BebuLamar

Although I never bought a smartphone for myself I don't see myself buying another camera. So I wish you luck!
To answer your question how to stop the decline? Easy if the people are buying more. How to make the people buying more? You change their mind. And that's my point. You have been trying to change our mind but unsuccessful.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I purchased a Pentax K-30 two years ago after using Canon Rebels for eight years; the K-30 fit into my budget and provided me with a Weather Resistant system; however, I'm uncomfortable using the K-30 above an ISO setting of 1600, and I have been in a number of situations in which I would benefit by being able to go to higher ISO settings, so the new K-70 and KP cameras are very attractive to me .... if I could come up with the money. That is where growth amongst current users would be found - providing new capabilities of genuine utility to us.

joelcandids

I live in Atlanta, and the last really decent, full service camera store just closed. The reason they gave was they could not compete with the on-line outlets. The whole photography landscape is changing rapidly, IMHO. With cell phones, GoPro and inexpensive Nikon and Cannon kits on sale in the Club Stores (many only shot as expensive point and shoot cameras) there are growing challenges to professional photography. To your point, and it may be valid, I think interest in photography as art has declined. Said a different way, people don't have the motivation to shoot the thousands of frames needed to hone seeing the shot and knowing how to compose it, and then expose it in a way that sets it apart from a snapshot. I may be totally wrong but professional photography doesn't seem to be valued in the way it was even ten years ago. I still find interchangeable lenses are in ample supply - I just don't see the interst in the art form and that long term is a bigger problem. After all that, I only have observations but no solution.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

EXACTLY.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

Good observations and points.

Marionsho Loc: Kansas

Remember when you had to actually change an aperture or focus a lens?
Just yesterday with my Lensbaby.
Welcome to the Hog, Hodgepodgerama.
Marion

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

I'm afraid that you are confusing discussion with persuasion. This is a DISCUSSION BOARD and this thread nothing more than an exchange of views and opinions.

SlideRule

Into the future, technology-wise, we'll continue to experience continuous change at an ever increasing pace. This impacts all manner of fields (I consult to senior leaders, including in the world of large IT systems where the pace of change is blisteringly fast!). Insofar as photography goes, more and more people will be taking more and more photos. Interchangeable lens cameras will be part of the landscape for the foreseeable future. Such cameras are not for everyone for a host of reasons. The existing market percentage-wise may shrink for interchangeable lens cameras but for sure in the near and medium term, there's nothing to worry about insofar as their availability goes. What will change will be the hardware used (lenses, bodies, artificial lighting) and the software processing of captured images and how data are stored and distributed. Innovation rules - It will only get better and better. Augmented and virtual reality will gradually gain their places in the sun, too. Maybe get concerned if feature length movies from major studios are "filmed" fully by mobile phones as a routine matter!

Similar disruptive change has happened in the audio recording industry as well. It has, indeed, impacted the older business model for recording studios. For the best sound recordings, one typically had to go to a hugely expensive studio with funding from a record company. Nowadays, there's an amazing amount of great gear for home and smaller studios. And, you can still get as much high-end studio gear as your budget can handle. The one difference is that the earlier generations of major recording studios tended to have much better recording spaces, acoustically speaking - hard to record an orchestra in one's living room. I'm familiar with this world having designed and built audio and video studios.

Back to cameras - nowadays, I mostly shoot with Sony gear (A7RII and A6500), and I can use lenses from my Minolta Maxxum days, new FE lenses from Sony, other A-mount lenses, Sigma 24-105 Canon-mount zoom with the Sigma MC-11 adapter, and etc., etc. There's a plethora of camera gear and accessories constantly being released. And often, I use my Samsung Note 5 mobile phone's camera - it works really well in lots of situations, it's another tool in the toolbox.

So... for photography, we're more likely to see availability problems in product manufacturing and delivery chains caused by savage malware/ransomware/cyber attacks than we are from manufacturers leaving the ILC market. (in my opinion)

Marionsho Loc: Kansas

Welcome to the Hog, SlideRule.

whitewolfowner

You have a very valid point. Education is needed for most to appreciate art; it does not come naturally to the average person. Those that it does come naturally, are the artists. And since education is going down the tubes (in the USA for sure), then appreciation of artistic photography will decline with it. The only people who will appreciate it are the artist themselves.

Doug52332

Cell phone cameras provide an alternative, although not a good alternative, to an interchangeable lens camera. Of course I haven't used all cell phone cameras, but I've used a few. Image quality leaves a LOT to be desired, and just because the camera beeps, don't think the shot is done. I've had subjects move after the beep, and even on a clear, sunny day, I've had shots blur on me. There is also a tremendous amount of lag time between pressing the shutter button, and shutter activation. In many cases, the on board flash can't be controlled, and you end up with burned out images, or images that are entirely too dark.

I much prefer to use my Nikon D3000 for my more serious work, and use my cell phone for its intended purpose - a phone. I'll be looking to upgrade in the near future, and I'll stay with Nikon. I like it, and it feels good in my hands. I may also get a good zoom suitable for nature and scenic photography, as well as a teleconverter for other nature shots.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Last November I took Amtrak out to San Diego and then served as my daughter's relief driver as she moved back to Indiana for a new job. We both had problems taking pictures from the moving car - so much in motion seemed to really bog down a phone's focusing software; my small Pentax Q-7 {I left my DSLR at home because bringing a big kit would partially defeat my purpose} was much better under those particular circumstances.

whitewolfowner

Doug:

I'd like to see someone try to photograph sporting events with a cell phone. You'd have to trip the shutter before the pitcher ever had the ball leave his hands and you'd still miss the shot.

Doug52332

Oh, I know! Cell phone cameras are best used for things that don't move. Pixel count is on the rise, but the size of the processor hasn't changed considerably.

You also won't see many faces taken from a distance with cell phone cameras. the faces tend to go blank, although the general shape is there. :)

anotherview Loc: California

I know others who use cell phone cameras exclusively. Your text means nothing to them, beginning with the word "education." They take snapshots -- hundreds and hundreds of them, with huge collections of these pictures stored on their cell phones, to show others. And they exchange these snapshots over the Internet within a social circle. That's it: They do personal social photography.

The seek no money for their photographic activity, and no career, no recognition, just the pleasure of the moment captured in a snapshot for their friends and family.

As to "what art is" and instilling it, forget it. Even photographers (almost all, I'd say) who use a DSLR do not attempt art but only a worthy photograph.

In my opinion, with so many cameras now functioning in the hands of who knows how many hundreds of millions of individuals, the craft of photography will soon enough benefit from those individuals who come to take this craft seriously,
for its own sake. We may reasonably expect, however, that they will want to go beyond their cell phone camera in order to achieve better results in their photographs.

It is really too soon to tell how a generalized diffusion of photography throughout the civilized world will affect this field of human expression. We shall see.