Unplanned obsolescence

 

 

One question I get asked a lot as a photographer and member of a photographic society is "my partner/husband/friend passed away and left a lot of cameras do you want them"

This always raises a dilemma because a) we want to help, and anything photography related is always of interest, and b) it will almost always result in receiving kit which is basically worthless and then working out what to do with it.

Let us be clear that some kit will always have value. For example, anything with Leica stamped on it will always have value. Also, some pre-war kit has nostalgic/historic value (not box brownies, however - there are so many out of there). Additionally, some old lenses have value, ironically because they were so poor, they can be used to create interesting artefacts. Old USSR lenses like the Zenith Helios lenses are especially popular.

Most kit offered don't fall into that category. It is things like low-end modern DSLR's and compact digital cameras. The unfortunate thing is that although some of these items might have been expensive when bought only a few years ago, today they have basically no value even in almost new condition.

I raise this dilemma because recently my recently widowed wife's uncle asked if I would be interested in his ex-wives cameras. I said in a moment of weakness yes, and this Christmas a large parcel arrived with a ton of old cameras. 

I was intrigued to what was inside and as you can probably guess  there was no Leica, but a number of digital compacts, all virtually unused (it was clear she was a serial camera buyer). However, although of little or no value in themselves, they do pander to my other interest of camera and photography history. So in the rest of this blog, I will use them to highlight recent camera history.

Exhibit 1

Built 2002

 

Price when new £720 (£1200 in 2021 prices). Value now - £0

When we got married, we were too poor or cheap to get someone to film it, so my wife's aunt, Jenny, did it for us. In fact, it might be this very camera she used. Unfortunately, it turned out that this sort of camera, rather than being the future, was just a brief interlude.

 

Storing the image on a miniature videotape, it meant rather than storing your memories forever, in a few years you were left with the issue of what to do with the mountain of plastic piling up in your loft. (Our wedding video was converted to DVD a few years later).

However, the technology on these sorts of cameras was superb. Not only did you have a digital camera that supported a good zoom lense and good speed reproduction, but the effort required to support a moving tape robust enough to faithfully record images while withstanding jolting etc was impressive.

 

Unfortunately, it had a number of issues. Tapes made the cameras large, you could only record for about 15 minutes at a time and there was no easy way to edit them, and sharing them was basically inviting everyone around to your house.

 

Despite the technology and cost, such cameras quickly died out when video cameras capable of recording to memory cards started arriving, meaning they are about as welcome as a mail order bride to a daughter's wedding.
 

Exhibit 2

Canon Ixus 70  2007 Cost when new £179 (2021 Price £264 )

7.1 Mpixels 1/2.5" sensor

Focal length (equiv.) 35–105 mm F2.8–4.9 

 

Value today £30

 

The Ixus 70 represents a whole load of cameras around in 2007. They were small (the Ixus 70 is about the size of a large matchbox), had a reasonable zoom range and were very popular.

 

Playing with it, it is hard not to see why. it is easy to carry around, very well-built and takes reasonable images in good light (even if the so-called viewfinder is a bit of a joke). 

So why don't we see such cameras around today? The easy answer is a mobile phone can do all that plus a lot more. I remember I bought a small such camera for my wife and I quickly found the issue when I tried to use it. Battery life was not great, so the camera spent a lot of time off. When something happened that I wanted to take an image of, I had to turn it on which took up to 1/2 second, by which point the moment was missed. 

Also, when photos started being shared, the lack of connectivity spelled the death-knell for these sorts of cameras, and I am sure many people have them cluttering their desk draws. We get offered these cameras all the time  and I still have not come up with any use for them apart from technological curiosities. 

Exhibit 3

Samsung Galaxy Camera (2013)

Price new £799 (2021 Price £975) 

Price now  £100

16.3MP backlight-illuminated CMOS sensor

21x zoom with 23-481mm equivalent focal length and OIS

F2.8-5.9 maximum aperture

ISO 100-3200

If I could have bet in 2013 what the camera of the future would look like, it would be this one.

