Ken Rockwell says DSLRs are dead. It is time for the Panasonic GF1.
A new “prediction” from Ken Rockwell.
“The 2000s were the DSLR decade. Those days are over. DSLRs are about as relevant today as dial-up modems and SCSI-conected scanners,
The 2010s are the decade DSLRs died.
In 2019, DSLRs will still be used for sports, news and action, but the rest of us will be using far more compact Powershots, M9s
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Recent comments
Comment from Mark Satola: Rockwell may be right, but this really i...
Comment from kersaint: True : the important fact is that everyb...
Comment from admin: Hi Simon! Ken Rockwell is the most famou...
Comment from Simon: ...and poor ol' husband Rockwell again m...
xn4c
3 years ago |BAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Loke
3 years ago |Just to put things into perspective: This is the same guy who spent the previous decade preaching how digital photography was going to die and film was going to again become the medium of choice for professional photography.
I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to trust him just yet.
Duarte Bruno
3 years ago |Give him a break…
He’s just trying to hit another generate traffic.
This time he may be right, though.
YeahYeah
3 years ago |Oh thank you Ken, you just made my day sunnier
Seriously, he might be right and I agree with him, but I’m just finding it funny to make “2019 predictions”
Radis.Rut
3 years ago |Well, It’s fun to think what will the future lies
marcram
3 years ago |If all big camera companies start focusing on mirrorless systems, then his prediction shall be true very soon. I am excited to see what Pentax, Fuji, Nikon, and Canon can do with mirroless designs. Maybe a 10mp full frame with low light potential of Nikon D3S … or maybe a mirrorless canon 5D with a 10mp sensor.
marcram
3 years ago |Some may say that the flange distance must be large and that you can have the mirror, but imagine a square full frame sensor camera with settings for crop factors (the Nikon D3s has this). You could have 1x, 1.5x, 2x, etc. and adapters for using various sized lenses. If you are going out to a social event, set it to 2x crop factor and use a fast and small m43 lens. If you want to do a wedding, set it to 1x and use a larger lens setup with full frame extension adapter. I think this gives a logical means to full frame mirrorless systems.
Richard
3 years ago |I don’t see this on Ken’s site. There was a Wired article, “5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR” which was plainly intended to stir the pot.
In any event, I do see some logic to the point. Everyone is enamored with size and ease of use of Leica M cameras, but they are outrageously expensive and will never be a mass market product. I think M4/3rds cameras are a step in the direction of a compact camera that will be a mass market product. Whether the 4/3 format is a final sensor size or merely an intermediate one remains to be seen, but the formula is, I think, a good one. The various “EVIL” projects suggest a step in this direction.
Let’s face it, who would not find something along the lines of a Leica M-9, but smaller, and actually affordable, an attractive package? Will it replace “big gun” lenses on SLRs for sports/action photography? Of course not, but the movement in this area is a natural evolution of improving technology (and production processes) that can move beyond the point and shoot cameras of today (which, by the way, sell in enormous numbers).
dMS
3 years ago |Please, someone give the man a crystal ball. Maybe he can predict future earthquakes.
nala
3 years ago |More m9′s in use than dslr’s? Not likely unless the M9′s of the furture plus lenses are under $1000. Rockwell’s head is full of rocks.
rs
3 years ago |KenRockwell is a twit. how he gets anyone to buy into his ridiculous articles designed purely to generate traffic is beyond me.
Keith Walker
3 years ago |You don’t need clairvoyance to predict that mirrorless camera backs will rake the DSLR market. Simple economics of cheaper camera backs and smaller lenses (that perform better at lower light) will force the issue.
Simon
3 years ago |…and poor ol’ husband Rockwell again managed to draw attention and traffic to his crappy useless website. Does KR pay you to to publish his truly visionary, ever-changing comments, or what’s going wrong with 43rumours? Seriously, I see this rumour page turn into a kind of ad page for certain online retailers and blog writers.
Would be great if you maintained a kind of healthy balance between information and ads/nonsense.
admin
3 years ago |Hi Simon! Ken Rockwell is the most famous photography blogger of the world. You can like him or not but he has a lot of “weight” inside the online photo community. What he says has a influence on millions of people. I am not promoting him, he has 150 times more visits than I have. Are you suggesting me to ignore him because you don’t like him? I believe it is better to talk about him and if he tells stupid things at least people gets warned. Cheers
P.S: I normally post non important news (like the Ken Rockwell post) on Saturday or Sunday.
kersaint
2 years ago |True : the important fact is that everybody now wants to come along with victorious ones… including Ken and alike divas… Exciting though pathetic !
Mark Satola
2 months ago |Rockwell may be right, but this really isn’t about technology, it’s about the potential tsunami of corporate profit attendant upon the product roll-out over the next few years. Untold millions of mirrorless cameras will very likely be sold in the next few years, bringing untold billions of dollars into the coffers of the companies that make them; and untold trillions of perfectly awful pictures will be taken with them, just as they were with DSLRs, film SLRs, rangefinders, press cameras and box cameras before them. It reminds me of the insane drive on the part of television manufacturers to develop new technologies every couple of years, to keep the mindless hordes in upgrade mode and shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars on the latest wall-sized HD digital flat screen, while the programs viewed on it are just as awful as before, if not demonstrably worse.
There’s much wisdom but absolutely no profit in “aint broke/don’t fix.”