Digital Cameras

Digital camera sales are in steep decline, with the market size having dropped by 84% between 2010 and 2018.

The switch to smartphone cameras has meant that producers of standalone cameras have focused more and more on high-end models aimed at professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts (the blurring of the distinction has led to the portmanteau ‘prosumer’ – between professional and consumer).

In recent years, however, even sales of premium cameras have declined. The rate of innovation has plateaued, with new features more abstruse and less groundbreaking, and many photographers are happy to buy second hand or to keep using the camera they have already.

The ongoing trade dispute between China and the US has also impacted sales due to additional tariffs applied to Chinese manufactured devices.

Nevertheless, while some of the more niche brands have fallen away, many of the major players are going strong; not least because they are active in many other sectors. As always, the camera industry is heavily dominated by Japan, with eight of the eleven companies rated in this guide headquartered there.

Lens of the rising sun

Japanese dominance in the camera industry dates back to World War II, when the country’s military relied on optical apparatus and great advances were made in optical glass manufacturing.

After the war, Japan’s economy recovered quicker than Germany’s allowing Japanese camera companies to gain the upper hand over the German manufacturers who had dominated the camera market before the war.

The digital camera industry is subject to the same ethical problems as the electronics industry as a whole, including exploitative labour practices, use of conflict minerals and resource consumption. In addition, there are also links to the hunting and surveillance industries.

Table highlights

Workers’ rights in the supply chain Workers’ rights violations are endemic in electronics supply chains, where intensive manufacturing in countries with little protection leads to exploitative practices.

Compared with some other mass-produced electronic devices such as smartphones, digital camera producers typically carry out more of the manufacturing and final assembly ‘in-house’ rather than outsourcing to other companies, although many companies do own manufacturing plants in countries known for cheap labour such as China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Complex electronic devices require a myriad of materials and components and this necessitates a large supply chain.

The companies assessed in this guide were found to be behind the curve on Supply Chain Management, with every company receiving our worst rating except Panasonic, which received a middle rating.

Conflict minerals

As with all manufacturers of electronic devices, Ethical Consumer expected camera companies to have a strong policy on the sourcing of conflict minerals.

Again, many of the companies assessed were found to be lacking in this area – Sony received our best rating; every other company was rated worst.

Toxics

As discussed in our guide to TVs on page 28 electronic devces typically contain a number of chemicals known to be toxic to humans and the environment. Only Samsung and Sony in this guide received our middle rating for toxics, every other company was rated worst.

Compact, mirrorless or DSLR?

Compact or ‘point-and-shoot’ cameras have typically been the most popular type for consumers; cheaper and small with an in-built lens, but the rise of the camera phone has diminished their usefulness.

Digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) and mirrorless are two types of interchangeable lens camera, meaning a range of different lenses can be fitted.

 DSLRs are typically bulkier, which makes them more cumbersome but allows them to fit more batteries in and last longer. They were once the only choice for professional photographers, but mirrorless cameras now offer similar levels of quality.

Links to state surveillance

As sales in personal cameras have plummeted, many of the larger photography companies have found a lifeline through applying their imaging expertise in other areas. One such area has been the medical imaging industry, but another is the rapidly growing market for video surveillance – part of the global expansion of mass surveillance which threatens civil liberties and human rights around the world.

Seven out of the eleven companies rated in this guide manufacture CCTV cameras and other surveillance equipment.

CCTV manufacturers

• Canon/Axis
• Fujifilm
• Ricoh
• Nikon
• Samsung
• Panasonic
• Sony

The latest to enter this market is Fujifilm, which released its first surveillance camera in early 2019 with the boast of being capable of reading a car’s licence plate at a distance of 1km. Canon’s subsidiary Axis Communications is one of the global market leaders in CCTV, and supplies governments around the world.

In recent decades, the huge growth in video surveillance in both public and private spaces has started to be combined with smart technologies such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence systems.

In the UK, law enforcement and private corporations have come under criticism for rolling them out, which campaigners say constitute “a threat to our privacy, freedom of expression, and right of association”. In September 2019, a UK high court found that South Wales Police’s use of automated facial recognition (AFR) was ‘consistent with the requirements of the Human Rights Act’ following a legal challenge supported by the campaign group Liberty.

The use of facial recognition is similarly expanding in the US, where it has been used to identify protesters in the city of Baltimore.

China’s ‘homeland security’

In China, a massive camera network known as ‘Skynet Project’, deploying more than 170 million cameras across the country, forms part of an aggressive policy of mass surveillance over the entire population.

Facial recognition technology has been used as part of an oppressive  crackdown on ethnic Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, in the Xinjiang region, where an estimated 1 million Uyghurs have been held in internment camps and subject to a program of ‘re-education’ that includes mandatory recitals of Communist Party political songs and speeches. This has been facilitated by a sophisticated surveillance network used by the government to identify and track any individual they believe to be a threat.

Hikvision, a Chinese CCTV company with close ties to the government, has profited through the design and implementation of this system of repression, and has even marketed a facial recognition camera that automatically identified individuals of the Uyghur ethnicity.

Hikvision does not feature in this guide since it does not sell cameras for photography, but it does sell CCTV cameras in the UK and US. The presence of Hikvison cameras in US government buildings has been called a threat to national security due to the US-China trade dispute.

Panasonic, Samsung and Sony were also listed as foreign-based suppliers to the Chinese ‘Homeland Security and Public Safety’ market in a recent market research report.