I go to this conference event in this season every year now, I like this area especially at dusk walking along the riverside rose park. Unfortunately this time we did not see any rose.
What really changed this year was that we so many mirrorless users here and also many more D-SLR users at almost all tourist venues of Osaka and Kyoto. But we did not see any one shooting on a m43 camera.
Last year I saw many more DSLR guys and almost no mirrorless guys , but this year it was like 60-40 , still a bit more D-SLR shooters but many Sony , Fuji and Canon mirrorless shooters here.
I guess the demise of D-SLRs and ILC in general is greatly exaggerated, at least in Osaka and Kyoto and most of Asian tourist venues. EOS M seemed very popular now, I was surprised to encounter many tourists with it.
Sony A7RX seemed also very popular now, I spotted at least 12 people shooting with it this riverside(other than myself).
I also saw many D850 users. I met a few Fuji GFX shooters and also X-T2 and X-E3 users here. What I could not see or find here was m43. It seemed completely ignored , no Chinese, no Western, no Korean tourists had it. I did not see any local carry it either. So it is not popular , rapidly becoming a thing of the past. I guess on this one I was right and also likes of Northrup , Hogan, Rabar were all right.
m43 is doomed, and as Hogan rightly said it, it is no longer a viable choice.
Why m43 is doomed 29(updated3):
I must wonder which one will die out first the remained D-SLR guys or m43 duo?
Sadly the reality is Mirrorless is not becoming any more popular than it was in 2009,let alone 2016. It seemed to have peaked out in 2012 or 2013, and then mirrorless sales suddenly went down to the original before 2011 era state.
Canon, Fuji and even really Sony weren't shipping MILC's. Sure the MILC to DSLR shipment ratio has changed as the sales volume of the D-SLRs is down significantly.
But mostly only in Sony and Fuji's case it has changed for better (this accounts for around a 2-5% net change by itself) because the E has eaten a bit of the A mount sales, but not given dramatically serious damage to Canon and Nikon yet............this is the reality of the ILC market at this point of 2018.
Also important to note: As the trending has shown over the past two years, we're seeing specific regions for shipment increases which tends to suggest that it's not "evolving", it's more "targeting" at specific segments of the market, and in most cases, they still remain to be a stable niche. The smaller the sesnor system the more severe damage it gets from both the matured never growthless market with really overwelming market saturation and the rapid advancement of smartphone cameras and One inch sensor cameras.
The only area mirrorless is doing anything but evolving is perhaps in Asia, but that seems to be more stock dumping. It's the entire world vs Asia plus Japan in terms of growth in marketshare. In fact, mirrorless(except the A7 line) is only successful in Japan, Korea and SE-Asia, not even in entire Asia since the Chinese(excluding HK and Taiwan) and the Indian market are not pro mirrorless yet, and I think this is something to do with the Chinese way of thinking: the bigger the always better mentality, and this mentality almost always dominates throughout the Asia except Korea, Japan and some SE Asia nations like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
So, I kind suspect the current style of the excessively small size with a bit better video and EVF is the only one big advantage over the same generation D-SLRs kind of mirrorless are not doing well in China and India, and I think it will never do well in that specific markets(Hong Kong and Twaiwan are very different, though). In fact, I think I have the data to prove it. In mainland China, Canon still dominates the market with about 45.6 percent of the entire market share. In India , Nikon is still the top but I do not remember the exact number here at this moment.
Remember, in most part of Asia, except Japan and Korea, the bigger the always better more powerful, more worshiped, etc. This means Mirrorless will be suffering even in Asia except Japan,Malaysia, Thailand ,Korea and maybe Singapore and Indonesia.
Anyway, percentage of growth on marketshare is meaningless without context.
For instance if you graph out the marketshare in NA(North America) and project "when" Mirrorless will finally overtake DSLR based upon current growth, we end up being 2 decades down the road. And do you think it is any meaningful? The old saying .. 10% of nothing is still .. nothing. Yeah right...
Also,you have to,again, realize this is shipments versus sales. shipments by nature of the quality of the MIrrorless vendors will be more consistent on an annual basis and YoY than the more longer release cycles of basically the two dominant camera companies .. Canon and Nikon.. And I expect that the real sales numbers of mirrrorless cameras are even worse based on our and other many large camera retailers inventory socks.
