the end is getting closer for small consumer digicams: http://www.halifaxlive.com/samsung_camera_10212004_3932.php Samsung Introduces First 5-Megapixel Camera Phone October 21, 2004 Samsung is turning up the heat in the mobile camera phone market with the introduction of the world's first mobile phone with a 5-megapixel camera onboard. The SCH-S250, phone camera also doubles as a camcorder and its 92MB of onboard memory can store up to 100 minutes of video. Other features include a built-in MP3 player, and Television function. "Our development of a five-megapixel camera phone will boost the competitiveness of the South Korean mobile phone industry," said Samsung's president Lee Ki-Tae in a statement. Up to 25 high resolution photos can be saved on its internal memory. Last year, Samsung introduced to world's first 1-magapixel phone camera, and just 3 months ago, they introduced a 3.2-megapixel camera phone. Samsung said the SCH-S250 performs as well as high-end digital cameras thanks to its CCD, high-sensitivity flash and a shutter speed as fast as 1/1,000th of a second. it's got a friggin flash too! this moves even closer to an article I wrote recently (clipped bit below) Looking at the situation now where in Japan few sub-3Megapixel cameras have been selling* I have troubling thoughts as to where this trend is leading. Currently in Australia consumers can buy 3-4 Mp cameras for a little less than $150, a mere days pay for many affluent consumers. Name brand cameras are having a difficult time in competing with such a deluge of cheaper competitors. The electronics manufacturers have no loyalty to photographers, and to date only camera manufacturers have used the sales of consumer cameras to subsidise the research, development and marketing of professional SLR's.. should camera manufacturers fail to *profitably* sell consumer cameras in the upcoming years the question begs to be asked - what price tag will be attached to the few SLR's sold in this upcoming and glorious future ahead? Tamron has ceased manufacturing Bronica medium format cameras, Nikon no longer makes compact film cameras, other manufacturers are considering trimming back their product lines while some are saying nothing, choosing to keep their health status as a manufacturer close to their chests. *The reason for the lack of 3 Megapixel camera sales in Japan is of course that mobile telephones these days have adequate cameras on board, at least adequate enough for many consumers who find the convenience offsets the lower sized image. Samsung has recently released a mobile phone with a Megapixel camera (§) and a hard drive onboard which has further bitten into low end camera sales. As one consumer writes of this particular phone "This is the first phone to converge properly! Doesn't matter what specs to me, the floodgates are now open. Once you mate a HD (hard drive) to a phone, the next step is MP3 player/ phone, and I can finally lose one of my gadgets! Hurrah!"(sic) Taken in context, this person has stated that they are prepared to forgo a *better* specified product (the MP3 player) purely for the convenience of having an all-in-one device that they carry with them everywhere already. I myself have chosen to use my own low quality phone/camera at parties and events rather than carry an additional device that I may misplace, and under the circumstances the images produced have proven suitable for their intended purpose, ie a 'memory aid'. These images have no professional value, they have no artistic merit to me(¥) they merely serve to remind me of a past event - a perfectly valid application of photography in a non professional way. I foresee that film use will fall into such decline in the world unless photographers realise the potential loss and reverse the trend, that photography in a professional sense will all but vanish, and we will go the way of the gas lighters of old London (to borrow a term) and it will be a long, long time before the job of 'Professional Photographer' is called for again. One only has to see the undercutting going on in the current industry, the reliance on digital (remember the manufacturers promote digital as 'cheap, quick and convenient' - consumers therefore expect any photographer who uses such tools as ALSO being cheap, quick and convenient!) to realise profits are and will continue to fall to the point where it is no longer viable to be a photographer. Another point worth noting - In the US car manufacturers had multi million dollar budgets to have photographers shoot cars. Last year there was no need for photographers .. Since all cars are wire framed in the design process it was a snap for the graphic designers and animators to recreate cars driving through scenes all in cgi on a computer. effectively, whole photographic industries and careers were wiped out in a year thanks to computers. Photographers in the past have had the foresight to protect themselves, their skills and their knowledge and thus maintained an industry, we modern photographers have not. We have adopted easy-to-use consumer tools, we have abandoned our knowledge and now we are no longer the elite group we once were, in doing so we have marked ourselves effectively redundant. <clip> The photographers who armed themselves with digitals to photograph catalogues effectively signed their own death warrants in the industry. The first time they shot and deleted in front of the customer they effectively educated the consumer as to how to do it themselves. It was simple for a business, spend the X thousand dollars on a pair of lights and a camera, shoot and delete until you get it right - job done, no need for the photographer <clip> ..The fallout will be that electronics makers will be making cameras and the camera makers will be gone. Future pro's will probably be ordinary journalists armed with mobile phones snapping 2Mp(*) images and phoning them immediately to the office. Wedding albums will be multimedia files made from video stills and phone stills. (* gotta ammend that to 5mp now!) Some have argued that we have to adopt these new scenarios if we are to remain viable however, we are stepping into worlds where others already have a claim to greater experience than ourselves, and we are not capable of competing. <clip> In years to come fine art and specialist photographers will still be found shooting film and asking decent prices. They will have isolated themselves from the norm and raised their art to an elite craft few will have the patience or the monetary support to be able to undertake. They will preserve the high skills and knowledge that the digital shooters will not know. Physics, chemistry and mathematical and colour comprehension will allow them to produce images vastly superior to the digital shooters. This will not necessarily be because they are inherantly better, but rather because they will truly know the underlying elements to pull off the shots - information few auto-everything shooters could begin to comprehend. Guide numbers, circles of confusion, DOF, developer chemistry , these are not boring stifling facts to intimidate or frighten photographers!- these are photographers friends, yet so many new shooters fear and loathe these things claiming they stifle creativity. Maybe then the industry will be reborn, but until that time, there's some hard years ahead for those who attempt to survive the fall of photography. k
