I have more to write about in terms of the state of the camera industry. I haven't covered sensors, distribution, or company/industry financials, and that will come in another "week" soon. But I need to post some gear reviews and discussions first. However, before we leave Camera Week I wanted to make a few final comments and responses.
I originally started to write this series solely about the overall State of the Nikon Photographer. But about half-way into it, I realized that it needed more context than just purely Nikon, especially since mirrorless is currently the area that's growing the most and Nikon is expected to enter that area soon. My ucpoming State of the Industry Week hopefully will fill in the missing thoughts that aren't in the Camera Week series, which summarizes things from the photographer's viewpoint.
Some people thought I was hard on Nikon (or their mirrorless camera of choice). There are two schools of thought here. The first is that "photographers aren't restrained by the current offerings." Behind this notion is that the current state-of-the-art is good enough, that the current choices let a creative and productive photographer do pretty much anything they desire. In one sense, that's true. If you need to photograph in low light levels, a D3s and the available really fast lenses will work just fine. If you need exceptional reach with wildlife, the D7000 and the 500mm work well. If you need a small DSLR, the D3100 is pretty capable and fits the bill.
But this notion falls apart for most photographers, who have to pick one body and then apply it to multiple types of photography. It's one of the reasons why I didn't write one article covering everything simultaneously, but broke things down into distinct camera groups (DX, FX, mirrorless, compact). If you can only afford (want) one camera, once you make a choice of that camera, you find that there are indeed gaps in things that you can do and lenses that fit your need. Of course, if you're a well-heeled pro that can afford a full outfit, you have no problems with getting a D3s for low light and action work, a D3x for studio and high resolution work, and a D300s for portable reach. And a full set of lenses to cover all possibilities. But that doesn't define most users.
I actually asked the question of a subset of my site audience recently: for the camera you've chosen, do you feel there are things you can't do, either because of missing features or missing accessories and lenses? The answer was overwhelmingly yes. When I further asked what those things were, the answers mimicked what I wrote about in my article, which hadn't been published yet. So I'm pretty sure that Nikon's customers are seeing gaps that aren't being filled. And third parties aren't always filling those gaps, either, which is another story for another day.
But the second school of thought here is the one I tend to use in writing about where we are: what could/would we have if the company/customer relationship were operating at peak efficiency? The answer is that we don't have a full system. FX comes closest, DX is not nearly close to being a full system (despite now being 12 years old), and we're all expecting Nikon to add a third (mirrorless) system soon, which is likely to be incredibly unfull at introduction while competitors are filling out holes in their mirrorless systems reasonably well. One point to ponder is this: if Nikon can't completely fill out two systems in 12 years, what's the likelihood they'll do so when adding a third? Or that the third system will be close to filled out any time soon?
Thus my tough prognosis comments.
Anyone that reads this site regularly knows that I encourage people to minimize and try operating without. Grab two primes and go out and photograph for a day. You'll find that you see differently and can make great images without a bag full of zooms. Nevertheless, what we're being sold by camera makers are tools that are systems. Incomplete systems. Systems with missing features or abilities. Systems that don't always integrate well. Systems that are in constant change at one core aspect (sensors) of which the camera makers are driving so that they obsolete what we bought last time (e.g. your old DSLR needs to be replaced).
We're currently in a stage where the camera makers are going to find the same thing that the personal computer CPU makers found years ago: just upping the specs at the core--in the case of CPUs, clock speed, in the case of sensors, megapixels--has diminishing returns and eventually market growth goes away because no one perceives a real need to buy the new to replace the old. It doesn't make the word processor run faster or their pictures any better. Meanwhile, the core changes take up so much of the engineering and require so much of the other components to change to keep up that systems never get fully fleshed out and completed. If you think about it, mirrorless is the netbook all over again. (Dare I say that what we really need is an iPad-like rethink? Communicating, Programmable, Modular ;~).
Finally, there's one other thing that the camera companies ignore at their own risk: perception. It isn't that a user is going to buy 64 lenses for their FX or DX or mirrorless body, but the notion that there are 64 well-chosen and well differentiated choices is indeed something that makes buying into a system easier for the customer to do. Canon and Nikon (and to a lesser degree Sony) have large legacy systems that carry over to some of their current digital systems. But new systems (APS/DX, mirrorless, etc.) start mostly fresh--legacy options don't exactly fill an exact need or add compromises that don't always play against modern bodies (no body-based focus motor, for instance).
To Panasonic's and Olympus' credit, they've created a reasonable new community of useful lenses for m4/3 in a fairly short time. Compared to Sony's poor lens offerings, it could sway a customer even if they didn't buy anything other than a kit zoom and a fast prime. Systems are systems. Full systems are better than unfull systems.
But I guess some of you won't be satisfied unless I offer an NRINO (look it up: Google "NRINO site:bythom.com"). So here it is: one thing that's easy to forget is that the serious photographer can get better results today and have more control of them than they ever could in film. Remember using ISO 1600 color film in 1995? Not a pleasant experience, yet virtually every current mirrorless, DX, or FX camera can do a better job. That's a very good thing about the State of the Camera.
Still, the camera makers can do better. Much better.