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2010-2019: The decade in review – the camera industry

31 Dec

Officially launched in 2010, I had a feeling that the Fujifilm X100 would be a hit from the first moment we saw a mockup. A small number of journalists worked closely with Fujifilm during the final stages of the X100’s development (and afterwards) to mold what turned out to be a really significant camera for the company.

My career as a photography writer spans 13 years, ten of which I’ve spent at DPReview. Ominously (as if 13 years wasn’t ominous enough), I started my career the year before Apple released the very first iPhone. In many ways, Apple (and other smartphone manufacturers – Samsung, Google, Huawei and the rest) have provided the mood music for everything that has happened since.

But I’m skipping ahead. In this article I want to look back at some of the biggest themes of ‘my’ decade in the industry. Not ‘mine’ in the sense that I had any significant impact on or influence over it (I didn’t) but from an insider’s point of view. The industry has gone through a lot of changes during my time, some of them very painful, but I suspect that before too long, we’ll will look back on the 2010s and realize that in many ways photographers, and those of us who write about cameras, never had it so good.

Here’s why.

From my perspective both as a photographer and photography writer, the 2010s was the decade during which consumer digital imaging really came of age. Consider that in 2010, the only mirrorless cameras you could buy offered Four Thirds format sensors, with (by modern standards) laggy and low-resolution electronic viewfinders.

A sample image from one of my first reviews for DPReview, of the Nikon D3S. Featuring highly advanced autofocus and fast continuous shooting from a full-frame sensor, the D3S offered specs which were a world away from most DSLRs and ILCs at the time.

By the end of the decade, features like advanced focus tracking, 10+fps shooting and high-quality video (the D3S offered 720p) would be commonplace in much cheaper cameras.

Most ILCs sold were DSLRs, and while full-frame was definitely a thing by 2010 (Canon’s EOS 5D-series was on to its second-generation by that point, and both Nikon and Sony had sub $ 3000 FFs), if you wanted a really fast, really tough, really capable camera, there weren’t that many full-frame options available. The 12 MP Nikon D3S that I used professionally at that time was miles ahead of any APS-C format ILC then on the market, but unsurprisingly, it was priced to match.

Fast-forward to 2019’s pre-Christmas sales and you could have picked up a factory-fresh Nikon D750 for under $ 1,000 if you were quick off the mark. The fact that a five year-old camera could be found at a good price isn’t in itself particularly surprising, but the fact that I’d still recommend a friend should get online and buy it goes to show how different the second decade of this century was from the first.

The 2010s was the decade during which consumer digital imaging really came of age

The D750 was released five years after the D3S but offered twice the pixel count, a superior autofocus system, much better live view / video and in a smaller, lighter body. The point is that those kinds of specs just don’t go out of date.

It’s wrong to say that camera technology plateaued during this time, but it definitely matured. Spare a thought for those of us who have to write about such things: no longer can we confidently declare a camera to be ‘best’. Instead we have to add endless caveats: best for landscapes, best for portraits, or – horror of horrors – best for the maddeningly-indistinct “you”.

We’re not arguing about sensor formats anymore

In 2019, just like 2010, we have three main interchangeable lens formats. Four Thirds (the original mirrorless format), APS-C (the original mainstream DSLR format) and full-frame (the primary SLR format). Back in 2010 we might have put those in order: Good, better, best. I don’t think we’d do that any more. We wouldn’t even necessarily call today’s 44 x 33mm medium-format sensors ‘best’ except in heavily-qualified terms. They’re just different – just another option.

I was among those in the photo media who expected that once affordable full-frame cameras came onto the market, APS-C and Micro Four Thirds would just sort of wither away. I’m happy to say that it hasn’t happened. While there’s definitely less growth in that market segment now than there was (and less compared to full-frame), high-end APS-C and Micro Four Thirds cameras are still alive and well. In a way, I think companies like Olympus and (especially) Fujifilm may have benefited from a bit of distance opening up between the formats, because it has allowed them to carve out their own distinct spaces.

If you’re buying a camera in 2019, the chances are it’s made by one of the same companies you would have been buying from ten years ago

As we all know, the 2010s were a tough decade for the industry. But amazingly, there have been very few casualties. Casio stopped making digital cameras, Samsung came and went, Pentax kind of sort of doesn’t exist anymore, but that’s about it. There’s been plenty of restructuring, but for the most part, if you’re buying a camera in 2019, the chances are it’s made by one of the same companies you would have been buying from ten years ago.

Rumors of Olympus leaving the camera business have been floating around for as long as I’ve been writing about them, but as you may have noticed, it’s is still in business. In part that’s down to a concerted effort on the company’s part to differentiate, and to pick its competitive battles.

The original Olympus OM-D E-M5 was a perfect expression of the promise of a small-sensor ILC. It was very compact and lightweight, but fast and powerful, featuring effective in-camera image stabilization, in 5 axes.

