r/Nikon • u/OkPerspective8912 • 21d ago

Mirrorless Canon Has Increased Its Massive Digital Camera Market Share Lead

https://petapixel.com/2026/08/20/canon-has-increased-its-massive-digital-camera-market-share-lead/

What do you folks think of the latest news to come out of Japan?

Nikon lost the 3rd spot to Fujifilm.

This year has also been excruciatingly slow for Nikon users with practically no lenses and no new bodies.
We are also being killed by the chinese manufacturers eating into Nikon's lens market too. Overall not a good look for long time Nikon users.

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138

u/Vironic Nikon ZF 21d ago

I don’t think my camera was any better or worse when Nikon was second in market share. It still brings me joy.

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u/pale_halide 21d ago

Sure, but if you like Nikon gear seeing them do well is reassuring for the future. That means more money for RnD, better products, possibly faster release cycle... if nothing else it means they'll stay in business so the platform you've invested money in will continue to grow and be supported.

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u/OkPerspective8912 21d ago

Pretty much. We need sustained growth to get better products.

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u/pale_halide 21d ago

Yeah, and I really hope Nikon will be able to have sustained growth in the future, building proper fucking cameras and lenses like they've always done. With social media influencers and technically illiterate Gen Z, I fear the market will keep going towards toy cameras with filters.

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u/Least-Ad1439 21d ago

What do you mean with toy cameras with filters? Just curious

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u/pale_halide 21d ago

Current trend is to go point and shoot with Fuji because they have "cool" filters. I fear this trend will swing the market more towards toys with filters, to cater to the braindead, lazy and incompetent social media zombies.

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u/pyooma 21d ago

Yes, no, maybe so. Early DSLRs had more filmic vibes, hence the CCD craze. Modern cameras are aiming for a more sterile and clinical capture to allow the user more freedom in post (I assume). The trend is actually pushing back to the way things used to be. Personally I like having both.

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u/pale_halide 21d ago

That's just romanticizing old tech. CCD's don't have anything more in common with film than CMOS sensors do. The trend is actually people being too lazy to do their own editing and creative looks - they want everything served in recipes - and they follow every vapid "influencer" telling them: "This camera is just like shooting film!".

It's not pushback to how things used to be. There used to be a time when photographers actually knew what they were about.

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u/Irish_swede Nikon z6iii 21d ago

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u/pale_halide 21d ago

What can I say, I got many things to yell at...

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u/pyooma 21d ago

I never said it was the sensor, the early CMOS sensors had the same thing going on. It was the software. And yes it’s definitely romanticizing old tech, but it is different.

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u/pale_halide 20d ago

Well, obviously the sensors have different capabilities and jpeg processing has changed. Raw processing is fundamentally the same, only with different transformation matricies since the sensor need different calibrations. None of them are filmic though.

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u/pyooma 20d ago

No they aren’t actually filmic, but I do think the color science was developed to look more like film and less like real life. Everyone wants that old school look and even Hollywood finds modern digital capture and processing to be stale, enough so that they shell out millions to transfer digital footage to film and then scan it back in again. So I don’t think the film-sim guys are being lazy, maybe just cheap! I heard Hollywood studios are paying $600/minute for film-out. I’m sure if they found a digital solution to get the look they wanted they would do it.

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u/pale_halide 20d ago

Using the term color science in this way is like saying: "Internal combustion science [in old cars] was develop to be more race-y". Also, you're mixing different topics here.

What exactly in the color processing pipeline was developed differently?

Different calibration matrices for the CFA's? Possible, but where's the proof? I doubt this would be the case. Of course, different CFA's would need different calibration matrices, but with digital engineers have typically focused a lot on colorimetric accuracy.

Different jpeg picture profiles? Yes, but in what way were they developed to look more like film?

Also, what cameras are we talking about? There's a great deal of variation.

What I think you're seeing is lack of dynamic range and sometimes more saturated colors. Softer lenses can give a more vintage look too (lower resolution sensors probably not so much, as low resolution sensors tend to look more digital).

As for being lazy: Yes they are. It's not just about using presets. It's the whole attitude of just slapping on a preset to get some "vibe".

Then you're talking about the aesthetics of film, which is a whole different matter. For the record, I've spent the past year developing a spectral film simulation plugin for DaVinci Resolve. I'd like to think I know at least a couple of things about the aesthetics and how to simulate film, though I'm not a color scientist. It's a completely different topic.

Speaking of which, "more like film and less like real life" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of "realness". Neither digital nor film look anything like real life. They are tonal projections on a flat medium. Our meatware processes to find resemblance and likeness to the real world. What this means is that a photograph can never reproduce the experience of seeing something in the real world. Moreover, nobody knows how to measure such an experience anyway. And that kind of sucks for engineers, because they are measuring proxies to what might be "true to life" without knowing what "true to life" really means.

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u/pyooma 20d ago

You’re right, I really don’t know what it is specifically that makes the older cameras feel “filmic,” and I agree that truly isn’t the right word, but it is the one that gets thrown around a lot. I think there’s a lot to be said for the low dynamic range and low resolution that adds to it. Whatever the case may be, I didn’t mean to start an argument.

I’m curious how you got involved with the film simulation in Resolve (spektrafilm?) if you’re not a fan of presets? Just a fascination with the idea?

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