Nikon “extraordinary loss” kills DL cameras and slashes jobs

https://www.slashgear.com/nikon-extraordinary-loss-kills-dl-cameras-and-slashes-jobs-13474817/

by rtcoms • 9 years ago

75 117 9 years ago

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

Its a very tough business to be in. A number of camera makers relied heavily on the higher volume point and shoot markets to fund their higher end cameras. And these days it is unusual to see someone using an inexpensive point and shoot camera rather than their phone.

marcuskaz2• 9 years ago

It's a tough business if you just sit back selling mediocre cameras and don't innovate. Numerous companies from Leica, to Sony, to Fujifilm have thrived in recent years even with all the improvements in smartphone cameras. It seemed to have taken Nikon and Canon much longer to adapt to the changing market.

carterehsmith• 9 years ago

Can we see a chart that shows how Leica or Sony or Fujifilm cameras have "thrived" since the introduction of smartphones?

cptskippy• 9 years ago

The ruggedized point-and-shoot(p&s) cameras saw greater focus in the last couple years due to the eroding of the regular p&s market by smartphones. With intrusion protection being the new bullet point on high end phones' feature lists, this niche market is going to be impacted as well.

Despite all that there still seems to be a significant market for p&s cameras, Sony has no less than 20 different p&s cameras. Most of those cameras seem to be variations of the same base model. That sort of variation seems to imply there's a significant demand.

sulam• 9 years ago

It implies that it's easy to create such cameras. Which is true -- I work for a consumer electronics company and it's pretty amazing how good Chinese manufacturing has gotten.

This is no guarantee people are actually buying these things -- i.e. that there is demand. Hyper segmentation is often a signal of the exact opposite -- micro demand, but not macro.

supahfly_remix• 9 years ago

Does Nikon design its own chips, or do they source them from an external vendor?

andrewblossom• 9 years ago

If I recall correctly, they use a mix of Sony and in-house designed sensors.

marcuskaz2• 9 years ago

The majority of the sensors are from Sony, with some from Toshiba and Nikon themselves.

http://nikonrumors.com/2015/12/16/list-of-all-nikon-dslr-cam...

slantyyz14• 9 years ago

Depends on the camera, but for the 1" sensors in the DL mentioned in the article, they have been using Sony chips since the Nikon 1 J5. Before that, the 1" sensors used by Nikon were made by Aptina.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

According to Nikon, “with the identification of issues with the integrated circuit for image processing, release of the three cameras was delayed indeterminately.” The company had a team working on addressing those problems, but “it has been decided that sales of the DL series will be canceled due to concerns regarding their profitability considering the increase in development costs, and the drop in the number of expected sales due to the slow-down of the market.”

I'm curious which of these was the larger cause of the shut-down. Did an insurmountable technical issue cause them to cancel the program? Or did they want to cancel the program because they didn't forecast profitability?

petepete4• 9 years ago

Long term, I think this is a good move for Nikon. Phones have eaten the DL's intended market, and at the DL's price there are already better options available in the same form factor.

Mirrorless is the future; if there was a mirrorless Nikon camera that could take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses, surely they'd be on to a winner

monksy3• 9 years ago

Phones and DLs are apples and oranges. You can't get the same shots on a phone that you can on a DL.

monk_e_boy3• 9 years ago

No but that shot on the DL has to be AMAZING compared to the phone. Otherwise people will just use their phones... another bit of equipment to worry about, to figure out how to crop a photo and upload it to facebook. It's too much effort for most people.

petepete4• 9 years ago

I agree. But that doesn't mean that modern phones aren't eating into the DL's market; a camera that takes decent enough pictures for Facebook and fits in your pocket.

slantyyz14• 9 years ago

> Phones have eaten the DL's intended market

Dunno about that, DL's were targeted for enthusiasts. Basically Sony RX100 buyers.

> if there was a mirrorless Nikon camera that could take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses

There is a mirrorless Nikon camera that can take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses. It's called the Nikon 1 series.

petepete4• 9 years ago

There is a mirrorless Nikon camera that can take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses. It's called the Nikon 1 series.

Ah, the all but dead Nikon 1 with a ~£200 adaptor.

lb1lf• 9 years ago

The Nikon 1 uses a small sensor - the crop factor would be somewhere close to three if you were to use F glass on it. Good for telephoto. Wide angle? Not as much.

