How big are we?

[woodrim]

[luisalegria]

I am, personally, not quite as tiny as I need to be, but I am eccentric. So there is that.

[Mir]

[Oldhand]

I wish I knew what IS is, ([i]am are was were been being[/i] - just covering my bases here)

OH

[konicamera]

[luisalegria]

Pentax.
IS with anything.
Its lovely.

[Oldhand]

[Lloydy]

[kenetik]

[Oldhand]

[woodrim]

HAY, my question was about MFL usage as a segment of the camera market. Are we minuscule or significant?

[luisalegria]

Compared to general camera use (cell phones and iphones/android things) we are miniscule.
Most people don't know what a DSLR is or what it can do.
I amaze them quite often just by taking 10-20 shots in a few seconds.

In the DSLR/semi pro/enthusiast market we are tiny. Fact is most users of such cameras use the kit lens and add-on lenses are fairly unusual. It isn't like the camera market of the early SLR days.

And compared to the AF lens add on market, again, quite tiny. Ebay is a bit misleading here as most people dont buy their lenses from ebay.

And even on ebay, search for used common AF lenses on ebay, especially for Canon, and you will get an idea of the scale difference there.

If we are 1/10,000 of the lens market I would be surprised.

[bychance]

I definately am

[Oldhand]

[Lloydy]

Maybe not entirely disregarded though? The camera manufacturers could have made their cameras incapable of using old glass, but they didn't.

[woodrim]

Thanks. Luis did a good job of summing up the overall market. I should have been more specific. I guess I was thinking within the interchangeable lens camera market. It is true that many casual users of these cameras use kit lenses - definitely zooms, and rarely shoot other than auto-everything. I think many of them would be better suited in P&S, which brings up another thing: the future of P&S. Cell phones are getting pretty good for those auto-everything people and will hurt the P&S market.

All of that aside, within DSLR, SLT, mirrorless users, there is us. I suspect that what we do requires a certain personality type within the serious photographers, which supports Luis' claim for tiny numbers. Still, I have to wonder when cameras offer MF support functions and especially Sony with the new A7 II. Now with in body stabilization and, if it is true, menu selectable focal length. Is that really necessary for the traditional shooter? I'm hoping it will be a dial approach that will allow odd focal length and not just the usual lengths. What comes to mind are lenses like Tair-11 at 133mm.

[kenetik]

I agree, mflensers are a small group of users overall. That Sony antishake thing is very cool if you watch the video, as to who it is being marketed to, it works for everyone, especially for video. I know in the past, for NEX, Sony put stabilization in the lenses but third party lenses like Zeiss and Sigma didn't have it, so this would be appealing in that situation as well.

And if I am not mistaken, Zeiss is making mflenses in Sony mount today.

[luisalegria]

I wonder how may A7's Sony has sold.

Going by how many have completed sales on ebay - @120 units on US ebay in the last month vs
@200 Canon 6D

And @500+ Canon 60D

@750+ Sony Nex

Its a fairly niche market even in the rather exotic region of ebay.
Ordinary consumers dont buy this sort of stuff on ebay, only the collectors, aficionados, thrill-seekers, confident bargain hunters and the like, just the sort of people willing to stick a 50 year old lens on a digital camera, so the sample is very skewed.

But even skewed as it is the A7 isn't all that popular.

[dan_]

This forum has ~8500 members and there are not so many other MF lenses fans forums. How many MF lenses fans do you know in your area? In my town, of ~ 400,000 inhabitants, I've only spoken with one other MF lenses fan (not a real MF fan, just an Yashica fan, but it counts) and I have never seen on the streets someone else using vintage MF lenses with a modern camera. None of the professional photographers I personally know in my area has any interest in vintage MF lenses.
How great could be the whole MF lenses fans number? 5 to 10 times bigger than the number of members here?
Then we probably are a tiny market of 50,000 to 100,000.

[woodrim]

[Oldhand]

[woodrim]

The casual P&S user, even if they're using DSLR, won't be interested. As I said earlier, I do believe it is a certain type person/personality that does this. Someone who is intrigued by it, someone that loves to fiddle with things, solve problems, and pretty much be different. Us.

[woodrim]

Oh, I forgot, you know what is even more unusual? The few women that are on here. Talk about minuscule - the female that does this is a rare bird indeed. Call it sexist, I don't care, but I'm always impressed when I see a woman in here.

[JJB]

I have enjoyed photography since I was a teenager but the increasing automation of the process increasingly left me disenchanted. These days with a smart phone or a relatively cheap digital P&S, anyone can take a good picture but you need more to aspire to great pictures. Scrolling through endless menus or ceding control to the camera was divorcing me from the process. With the rediscovery of the manipulation and choice of manual lenses, I find myself reconnected to the process and seeing the world differently. I am attentive to small moments of beauty every day that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Whether I can capture them to my satisfaction is another matter entirely. But it makes the successes more rewarding and I feel like I can move past the generic.

So I would say selective and discerning. I'm glad I found this place.

[kenetik]