Despite of the LL, IR, DPR,etc selling internet myth that the A7 series is the king of everything in this closed small market, the A7R3, the A7M3, the A9 are all just doing OK , not selling extremely well like DPR, IR, etc, say. Sure the A7MK3 did well when it was very new for about 2 months , but now it is not selling well. Every where you can just order it and get it immediately. No long waiting for it at all. The A7R3 also did very well for about 1month but it was never backordered and never outsell the D850........it is surprising but it is the fact.
The fact is the Sony's bestseller camera of all time has been already discontinued NEX5 series and its successor the A5100. And their next best seller of all time camera series is the A6XXX. So the A7X is not the best selling Sony camera of all time as DPR and those paid artisans working for Sony want you to believe.
We all know that Sony seems to want to increase per unit profit rather than total sales even at the big cost of some market share, so what they have been doing is not really bad or anything, but just not increasing their share, they want it or not.
In the end ,mirrorless sells more or less is stable in EU and NA across the last two years. Spin how you want but it is the fact, even the excsssive Sony internet shill marketing through Youtube and DPR hasn't changed this much............ and most of those mirrorless guys losing money due to the excessively disproportionately huge amount of money they have been spending for shill marketing and those silly Youtube morons. Maybe they've helped Sony , Olympus and Fuji increase a bit of sells by value, but what they have spent on those shills is still a much bigger amount of money than that a bit of sales increase that the YouTube and rumor sites shill marketing have generated for Sony, Fuji and m43.
Remember Panasonic and Sony have been hiding the fact that they've lost some big money in ILC still camera business by merging their weak performing DSC(stills)business with the very strong DCC(digital cinema camera)business.
Of course this will all change in a heartbeat once Canon or Nkon adopt mirrorless fully into their existing product lines.
However, usually D-SLR haters(including I used to be) think that's unlikely anytime soon because it would be akin to the emperor admitting he has no clothes. They're all in on DSLR's and perpetuating the myth of their superiority with old dated lenses. I think all of us agree that mirrorless is the future, but when it will match the D-SLR in all ways , is the question, and none of the current mirrorless including the super high end ones like Leica SL, the high end ones like Sony A7R3and A9 are not even close to the high end D-SLR in terms of general operation speed and C-AF. What I mean by operating speed is not just how many frames they can shoot per second , but card writing speed, formatting speed, start up speed, and wake up time from a long sleep, etc. All kinds of general operational speed.
And none of mirrorless makers've shown any proof in being able to produce a MILC that matches the high-end D-SLR competition in general operational speed and still produces a profit in any case, other than the Leica's super expensive SL and Sony's flagship A9 remotely matching it on paper.
Really be honest, considering the fact how long the mirrorless companies such as Sony, Olympus and Panasonic have been saying how mirrorless is smoking the D-SLRs even the most expensive ones or how their cameras changing the game...... has any Mirrorless company really actually proved that and successfully demonstrated consistent profits in their respective mirrorless business?
We can't even say Sony has , because they lump it all together and massage the numbers until they look good to naive people at online forums. Or we still can't say Fuji has done that just for the same reason for the Sony case.
That all said, Sony or Fuji is not a real loser here, but IMHO, m43 is now really really doomed, the inevitable loser here.
The elephant in the room is the massive install base differences in between a Canon and a Sony.
Many m43 fans writing something like this,"Sony is well recognized among the MILC crowd for being woefully inadequate in its line of lenses. It's in m43 that a full range of current lenses designed specifically to take advantage of the format (small and light, with a few Pro exceptions) has been best realized."
Oh really? according to DXO no, not at all true. And I think many of m43 fans do not understand why their best lenses on the tiny sensor rated so bad compared to the supposedly terrible Sony Zeiss or venerable Nikon 2007 era lenses on a FF.
Because, it is simple, m43 lenses have to resolve 4 times more details to match terrible FF lenses on a decent FF body level(in resolving power). And it is simply impossible. So, it does not matter how good a m43 lens is at a lab without a sensor, it will never perform as good as the worst Sony lens on a A7X in real world. So, in this sense, DXO is the only really reliable lens system resolution test site, and thus they deserve more sincere respect for what they've been doing there for free for us. Testing lens alone is meaningless since it does not show the real life lens performance on a particular sensor type that the lens supposed to work with.
