I’ll never forget the look on a Japanese executive’s face when I asked a very curious question. “Hold on, Sony introduced this feature in their cameras recently, how are you all coming out with the same tech at the same time?” He smiled at me, and didn’t give me an answer. That was a year before I started the Phoblographer — and it wasn’t until I was a bit further into my career that I learned the crazy truth. All of the camera manufacturers are all using each other’s parts, designs, and innovations. Just think about it: if scene detection (otherwise call AI detection) wasn’t a top secret thing, then why didn’t Sony keep the secret all to themselves? And why does the company’s sensors appear in so many cameras? It’s made me wonder many times over and over again: if the camera manufacturers stopped working together, could any of them actually survive?
Here are my initial thoughts on an all-out camera war:
Canon
Canon is in a very healthy position here. They make all their own stuff for the most part. That means their sensors, motors, lenses, etc. are all mostly made in-house. If they were to make point-and-shoot cameras, they’d need to find a way to make them very affordable with sensors that are much different from what we see in the rest of the point-and-shoot market. But as far as ILC devices go, Canon could easily sustain with their own factories and all. In fact, they’ve been doing it for a while. On top of that, they’re also one of the top patent holders in the world.
Nikon
Nikon is quite an odd one. In many ways, it’s an amalgamation of many other companies, and sometimes I wonder what tech is actually its own and what isn’t. For over a decade, it’s used sensors from Tower Jazz and Sony. On top of that, Nikon has been known to license lenses from Tamron. What’s quite intriguing now, though, is that the company bought RED—and just under a decade ago, RED was making better sensors than Sony.
Could Nikon end up using RED’s sensor tech instead of Sony’s? I truly hope so!
Sony
Sony is in one of the healthiest positions in the camera world. First off, the imaging division is actually a cash cow for them, so they might keep making sensors for phone companies and other devices. But if other brands stopped using their sensors, then Sony would still have a ton of tech and partial ownership of Tamron. On top of that, they make pretty much all their own stills in-house. Without a doubt, Sony would survive.
Panasonic
I was once told that Panasonic reps could wake up one day and buy out all the camera divisions of all the companies around. There was a period when they were making their own sensors, but in the digital world, they’ve often relied on Leica in many ways. At the same time, Leica has relied on Panasonic. For example, the L-mount alliance is Leica’s mount, and Panasonic would either need to make its own mount or continue to work with other brands as allies.
In recent years, they’ve been making their own lenses. What they’d mostly need to do now is make their own sensors. I’ve long had an inkling that the Pansonic S1R was their own sensor. If it indeed was, then we need more cameras like this.
Leica
Leica is in a fascinating position. Of any of the camera companies, I think that they’d do the best with survival. They don’t need to make digital cameras, as they still make film cameras. Where they’d have trouble, perhaps, is with making their own sensors. But Leica has made its own lenses for a very, very long time now.
Fujifilm
While the X series largely relies on other companies to make the glass and sensor tech inside the cameras, Fujifilm’s Instax division is really its cash cow. It could lean incredibly heavily into this and still manage to survive.
Pentax/Ricoh
Pentax and Ricoh could survive mostly by diving back into the film world. I think the world would love a Ricoh GR point-and-shoot film camera for sure.
OM System
This one is really hard to tell, since they were sold off a while ago. OM System makes some absolutely incredible tech in its cameras that no other brand really has. But they’d need to make more of their own lenses and their own cameras alongside the sensors.
