The annual snapshot of the local camera market

By Peter Vogel

Every year around this date this column is given over to a survey of digital camera sales here in the Vancouver area.

Through our web site http://www.ndrs.org/iol/cameras.htm, updated daily during the November-December period, you can get a quick snapshot of the marketplace for digital cameras. True, you will be reading this just after Christmas, but the information is likely to remain valid for another month or two.

When this column first appeared in 1996 the first digital cameras sold at the consumer level cost about $1,000 or so, and if you chose the right model, you might get a rather grainy LCD screen, although it was typically an afterthought.

My school's first digital camera, an Epson PhotoPC 500, was in that $1000 range, although the manufacturer, now almost out of the digital photography field, donated part of the cost.

Remarkable though that camera was for the time, it would be considered laughable today. In a field dominated by megapixel rating, this unit didn't even hit a "1" rating. Battery life? About 30 photos (as long as you didn't turn on the LCD viewer). Zoom capability? Not a chance.

Fast forward a little over a decade. Although the megapixel "wars" aren't quite over, manufacturers are sensing that customers can't be bamboozled on this front much longer, so other come-ons are needed.

Many of today's digital camera customers are likely to be buying a second or third unit, and a one-notch boost in megapixel rating just doesn't have the appeal it did when 2-megapixel units were the norm.

Today it's all about features and cosmetics. Cameras are ultra-thin and have face-detection technology with the promise that faces will always be in focus, as well as image stabilization that claims to remove those annoying blurs and streaks, particularly under low light conditions. They are also shockproof and waterproof.

Don't get the wrong impression here. Much new technology is truly amazing. No one is going back to film any time soon, but do we really need a new camera every few years? A generation or two ago a family would keep a camera like the venerable Canon AE-1 for life (your life, not its life!) I'll bet some readers still have one up in the closet somewhere.

Bearing in mind that the only "constant" in the field of digital photography is "change," let's look at some of the developments in this year's survey list www.ndrs.org/iol/cameras.htm. The list is drawn from retailer flyers and web sites in the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Most manufacturers will produce a broader range of cameras than are on the list, but retailers typically concentrate on a handful of models. This list has models that are actually advertised and sold locally.

Most of the advertising is aimed at cameras in the 7- and 8-megapixel range. At the bottom end, five-megapixel units have virtually disappeared. Last year's list was dominated by 6-megapixel cameras with an average selling price of $340. That same class on this year's list has just six entries, two of which are holdover Nikon DSLR units. Ignoring these, the average selling price has dipped below $100 in this category! FYI: a 5-megapixel camera will take perfectly good photos suitable for enlargement to 8" x 10".

Dominating this year's list, 7-megapixel cameras, many with a broad range of features, have an average selling price of $230 (down from $470 last year), certainly illustrating the more-for-less trend in the field. Canon and Sony dominate this category. Most units have three-times optical zoom and a 2.5" LCD display, although there are standouts with up to 18x zoom and there is even a full-fledged videocam/digicam.

At 8 and more megapixels, Nikon joins the list of dominant players. Although late to the digital photography game, Nikon's cachet and its two-year warranty in Canada seem to be paying off. The company has a broad range of products, including two 12-megapixel models.

DSLR cameras dominate the 10-megapixel category. Canon put this class of camera on the map with its Rebel XT, and the follow-up XTi is one of this year's big sellers.

My colleague, Andrew McCracken, has faced the debate over point-and-shoot versus DSLR camera in his day-to-day work. "I purchased a Panasonic DMC-FZ50 to provide students with a durable piece of equipment with which to take large-size photos for use in our school yearbook. I chose not to buy a DSLR because I was concerned about possible damage to the lenses and connections.

"This unit has proved to be a user-friendly camera for my students, with sufficient zoom to capture most events that a school yearbook requires. The downside to the camera is that it is not a DSLR and therefore is slow. For sporting events we use a DSLR, a Pentax."

Niche players in the digital camera market, at least here, include Samsung, GE, Casio, and Polaroid. Some of their offerings may be worth a look (check out the Samsung NV11 for instance) but others are destined for the clearance bins. HP, which has been quite aggressive with its camera line over the past four or five years, has been relatively quiet this season. Kodak also, after a comeback from near death, appears once again to be struggling for recognition, at least in this marketplace.

At this time last year I predicted some of these also-rans would be out of the marketplace within a year. Clearly that hasn't happened, but their market share is insignificant compared to that of the big three: Canon, Sony, and Nikon. These three, along with Fuji and Olympus, account for most of the units sold in Canada and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

Utility of the Week
A longtime friend and reader of the column writes: "I just have to share this fantastic little program with you. It has already become my favourite utility! It is called PhraseExpress www.phraseexpress.com and it's free."

"I'm using the program to:

• Store all my e-mail addresses. I assign Ctrl-Alt-E to the list of phrases and call it up with that keystroke combination to select from the list.
• Search the web. I've created scripts to take what I have on the clipboard and then search Google, Wikipedia, Internet movie database, eBay, or dictionary.com.
• Add signatures to e-mails. I've modified their scripts and quotes to use at the end of e-mails, generating my "signature" with random quotes of my choosing.
• Correct mistakes on the fly. It imported MS Word's auto-correct features so that if I misspell one of the "common errors" it will correct it on the fly in any application.
• Launch programs. I have Notepad launch when I hit Ctrl-Alt-N.
• Record the clipboard. I've set up the clipboard recorder function so that when I hit Ctrl-Alt-V it pops up a list of the last dozen or so items on the clipboard that can be quickly inserted."

Caveat: free for personal use only.

Office Live Workspace
Made available Dec. 10. Sign up at officelive.microsoft.com for the Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta. Save 1000+ documents online, access them from almost anywhere via a web browser, and easily share your work with others. Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to peterv@portal.ca.