And, unlike Sony and Zeiss primes on A7X, all those amazing MICRO43 lenses are heavily relying on full software corrections to make them look good, it is nothing like the new Zeiss Melvus 85mm f1.4 on my D750, or the cheap Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8 or the Sony FE85mm f1.8E on my A7MK3 or even the venerable A7MK2(the A7MK3 and MK2 sensor level IQ is identical anyway), let alone the Canon 35mm f1.4 LMK2 on the 5DS-R, or the Samyang 35mm f1.4 E on the A7R3.
Another m43 fan says ,"Many of the lenses in their "extensive" line-ups are long in the tooth or redundant or both, as Thom Hogan has described as it relates to Nikon in ByThom.com articles."
Well, it is true, but as I explained even the worst Nikon, Sony and Canon lenses do better on their respective FF bodies than the best m43 lenses on the best m43 body, period.
They cannot beat the basic law of physics.
Plus, actually when you have a stable of 60+ lenses, you don't update them all at once. many of m43 lenses are expensive and rely heavily on software corrections to correct obvious design compromises to make them small enough to be attractive to the target market.
In fact, doing a quick look .. Canon has updated 1/2 of it's lenses in the last 10 years, so have Sony and Nikon.......... so game over. There is nothing m43 does better than anything else, but it is an expensive system for what it does, especially after normalizing DoF of all systems in question here.
As m43 fans say many times Thom wants DX lenses and keeps complaining about it .. but Thom, even though is a resource I love to read and respect, has some very specific biases needs that most of people do not share. Hey, my A6500 takes all my FE lenses, my D7200 takes all my FX glass, so what is the issue here? In an ideal perfect world they may want to develop a full line of dedicated APS-C lenses, but in real world both Nikon and Sony have very limited R&D money and so they cannot completely duplicate their FF lens lineup with DX or APS-C line lenses. I think if their budget is unlimited , yeah they would try it. But it is an expensive task.
m43 fans like to put Canon Nikon into the same league as Kodak was in, and they tend to use a car analogy-usually GM or Nissan. They think Canon Nikon are next GM, Kodak, Blackberry, etc........
"GM was the strong dominant player in the car market a couple of decades ago, but now where are they? They failed and failed in many markets and once even legally bankrupted.
And Canon Nikon fan base are very old increasingly graying old men just like that of GM fan base a few years ago. "
Many m43 fans tend to think this market this way and expect others to agree that Canon Nikon are quickly becoming next Kodak.
But this is not logical, simply stupid. Mixing up camera market with car market is really wrong, camera business works more like PC or Mac than car. If you have too many Windows only programs that you must need for your work, you can not easily cross over the fence to go Mac, or vice versa..........Camera system works similarly. Many of us have too many lenses for a particular mount to move out of the system easily as Thom pointed out a few weeks back.
So, Canon Nikon Sony do not become like GM or Kodak, but they are kinda MS of camera world.
Then, m43 fans say:
"Then, why do you think mirrorless got to be this popular now? older people that couldn't handle the weight of DSLR at first and slowly moving into m43, did you guys realize that?"
On paper, it may be correct, but in reality that's too much of a generality.. I know from walking around and observing in many places .. and also tourist places in Japan, Thailand and Korea.. DSLR's are being used by all generations, and I rarely see a mirrorless in the field. In fact, I have never met any m43 users in real world out side of forums or my camera mall. I saw a few Sony A6500/ A7/A7R , or EOS M5/100, etc , users and a few Fuji shooters in real world but really never saw any one serious with a m43. I've seen far more supposed to be dying Nikon D-SLRs than m43, period. I think m43's real rival is not Sony or Fuji or Nikon, but Pentax. That is the bitter tough reality.
Actually, no camera forum denizens realize it but we have to face the fact that all ILC cameras are big to most of NORMAL non-photographer people, and they are very intimidating to most of NORMAL people(I mean regardless of mount type or sensor type).
I have written about this a few times already but I must repeat it again here:
I never realized it before but while walking around down town Fukuoka with one of my long time non-photographic friends here forced me to understand it. A friend of mine told me below:
"I really thought all your interchangeable lens cameras huge and intimidating. It is always annoying!
I even feel kind of embarrassing to walk around with you when you have a big camera with a big lens on you. And it is really pain-in-ass to use any ILC, it does not matter a m43 or a FF, but if I must buy and use a ILC, I will go all the way up to FF. No matter how cheap the lenses are , I do not want many of it, only one lens the best and the fewer lenses a system requires , the better it is, period!"
