Are DSLR Cameras Dying?

A lot of you may not know this, but I wasn’t always just a computer geek. I actually started out in technology as a photographer. I shot high school newspaper and yearbook photographs as a “staff” photographer for the school that I attended, Central Davidson Senior High. So, it made sense that I would go to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, Printmaking, and Photography. After I got out of college I opened my own photography business called Bailey Photographic Arts. As you might expect, I had my own fully equipped darkroom, and I had a series of Nikon professional cameras. And, I thoroughly enjoyed photography. However, I discovered that while photography was a great hobby, it really wasn’t what I wanted to do in terms of a career. So, over time I ended up getting into computers, at a time when personal computers were in their infancy, the late 70’s and early 80’s, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Why tell you all this? Well, I read many articles recently online that are predicting the death of the DSLR that is, the Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. Now you might say, “But wait, Dr. Bill, DSLR’s are fairly recent technologies!” That’s true, but this article from NBC News says it pretty well; dedicated cameras seem to be on their way out! Why? Because so many people are using their smartphones as cameras! As you know, there are a lot of photographs being posted to Facebook, Twitter, and lots of other web sites! It’s certainly not that photography is dead! It’s a matter of convenience. And the fact that smartphones have gotten better and better at taking pictures, resolutions are higher, tools are easier to use, and they’re getting better all the time! For instance. The Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone has the ability, within the phone, to shoot pictures and eliminate elements within the image, like the commercial that they have showing someone graduating from school and some knucklehead stepping in front of the people in the photo that the parents are taking, and then allowing you to eliminate that person from the shot! That’s pretty cool for camera in a smartphone, you have to admit!

So what does this mean for the future of Nikon and Canon the two best-known, high end, camera makers? As this NBC News article reports the president of Nikon, Makoto Kimura, said in an interview with Bloomberg recently that the company might have to “change the concept of cameras” in order to survive! That could be very interesting!

Here’s a link to the NBC News article: We’re taking more pictures than ever … so why are cameras dying off?

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