You say to me affordable? The rich and the poor (i.e. us!) on stake.

Every manufacturers seem to mimic the Leica commercial strategy
 by concentrating their line of products to a niche market.

I cannot prevent myself to comment about all those new cameras and lenses that have launched within the last year and so. Nikon (Z), Sony, Olympus (E-M1X), Panasonic (S1, S1R) for example are so expensive cameras that we may now considerer the Leica price availability to be on the average!

Source: Fujifilm France

Hopefully some manufacturers are still trying to offer more accessible models such as the Fujifilm X-T100 or X-E3 but these ones are still a strong investment for the non-rich beginners like students or low rate workers.

With a price tag of $1250 (including the XF23mm F2) the Fujifilm X-E3 cannot be assimilated as we use to call an entry-level model but it is the price to pay to get an image sensor that equal the X-T2.

And all these up-of-scale pricy products seem to be intended for so-call video and photo professionals but is there so much people to sustain all this overwhelming offer of camera bodies and lenses from these manufacturers. It is at a point that I am thinking that these compagnies are more targeting the Web photo-video reviewers than the real users (at least the average ones!).

The 2016 Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II was introduced with a price tag of $2500 which was consider at the time as an extravagance but we know now that the new E-M1X version has simply surpassed that limit by more than $1000!

By becoming a financial elite product we are endangering the democratization of the medium (photo and video) and more important we are creating products that will be able to generate acceptable quality result without any kind of new creativity effort from the fortunate user. Because those high priced product will be bought mainly by rich amateurs that are not very motivate to learn more about the media.

I know that my concern will be simply ignored by most of the blogs or vlogs over the Web planet and this is very disturbing. Are we so infatuated on ourself to ignore such consequences on the popular user photo and video communities i.e. the ones who really produce original contents of pictures and video. Because if we need a sort of elite in that cultural field it must be an artist one that derange, question, provoke and finally contribute to the advancement of the art.

The elite product presentation done in beautiful destination like Barcelona are mostly interesting for the lucky selected Web photo reviewers but don’t give much for the basic users like us… (Note: the picture has been done during a personal stay in 2011)

I hope that at least some of the most visible Web photo & video reviewers will spend less time with the the more fortunate (but who are typically less medium productive) people or the ones who are dreaming to possess these jewelry products and will reconsider the real amateurs (i.e. the ones who like and use the medium) base.