Here in America, we reflexively think “Kodak” when we think photography. Alas our friends in Rochester seem to be running out of money and time. And, from current visits to HP’s website and to Amazon.com it seems that HP has all but given up on the camera business, notwithstanding its supposed reentry a couple of years back.
Whilst Kodak struggles to survive, hitherto healthy camera makers such as Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, et al, suddenly find themselves the victims of flooding in Thailand (of all places!) that has forced temporary factory closures and supply-chain nightmares.
Some Perspective
Let’s go back to a simple analysis of how the camera business got to where it is today. Apart from the aberrations of film formats such as 126, 110 and APS (ah, those secret APS conferences a decade and a half ago; the first one cost 10 million yen per head to attend. Am I remembering right? Did they really expect to be able to coat APS film with a transparent magnetic layer that would allow digital image information to overlay the chemical image, or did I dream that?), the mainstay of our industry was 35mm film. But the size and shape of the film canister, its film path and its take-up spool dictated the basic size and shape of a typical 35mm camera. See one and you all but saw them all.
The transition to digital has thrown those constraints out the window, and now we are confronted with myriad sizes and shapes, some unrecognizable to any Rip van Winkle awakening from a slumber as short at even 20 years. Modern digicams can be incredibly thin, even when housing zoom lenses. Even a 16x zoom lens can get you a camera less than an inch thick. Digital zooming has not really caught on big-time, but if the pixel count increases in sensors, it might become more palatable. My favorite camera is a megazoom (bridge) camera, but the capable device is too bulky for me to cart around on a regular basis.
In 2004 I almost accidentally met the then CEO of MicroVision, whose company was developing a tiny laser-driven eye-level EVF (electronic viewfinder) with various industrial applications. After chatting and analyzing its potential, I came up with a proposal for a mirrorless, interchangeable-lens digicam using a rear LCD and a MicroVision EVF. I took it to photokina 2004 and showed it to several majors (such as Samsung, Leica, Kodak, Sigma, etc.), but MicroVision took the technology into microprojectors, and the camera EVF idea died.
Companies Mentioned:
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