Buying a dedicated camera used to be an accessible step up from whatever you shot on before. Today, that entry-level market has largely collapsed, and the gap between smartphone photography and "real camera" photography has quietly become a financial wall for anyone trying to cross it.
Coming to you from Jason Row of Rowtography, this candid video lays out exactly how the camera industry priced out beginners and what that means for anyone trying to make the jump from smartphone to dedicated camera. Row points to two forces squeezing the budget end of the market: technology creep and the smartphone revolution. Around 2012, you could walk out with something like a Nikon D5100 and a kit lens for roughly £450 to £500. That same entry-level experience now costs closer to £1,000, and a kit lens at that price point is nearly impossible to find from a major manufacturer. Row argues the lower end of the market didn't just shrink; it disappeared, and what replaced it was a tiered system where you either shoot on your phone or you spend serious money.
The lens market tells the same story. Row points out that a 24-105mm zoom, a lens that isn't particularly fast or cutting-edge, runs well over £500. What used to be a budget zoom category has been pushed up in price as manufacturers load lenses with stabilization systems, focus limiters, and USB-C firmware ports. Row questions whether any of that is actually useful to someone just starting out, and it's a fair question. The saving grace here is third-party manufacturers, and Row gives credit to companies like Sigma, Tamron, and a growing wave of Chinese brands such as 7Artisans, which are producing solid glass at prices that are at least closer to what the budget end of the market used to look like.
There's also a cultural dimension Row raises that doesn't get talked about enough: cameras as luxury goods. A segment of buyers purchases cameras not to shoot with but to wear, and that demand gives manufacturers room to push prices higher regardless of what the technology actually justifies. The compact camera market, which used to funnel curious newcomers into budget DSLRs, was wiped out by smartphones over a decade ago. That pipeline is gone. What Row is describing is a market that lost its on-ramp and hasn't rebuilt one, even as smartphone photography keeps raising the bar for what casual users expect.
The good news, and Row does get to it, involves the used market. The shift to mirrorless has flooded the market with capable DSLRs at a fraction of current mirrorless prices, and the lens options that go with them are equally affordable. How Row breaks down exactly what to look for and what to realistically expect from that used gear is worth hearing in full. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
13 Comments
Inflation and supply chain logistics are unyielding foes of stable prices. Add to that any price increase from a temporary spike in a commodity price, will be sought to be retained by manufacturer, even when costs go down.
If you're a beginner I would recommend buying a second hand full frame pro camera of 5-10 years ago. It'll still be good enough and do the job if you ever start selling your work. You'll save a huge wad of cash.
Id love to get a d850 again but its a big chunk of change to start again.
Maybe 10 years ago…
Major camera makers are prioritizing short term greed st the cost of long term success. This largely forces most people to just stick with their smartphone even if they have an interest in stepping up. The reason why is that it is harder to justify a large purchase when you just have a budding interest. The end result is that the super majority people who would be interested, never enter the ILC ecosystem. This means that the camera makers are catering to a higher end consumer base that is shrinking through attrition. The shrinking market has shown that people aren't entering the ecosystem as fast as people are leaving it through retirement, and other means.
While the used market is one potential option, it is not very good for beginners, since often ebay has many scams and cameras that get listed with issues that are not immediately noticeable but big once noticed. e.g., a cluster of dead pixels that you discover when you don't immediately discover, or a used lens that is decentered, or the focusing motor is starting to fail but works well most of the time, or a lens that dust on an internal lens element and the user doesn't immediately notice it until they stop down to F/8, or a DSLR where some of the focus points are too far out of spec because the previous owner moved the mirror by hand and damaged the smaller pellicle mirror. There are many issues that a beginner may overlook or not notice until it is too late.
Beyond that, the gouging on modern ILC mirrorless cameras has also lead to an increase in pricing for older used DSLRs.
While newer and more modern ILC cameras have gotten better, it doesn't mean that they have gotten more expensive to make, for example, a modern hard drive is much cheaper than one from the past, while offering far more storage and better performance, this has made setting up a home NAS more accessible for the vast majority of users.
If you want to bring people into the ILC ecosystem, then camera makers need to bring back budget offerings.
An ILC camera is cheaper to make since it relies less on expensive mechanical parts that require very tight tolerances and calibration stages. e.g., a DSLR needs an an expensive pellicle mirror, and separate phase detect sensor, in addition to a pentaprisom or pentamirror.
An ILC only needs a small display and a diopter for the tiny display in the viewfinder, and skipping those other components and the calibration steps for them.
Given the changes there is some flexibility to offer something more modern while also offering similar entry level price points.
Outside of extremely wealthy celebrities, it is exceedingly rare for someone to immediately jump to a high end/ expensive camera when they have a budding interest in photography. The super majority of people start with a low cost entry point, and once that interest is fully established, then they start investing more money into the ecosystem with more lenses, newer camera bodies, and accessories.
If the first step becomes too large, then most people will just not risk it and stick with their smartphone.
If anything, they should aim to offer even lower price points since the point and shoot market is largely dead. In the past there were point and shoot entry points that would offer some additional controls and other features over the smartphone camera, e.g., there were many 1/2.3 inch sensor based superzoom cameras for $150-$250 where you could get anywhere from a 12X to 25X optical zoom. then when they outgrew the point and shoot, there wre DSLR kits, e.g., a $300-$400 kit that would include a DSLR and an 18-55mm kit lens (e.g., a Nikon D3xxx), or if a few more features were needed, then a D5xxx, which would be in the $500-600 range), and then a more controls and higher performance in the $800-900 range with a kit lens (e.g., the D7xxx range). Overall there were multiple stepping stones to get people into the ecosystem.
