The rumor sites are struggling with the paucity of new camera introductions. Some had already established a habit of leaking information one piece of the story at a time from sources that had provided them more complete information. And as usual there's the rush to publish a full spec sheet a day or two prior to an actual product introduction, only that's not happening very often, particularly as some companies have tightened the release of information (dealers were a big leak point; I had information on the Nikon Z50II almost three weeks prior to most dealers, who didn't get that information until literally the last minute).
I'm not sure how any of that is particularly useful to a reader; I see rumors more as entertainment. The type of rumors that would be more interesting to me would be about general positioning, not specific products. For instance, will Nikon continue on with DX or begin to abandon it? That's a rumor that, if seemingly substantiated, would attract my attention and have me scrambling to verify or dispute.
Recently, Canon Rumors published the kind of rumor story that seems more useful to me: that Canon will make an APS-C video camera, a retro full frame one, and an ultra-high resolution one. Now I don't know whether that information is true or not, but if it is it tells me something about Canon's future model direction and whether I'd want to continue investing in their line today. (If you can't figure it out for yourself, these three rumored models would represent a "broadening" of the Canon product line as opposed to iteration. The Canon line is already really broad. My take on this rumor, again if true, is that Canon sees Sony sucking up customers with APS-video, Fujifilm/Nikon sucking up customers with retro cameras, and Fujifilm sucking up high-end pixel peepers with GFX. Canon wants to be the primary sucker of every niche, thus they need to respond. I'd tend to argue that companies that aim with shotguns might not be very good at hitting bullseyes.)
It's interesting that "road maps" were deemed necessary by the Japanese companies when they each were trying to transition users from DSLRs to mirrorless—but only lens road maps—yet these sporadically-updated documents have now been dropped by all when they felt their transition was reasonably complete. It can't be that they felt that the road maps gave their competitors insight into the potential future offerings. That's because the coopetition in Tokyo is so ingrained and intertwined that I doubt that there's much, if anything, secret between them. Maybe specific date, price, or new feature information isn't always shared, but pretty much everything else is. Yet road maps did give customers confidence that putting thousands of dollars into a new product line wouldn't be a dead end.
It's almost as if the Japanese are fearful of anything that might be perceived as even a vague promise. Successful consumer companies have close relationships with their customers, not arms-length, silent ones. I still see plenty of photographers guessing that some mirrorless mount or another is a dead end, but I don't really see the camera companies doing much to keep them from such speculation.
The camera companies are now asking us to buy top-of-the-line products for the most part. Their continued financial success pretty much depends upon that now. Yet none of these companies really wants to have a direct conversation with the customers who are putting thousands of dollars into their gear about their commitment and why they should maintain it. Despite the even higher costs of doing so today, I still hear from people who feel abandoned by their brand and are again determined to switch. (hint: all brands have the same problem, so switching won't solve the sense of abandonment.)
I was going to write that Sony, with its Kando events, was an exception to this, but it seems that these trips went private and invite-only since the pandemic. Kando was always about trying to fuel influencer-type social media, but it originally had the sense of being inclusive to the user base, not exclusive.
All the camera companies have "ambassadors"—famous photographers you can aspire towards—and yet I feel that most of those programs are effectively just marketing endorsements with almost no other meat on the bone. The "learning" (or worse, "mentoring") that you might get from those paid representatives of your favorite camera is minimal, to say the least. I was perusing one company's ambassador postings recently and felt this vague sense of things being mailed in. No real effort, no clarity, no clear purpose, no new information, nothing that you couldn't get from other common online sources. Heck, I didn't even get any "my brand's camera does this better because...” Even at my level, the professional services from each of the camera companies can be highly hit or miss. Generally a hit for some big events and some “who we’re targeting now” photographers, but often a miss when something comes up and you need an answer to a problem that just cropped up.
We're at a crossroads today, and probably sooner than Canon or Nikon thought we might get there. DSLRs blazed upwards in sales in the first dozen years of the century, mirrorless in the second. What's going to blaze upwards in the third, which we're now officially entering? Seemingly nothing. Mirrorless volume was 4.8m units in 2023, and it'll probably be within 10% of that in 2024 despite the continued 20-30% annual decline of DSLR. So mirrorless is not fully "replacing" DSLR volume. I currently predict that interchangeable lens camera volume will not grow at all in 2025.
Understanding how each brand is preparing to deal with the coming sales plateau would be useful to those of us spending our hard-earned money on these (mostly) unnecessary toys. Again, those are the rumors that would be interesting to read, not that iteration ten of the everyman camera will have a slight bump in features or performance.
Bonus: Personally, what happens next with the camera companies is no longer particularly important to me. At 73, I have all the photo gear I need to conclude my career as a photographer. I don't need to buy anything other than to perhaps replace something that I might break. Indeed, in looking back at my recent business financials, I can see a clear downward curve in my acquisitions and a continued emptying of things from my gear closet I'm not using. That's despite the fact that I currently plan to cover the 2026 Cortina Winter Olympics; what new stuff do I need? None.
However, as you might tell from the theme of a few of my recent articles, I am concerned about the photo industry, in pretty much all aspects. It doesn't appear at all clear to me how the Millennials and Gen Zers are going to take to photography and stand on the shoulders of what we Boomers and Gen Xers have accomplished (as Sontag suggests every new generation must). Are we really going to say smartphones are the only future of imaging? That seems limiting and wrong.
