An Olympic Year in photo equipment!

Who said that the traditional photo market is shrinking at an accelerated pace? It seems that the camera manufacturers didn't get the message or simply (temporarily) ignore it to invest their strong effort to reveal a plethora of new (and expensive!) camera and lens models. We know already that the next summer Olympics will attend in Tokyo and selected areas of Japan. So, there is certainly a question of nationalist pride among the Japanese camera manufacturers headquarters ***.

Bruny Surin, 1992 Canadian Olympic Trials
Photo Daniel Marchand

What is significant in that large effort from the different brand names is the concerted priority to offer new or enhanced "Pro" oriented equipment. That is may be interesting in term of technical advancement but for the "common" no-penny photographer, this represents often products beyond their reachable budget capacity. Fortunately, many manufacturers have already presented more affordable photo devices during the last year.

Another good news for the starting 2020 decade is the "rebirth" of the APS-C format with the recent contributions of Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm (who was may be the first one to acknowledge its mirrorless potential). Alongside with the still living Micro Four Third (MFT) format, the APS-C represent the real future for a compact ILC system if you consider also the physical lenses dimensions that are incorporating the latest technological advancements.

The D-SLR era is entering in its lasts glorious moments with the 2020 summer Olympics event. It will be very doubtful that Canon or Nikon will continue their development past this particular moment in time. The mirrorless technology is a lot more mature than ten years ago and its "pro" and enthusiasm acceptability have convinced a lot of potential photographers over the planet. Will it least less longer than the D-SLR/SLR successful chapter has been? We cannot say because with the electronic development, the things may change radically in a very short laps of time.

So, at least, the year 2020 is looking good into the photo equipment frontline after years of depress reports and consolidations of the industry (which are not fully completed incidentally). A kind of a break for us who would like to concentrate on the pleasure of taking picture with our beloved camera equipment.

*** I have serious doubts that, without the Olympics incentive, the camera manufacturers like Canon or Nikon would have consider to invested again on D-SLR pro models like the 1DX mark III or the D6 considering their new involvement into their brand new series (with FF sensor format) of mirorless cameras and lenses.