In the not too distant past, the goal people had in mind when taking a photo was making a print. Today, there are approximately 95 million photos taken every day and shared on Instagram. Some of these may also be printed, but a large percentage of these photos are taken with the express purpose of sharing them on Instagram.
How much friction exists between a camera that is not a smartphone, and Instagram. If you have WiFi on the camera, you can connect it to your smartphone, and then edit and share it. If you don’t then you have to put in on your computer, edit it, and then get it to your phone before you can upload it.
So if you are going to take a photo for instagram, what camera are you going to use? It will depend partially on the purpose of the photo. If you are a fine art photographer, a portrait photographer, or someone else who makes a living taking photos with a camera, then you will probably do what you need to do to share your images on Instagram. But what about everyone else?
Some photos, such as photos of your meal, selfies, or general whimsical lifestyle images, would probably be made with a smartphone anyway. But what about travel photos, vacation photos, or any other type of photo that could easily be taken with either a smartphone or a camera? When you are standing there, trying to decide which camera to carry with you to take the photos you have planned, and you plan to upload these to Instagram like 95 million other images are each day, will that influence your decision?
How may times do you make the decision to shoot with your phone and not your camera before it impacts your buying decision the next time you are shopping for a camera?
Yes, I know that some images can be done better with a dedicated camera. I don’t want to get into that debate here. What I’m talking about is the area where there is overlap. The images that can be taken with either. The ones where you say… Meh, the phone will do good enough. How many times are consumers nudged away from their camera and towards their smartphone because they want to get the images to social media quickly and easily?
Camera’s have computers in them. Camera’s have software. Many cameras have WiFi. Why not social media apps? I think that this is something the big camera manufacturers need to consider to protect their market share, especially as the quality of images from smartphones continues to improve.