I would be surprised if the Nikon 1 tempted many who have invested in lots of F glass. Now, if Nikon were to release a mirrorless full-format camera with excellent AF and low-light performance, I believe you'd find a lot of people asking them to shut up and take their money.

rangibaby3• 9 years ago

D3xxx D5xxx → DX mirrorless

D7xxx D5xx → "pro" DX

D6xx,D7xx,D8xx → Some kind of consolidation here

Dx → "Medium format"

luckydude4• 9 years ago

My kid said that too. I bought him a mirrorless camera, pretty decent one, about $2K with a 18-55 (18-50?) and an 18-200.

He used it for a while and then then stopped, he uses a full frame Canon body (5DIII) instead.

I really really don't get the appeal of mirrorless. Yeah, it's smaller if you are out in bright daylight and you have an f5.6 lens. Not so much if you have a f1.4, 1.8, 2 lens, those have to be big to let in the light. So you have a big fat lens on a slightly smaller body and you give up an optical viewfinder.

I shoot sports. Mirrorless is a joke in bad taste for sports. You are forced to do burst because you can't time your shots and now your workflow sucks because you are deleting 98% of your shots. My keeper rate with a 5DIII or a 1DX is 60-80% if I do my part, which I usually do.

callmeed2• 9 years ago

with increasingly capable smartphones chewing through the dedicated photography segment. Still, it seems Nikon has suffered it worse than most.

The damage from smartphones was done a while back. The truth now is that Nikon (and Canon to some extent) failed to be at the forefront of: (a) action/drone cameras, (b) 4K video recording, and (c) mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras. Sony and Fujifilm have seen a real renaissance in their mirrorless camera lines (I switched from Canon to Fuji and haven't looked back). Sony has small mirrorless cameras that shoot 4K on par or better than Nikon. GoPro created a billion dollar public company yet Nikon only just recently announced their own action cameras.

I worked in the photo industry for several years and Nikon was once the gold standard. IMO they have no one to blame for their current state than themselves.

criley22• 9 years ago

I mean, I suppose on the consumer or prosumer level, but if you go to any sporting event, you will see a sea of Canon L series glass and not much else...

Not sure the quality of the source but this suggests that 75% of the pro cameras at last weeks Super Bowl were Canon, and all of the television broadcast lenses were HD Canon lenses.

I just don't see GoPro or Fuji competing at that level, so perhaps their issue was expanding past the point that their core business could support once those periphery product lines fell out of trend.

[1] http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-dslr-cameras-and-ef-len...

monkmartinez5• 9 years ago

How many professional sports photographers are there? I guess all those wedding photographers need to look the part with Canon's and Nikon's too. Is that enough to keep Canon and Nikon afloat?

jdietrich8• 9 years ago

I think that Canon and Nikon have been resting on their laurels, in large part because they have the photojournalism market sewn up. They're the undisputed champions of a small and highly visible market, but they have been overtaken in almost every other respect. They don't make the best sensors, they don't make the best lenses, they don't make a compelling mirrorless camera.

Canon and Nikon don't have the aspirational appeal that they used to. Their prestige has been badly undermined by the Sony/Zeiss partnership - the best sensors paired with the finest glass. Sigma used to be the cheap option, but they're now producing some of the best primes in the world. It used to be that serious photographers were either Canon or Nikon people, but now they have a lot more choice.

javiramos• 9 years ago

I think that there might be a new wave of camera companies that might substantially disrupt the high-end Nikon/Canon market. Light is a good example. [1]

[1] https://light.co/technology

monksy3• 9 years ago

I agree with most of what you've said. However,

To claim that smartphones are a replacement for P&S cameras is I think misguided.

P&Ss perform a lot better on vacation. They don't perform as good on brief everyday interactions.

A. Action cameras- Not sure why this is a category, but people do consume GoPros like crazy [despite quality issues]

B. 4k video recording, you do have a good point there.. that's mostly for the vloging community.

C. I think this is the category that isn't well published. I just recently bought an Lumix LX10. It was expensive but the results are great.

I loved my Nikon CoolPix S6800, but Nikon decided to drop the ball and that's why I moved over. (Cannon's had a nasty red bias I couldn't tolerate)

monk_e_boy3• 9 years ago

The problem with point and shoot cameras is their lack of interaction with phones.

