Is Every Snap a Photo?

Digital has expanded photography's definition and market

Every time I see your face, it reminds me of the places
We used to go
But all I've got is a photograph, and I realize you're not
Comin' back anymore

Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Three, Issue 26

Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in Pentax Forums.

The Sunday Reader, Dec 15, 2024

It was Christmas inside Costco, even though outside it was still August in Texas and slightly hotter than the surface of the sun. Among the giant artificial Christmas trees and lawn reindeer large enough to drag your house like a sled stood a display of special Lego kits released for the holiday season.

Now I don’t know how Christmas presents work in your family, but in my family, they are only slightly less planned and organized than the D-Day invasion of Europe. There’s coordination of who buys what for which child, what presents are stored away until a certain child is old enough, tracking who likes dinosaurs and who has switched to Star Wars…

I’m way too old and wily to get involved in all this. So I did what I always do: I pulled out my cell phone, snapped images showing all the available kits and their prices, and then sent everything to the Committee to Make Sure Christmas is Perfect in Every Way.

I’ve never thought of images like that as photos. I’ve always thought of them as notes.

My elderly mother gets all sorts of medical and retirement paperwork, which I’m always worried about losing. So I pull out my cell phone, snap images of those documents, then file the snaps in a cloud folder so I can find them when I need them.

More notes, no?

I’m not the only one who does this, but I’m something of an oddity because I started doing photo notes back in the film days. At the newspapers where I worked dozens of rolls were processed at a time, and it would have been a nightmare trying to tell apart all the different high school baseball games during the season. So each of us carried a card with our name in block letters and religiously followed a reloading routine: as soon as the new roll was loaded I’d drop my FEOLA card on the ground and photograph it two or three times.

I soon started doing it for everything. Check presentation? Grab a photo of the check. Award? Take a picture of the certificate, and be sure you have the correct names and spellings and organizations. Daily newspapers processed film immediately, so my “notes” were ready and readable by the time I sat down to write each night.

By the time digital rolled around using my camera to take notes was simply my habit.

Turns out I’m not the only one.

People take pictures with cameras that are kind of memos, Pentax Division General Manager Tomoki Tanaka said during a recent interview. We believe people want to take pictures, not memos.

Photo notes, memos – what does it matter? Is this one of those endless, pointless debates like Is Photography Art?

Not when it comes to discussions of the photography business. One of the key data points to understanding any business is the size of the market. It is certainly true that smartphones are used to take the majority of photos today. But that is at least partly true because digital cameras have vastly increased the size of the photography market. Because that’s the story of photography: each jump forward in technology has expanded the way cameras are used and the number of photographs taken.

No one smiles in Daguerreotypes

People smiled and laughed during the 19^th Century, but you’d never know it from the early Daguerreotypes. It’s not that smiling hadn’t been invented; it’s that early photography portraiture replicated the practices of the painters of the day. An important person or family might have a handful of portraits done during a lifetime. Naturally, these were seen as serious, formal occasions. And it didn’t help that the long Daguerreotype exposure times meant that holding any type of pose was painful.

Yet the slow Daguerreotype process was lightning fast – and cheap! – compared to sitting for weeks or months while a painter created a portrait. So portraits became much more common.

Then came film. And George Eastman, and his Kodak Moments.

Enter the snapshot! And the accompanying exponential increase in photography.

But the snapshot did not put an end to portraiture, which continued to specialize in formal occasions such as weddings and school photos.

Digital has likewise expanded photography with notes and memos, daily meal and outfit diaries, and a thousand other types of images that make sense now that you’re seeing the image instantly rather than waiting a couple of weeks.

So what’s the winning strategy for a camera company in such a market?

Ricoh Imaging piles up wins

Ricoh has struggled along with other office equipment companies this decade because of the work-from-home boom. But at the same time, the parent company has consistently singled out Ricoh Imaging as a bright spot for sales and profitability. Ricoh’s latest report, issued November 8 for the half-year ending September 30, is even more effusive. The camera business performed well due to the contribution of new products, resulting in increased revenue and profit.

