Lower volume, higher unit price. Also cameras and lenses are (generally) much much better than they used to be. Perhaps people are willing to pay more for a better thing.
Also cameras and lenses are (generally) much much better than they used to be.
They really are. The cheap-o kit lenses they include nowadays use molded aspheric elements, and they are designed in such a way to take advantage of in-camera distortion and vignette correction. They are far better than the kit zooms you’d get back in the film days.
That depends on the kit lens of then and the kit lens of now. There was a lot of variability then, and the same holds true today.
I bought a body only Canon M50 as a glovebox camera, and read the reviews of their 15-45 EF-M kit lens and thought that it couldn't be that bad. I bought a new one on Ebay for $50. It is horrible in every single aspect. I've had numerous 35MM kit lenses over the years, and the Canon leads the pack for pure trash factor. It essentially turns the camera into a toy camera.
The higher end kits from different manufacturers are ok, but those are regular lenses vs designed to be in a kit at the lowest possible price.
Canon and Nikon are going to be in real trouble unless they increase the quality of their cheaper wares and make software that works.
The cause and effect you imply here are backwards I think. The products are better to justify their higher price, not higher priced because they're better. The first sentence has it right - if you're faced with lower volumes, the best way to cope is by raising prices.
The products are better because of steady improvement in precision manufacturing. Sensors and lenses have both come a long way, the latter is mostly a benefit of cheaper precision steppers.
The prices are higher because phones have taken the whole entry tier of the market out, pretty much. There's not a lot of point in a good digital camera with one noninterchangeable zoom lens, when pictures from a phone camera are almost as high quality, and action cameras like the GoPro also chipped away at that product.
Cameras are a specialty product now, with APS-C and 3/4 as the entry level. People who want that kind of control and quality are willing to pay for it, and there aren't as many of us as there used to be.
You're correct that the cell phone has killed off the low end. People used to believe that they needed a proper camera to get their casual snapshots, but more and more they realize the camera built into their phone is perfectly adequate to the task. So fewer and fewer people are buying those "proper" cameras, leading to the reduced volumes. But reduced volumes lead to reduced revenue, and reduced revenue is poison to any company. So they compensate by raising prices. People generally respond poorly to raising prices for no reason, so they make the goods better to justify it. The methods used to make them better are irrelevant.
Your phone camera is not as good as a cheap DSLR paired with a cheap 35mm f/1.8 in absolute terms.
Your phone camera is way better at the job to be done, which is to quickly share pics of your cock, cats, or kids, depending on what age bracket you are in. Traditional cameras, in which I include mirrorless, are still terrrrible when it comes to quickly bouncing a photo to Instagram, and arguably even worse when it comes to quickly making a video for TikTok.
Entry level DSLRs are roughly the same price as a low-end smartphone. For many, simply switching from a low-end smartphone to a high end phone will produce better results.
In particular the software assistance for capturing dynamic range and shooting in odd lighting conditions on an iPhone is pretty spectacular. Replicating the point and shoot experience requires a pretty substantial amount of skill on a traditional DSLR.
> cheap DSLR paired with a cheap 35mm f/1.8 in absolute terms.
I think this depends on the shot. The Pixel 4 easily beats “cheap DSLR” in several settings, particularly low light. I know folks who have an iPhone as a phone and a Pixel as a camera :).
It’s true that it’s also much better at “photo production” (capture => minor edit => post), but I think you can find examples where the photo itself is strictly better.
In low light, I’ve never seen a smartphone that will beat a fast prime on a mirrorless or DSLR camera.
A kit zoom lens will struggle in low light, but you can get extremely high quality fast primes for a couple of hundred dollars these days that will blow away any smartphone.
Versus night sight? The single shot with wide enough glass is definitely going to be better: there just aren’t many photons on the little sensor! But the stacking that night sight does “in camera”, particularly since the Pixel 4, seems to outpace “cheap DSLR”. Here’s a basic Nikon vs Pixel 2 a couple years ago [1].
You aren't going to get a decent, fast prime for a few hundred dollars, much less an excellent one.
Apple's low light performance in their new phones is excellent, and they are making huge strides in every area with every generation. A minimum acceptable DLSR with an acceptable fast prime will cost $1k, which is also the cost of Apple's excellent pro iphone that will rival the quality of the former for the average user.