This may not be an issue today, but for the last few years people ask me what cool camera to get that's under £250. I ask them what they want to do -- mostly portrait shots and kids action shots indoors (play areas for toddlers), and most importantly just click a button to transfer the photos onto the phone for facebook. There isn't a camera that will do all that any better than an iPhone camera. Sure a DSLR will take a nicer photo, but dragging that massive £2K weight around for a 10% better photo. Or for most people they can't even see the difference. I love me a bit of bokeh, but for 99% of people, they simply don't care.

lightedman4• 9 years ago

"Action cameras- Not sure why this is a category"

Plenty of us have need for cameras mounted to ourselves so our hands can remain free for work, such as sitting inside of a highly dangerous mine while trying to extract 20+ pound chunks of fluorite and capture the awesomeness of pulling the mineral right out of the ground after millions of years of formation.

thaw12342• 9 years ago

Smartphones are, in fact, a replacement for point & shoot. It's true that they have a smaller sensor ( ~2 times smaller than that you would find in your average P&S ). However * You already have one... * In fact it's probably either in your pocket or your hand right now. * Your smartphone has a far superior UX and the photo can be uploaded anywhere in seconds. * Smartphone sensors - being mass produced at a very large scale in a market which is quite under pressure to constantly improve with short release cycles - actually perform very well for their size.

So, cameras market mostly make * Very high quality P&S such as the sony RX100 * DSLR & Reflex for enthusiasts * Professional cameras

However, why they don't try to improve the workflow & the UX of these cameras is a mystery to me. Proper software ( android based maybe ? - sony already run some kind of android ), touch-enabled UI, gps, accelerator wifi & articulated screen should be standard.

I love my sony a6300 but the UI drives me crazy. You have to go through a crappy UI, pay several dollars, to download an intervalometer - aka an app that will take photos at a specified interval of time.

And sending a photo to another device seems such a pita I didn't even bother to try.

orbitur• 9 years ago

To claim that smartphones are a replacement for P&S cameras is I think misguided

The problem is that the majority of consumers have already decided the opposite. P&S sales are in decline, which means our options will diminish and those options will get more expensive.

It's a bummer, since my P&S from 2013 still blows away my iPhone 7 when indoors or other low-light situations.

But I like to think whatever iPhone model is out in the next 4 or 5 years will finally match my $200 P&S.

jdietrich8• 9 years ago

The P&S market has been squeezed from both sides. Smartphones have taken away a lot of market share, but so have mirrorless cameras. The entry-level enthusiasts who might have once bought a $400 P&S are now overwhelmingly opting for a mirrorless ILC instead. For a slight increase in size, you get better handling, a vastly better sensor and the flexibility of interchangeable lenses.

curun1r• 9 years ago

To claim that smartphones are a replacement for P&S cameras is I think misguided.

There's a joke that asks, "what is the best camera?" The punchline is, "whichever camera you have with you when you need to take a picture." To me, this captures why smartphones beat P&S, even for vacation photos. The difference in quality just isn't that large. I just spent six months traveling and almost never used my P&S. Even when I had both on me, my phone was just more accessible. And P&S can't match the sharing functionality of a smartphone. Even on vacation, when I take a photo I liked, I want to put it on Instagram without having to use a computer.

I see a market that has no middle. You're either a professional who needs the absolute best quality or you're not and want something that takes acceptable photos as quickly as possible. Other than that, there's only the specialty market (action, drone, underwater, etc), which is small by comparison. But smartphones are now good enough that the market for P&S is vanishingly small.

ulfw• 9 years ago

Smartphones have replaced the postcards sent to family and friends during vacations. Something that the point and shoot alone hasn't been able to do as there are too many steps involved (Take picture, take out SD card, out in laptop, copy pictures, go to Facebook etc, upload). On a smartphone it's tap, take picture, tap, upload. Boom. Shared. Done. Most people don't care if it's a 1/3" (many smartphones) or 1/2.3" (most point and shoots) or even a 1/1.7"(higher end) sensor. Lacking of zoom is a bit of an issue, but that alone isn't enough for people to "carry yet another" device in their purses.

1" sensor enthusiasts cams are selling quite well (Sony RX series) Mirrorless and DSLR are selling well with tourists.