Perhaps the best example is the OM-D series. With the launch of the original OM-D E-M5 back in 2013, Olympus used the undoubted benefits of a small sensor to reinvigorate the spirit of its iconic OM-series film cameras, and create a range of products which didn’t look like anything else which existed at the time. Meanwhile Panasonic has doubled-down on video in more specialized M43 options like the GH line.

Fujifilm’s X-series, which debuted in 2012, is a great argument for the unique benefits of a small-sensor system: genuinely compact cameras and lenses, without a huge penalty in image quality. But while I knew that the X100 would be a hit from the first time I saw a mockup, I will admit that I was a little concerned that Fujifilm might have missed the window of opportunity by the time it created the X-mount. I needn’t have worried: since its inception, the X-series has generated a large, and very loyal audience of fans.

Likewise Sony’s a6000-series, which offer incredible speed and class-leading autofocus, in bodies which cost a third of the price of similarly-fast full-frame options.

And then there’s medium format. After deciding not to bother with full-frame at all, Fujifilm decided – like Pentax before them – to explore the market for a series of consumer cameras built around an even larger sensor. While this year’s $ 10,000 GFX 100 is beyond the means of most of us, the GFX 50S and 50R have proven very popular, especially with studio and landscape photographers.

Technology, technology, technology

The past ten years has seen a lot of technological development in the field of photography – not least in the smartphone arena. But in the camera industry, two companies really made the running at the beginning: Samsung and Sony. Arguably, no other manufacturer did as much as either of these players in the first half of the decade to shift our expectations of what digital cameras could do.

I remember as far back as 2007, even before I joined the team at DPReview, being invited to focus-group sessions with Samsung in London to give notes and feedback on prototype cameras and concept drawings. Samsung was really serious about making a difference in the photography space, and its ambitions culminated in the NX1: one of the most capable mirrorless ILCs ever made. Throughout the process of developing the NX-series, Samsung was perhaps the most proactive of all the manufacturers in seeking feedback from industry journalists and incorporating our notes and suggestions in new firmware versions.

That feeling of collaboration, especially around the development of the NX1, remains one of the highlights of my career, even if it did make the NX1 a very difficult camera to review, since Samsung kept on making changes to it!

Sadly, Samsung left the field before the full potential of its NX system could be realized (one of the few great ‘what ifs?’ of the photo world) but it was very clear that Sony, on the other hand, was in it for the long-haul.

What we might call the ‘democratization’ of full-frame and larger sensors started in the 2000s, but it was in the past decade when really good larger-sensor cameras became really affordable. High-resolution stalwarts like Nikon’s D800-series, and Canon’s slowly-evolving 5D-series (including the sometimes overlooked super high-res 5DS/R) and less costly ‘entry-level’ options like the Canon EOS 6D and Nikon D600-series, all helped put full-frame into the hands of more photographers than ever before. I remember the original 36MP Nikon D800 being something of a wonder, at a time when 24MP was still considered more resolution than most people really needed. Resolution was one thing, but the dynamic range benefits of Sony’s dual-gain sensors actually changed the way I shoot, permanently.

In the five years it took Canon and Nikon to create full-frame mirrorless mounts, Sony had released seven a7 and a9-series ILCs

Which brings us to Sony: arguably the most important manufacturer of the entire decade, in this industry. When it was still evolving what had been the Minolta A-mount, Sony had made a handful of full-frame DSLRs alongside a range of innovative ‘SLT’ cameras, which were sort of a halfway point between traditional SLRs and a pure digital experience. It took quite a while before this experimentation paid off in significant market share, but in the 2010s, with the launch of the mirrorless E-mount, things really took off.

Sony was first to market with a full-frame mirrorless lineup, and – probably more than any of the other major players – really created the expectation that mirrorless could be a viable alternative to DSLR. In the five years it took Canon and Nikon to create full-frame mirrorless mounts, Sony had released nine a7 and a9-series ILCs, and in that time had taken a considerable technological lead in many key areas, including on-sensor autofocus. It’s also worth noting that many of the digital ILCs, and the majority of the compact cameras sold today contain Sony-made sensors – something that has actually been true across the whole of the last decade.

As a technology journalist, I will always be grateful to Sony for keeping us busy and injecting some energy into the industry at a time when we were resigned to cautious, incremental releases from most other manufacturers.

Summing-up

A lot has happened in the world of photography since 2010. The past decade didn’t see quite the same breathless pace of camera development (and heady sales) that characterized the first ten years of the 21st Century, but there’s been plenty of progress, and the digital photography landscape in 2019 is certainly radically different how compared to how it was 2010.