Now we are at a point where crop sensor ILCs are being priced similarly to full frame ILC cameras. and a user who needs a camera and lens, is spending well over $1000 if they want something new.
No other industry behaves this way. If you want to get into audio podcasting. You get decent audio at the $50 range, and you can go all the way up to a $50K mic if you want. Imagine if the mic industry decided to turn $1200 into the entry level point for a microphone, where your only choices are the mic built into your smartphone, laptop, or webcam, and then the next step up is something equivalent to the $1300 Neumann TLM 103 (that mic has good quality). How likely are you to see new people get into podcasting?
An ILC camera is cheaper to make but more expensive to buy. Hmmm...
(says me slightly facetiously).
The ebay thing would be less of an issue if the presenter and other people warn of these issues. Tell the potential buyer about the companies that specialize in used gear, or used gear alongside their new gear. There are companies that check out their equipment before reselling. They mention issues. Some even have good return policies.
I rarely have issues with used gear because I tend to used trusted sources.
The Canon R50 kit doesn't count at $800?
They're not being greedy; manufacturers don't have big profit margins. Camera volumes are down like 92%, so they've lost the efficiency of scale they had 12 years ago. They have to charge more just to break even.
The rest of the world has been improving at the speed of software, but Japanese camera manufacturers failed to make the transition to the software era.
The #1 question I get is, "What $300 camera should I buy that can take better pictures than my iPhone?" You can't buy any camera at that price point. Even a $1,000 camera kit will generally produce worse pictures than a modern iPhone, especially in the hands of a beginner.
And when a beginner does get their hands on a camera, they perceive the camera as overly complicated and generally producing worse pictures than their phone (in their novice hands), so why keep messing with it?
Anyway, point being, it's a very difficult time for people to get started in photography.
By not changing, that is essentially a continuation of a doom loop. It is like when a store loses customers because they charge too much, and then since they have a goal of consistent growth figures, they as they lose customers they adjust prices to maintain those growth figures with a smaller number of customers, which further drives more customers away until the business collapses completely.
At the moment, the camera industry is largely catering to those who are already deep into the ecosystem and have even deeper pockets. And while Nikon, Sony, Canon, and Fujifilm have released a lot of really cool cameras over the years, they have not moved the needle in getting new people in, because to someone priced out of the entry level, as cool as many of the $3000-$8000 cameras are, they won't be the first choice of a beginner unless they are incredibly wealthy.
Modern ILC cameras have gotten better at being easier to use for a beginner, especially since on-camera phase detection was largely perfected.
In the past in the DSLR days, it was more common for beginners to get bad results from a DSLR, which largely damaged that market early on. But the cause was largely due to arbitrary crippling and greed, which resulted in a user having a decent chance at their entry level camera being more difficult and complicated to use than the top of the line full frame cameras.
For example, if you had a DSLR along the lines of a Nikon D3xxx or a D5xxx. Those cameras had firmware level crippling paired with looser manufacturing tolerances, thus they were more likely to back or front focus. A total beginner may blame shoddy calibration on themself and erroneously think they are using the camera wrong, and thus thinking it is too hard to use.
Or they will eventually recognize the issue likely after the store return window, and then get bitten by equally loose warranty standards in terms of how much error is allowed before they recalibrate. In the case of Nikon, for an entry level camera, if the focus is somewhere within the DOF of the reference lens, then they will not recalibrate. This means on a budget lens, you can have enough back focus that the details of the subject are plagued with LoCA and Nikon will sat that is perfectly fine.
Since they do not allow AF-Finetune adjustments in the entry level camera settings even though the function is fully present in the firmware, the beginner now needs to track down a copy of the service center software and hope their system doesn't get flooded with malware, and then the user now needs to do their own focus calibration.
The good thing now is that this style of issue that entry level DSLRs were more prone to, are not an issue with modern ILC cameras that can do on-sensor phase detect. Image editors and the camera raw engines in many applications have improved drastically as well, such that even the most novice user is likely to have a pleasant experience working with the raw files.
The only thing really getting in the way is the overly high pricing that almost guarantees that almost everyone with budding interest in photography, and a smartphone, would be unwilling to take that first step into the ILC world.
Salient observations. The Japanese still don’t get software. And why does my Canon R7 not have the GPS that you can get on a $150 phone? Canon’s connect-to-phone GPS through a crummy app is risible.
Yes.
YES!!! I do not believe a young beginner would be able to afford any camera brand and its lenses today!
Yes the used market is full of good deals. I still carry my very old FUJIFILM WP Z, why it is water proof for one where the Cell Phone is maybe not but why take the chance on $1K to $2k.
When I went Sony with the A7SM1 and following M2's there were many things to attract one M2's had IBIS, never heard of before and good by to the tripod!!! Yes also Capture ONE for just $20. The biggest was the on camera apps at Sony's Playmemories, no longer available! All those apps were great to learn Photography like the "Digital Filter" greatest for night Astro MW's as well as running water.
The sad thing was not till a couple of years ago did I see a A7R2 in a military store brand new in the box along with several lenses for near nothing!!!
What Sony needs to do it keep making these cameras and bring back the Playmemories site for all the beginners soon to be Pro's of just happy Hobbyists, learning is a base to photography.
The phone also runs mainly in a auto mode so learning the triangle info is never there. Another many many to not edit raw image, they are to busy watching texting and posting.