The point and shoot segment is done.

monkmartinez5• 9 years ago

GoPro is not in much better shape than Nikon. [1] Nikon shouldn't even bother with the action cam market.

Yi Technologies [2] and companies like Yi are going to DOMINATE the non-smartphone camera market in short order. Just wait for MWC this year...

[1]https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/03/gopro-incs...

[2] https://www.yitechnology.com/

mahyarm3• 9 years ago

Really? Their MFT camera is about the same price as a low-end MFT from olympus or panasonic. The go pro had a lot of obvious margin to eat up. I wonder how much a sony action cam would cost if they didn't have to provide a warranty like yi doesn't have to provide much of a warranty?

DJI is pretty expensive and chinese too. In the end it's about the tech to price ratio.

yourapostasy• 9 years ago

...Nikon (and Canon to some extent) failed to be at the forefront of...(b) 4K video recording...

I'm in the market for a "casual" 4K video recorder. It would only be used to create archival footage of interviews; no need for ultra-fast action-capture, color can be family-photo-good-enough. From what you asserted above, I get the impression that Nikon and Canon have ceded the consumer-grade 4K camcorder market to other competitors, is that the case?

callmeed2• 9 years ago

Yeah, definitely. You can find tons of reviews on various sites (DP Review is great) and plenty of sample footage on YouTube.

I'd definitely suggest getting something with an external mic jack–getting good audio makes a big difference.

_Codemonkeyism• 9 years ago

The Panasonic G80/G85 is a nice 4k cam. I use the predecessor (G7) for webinars.

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dmc-g85-g80...

jbarham2• 9 years ago

Nikon has never been a contender in video. Canon has but it's ceding a lot of ground to Panasonic (GH4/GH5) and Sony (A7S) in 4K video as it doesn't want to cannibalize sales of its much more expensive video cameras.

matthewvincent• 9 years ago

I think you're right on with B. As a photo professional I'd say 4K 60fps video is the number one feature a camera can have these days. Enabling every photographer to also be a cinematographer. Canon and Nikon just aren't keeping up, mostly due to their crushingly expensive pro lines.

perardi• 9 years ago

Damnation, I was hankering for the DL 18–50. I'm an ultra-wide-angle addict, and that would have been an amazing "I'm packing really light for this trip" camera.

Thom Hogan, a longtime Nikon pundit, has good thoughts on how badly Nikon is handling this disruption. (I think smartphones are one of the best examples of Christensen disruption; they started out awful, are still relatively awful, but they are cheap, ubiquitous, and get the job done of getting photos of your cats and kids to Facebook instantly.)

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dl-turns-out-to-mean-dea...

buserror• 9 years ago

To be fair, I've been using a Panasonic DMC-GM1 with a 14mm pancake for a few years and I don't really see how the DL would have improved on that... A bit more speed, but then again the GM1 is not even on sale anymore and Nikon failed entirely to release their take on the ultralight 4/3 equivalent...

Years too late!

acomjean• 9 years ago

For those that don't know what 4/3 cameras are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system

The camera business had a new small interchangeable lens almost pocketable camera "standard". The micro 4/3 used sadly by only olympus and panasonic. When I travel to take pictures I take a canon 5D SLR and a much smaller olympus micro 4/3 with a wide angle zoom.

Why Canon/Nikon/Sony go their own way with incompatible small mirrorless cameras I have no idea. I would love more lens options for micro 4/3 and those big camera makers make great glass...

porsupah• 9 years ago

It's worth bearing in mind that the loss is primarily due to their lithography business, rather than imaging:

http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/20170213_1_e.pdf

"In accordance with this restructuring, the Group recorded extraordinary loss of 29,790 million yen, mainly incurred from inventory write-downs/write-off in Semiconductor Lithography Business, as restructuring expenses for the nine months ended December 31, 2016."

degenerate• 9 years ago

Also, Canon has been kicking Nikon's butt at form, function, and price in the camera market. This is strictly my opinion and the same of some of my friends.

mahyarm3• 9 years ago

Really? How so? Lenses are pretty close in price & the D600 had a much better sensor than the 6D for example.

jlarocco• 9 years ago

That's somewhat true, but the biggest reason to buy a camera these days (over just using a phone camera) is for better image quality, and IMO the mid and high end Nikons give better results than Canon. Obviously subjective, but it's why I bought a Nikon last year.

pthreads• 9 years ago

It's sad to read about the downward trajectory of Nikon's future. I loved their interchangeable lenses. In my opinion they were better than Canon's (not enough space here to go into details). I had an 80-200 f2.8 telephoto that, between multiple owners, probably saw 15+ years of service and still going strong.

rangibaby3• 9 years ago

Even if they go bust, there is a hope they will get back to their roots and end up remaking their classic lenses like Voigtlander or Meyer Optik Goerlitz.

