The camera market is in a difficult position: Supply cannot meet demand

2020 and early 2021 must be said to be very difficult times for the camera market due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. Due to the quarantine order, many people do not have the opportunity to take pictures, so there is no need to buy new equipment, or simply because the economy is affected, so people do not have the financial resources to do it. But by the second half of 2021, the photo market is facing a completely opposite situation: user demand has returned, but the supply capacity of manufacturers cannot meet it.

The explanation for this phenomenon is the global shortage of chips. The likes of Apple, Audi and Sony are all said to be short of products to sell because there are no chips to produce. In the camera market, the likes of Fuji with the GFX100S, Canon with the EOS R5 and Sony’s Alpha 1 series are all hot products but have a shortage of goods to sell. There are a few exceptions like the Sony ZV-E10, experts say that this machine has “recycled” some of the components produced by the Japanese electronics company before so it is not affected much.

This is a big deal for all manufacturers, but no one seems to want to talk about it. Photo industry site Petapixel has contacted all of the camera manufacturers to discuss the matter, all of whom declined to comment. Even the big distributors don’t want to comment, all seem to want to ignore it as if nothing happened.

Fortunately, one person spoke up, it was the manager of the Forth Worth Camera store in Texas, Mr. MacKenzie Hughes. “The supply is very erratic, sometimes we receive a large shipment of Tamron lenses and other times none at all. Canon does the same thing, sometimes there is a shipment but then there is no more. All the carriers still don’t stop shipping products, but not regularly.”

It can be said that the camera market is in a difficult position, like an animal caught in a trap. After years of struggling with customer demand, by the time many people had money to spend on new products, the market failed to take advantage of the opportunity to gain momentum. Mr Hughes shared:

“Demand to buy cameras is really high, and a part of people know that there is a shortage going on. The same situation is happening in the printing industry, when photographic chemicals and paper are in short supply. .”

“The demand for digital cameras today is probably even greater than when this type of camera was invented. Many people even put down large sums of money to secure a place to buy new cameras, up to $3000 for each camera. an EOS R3. One even paid up to 10 Nikon Z9s yesterday, although no one knows how much the camera will cost.”

“There’s luck in misfortune” for small stores like Fort Worth Camera. According to Mr. Hughes, because cameras have become scarce, many people want to buy directly at physical stores instead of waiting for them to be available at major online stores. “You still can’t buy the camera you want right away, but at least you can talk directly to the store staff and put down a deposit to wait for them to arrive.”

He also said that the fact that photographic products are in a rare condition is not only due to chip problems. There are many other reasons, including transportation problems when the transport industry has not fully recovered: “There are still a lot of shipping boats parked at the berths and not in operation”.

The difficulty of the camera market will not end overnight, as technology experts say that the chip shortage will not start to be resolved until next year.

Photo in article taken by Ted Forbes at the Fort Worth Camera store