Five Ways Digital Photography has Changed the Marketplace

The popularization of digital photography has done more than fill more people up with the urge to shoot pictures. It has actually completely changed the marketplace of photography and in some cases it has dismantled or destroyed parts of the industry as a whole. Even though digital photography has only outshone film based shooting for less than a decade, the effects are already staggering.

People print fewer photos:

From the beginning the photo giants Kodak and Fuji feared the result of digital photography’s popularization. While they themselves are big players in the market, they were also huge players in the world of photo developing. From the earliest stages of the digital photography era it was clear that people would be printing far less of the photos that they took. When they do print, a lot of the time it is via a home printer. The result is that the photo print business has been turned upside down and companies like Canon and HP are now major players in the photo printing marketplace.

Hardware competition from all sides:

The film camera market was a fairly tight one. Quality camera manufacturers consisted of a few companies such as Canon, Olympus and Pentax. Digital photography though has opened the door for other companies to take the stage. Sony for instance would never have been taken seriously as manufacturer of film cameras but they were able to make themselves right at home in the digital photography world and are now their products, along with other relative newcomers like Casio, are top sellers. On the flipside, companies like Minolta have flat out gone away.

Bye bye Polaroid:

Polaroid cameras were always cool, but their niche no longer exists. Little do most people know, there were a professional line of instant cameras that had a lot of artistic merit, but the big money was in convincing consumers that they wanted to see their pictures right away. Digital photography not only meets that need nicely, but it does it far better than the Polaroid option and it does so without the ongoing costs of film. Now try to find some instant film out there.

Film is quickly vanishing:

It didn’t take long for this to happen either. Right about the time digital cameras first began to outsell film cameras Kodak began closing factories. Along with Fuji they found themselves facing a much lower demand for that type of product. Digital photography has gone so far as to quell the demand for many higher end films and, recently, Kodak has actually had to announce an end to the production of the famed and much loved Kodachrome film.

Professional photographers had to change the rules:

It used to be that you’d hire a photographer for an event and they’d charge for prints but keep the negatives. People seemed to be okay with that for the most part, knowing they had to go back to that photographer whenever they wanted more prints. Digital photography though is so streamlined that it’s hard for photographers to get away with not handing over the “originals.” Now many of them just give original photos on a CD and wash their hands of it.