Nikon (and Canon I think) problem these days is a body is a body. Their bodies aren't dramatically different to those of other manufacturers, yet they still demand a premium price. Fujifilm and Pentax for example offer good enough or better alternatives at reasonable price points and are doing just fine.

I want Nikon to do well but they need to try harder.

TheOneTrueKyle• 9 years ago

As much as I love my sony A7s-II, the UI has been a nightmare and Sony won't update the app to support the Pixel so that is useless now.

However, I still haven't seen a 4k mirrorless equivalent from Canon so my Sony is still the best option for what I want to accomplish.

I still use Canon and Nikon glass however.

justicezyx• 9 years ago

I do hope they find a way to sustain their high-end DSLR line. Otherwise, I think the price tag is going to increase too much...

Thaxll• 9 years ago

Sounds like Kodak's fate.

luckydude4• 9 years ago

I'm a Canon guy (1DX II, 5D III, 7D II and lots of Canon glass, a couple of Sigmas, a Rokinon) and I try and convert my buds to Canon from Nikon all the time. Here is why.

For decades the leader in [D]SLRs was either Canon or Nikon. Yeah, yeah, there are others, I started out on Pentax as did many people back in the film days, but it was clear 35-40 years ago that it was either Canon or Nikon if you were serious (and more yeah, yeah, Hasselblad was a thing back then but they priced themselves out of the market as did Leica and Zeiss etc. Awesome stuff but $$$$).

Who was "best" bounced back and forth and it really didn't matter if you picked Canon or Nikon, if Canon was best now, wait a few years and it would be Nikon.

It's important to realize that the consumer equipment, including all those plastic crappy kit lenses, generated a lot of revenue and that money funded a lot of high end equipment. I tend to doubt that Canon sells enough of their $12,000 600mm lenses to cover the costs of development. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Nikon stumbled at the wrong time. They stopped being best (for the most part, the D800/810 were and are amazing bodies) quite a while ago and they haven't recovered.

This is just my opinion (all of this is just my opinion for that matter) but I think the reason they haven't recovered is that they dug themselves into a hole right as point and shoots, and then cell phone cameras, got "good enough" for the masses. Definitely not good enough for anyone serious, compare any portrait taken with a phone to something taken with Canon's 200mm f2 (by far my favorite lens) or even Sigma's 85mm f1.4 Art. You can't get that dreamy smooth background with that razor thin depth of focus that makes the person pop, it just can't be done. But I digress.

Nikon is in trouble because of the loss of revenue from the low end P&S and consumer DSLRs. For the low end, phones are good enough and they are always with you.

Canon doesn't have that problem, they've got 75-80% of the high end market, look at any sporting event and you'll see a sea of big white lenses, those are all Canon.

Canon also has a dramatically better line up of lenses and for anyone serious, it's the glass that costs the money, I've got far more money tied up in glass than I do in bodies. Nikon used to have one lens that Canon had no answer for, the 14-24mm f2.8, I lusted after that lens. But Canon came out with the 16-35mm f2.8, which is sharper than a 15mm Ziess prime and that's it in my book, game over. There is nothing that Nikon has that Canon doesn't have as good (and mostly better). And Canon has a ton of glass that Nikon doesn't have.

Canon is also better positioned, they make a lot more stuff than Nikon does, they are serious players in anything with a lens, their movie stuff generates money, their printers generate money, their security stuff generates money, they can weather pretty much anything.

I shoot semi pro sports and all my pro friends are dumping Nikon (while they can get anything for their glass) and moving to Canon.

Tl;DR: Nikon is in trouble, Canon is fine, the DSLR market is strong at the mid to high end. Low end is dead.

Nikon “extraordinary loss” kills DL cameras and slashes jobs

Related Stories