Originally published February 1 2005
Simple, cheap digital cameras still have advantages over high-end models
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Small, inexpensive, and generally lacking in features, simple digital cameras nonetheless maintain a strong position in the marketplace for a single reason: people want them. With a resolution of three megapixels, these entry level cameras lack the power of their larger brethren, but they allow non-technical users to carry them in a pocket, take them out, point, and click.
IT'S the line that sparked a digital imaging market market explosion: "I just want a camera I can carry around in my pocket/handbag that I can just whip out and point and shoot."
At a time when digital camera makers are packing ever more megapixels and features into their latest offerings, most punters still have other criteria when deciding where to spend their imaging dollar.
Unlike the early days of digital imaging, when megapixel digital cameras virtually walked out of the shops, today they face strong competition from mobile phone, PDA and music device makers.
"Three megapixels is, for the entry level market, pretty much the benchmark," Kodak Australia-New Zealand digital and film imaging systems general manager Steve Morley says.
Canon Australia marketing manager Stuart Poignand agrees, saying three megapixels has proved a resilient benchmark in most people's opinions about digital cameras.
For manufacturers such as Kodak and Canon, this technology point is where most sales have been in the past year.
Kodak's best seller in the months leading up to Christmas, for example, was its $149 three megapixel CX7300, while Canon's leader was its similarly specced bottom-of-the-line Powershot A400 ($299 for the camera alone).
"When digital cameras first appeared and the market for them boomed, sales of analogue (film-based) cameras stayed relatively steady," he says.
Sales of analogue cameras have started to decline as more low-priced digitals become available."
For $100 more, at $399, the company's three megapixel A75 model has a three times optical zoom.
Mobile phone maker Nokia, for example, estimates that last year 90 million camera-equipped mobiles were sold by all manufacturers worldwide, and that by 2008 600 million will be sold.
That is about two-thirds or three-quarters of the models we have on the market," Nokia Australia corporate communications manager Louise Ingram says.
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