I guess a big lens annoys people more than a big camera......I never saw it his way but I got his point and respect that. So I decided to carry my tiny Sony RX100M4 when I just walk around the city area with other people. If I am alone shooting something, then I usually carry my big camera, and I think it does not matter it's a m43, a FF, an APS-C, it is all big to most of NORMAL people, anyway. They all hate us with a big ILC and annoy us anyway, we must be bold and aggressive or miss many shots......
Then why not just go all the way up to FF or at least APS-C?
Another important point most of mirrorless(especially m43 fans) tend to forget is most of NORMAL people cannot tell any difference between m43 IQ vs One inch compact IQ.
My Chinese friend says he thinks SOOC image of the decent One inch compact seems better than that of any of current generation m43 cameras. This is a really huge minus point for the m43 duo.
The m43 system was attractive when there was no other serious mirrorless systems or their lens selections were still very very limited back in 2010-2012 period.
And they were always ahead of the rest in terms of feature set, so they could survive this long even with the well known sensor quality related disadvantages.
But now the rest of the camera world have finally caught up with them in the feature set department and lens selection.
In case of Sony, they may be already better in lens department. Fuji does not have as many lenses as m43 does, but arguably their lens selection is much more logical and better than that of m43.
Now many thirdparties like Sigma, Samyang, Tokina, Zeiss and others begin to ignore the m43 duo, and I think it is an alarming sign of declining popularity of the system...........it is really hard to deny the duo may be repeating the same mistake that they did in the last few years of their SLR 43 era.......
m43 is attractive only when it is much smaller , cheaper , or more feature rich than the rest(with a bigger sensor). But by making everything more expensive and big , Pana Oly are just killing their own charms.
So maybe the one really doomed system is not Nikon F or Pentax K or Sony A but m43?
Historically, Nikon and Pentax have had very enthusiastic and even fanatic core shooters and they are usually too old to adapt themselves fast to new EVF based gear even if they understand the mirrorless is the more logical choice for them as they are aged and getting weaker every year.
And there are also many many young kids that think very mechanical analog-looking old Nikon as cool or better than those dinky toy-like m43 cameras..........especially in Asia there are many of those kind of kids , as I already mentioned in the very first part of this post , many Chinese and Indian boys are after more pro looking cameras than smallish m43 kind of cameras. And this is a clear trend in China. So in China , Sony,with its FF sensor and AF-capable Zeiss primes , is doing very well there now, Canon is still doing well as their 5D series is very popular there, Nikon is not doing as well but at least their D850 and D750 are doing quite well in that market too. In India, Nikon has been the no 1 choice for serious shooters for decades.
So D-SLRs guys may survive as antique camera or professional camera manufacture at least in Asia, but m43 ? I think they will die out soon, m43 has no IQ advantage over the One inch compact (unless you are willing to invest into one of their pro line primes that'd cost you over 1500 US each)and m43 has lost the size advantage over Fuji X. And it is a huge loss.
UPDATE: As I started this m43 is doomed series a few years ago, many of its fans really strongly disagreed with me and called me a Sony fanboy or deranged FF fanboy.
But the fact is I have never been a fanboy of any system or brand, I just dislike all systems in many ways and like them all in some ways.
And I have always owned at least a couple of m43 bodies since the dawn of that system, so I think I am very realistic about the system and value of it. I do not call myself or any one as an authority of anything, but I am sure at this point of this game, many will appreciate me that I have been brutally honest about this and writing about the real truth about this industry. Now many of so-called experts(actually clueless online morons pretending to be experts of ILC industry) literally repeating what I have been said about m43.
It is dying and will definitely die at least as a serious still camera system.
Those insecure m43 fanboys always hurt and react too much to drag it down to a name calling contest whenever anyone honest or new write about any issue of m43 as a system since those new to this system or wondering if it is right for them kind of people are all not very sure if this will still be a relevant system 3 years from now. And it is really a reasonable question to ask, but it will make those asking about it a troll in any m43 or mirrorless related forum.
But they do ask and tell others how Nikon must be dying or will have to be dying, or how Sony will terminate their A mount or the entire Alpha division as the new CEO Yoshida is not interested in any hardware gadget business, etc.
But the truth is nothing other than m43 or Pentax is really doomed. The m43 fanboys say Nikon is arguably much more doomed........but the reality is Nikon still sells 3 times more than m43 and Pentax combined(by value).