New products introduced during the half-year include:

• Pentax AF180FG flash

• Ricoh G900 II, Ricoh G900SE II

• Pentax 17

• Pentax WG-8, WG-1000

• Ricoh GR III HDF, Ricoh GR IIIx HDF

Ricoh does not break down sales by department, never mind by product. So how can we tell what is working?

One thing economists look at is price signaling. The law of supply and demand dictates price. Products with less demand need to lower prices to increase sales; products that are in high demand do not. Economists actually argue that products that are in high demand – back-ordered, or with waiting lists – should raise prices to balance things out, but there are a whole range of business reasons why companies don’t like to do that.

So let’s take a look at the pricing history of some of Ricoh Imaging’s products. The K-1 II was introduced in 2018 for $1,999, which has fallen 20 percent to today’s average price of $1,596.

The Pentax K-3 III also followed this pattern, introduced in 2021 for $1,996.95. That’s fallen 18 percent to today’s average price of $1,657.

Now let’s take a look at some of the newer cameras. The Pentax 17 half-frame 35mm film camera was introduced this summer for $499.95. And after 6 months of sales, the price at B&H Photo has fallen all the way to…$496.95.

But the 17 has only been around for six months. How about the Pentax K-3 III Monochrome, which costs almost five times as much and has been around longer? The Monochrome was released for $2,199.95 during the summer of 2023, and after 18 months of sales, its price has also fallen $3 to $2,196.95 at both B&H Photo and Adorama.

And then there’s the Ricoh GR III. Introduced in 2019 for $899.95. Five years later you can get one from B&H for $966.95.

Pentax's "workingman's Leica" strategy

Ricoh Imaging has staked out a strategy that mirrors Leica’s, albeit at a much lower price point. Consider:

1. Both companies have flagship product lines that stubbornly cling to systems “outmoded” by mirrorless designs: Leica’s M Series still uses the coupled-rangefinders it perfected half a century ago, while Pentax stands fast with the Single Lens Reflexes (SLRs) that dethroned those rangefinder decades ago, led by, ironically, the Pentax Spotmatic.

2. Both now offer unique black-and-white-only models that sell for more than their color counterparts:

   • The Leica M11 Monochrom, the only black-and-white rangefinder

   • The Leica Q2 Monochrom, the only black-and-white fixed-lens compact

   • The Pentax K-3 III Monochrome, the only production black-and-white DSLR

3. Both offer compacts that are so wildly popular that they are often on backorder: The Q3 for Leica, and the GRIII for Ricoh Imaging

4. Both companies have returned to film. Lecia is selling M6 35mm film cameras as fast as it can make them. The Pentax 17 half-frame is also a hit worldwide.

And while Ricoh Imaging has been following in Leica’s wake, Leica has now returned the compliment. The latest Leica is the Q3 43, which is a Q3 with a fixed 43mm F2 Apo-Summicron lens in place of the regular Q3’s fixed 28mm f/1.7 Summilux Aspherical optic. In other words, the Q3 43 is to the Q3 as the Ricoh GR IIIx with its 40mm equivalent lens is to the original GR III with its 28mm equivalent optic.

Ricoh’s long-term growth strategy

So if the overall photography market is expanding, and Ricoh Imaging has a growing set of profitable products, what’s their long-term strategy?

Consider this first: What upgrades could Ricoh add to the K-1 to make it a sales hit like the K-3 III Monochrome, the GR III, and the Pentax 17? What would bring in new customers?

More megapixels? Faster autofocus? Even if a K-1 III becomes king of the tech hill, it won’t stay there. Tech progress is relentless; every leader is soon leapfrogged. None of that will get photographers to dump other systems and switch to Pentax.

That’s why I don’t think there will be a K-1 III. Instead, I think there will be three K-1s.

It’s important to note that I don’t have any insider information here. It just seems obvious that Ricoh is heading toward its own version of what Leica has staked out: a single system that covers all photography media. A Leica photographer can carry a single bag filled with M lenses that fit an M11 digital color camera, an M11 Monochrome digital black-and-white camera, and an M6 35mm film camera.

Three media. One set of lenses.

And that’s where I think Ricoh wants to go: An updated K-1 C digital color DSLR. A K-1 F 35mm film SLR. And finally a K-1 M digital monochrome DSLR.

Three media. One set of K Mount lenses.