Camera Purchases and Lifecycles

THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN THIS IMAGE IS THE LOCK. DO YOU KNOW WHY?

NIKON F2 - STILL WORKS 50+ YEARS LATER

When you buy a new camera, how long do you expect it to keep working? How extensible should it’s lifecycle be? Do you typically change bodies every year or two, or do you want to get the most out of your investment by using what you bought longer?

Good questions that every photographer needs to answer for himself or herself.

Bothersome

This is a topic that is particularly bothersome to me. Back in the 70’s the term planned obsolescence was coined to specifically describe the output of American automobile manufacturers. The idea is and remains simple. Sell a product and then release a new version in short order that the original buyer will want instead of the original purpose.

In fairness, the term was applied to the use of low life parts, or later modular components such that when one tiny thing failed, the entire module had to be replaced at exorbitant cost. From crappy brake shoes to single modules controlling all electronics so if a lamp failed you had to buy an entirely new module just to get that lamp working again were (and are) evidence that the buyer comes last. This happens in cameras too, but some makers are much bigger offenders than others.

Fujifilm

Fujifilm makes excellent cameras and fabulous lenses, but what really captured the minds of serious photographers was that the purchase of a Fujifilm product did not mean an immediate financial penalty of 20% once a frame was made because Fujifilm demonstrated a longer term commitment to their buyers.

Most camera makers at the time would release one or two bug fix firmware upgrades but never new services. Fujifilm changed that by not only fixing bugs, but by adding new functionality to the camera that you already owned. It did mean that they couldn’t sell you the new model 12 months out where the only difference was a few features, but it also engendered customer loyalty and a better return on investment. This has been proven through buyer studies and resale value of used Fujifilm equipment.

Nikon and Canon

For years Nikon and Canon behaved like US auto makers. You bought and they would post purchase offer bug fixes to egregious problems but only for a limited time and never with new functionality. The mentality was that once you had one of their cameras, they could come out with a new model and market aggressively to convince owners that they were missing something significant with this latest wazoo feature or function. This was always complete mcmarketing BS with no grounding in facts, but they were massively successful because buyers foolishly believed that the makers put the customer first.

What Happened?

When the photography industry hit the iceberg and the point and shoot models sank to the bottom in the face of simpler to use and easily as good at imaging smartphones, some smart folks in the companies began to see that the old model was going to be less effective. The smartphone lookalike cameras from non smartphone makers had the glide path of a cinder block and couldn’t be given away. Frankly they were poorly designed, were feature bereft and were lousy cameras with only a brand label going for them. And the market said that the label didn’t mean anything.

We saw Nikon make a sea change with the Z9. It was the first major Nikon product that not only received firmware updates to fix bugs, but the same updates also delivered significant improvements in existing functionality as well as functionality that the originally released product never had. The response from the market that paid for their own Nikon professional cameras was incredibly positive. Whether Nikon continues to follow the model established by Fujifilm, only the Nikon decision makers know, but I am hopeful that they do.

Canon has always been the most egregious offender. More models that are very close to another at common price point jumps, usually $100 USD for the same product with a different label and different firmware that allowed access to functions in the camera but disabled by software. I had the original Canon 7D. It was pretty good for its time, but an independently developed firmware called Magic Lantern unlocked all the stuff that the camera could do that Canon had disabled. This made the 7d change from decent to awesome. When I sold my 7D to purchase the ostensibly superior sensor of the 7D Mark II, I found massive buyer’s remorse. The 7D Mark II was not actually better than the original in any way that mattered, and I lost a ton of functionality due to the artificial constraints applied by Canon with intent.

I cannot single out Canon as a maker whose new model is the same as the old model with some new features that likely existed in the original model but were locked away specifically to allow the maker to release a new “better” model using the same guts as the old one. If you don’t believe makers do this with plan and intent, see a mental health professional because you have a reality problem. You are the customer and you come last.

Recently it was leaked and so far the leak is not verified, that Canon has delayed the release of the R5 Mark II until 2024 and will instead release a firmware update to the existing R5 enabling functionality that exists in the R6 Mark II which are newer but less costly models. As an R5 owner, I am hopeful that this happens but will believe it when I see it and have installed it to find out if the rumours and promises are true. Trust but verify is a stupid statement. If you trust, then verification is unnecessary, so let’s cut that to verify and move on. It also tells me that the existing R5 can actually do all the things that will become allegedly available and that such functions are simply locked out by firmware.

Knowing what I know now, I would be far more suspicious of makers and indeed would never have bought an R5 were it not for the substantial investment in older Canon lenses that work very well. Will I be swapping them out for RF glass? No chance. My investment in supporting tools made the R5 a purchase, not the R5 itself and certainly not that it came from Canon.

S

The camera is just a tool. I have been engaged in photography for nearly 50 years. There is nothing that I can do now that I could not do then, other than the skills differential built over time, and the presence of some features that simplify what I would do. I could focus myself then and still can. I could make exposure decisions then even without a light meter and still can today. I have a more feature rich hammer now for certain, but it’s still only a hammer. The camera stores the image, but I am the one making the image. This is true whether I shoot with the R5 or my old all manual Minolta SR-3 (which despite being nearly as old as I am, still works perfectly today). By the way, if you are a photographer where the image is made in your brain, and not a picture snapper dependent on the box in your hands, your camera, however feature rich or how much you spent on it is still just a hammer. Will the R5 function in 60 plus years as that old Minolta does, or the older Leica or similar vintage Hasselblad? What about the older Speed Graphic? Or even the much younger (relatively so) Nikon F2AS? I don’t know, but I doubt it. The attitude of makers relative to lifecycle and quality has changed and not for the better.

If you find what you read here enjoyable, please subscribe to the articles and to the podcast. If you shop at B&H Photo Video, please do so through the links on the home page. It costs you nothing and pays a small commission to me to keep things going here. Until next time, peace.