They say Nikon's biggest issue is lack of their own sensor, well , they have had it since about the D2X time.
And the D850 sensor , while it is produced by Sony, is a completely unique to Nikon and now Nikon is saying good bye to Sony , they will be working with Tower Jazz.
So Nikon will not have any sensor supplier issue, but m43 will.
Why? Because the volume they move and value they make is too small for any serious sensor manufactures to take the format seriously. Thus, they've been clinging to the 3 generations older sensor tech for 7 years or so since the OMD EM5 days. So I must say putting m43 in the same league as Nikon or Sony is just a bit over the top.
So I think I am right Olympus will eventually go FF or at least APS-C(super 35) just for the newer better available sensor electronics tech for the bigger more common sensor formats.
For the same reason half sized MF will eventually die since it is a super niche format and the IQ advantage of that over the FF 135mm format is just too insignificant.
So the Phase One type of real MF will dominate the highend market and Fuji , Hasselbald or Pentax fake 645 all will have to go extinct soon. Sony will not make much by producing that format sensor for them, they will make much more money by selling the real MF sensor to Phase One and some others.
And I am 100 percent sure Sony will make a MF camera system is a lie, they are not interested in such a niche market, their shareholder will not let them go there, it is really simple as that. Sony is not Phase or Haselblad, not even Fuji, and they know their brand value and where it works the best better than any reviewer or those pundits at SAR junk.
So I must say when I wrote this article first time I did not believe Oly would actually go FF, but now I do believe they will go FF quite soon.
UPDATE2: it is really odd to me that no one really starting any "coming death of m43 " threads in any camera forum although it is definitely the most doomed system with the advent of the one inch super zoom cameras such as the RX10MK4 and Panasonic FZ2000.
The One and the m43 both have the same 20mp resolution and the One is backside illuminated and the m43 is not.
So the IQ is basically not much different , the One just needs a bit faster lens to over come the smaller sensor size over the m43.
But if one really needs a big sensor advantages , then he or she would have to go up to at least APS-C anyway.
Now I think Fuji was very wise when they chose APS-C as their smallest ILC camera format. APS-C is the smallest acceptable ILC sensor format in the near future and it is obvious because of the advent of the RX10 and FZ200 type of One cameras.
So it is really odd no one talks about the coming death of m43 but many talk about the coming death of Nikon or Canon , or Fuji.
Honestly, take a honest look at m43 financial reports, they are pathetic , their future seems really bleak. Nikon is at least in much better shape than the m43 duo. Fuji is far better now and Canon is in a totally different world.
Honestly there is nothing more doomed than m43 now, only diehards try to deny it.
UPDATE3:Crazy fanboys trolling at other brand forums just to annoy people in other brand forums is is a typical Sony thing. Sony has two things that are going around since the very first day of internet forums:
1. freaking stupid and annoying fanboys who seem to measurebate on their toys, rather than really work with them (well, if they really own them, which I often doubt). If they are just real fanboys rather than shills , then I must say they are some sort of a psychopath.
2. a LOT of paid Sony guerilla marketing guys, flooding other brand forums like LL, NR, PR, MR, DPR Nikon/Canon/Fuji forums with unasked info about the 'superiour' abilities of their product. What is very suspicious in all of these cases is, that these guys are mostly not answering direct critical questions on the product they try to persuade people into, making huge efforts to only talk about the 'pros' of the product (even if they are only on paper) and more often than not, they are very new in the forum and only write in competitors sections. So it is very easy to spot out those extremely annoying Sony shills and mental case fanboys.
There was a documentary on TV about this phenomenon and one is for certain, the internet is FLOODED by those paid shills.
I see a lot of these idiots in the Nikon and Canon forums and I decided to completely ignore these guys as they won't stop spreading BS anyway, finally that is what they get paid for..
What really stupid about this extremely aggressive Sony shill marketing in many rival camera brands forums is that this may helps Sony sell more camera for a very short time , but after that people will definitely wake up and some (actually many ) will hate Sony because of the shills and trolls.
So I am now quite sure Sony marketing guys are quite shortsighted , they do not seem to understand psychology of photographers and usual camera buyers.
I think this is why they will fail in this market too , just like they failed in cellphone market and PC market by doing the same.
DPR , IR shill marketing may work for them for about 2 or 3 years, but the excessive shill marketing just creates more and more haters in the longer run and it never works in the long run. They seem never get this.