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Photographers see AI as a threat. But Japan's biggest camera makers agree on an entirely different trend - and it could shift the future of cameras. Published 5 hours ago In a recent interview, Canon, Sony, Nikon, and Fujifilm all agreed that the experience of shooting with a dedicated camera is becoming increasingly important The growth of AI has been met with trepidation among the creative community - but Japan's biggest camera makers agree that AI-generated content is sparking an entirely different trend: the growth of the dedicated camera and a shift towards prioritizing the experience of photography over technical specifications. Japanese business publication Nikkei Shimbun recently interviewed executives from Canon, Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm. Despite discussing camera trends with four competing brands, there's an overarching trend that Japan's biggest camera makers seem to agree on. Camera makers believe that the rise of AI-generated content, along with trends towards a more retro film-like look, is actually driving more people to pick up a dedicated camera over simply shooting with a smartphone. The camera market saw healthy growth last year, but the biggest growth was in the fixed-lens compact category, which rose nearly 30 percent. But with AI slop driving more people to pick up dedicated cameras, the reason behind choosing a certain camera is also shifting. The experience that a camera offers is becoming increasingly important in the era of AI and smartphones. Camera makers are seeing an increased priority on the physical controls and the style of the camera. Casual photographers shifting from a smartphone are often looking for a camera that's more fun to shoot with - and the design and physical controls are a big part of that. The rise of screen-free cameras is a key example of this trend, along with the continued rise in retro cameras. Generated content is known for being overly perfect and inauthentic, and that's creating a push towards a more traditional camera experience, both in the camera's design and the look and feel of the images. More and more camera makers seem to be pushing the in-camera colors through film simulations, photo styles, and in-camera LUTs. Camera makers have long been engaged in the megapixel race and the push to beat out competitors' specifications. Manufacturers aren't dropping out of this race anytime soon, not for pro models geared towards serious photographers. The best camera deals, reviews, product advice, and unmissable photography news, direct to your inbox!

Canon, Nikon, Sony, and FUJIFILM on the future of cameras - video, shared platforms and AI. Four of the people who decide what its next cameras look like have sat down with the same Japanese newspaper, and they did not give the same answer. Canon wants to sell style and feel alongside performance, Nikon is putting its money into processors, sensors and video cameras, Sony talks about digital twins, and FUJIFILM bets on dials and film color. Read from a filmmaker's seat, the most interesting part is how much of it is about video. The interviews were published by Nikkei under a headline that translates roughly as "Cameras in the AI era: competition moves from specs to experience". The publication spoke to Go Tokura, Executive Vice President and head of Canon's Imaging Group, Hiroyuki Ikegami, Senior Executive Vice President and head of Nikon's Imaging Business Group, Kenji Tanaka, who ran Sony's camera business before becoming President and CEO of Sony Corporation in April, and Kouji Matsumoto, Corporate Vice President at FUJIFILM. The piece is in Japanese and behind a paywall, so all quotes below are translations. Nikon puts video on its investment shortlist. For CineD, Nikon's statement is the clearest. According to Nikkei, Ikegami-san says the company is focusing its investment on three things: next-generation image-processing engines, image sensors, and video cameras. He also describes a plan to build an engine and software platform that can be dropped into a range of different products. That lines up with what Nikon told investors in May, when its Medium-Term Management Plan spoke of a full entry into the cinema market. It also fits the product trail CineD has followed since the RED acquisition: the Nikon ZR, the NIKKOR Z CINEMA lens development announcement and, most recently, N-RAW in the $1,399 Z5IIC. A shared platform is the logical next step if one RAW family and one color pipeline are supposed to run from an entry body up to a RED. Ikegami-san is also candid about the cost of that approach. "It is taking a bit of time to cascade the features of our flagship Z9 down to lower-end models," he says, adding that completing a lineup from high-end to low-end pulls the average selling price down. He frames the dedicated camera as a "smartphone + 1" device, something people carry in addition to the phone rather than instead of it. What CineD do not get is a timeline. Nothing in the interview says when the new processor arrives or which camera gets it first. As CineD all are aware of, Nikon's software pace has not always matched its hardware ambitions. ZR owners know it well. Canon: more V Series, and lenses built for both jobs. Tokura-san's starting point is the compact camera boom. "Young people are driving the current growth of compact digital cameras," he tells Nikkei. "They certainly aren't buying them just because of high performance or image quality; they enjoy the shooting experience itself, even if it comes with some minor inconveniences." Canon's lineup, he says, has so far been organized around performance and price, and now needs style and feel woven in. The part that matters for video shooters follows from that. Canon intends to expand its video-oriented V Series, the line that so far includes the PowerShot V1 and EOS R50 V, and to add more video-oriented lenses that remain useful for stills. Seen next to the EOS C50 and the recent EOS R8 Mark II, this reads like a company separating its photo-first and video-first products more clearly instead of asking one body to do everything. There is a commercial reason behind the tone. As CineD wrote when looking at Canon's numbers in Canon's Cameras Are Printing Money Again, compacts are currently doing a lot of the heavy lifting. A "V Series" that grows upward would give those buyers somewhere to go that is not a Cinema EOS body. Sony thinks beyond the camera. Tanaka-san's answers are the least about cameras as products. He describes what Sony calls spatial AI: "capturing the physical world using image sensors to create a digital twin, wherein we can make reality more attractive or simulate different ways of presenting it." Alpha, in this picture, is one input device in an entertainment business that also includes film, music, and games. He stretches the word creator accordingly. "Anyone who creates something and inspires emotion is a creator. This includes not only photographers and film directors, but also dancers, musicians, and athletes." It is a big-picture answer, and it comes from the person who now runs Sony Corporation, not only its camera division. It says little about the questions Cinema Line users are asking this autumn, with the Sony FX5 still not in customers' hands. But it does explain why Sony keeps investing in volumetric capture, virtual production and sensor technology at the same time: for Sony, the sensor is the business, and the camera is one of several places it ends up. FUJIFILM stays analog at heart. Matsumoto-san gives the most conservative answer on AI, and probably the most popular one. "AI can generate images, but only humans possess the subjective sense of feeling, 'This is real,'" he says. FUJIFILM's pitch is the physical experience: "Finding affection in the tactile, analog feel of turning dials or enjoying the distinct color tones of film photography is only possible thanks to our accumulated camera technology." For filmmakers, that philosophy already has a product attached. The GFX ETERNA 55 leans on exactly this heritage of film stocks and color science, and the Film Simulations are a workflow argument as much as a nostalgic one, because a look that works straight out of camera saves time in post. What this means for video shooters. Put the four answers side by side, and one thing stands out: none of these executives talk about megapixels or burst rates. Two of them, Canon and Nikon, name video explicitly as where the investment goes. That is consistent with the shipment data, where mirrorless units are roughly flat while value rises (see its piece on the CIPA first-half numbers), and where growth has to come from somewhere other than selling stills photographers one more body. "Experience" is a comfortable word for a manufacturer, because it cannot be measured in a lab the way rolling shutter or dynamic range can. A shared platform across a whole lineup, as Nikon describes it, saves development cost, but it only helps users if features arrive in the cheaper bodies quickly, and Ikegami-san himself admits that this has been slow. And as far as the interviews go, nobody addresses what working shooters complain about most this year: prices, memory costs and delivery times. Whose answer is closest to what you want from your next camera: Nikon's video-first investment, Canon's V Series, Sony's spatial AI, or FUJIFILM's dials and film color? Let CineD know in the comments below!