Thom Hogan's Old Drum

[Mike Farley]

The camera manufacturers are in the process of releasing their latest results and it is the usual bad news, sales are down again. Thom Hogan repeats his mantra that digital cameras lack the convenience of smartphones, even if image quality is better, and the company which works out how to provide full integration with other devices and the Cloud will clean up. He describes how he sees this happening, but would this be sufficient to encourage you to purchase a camera which did this?

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/pan ... ng-in.html

[Mike Farley]

The camera manufacturers are in the process of releasing their latest results and it is the usual bad news, sales are down again. Thom Hogan repeats his mantra that digital cameras lack the convenience of smartphones, even if image quality is better, and the company which works out how to provide full integration with other devices and the Cloud will clean up. He describes how he sees this happening, but would this be sufficient to encourage you to purchase a camera which did this?

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/pan ... ng-in.html

I'll answer my own question. Such an integrated worklflow would be a nice to have, rather than an essential. It is anciallary to taking pictures rather than an indispensable part of the process. Almost always I will shoot in Raw and expect to undertake at least some post processing work before the final image is ready, so I am already committed to a level of activity for which transfer of files between devices is just a small component. For a professional such as Hogan, especially one shooting subjects such as news or sport where results are needed quickly, or is constantly travelling, the answer might well be different and such automation would be a benefit. Whether it would be sufficient to tempt casual users, where the main market probably lies, away from the convenience of their camera phones seems open to considerable doubt. Such a solution might be one component in an overall scheme to increase camera sales, but not the total answer. If it were that simple, I suspect that the manufacturers would be doing it already.