In some ways of course it’s a poorer and more frightening place: certainly for camera manufacturers. The decade began in the shadow of the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s, and in 2012, a devastating earthquake and tsunami caused enormous loss of life and considerable disruption to manufacturing centers in Japan.

Meanwhile, as apps like Instagram and Snapchat turned photographs into units of social exchange, a whole generation stopped buying dedicated cameras. Ironic, perhaps, but totally logical, given that the cameras in smartphones make that process easier, and they keep on getting better, and better, and better. Looking ahead, it seems inevitable that the next ‘revolution’ in digital imaging will be courtesy of so-called ‘computational photography’. That’s a pretty easy prediction to make, given that it’s already underway.

As apps like Instagram and Snapchat turned photographs into units of social exchange, a whole generation stopped buying dedicated cameras.

So that was my decade in digital photography. A period which spanned disasters (both natural and man-made) major technological advances and upheavals, and some major personal upheavals too: a move to the US in 2010 being chief among them. My colleague Richard (another 10+ year veteran of DPReview) will be penning his own look back in Part 2 of our 2010s retrospective, focusing on developments in autofocus and video, so keep an eye on our homepage for that.

While the industry we’re reporting on now is quite different to the industry we joined way back in 2006 / 7 (my three years at Amateur Photographer Magazine in London overlapped with Richard’s first couple of years at DPReview), I truly believe that there’s never been a better time to be an enthusiast photographer. Thanks for joining us on the journey, and I hope you’ll join me in raising a glass to the next ten years.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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2010-2019: The decade in review – technological advancements

31 Dec

The latest AF systems mean I can take for granted that the photo will be focused where I want it to be, so I can think about composition, concentrate on interacting with my subject and capture the right moment.
Photo: Richard Butler

My colleague Barney has already had a look at the broader trends in the industry over the past ten years, so it’s fallen to me to have a look at how the technology has changed in that time. From the perspective of someone who’s spent all of the last decade testing and reviewing cameras I’m going to argue that the two biggest areas of improvement and change have been autofocus and video.

Autofocus improvements

Barney wrote that in 2010 we had ‘DSLRs with highly advanced autofocus systems,’ while the early mirrorless autofocus systems were often slow and clumsy. But in the decade that’s followed, we’ve seen mirrorless AF not only catch up to DSLRs, but to begin to offer greater capabilities, often in an easier-to-use manner and across a much broader range of the market.

You don’t need to buy a D300S-level camera to get what used to be considered ‘pro-grade’ AF performance: you can find it, and a lot more, in sub-$ 1000 cameras that you can essentially point and shoot with. A number of changes that have brought us to this point.

Lenses designed for mirrorless

One of the biggest changes is probably the hardest to see: a change in the way lenses are designed. The the brute force approach of ring-type focus motors and unit focus designs (moving a unit with multiple lens elements) used in DSLRs isn’t a good fit for the way most mirrorless cameras need to operate.

Those large focus elements meant a lot of inertia, which is a problem for the back-and-forth movements required by contrast-detection autofocus. Secondly, while ring-type motors are great at moving quickly, they’re not the best choice for moving slowly, smoothly and quietly, as required for video shooting.

The original Olympus OM-D E-M5 was one of the first mirrorless cameras whose lenses helped it to focus at least as quickly as it kit-lens equipped DSLR peers (for single AF acquisition at least). It was also the first camera to offer eye-priority autofocus.

In recent years we’ve seen many manufacturers change their optical designs so that they can be focused with a single, lightweight focusing element. With less inertia, these can be moved with greater subtlety. The latest lenses often feature two independent focus groups, helping to avoid any deterioration in quality at close-focus distances.

The retractable design of Canon’s RF 70-200mm F2.8 has caught all the attention, but the use of independent focus groups, both light enough to be driven by innovative ‘Nano USM’ motors, is also a huge departure from its DSLR counterpart.

Alongside changes in optical design, we’ve also seen the development of new types of focus motor, usually less powerful than ring-type ultrasonic motors but instead able to provide both speed and precision control for these small-focus-element lenses. The overall result is a new generation of lenses that can perform as well or faster than their DSLR predecessors, while also providing visually smooth focus for video.

On-sensor phase detection

In parallel, we’ve seen the development of on-sensor phase detection technologies. First appearing in Fujifilm compacts, then Nikon’s 1-series mirrorless cameras, before being widely adopted by other companies. At their most simple, these systems selectively look at the scene through the left and right sides of the lens, building up a sense of depth in the scene, much as humans do by comparing the information from their left and right eyes.

Canon took on-sensor phase detection one step further: its dual-pixel design uses split pixels to let it derive distance information from every location.

This depth information is then used to assess which direction and how far to drive the focus element, much as the dedicated sensor AF did on DSLRs.

