as used in photography. Also, my argument is in the limit that (non-optical) technology gets better. Also, while I took (and loved) many optics classes at university a lifetime ago, I ultimately did not become an optical engineer. I'm sure the…

I do some optics design. The Lytro was exciting. Reinforcing what you say, when a light ray hits a pixel on a conventional sensor, the sensor only knows where the pixel is located on the sensor. Ensuring that each pixel corresponds to a specific location in the scene being photographed is the lens design problem in a nutshell.

But a ray has both a position and a direction vector. If you can measure the complete ray vector -- its position and direction at the same time, then you can compute where it came from, even if the lens is not perfectly designed. The light field sensor relaxes the lens design problem considerably.

An earlier technology called a Shack-Hartmann sensor, similarly measures the full light field at once. It's used for things like measuring the wavefront quality of lasers.

There is still a problem, which is that you have to assign a physical sensor pixel to each point in a 4-d space (2 position and 2 direction coordinates), which means that you have to give up some of the spatial resolution of the sensor. This makes it hard to compete in a market that is clamoring for more and more megapixels. Instead, the sales pitch has to be more nuanced, as in comparing the actual image quality of the pictures, which is a harder sell when the quality of pictures from cell phone cameras is pretty damn good.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#165

Post by dagw »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #137
varjag wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, as well as a gigantic portfolio of patents. They aren't going away. Kodak would like to have a word.

Nikon sells much more than just cameras. I only know their excellent microscope product line ( https://www.nikon.com/products/business/biomedical/ ), but it looks like they are also in the lithography business https://www.nikon.com/products/#ps-biz Kodak had what, printers?

Kodak had what, printers?

Kodak pioneered digital photography (they literally invented the first digital still camera). All through the 80s and 90s they had the best digital camera sensors on the market and where first to release a commercially available DSLR. In the mid 90s they owned the pro DSLR space.

But they didn't want to cannibalize their film market, and after much infighting between senior managers they ended up not investing in the digital lead they had. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#166

Post by tesseract »

dagw wrote: post #19
amenod wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony yes, but Canon? I thought it was faring worse than Nikon, or am I mistaken?

Canon is much larger and more diverse company than Nikon. I don't know who is doing better in the DSLR space, but Canon is almost certainly doing better overall.

Isn't Nikon still a pretty big player in semiconductor (and OLED/LCD) lithography equipment? I don't know what percentage of the business that is though compared to cameras.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#167

Post by Exmoor »

perardi wrote: post #120

I fear for Nikon, even though I suspect they have lifelines, given Bank of Japan’s quantitative easing. They’re the least diversified of the big camera companies. Sony has…a lot, from semiconductors to financial instruments. Canon has high-end video, scanners, and enterprise printing and copying. Nikon has photography-oriented cameras, some medical optics, and semiconductor equipment, and that’s about it. They’re jus…

Nikon also has a well respected sports-optics division (binoculars, spotting scopes), although they are also seeing a ton of competition in that marketplace as well.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#168

Post by schrijver »

bee_rider wrote: post #148
dsego wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera manufacturers seem to be set in their ways. Wouldn't it be cool if you could load a sim card into your smart-camera & use android apps for cool features, like proper HDR (not the manual bracketing stuff), maybe apply some casual third-party filters, or instant streaming and sharing on social platforms. But maybe the target market, the professional photographers, are also the older generation that care more…

I suspect another aspect to it is that camera manufacturers didn't even really want to go digital at all. They had a nice revenue stream in the form of "selling rolls of film" that would have kept them happy indefinitely. It isn't easy to obsolete your main lifeline.

If I’m not mistaken Canon, Nikon, etc. only ever sold camera’s, not film. And photographers changed camera’s a lot less often in the analogue days. With digital the customers suddenly got on an upgrade schedule similar to that of computers. So from a commercial standpoint the move to digital must have been pretty attractive for the manufacturers.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#169

Post by varjag »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #137
varjag wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, as well as a gigantic portfolio of patents. They aren't going away. Kodak would like to have a word.

Nikon sells much more than just cameras. I only know their excellent microscope product line ( https://www.nikon.com/products/business/biomedical/ ), but it looks like they are also in the lithography business https://www.nikon.com/products/#ps-biz Kodak had what, printers?

Nikon was mom&dad operation compared to Kodak in its prime DJIA-listed days.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#170

Post by LandR »

ghaff wrote: post #76
robotmay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think camera bodies make a much larger difference these days than lenses, actually. Obviously the lens still makes a notable difference, and for certain forms, like wildlife photography, the lens requirements are inescapable. The new models out in the past few years have absolutely incredible low-light performance that completely change the lens landscape, even; you can now ditch the requirement of carrying a hefty…

Sigma used to be one of the brands you bought because you didn't have the money for the camera manufacturer's lens. Now, they have unique models in a number of cases. I still have mostly Canon glass but I have a couple Sigma models because Canon doesn't have the equivalent.

Haven't used a sigma lense for years. Are they now comparable quality to NIkon/Canon lenses?
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