Thought experiment: What if electronically controled cameras are actually no less reliable

[NB23]

We easily fall in Love with our mechanical cameras.
Nobody falls in Love, or at least shouldn’t, with a digital/electronic camera.

 

[mehguy]

There''s video in YouTube of a guy putting together an iPhone from parts sourced there. That WAS an amazing insight!

But here's another one I wanted to share of problems and practicalities fixing electronics today. Some phones rendered unfixable because proprietary stuff, "security" and locking things down that has and will make your future repairs unnecessarily harder - if not impossible. Even with Shenzen around.

Louis Rossmann is always a treat to watch

 

[mehguy]

We easily fall in Love with our mechanical cameras.
Nobody falls in Love, or at least shouldn’t, with a digital/electronic camera.

Why shouldn’t they? People fall in love with digital/electronic stuff all the time.

 

[NB23]

Why shouldn’t they? People fall in love with digital/electronic stuff all the time.

They are all made with programed obsolescence in mind.
Because they are expendable.

It’s a game where you are beaten right at the start.

 

[faberryman]

Back in the day, I remember film camera manufacturers came out with new models fairly regularly and launched advertising campaigns to get you all gassed up to buy them. What is different today is that new models come out at shorter intervals because the technology is advancing more rapidly. No great mystery at play. I know it may be hard to believe, but you don't need to replace your camera every time a new model is introduced.

 

[NB23]

Yes but nowhere near today’s numbers. Back then a camera could get a yearly run of 50,000 units. The next model wod get added on top while never saturating the market.

today, 50,000 units is a daily production

 

[flavio81]

The general wisdom for decades is, that electronically control cameras fail easily, and that with no spare parts anymore, that there will be no way to fix them. Eventually in the coming decades there shall be a mountain of 1980s-2000s cameras that all failed, and the robust mechanical cameras of the 40s-70s will live on forever.

But what if this wasn't the case? What if camera technicians never wanted to learn the skill-set that electronic repair takes?

This topic was already covered recently, I invite everybody to take a look:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/observation-on-camera-reliability.189246/

 

[Don_ih]

This topic was already covered recently

Ah, but if we stop talking about the same things over and over, we will stop talking altogether.

 

[wiltw]

SMD components, especially the ones that came about during the 80s and 90s, can be easily done at home with a hobbyist setup. No microscope required. It takes a little practice and a pair of tweezers but it’s very much doable. The components you’re describing that require very specialized tools really only came about during the late 2000s.

SMD is not extraordinarily difficult to de-solder and solder a new one; but when the part is something like a resistor pack that needs to be replaced, that can be an issue when it has pins that go through multiple layers of a MULTILAYER circuit.

 

[faberryman]

Yes but nowhere near today’s numbers. Back then a camera could get a yearly run of 50,000 units. The next model wod get added on top while never saturating the market.

today, 50,000 units is a daily production

Your information is out of date. A 50,000 daily production of a camera would be 18,250,000 cameras a year. In 2021, the total number of all cameras sold was approximately 8,600,000, down from a high of 115,000,000 in 2011. Production of cameras has been plummeting for the past decade. Needless to say, smartphone sales are up significantly for the same period. Like McDonald hamburgers: billion and billions sold.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264337/cipa-companies-shipments-of-digital-cameras/

 

[NB23]

Your information is out of date. A 50,000 daily production of a camera would be 18,250,000 cameras a year. In 2021, the total number of all cameras sold was approximately 8,600,000, down from a high of 115,000,000 in 2011. Production of cameras has been plummeting for the past decade. Needless to say, smartphone sales are up significantly for the same period. Like McDonald hamburgers: billion and billions sold.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264337/cipa-companies-shipments-of-digital-cameras/

Who said year round?

besides, are you really doubting the planned obsolescence?

 

[reddesert]

First, the discussion was also about electronic and mechanical film cameras. There are electronic film cameras, even if one feels they are unworthy of love.

Second, upgrade fever is not the same as planned obsolescence. I can still use a 15 or so year old digital camera, as long as they keep making compact flash cards. Planned obsolescence is when support is withdrawn, like a computer whose OS is unsupported, or like a camera that only takes 620 film.

 

[MattKing]

And considering how long 620 film was made after the last camera was made, those are really long term obsolescence plans!

 

[wiltw]

Your information is out of date. A 50,000 daily production of a camera would be 18,250,000 cameras a year. In 2021, the total number of all cameras sold was approximately 8,600,000, down from a high of 115,000,000 in 2011. Production of cameras has been plummeting for the past decade. Needless to say, smartphone sales are up significantly for the same period. Like McDonald hamburgers: billion and billions sold.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264337/cipa-companies-shipments-of-digital-cameras/

And in 2021, the total ship,eents of all SLR + Mirrorless is a bit over 5 Million units, per CIPA...about 2000 per day.

 

[Vaughn]

Electronic or not, I dislike plastic.

 

[tokam]

Alac, alas, it looks like another photographic religious war has erupted - Manual v's Electronic. I have a foot in both camps. I even like plastic as I have owned a T90 since new in 1987 and it's still purring along. I also have plenty of cameras that only use power for metering and a few cameras sans a meter.

