I think we've officially come to the point where every new product announcement needs the first paragraph to clearly enunciate how it is better.
With everyone now iterating full lineups (and Chinese lens makers trying to elbow in), each new announcement from a camera or lens maker tends to be something that existed before (or existed in someone else's lineup and is now being copied). Coupled with a slower development and release pace, "truly new product" tends to happen fairly rarely. In terms of cameras this year, that meant only three of sixteen were something noticeably new (Canon R50V, Fujifilm X half, and Fujifilm GFX100RF, and you might argue that the first is just a different body for an existing camera and the latter is mostly an existing camera with a bigger sensor).
Lenses haven't really fared any better than cameras. Of the 25 announced in the first half of this year, yes, I see some "stretching" being done—Sigma 300-600mm and 400-800mm and all the f/1.2 optics—but nothing has struck me as "wow, that's new."
For everyone in the camera industry, including you, the customer, your primary thinking about any product announcement now really has to consist of the headline question: how is it better?
The just announced OM-5 II is a good example to consider. The shape of the hand grip changed, you finally have the menu system that OMDS has been using since the OM-1 several years ago, a button has changed function, plus two new minor video features and two minor still features. Oh, and there's now a brown panda version. That's not enough "better" to get me to pay US$300 more for it (today's pricing; the OM-5 is currently on sale).
Compare that to the Fujifilm X-E5 or Nikon Z5II. Both those cameras got considerable feature/function upgrades from their previous models. If you were considering the previous model, you should be more impressed with the new one, as you can clearly tick off a substantial set of "better" items. On the other hand, the Nikon Z5II sells for US$700 more, so it had better be better.
But I mentioned "everyone" in the camera industry, so let's take a peak at how that looks for a few others:
- Camera maker — "Better" for them comes in one of two ways (or both): cheaper to make, or will sell more. I don't get much of that from the OM-5 II, but do from the Fujifilm X-E5 (the Nikon Z5II is tending to steal customers from the Z6III).
- Camera dealer — It's only "better" if it sells more. Dealers live off of inventory turns, and they only get that through sales volume. Dealers complain when a new product doesn't tweak the turn bar up, and strongly complain when the turns instead become boxes sitting on shelves.
- Rumors site — The more surprises—particularly ones that can be revealed in the run-up, something that Fujifilm's supported leaks do well—the "better," but they need a series of those, not just one big surprise at the end. The slower development schedules and the meh releases are hurting these sites, as there's not a lot of reason to visit them if they're not constantly giving you "sneak" tokes.
- News/Forum sites — When your news is meh, nobody pays much attention, and when your fora are discussing how meh a new product is, the cathartic post effect wears off very quickly. You can almost figure out the "better" product announcements by how many "should I update" posts there are, which these days are already well down from their peaks.
- Professional photographer — Starting to not care. Realistically the top tier products from every camera maker are more than sufficient enough to carry them through the next few years, and nothing in the lower end products is making amateurs snipe any more seriously at our tails. Lenses, on the other, do get our attention if they fill a hole we either knew we had or didn't know we had. But both those things require more than a press release that says "we added a new lens."
- Amateur photographer — I'd argue that even the entry bodies and lenses from all the camera companies are good enough to take pretty incredible photos. Plus, with apps like Adobe's Project Indigo now showing that smartphones can do even more than most thought, as long as you're not going larger than, oh, 11x14" in output I'd say that you don't need more, and even "better" cameras and lenses aren't going to give you any benefit unless you actually learn to use them for that benefit.
We're sort of in one of those lulls the auto industry kept getting into: "yes, we have new cars this year, but some of those are just new grills and a couple of other visible things that we think make it look snazzy."