Not only was it sleek, well-built and gave a good sensor and zoom lens, it boasted a huge rear screen covering the entire rear of the camera. It also had the kind of user interface that a Sony owner would weep for, with intuitive manual settings, touch to focus etc.

On top of that, the camera was driven by android OS, the same seen in mobile phones allowing to connect to Wi-Fi to share images and add apps such as Snapseed, so you could edit your images on your phone. You could even but a SIM card on and connect to mobile networks. 

One interesting quirk is that instead of full SD cards, it takes microSD cards, which reduces its footprint a bit.

It did and does now feel the way cameras should be, but it turned out to be just a brief experiment and not followed up on. OK, there were some complaints that image quality was not that great, but it was more than that.

The 1st reason is that Samsung decided to get out of the camera market in 2016, which came to a shock to many since they were quite highly regarded. However, the management of Samsung saw, probably quite rightly that the market for cameras was shrinking and since they were not a big player it was better off investing elsewhere. 

The reason for the shrinkage was again that cameras were being  incorporated into mobile phones. In many ways a camera like this should have been a good competitor since the lens and sensor size was streets ahead of the mobile of the day (for example the iPhone at the time had a 1/3.2"sensor in front of a plastic fixed lens), however the problem was why carry this camera around and a mobile? When a mobile would do 90% of what the camera did, without spending £800 for the privilege.

However, camera UI's, their lack of flexibility and inability to customise them is still an issue in modern cameras. It is a pity that this attempt could not of been carried forward to DSLR's, A definite might have been.

Exhibit 4

 

 Panasonic HX-WA20 (2012)

£250 when new (£314 in 2021)

Price now £69

1/2.33in CMOS 9.8 Mpx

7.5x optical zoom (28-280, F4 -20 )

This one is a bit of a peculiarity. Although bought out in  2012, it would be hard to guess that it is 10 years old, and it is the one camera that i would think about still using today.

Obviously the camera is designed to be video centric, however it does offer a usable stills function. The interesting thing is the form factor. The truth is that camera design has pretty well stagnated. Yes there are tweaks here and there, but the fundamental design is not fundamentally different to the 1st SLR's 60 years ago. 

The strange thing is that SLR's were designed as they are because the camera spool had to be pulled across the aperture. However, despite being no film or canister, cameras are still designed as if they are doing exactly that. There have been attempts to move away from that for, but design conservatism has meant they have generally failed. 

This camera is interesting since it shows an alternative design strategy, although largely it is designed as a video centric device. However, again, with cameras video capability being a major selling factor nowadays, the question has to be asked whether the SLR blueprint is really a good form factor for video?

However, this has nothing to do with why I would still use this camera. It has a trick that mobile phones still struggle with. It is waterproof up to 3m. When I went diving in 2019, I bought a small waterproof Fuji, but this would have worked nicely, with big controls. 

Unplanned obsolescence

So my unexpected gifts have given me to look at recent history of camera technology. One of the weird thing is that apart from the video camcorder, none of these devices are unusable and would take fine photos today, but are basically considered junk.

If you bought say  Nikon F mount in 1963, you could almost get a lifetime of usage out of it. Now the usable life of a camera can be measured in months. For example, the DSLR manufacturers seem to bring out a new product every 6 months. There is often little wrong with the existing camera, but this forced obsolescence means that usable products are discarded before they even get a scratch.

To me, this seems wasteful and unnecessary. One way it could be improved is enforcing software upgrades. Fuji were the 1st to introduce the concept of kaisen, where the life of a product could be extended by software, and other manufacturers have gone some way in doing that, but it could be better.

 I am always interested in the maker community who re-use and re-purpose technology. However, if manufacturers were encouraged to provide methods of software updates and also after a period of time provided the source code, a lot of hardware would not go to waste. 

However, there is little benefit for manufacturers to do this unless forced by law, so I expect the draws and landfills of the land will continue to get filled with fully functional, but obselete devices for years to come