The earliest issue with electronics in cameras was 'range anxiety' regarding battery lifespan for meters. Now we are on failing electronics and really there haven't been too many howlers from manufacturers with dud electronics. Bad capacitors in some Minolta SLR's of the '80s and some OM bodies that had excessive power consumption and the early Spotmatic ES that had problems. Tell me what manufacturer had endemic electronic problems post 1980. There are always going to be sporadic examples of failed cameras of which we don't have a clue how they have been used and stored over the last 40 years. Most of them are getting pretty cheap to replace now.

 

[Thomas_Higgin]

at the consumer level, mechanical cameras dance all over electronic cameras. A mechanical camera that’s been sitting around for years is less likely to have major problems simply because they lack the intricate and fragile circuitry of an electronic camera. We’re just saying that at the professional level, the reliability of electronic cameras becomes less of an issue.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

I have an AE-1 that's had no more than a seal replacement and works fine. I had to send my FM2n away for work a few years ago. I'd say it's a crap shoot with devices as complex as cameras mechanical or otherwise.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I have a 30+-year-old Nikon N6006 SLR, electronic. A couple of years ago I checked the electronic shutter and was happy to find it's absolutely still accurate, more than any mechanical camera (lens) I have. I couldn't;t really check it faster than 1/125th of a second. But look at the results I got for the other settings. Really quite accurate.

 

[mehguy]

at the consumer level, mechanical cameras dance all over electronic cameras. A mechanical camera that’s been sitting around for years is less likely to have major problems simply because they lack the intricate and fragile circuitry of an electronic camera. We’re just saying that at the professional level, the reliability of electronic cameras becomes less of an issue.

Just because it’s working doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate. And mechanical shutters WILL drift. This article gives good insight into how sellers are marketing “working” cameras.

https://kamerastore.com/blogs/posts/5-levels-of-shutter-testing-how-accurate-is-your-film-camera

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Just because it’s working doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate. And mechanical shutters WILL drift. This article gives good insight into how sellers are marketing “working” cameras.

https://kamerastore.com/blogs/posts/5-levels-of-shutter-testing-how-accurate-is-your-film-camera

As you can see from my last post, the all-electronic 30-year-old N6006 seems to work flawlessly including exposure and shutter. Here are sample shots were just taken with it recently. using Tmax 400 35mm film.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157716777378896

Meanwhile, my Nikomat FT3 which is all mechanical except the built-in manually adjusted exposure meter does not expose correctly half the time due to drift with the metering. So at least in my experience, electronic cameras seem to be better, at least slightly modern ones like the N6006. I guess the answer is to make sure you buy one that works when you buy it. And hope it lasts awhile.

 

[Don_ih]

Mechanical cameras range from pinhole to Contaflex. A pinhole camera is absolutely reliable and a Contaflex is, well, probably not working. There are mechanical cameras that are very capable and yet not mechanically complex, such as a large format camera with a Packard shutter (if you've ever taken one of those shutters apart, you know how simple it is). But greater demands of the application require more sophisticated devices. And, frankly, electronic cameras are the most sophisticated and are usually more capable than their use requires.
And it's a fairly well known fact that what kills most electronic cameras is battery leakage. Second would probably be material failure, such as foam turning into ooze or plastic becoming brittle or lubrication turning into glue. The electronic components are designed for much greater stress than they receive in a camera.
The fact remains, though, that you can make a mechanical camera with a box, some cardboard, and a magnifying glass. You generally can't make an electronic camera. And no one else is making them, either (film ones, that is). So, eventually, you may need to settle on something less sophisticated. You know, in a few hundred years or so.

 

[Jim Jones]

We can admire the obvious engineering and workmanship in the best of older mechanical cameras, but I am more impressed in the lower cost per image of today's digital cameras. Cameras come and go, but great images should perhaps last for hundreds of years.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Alac, alas, it looks like another photographic religious war has erupted - Manual v's Electronic. I have a foot in both camps. I even like plastic as I have owned a T90 since new in 1987 and it's still purring along. I also have plenty of cameras that only use power for metering and a few cameras sans a meter.

The earliest issue with electronics in cameras was 'range anxiety' regarding battery lifespan for meters. Now we are on failing electronics and really there haven't been too many howlers from manufacturers with dud electronics. Bad capacitors in some Minolta SLR's of the '80s and some OM bodies that had excessive power consumption and the early Spotmatic ES that had problems. Tell me what manufacturer had endemic electronic problems post 1980. There are always going to be sporadic examples of failed cameras of which we don't have a clue how they have been used and stored over the last 40 years. Most of them are getting pretty cheap to replace now.

I too have my feet in both camps. My serious work, sirius?, is with the Hasselblad and is all mechanical. My relaxed work is with the Nikon N75 and Nikon F100 and those are electronic and AF. The 4"x5" of course is mechanical.

 

[George Mann]

The Nikon F801/N8008 and F90/N90 series have so far proven to be the most reliable electronic slr cameras.

However, I find them to be awkwardly heavy.