The knock-on effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have been many and varied on both individuals and industries, and the photography world has experienced its fair share of related difficulties. Many working photographers simply couldn’t work, while lockdowns prevented everybody from travelling, attending events of any sort or even socialising with family and friends… all activities where you’d typically be taking lots of pictures. Reduced incomes – as a result of lockdowns forcing many businesses to close or operate at very reduced levels – have no doubt resulted in reduced spending on items not considered essential… such as a new camera or lens.
For the camera makers there have been disruptions to supply chains due to global issues with shipping caused by container ports either closing at various times or being short-staffed due to Covid outbreaks. This has also affected deliveries, not to mention causing a huge increase in the cost of shipping anything around the world. Covid outbreaks at factories have also interrupted manufacturing, causing shortages of critical components such as, in particular, computer chips.
With all this going on, it’s pretty amazing that anybody got anything done over the last 12 months, but it actually turned out to be a reasonably good year as far as new imaging products are concerned… perhaps not quite a vintage year, but not far off it. There were quite a few highlights and certainly enough going on to keep everybody interested, if not actually spending money. According to Japan’s Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA), demand in 2021 was still quite a bit down on pre-Covid 2019, but up a little overall on 2020 at least until August (which were the latest figures published when this article was compiled). However, the on-going global chip shortage will have a bigger impact on the production volumes for the last third of 2021 (traditionally much higher in anticipation of Christmas sales), so it will be interesting to see where everything ends up compared to 2020, which actually finished the year stronger than it had begun. What continues to be very obvious is that DSLR production is steadily declining (possibly by as much as 25% by the end of 2021 compared to 2020) while production of mirrorless cameras is, not surprisingly, steadily increasing, albeit destined to be the most impacted by year’s end due to the issues just outlined.
However, you don’t really need the numbers to see what’s happening in the interchangeable lens camera market. Just one new DSLR was launched during the period of eligibility and it is a further update of a model that’s close to seven years old. Additionally, both Canon and Nikon continue to delete older models from their line-ups without replacing them, and Sony has called time on its A-mount system, ending production of its last DSLR model, the A99 II (yes, it had a fixed mirror, but it still had a mirror which made it a reflex camera). In comparison, there were 14 new mirrorless cameras released during our period of eligibility (including Fujifilm’s two medium format models, but not counting the Nikon Z 9 which, in mid-October, had yet to be officially launched).
Excellent though the Pentax K-3 III undoubtedly is, we decided not to have a DSLR category this year primarily because, with all the camera makers’ resources going into their mirrorless systems, there is no real innovation or development going on here anymore. We continue to maintain our four main categories for mirrorless cameras – Consumer, Enthusiast, Professional and Hybrid – and have reinstated the award for best medium format camera although, of
