The number of photography websites confidently predicting the total demise of the compact camera has risen sharply in recent months. The purveyors of this view are not prescient or even particularly clever. If one simply projects the recorded downward trajectory of compact camera sales year-on-year the line will hit zero tomorrow. Or next month. Or next year. Sometime, anyway. Soon say the savants.
Smart phones have won the battle, compact cameras are done.
Maybe they are right. But I think that if camera makers revisited the compact camera concept with some refreshed and innovative ideas they could turn the tide around or at least stem the current freefall.
In particular it seems to me that camera makers appear to have the idea that they are producing gadgets. Things. Stuff.
Of course I cannot read their collective corporate minds but that is how it looks to me based on the flow of compromised, half baked products which we see.
I believe they would do better to understand that they are really selling an experience and they need to clarify exactly what that experience might be.
I will return to this theme in a separate post soon but in the meantime we still have some compacts capable of making very good pictures in a variety of circumstances.
One of these is the Sony RX100.5A. None of the RX100 series models will win a prize for ergonomics but they are all capable picture takers.
This post shows some photos taken with the RX100.5A in Sydney at various times this year.
I cannot say I find the experience of using this camera rewarding but I continue to use it for the time being because it comes with fewer operational faults and failings than similar compacts from Canon , Nikon, Ricoh and Panasonic.
It’s the least unacceptable of the bunch. Not much of a recommendation but there it is.
See my Compendium of compromised compacts on this blog.
At least the Sony has a viewfinder although it is a pesky nuisance to use.
Smartphones have none. I was recently using my smartphone in bright sunlight and found it impossible to get a clear view of the subject on the screen.