Subject-aware AF

The other major leap forward has been in subject-aware autofocus. Nikon in particular had made some steps in this direction using its DSLRs’ RGB metering sensors, but the move, with mirrorless, to focusing using the main imaging sensor has allowed cameras to develop a much more sophisticated understanding of what they’re shooting.

The latest generation of cameras are beginning to use AF algorithms trained by machine learning

Face Detection had featured in compact cameras for some time, but the power and accuracy of such systems has changed completely in the past few years. Olympus introduced eye-detection AF in 2012’s E-M5 and such systems have only got more responsive and more reliable as further development, greater processing power and input from on-sensor phase detection have progressed.

Which brings us almost up to the present. The latest generation of cameras from Panasonic and Sony use AF algorithms trained by machine learning (analysis of thousands of images), that let the cameras recognize what they’re focusing on. This lets them stay focused on people or pets without getting confused if the subject turns away from the camera. To the point that the latest $ 600 mirrorless camera will give a 2010 pro-sports camera a run for its money. Perhaps even in the hands of a beginner.

The Sony a6100 is a pretty modest model in many respects, but it has an AF system that’s both easy to use and in many respects more powerful than the pro DSLRs of ten years ago.

I didn’t notice the full impact these changes had made to my photography until this article forced me to think back to how I shot cameras in 2010. Back then I’d have mainly stuck to AF-S, solely using AF-C for sports shooting, and would have expected to have to keep the camera pointed at my subject, when doing so. These days I take for granted being able to leave most cameras in AF-C and use AF tracking for almost everything. And the cameras with responsive eye detection have become the ones I most enjoy for portrait shooting, simply because it frees me up to talk to my subject and devote more of my brain to lighting and composition: knowing the subject will be in focus.

This is only likely to continue to improve, especially as traditional cameras try to stay competitive with the smartphones backed by the computing know-how and seemingly endless R&D resources of the likes of Apple and Google.

Video advances

The other obvious change of the last decade has been the ever evolving quality and capability of video capture in stills cameras. Ten years ago, video from stills cameras was in its infancy: the Nikon D90 and Canon EOS 5D Mark II had brought high resolution video to consumer cameras just a year before, and Canon was seen as the preeminent video tool for keen videographers and small production companies.

Ten years later and we’re testing a camera that can produce 4K footage good enough for high-end professional video production, and even the sub-$ 1000 models from most brands are packed with an array of video tools that easily eclipse the 5D Mark II.

I remember being amazed when I first saw this clip from the GH3 on a 1080 TV. I also remember how piercing the sound was, as Clan Line passed inches from my head, as I shot it.

To an extent, much of the story can be told by following the progression of Panasonic’s GH series. After the success of the EOS 5D II, Canon switched a lot of its video efforts on the more pro-focused Cinema EOS line, leaving the way clear for Panasonic to produce a succession of stills/video cameras with ever more high-end video features and ever more impressive output.

The GHs were some of the first stills/video cameras with 1080p video, the first to shoot 1080/60p, the first to shoot 4K video and the first to shoot 10-bit footage. They were also some of the first cameras we saw to include features like focus peaking, adjustable zebra exposure indicators and, more recently, vectorscopes and waveform displays.

The Panasonic GH5S became the first stills/video camera to offer a waveform display for assessing video exposure.

There’s also perhaps a history to be written about the hacking projects that helped extend the capabilities of both Canon and Panasonic’s video cameras (which perhaps made clear to manufacturers how dedicated and eager the audience for such cameras was).

These camera in particular have been responsible for much of what I’ve learned about video shooting: each successive model has forced me to go off and learn or go out shooting to make sure I appreciated how each feature and spec addition helps for videography.

Having to learn to shoot video for the reviews I’ve written has kindled a real personal interest videography

Sony brought many of these things to the mass market, incorporating many of these specs and features to its more mainstream models. Panasonic’s GX8 beat the a6300 to the punch, in terms of offering 4K, but the Sony added previously exotic features such as Log capture, which inspired me to embark on my first proper video shoot.

But video is no longer the preserve of Panasonic and Sony. I doubt anyone would have predicted the speed with which Fujifilm has gone from producing some of the worst video in the industry to some of the best. Interestingly, things have almost come full circle; with Nikon offering Raw video output from its Z6 and bundling the camera with a gimbal and external recorder for budding film makers. That’s fair leap forward compared with the D90.

Shooting this video involved learning to use a one-handed gimbal, which is tremendous fun. The final result is probably the creative work I’m most proud of, from the last ten years.

Interestingly, these developments are beginning to dovetail with AF changes I described. In much the same way that Pro sports shooters are still unlikely to depend on subject tracking, many professional videographers will continue to depend on their own skills and experience. But for the rest of us? Video autofocus is only going to get better at maintaining focus where we want it, or smoothly transitioning between selected subjects.

These improvements in video and autofocus will just make life easier, meaning we can concentrate on the creative aspects that matter.