The 3  pictures in this post  were made whilst  I was on my way to make some supplementary photos for the upcoming Walking /Photography exhibition  at Encounters Gallery for the SALA Festival in South Australia. The Festival starts  in August, 2020.  

The pictures, which  were  made with the Sony A7 R111,   indicate that one  of the advantages of digital technology over the older film technology is digital's  low light capability.  The pictures were made 30 minutes before sunrise, which was at 7.23 am that morning.  The camera  was handheld with the 35mm Leica lens wide open.  This kind of low light photography would only be possible using film if the camera was on a tripod and the  exposure was long.  The latter is a studied style of photography,  not  the  spontaneous one in low light  made possible by digital technology.  I find this low light capability important  as I am often walking before sunrise. 

We may have seen the end of the rapid improvements in digital camera  technology.  The current news in the Japanese camera industry's shrinking market continues to be grim. After successfully driving out the Germans (eg., Rolleiflex) from the  industry in the first decade of the 21st century, the digital bubble that began in the mid-2000's burst at the start of  the second decade.   Since then the sales of the iconic brands in the Japanese camera industry  have been on a steady downward trajectory. 

It is reported that 2020 camera sales in Japan are on track to be roughly 1/10th what they were back in 2010, when digital camera sales peaked at 121 million units. Some iconic camera manufacturers --eg., Nikon--are making losses,  and they are forced to  reduce costs to stay afloat in a world of  smartphone technology and Covid-19. 

The implication is that photography is now an electronics technology. The speed of change in the electronics business (computing power, memory, screens and sensors) now drive the markets. The big electronics companies are increasingly owning  photography. The new normal for  the interchangeable lens  digital cameras is they have  stopped being mass consumer products and have become the specialist equipment of the niche market of  professionals', artists  and ambitious amateur photographers'. 

With a mature technology for digital cameras having being reached,  and most consumers and tourists happy to use their smart phone  for their everyday photography,   restructuring in the Japanese camera  industry looks to be economically necessary. The iconic Japanese  brands will need to specialise and diversity--as Leica has managed to do. Cameras in the niche market will become more expensive--just like they used to be before the digital boom.