About the death of Point & Shoot cameras I would say a thing…

Yesterday Petapixel published: Point and Shoot Cameras are Basically Dead. I would express my ideas…

First of all, as you know, I love the point & shoot cameras. i love the concept and the idea to have a camera that falls into a pocket. Second thing: the point & shoot cameras are not born with digital. And there are extraordinary photographers who have used and use them: Daido Moriyama and Claude Nori the first names coming to my mind.

Currently I have 2 film Olympus P&S cameras: Olympus Stylus Infinity and Olympus Trip 505. In the past in digital I worked with 4 fantastic Point & Shoot: Panasonic Lumix LX3, Canon G12, Leica X2 and Ricoh GRD IV. I have worked with these cameras for both street photography and client commissioned work. In particular most of the MEXICANA work was realized with the Leica X2 that is a point & shoot camera with an APS-C sensor. Ricoh GR is a lucky series, which counts with absolute respect of most street photographers worldwide.

If the article by PetaPixel still leaves a chance to compact cameras I happened to read some celebrations, with comments like that the “point & shoot” would not be real cameras (forgetting at least three decades of photography history) and with iphone you can do something better than with P&S. Let me say that I have an iPhone but I just can't consider it for photography. Just the feeling of holding a phone so thin it doesn't fit with me when it comes to photography. And guys, I am not that kind of photographer in need to frame all the time through a viewfinder.

I know that the trend today is to want to cancel everything. They are burning books and entire cultures. But I don't see anything positive about it. Moreover, it already goes against the trend right now in Japan where amateurs are looking for and buying old compact cameras with the CCD sensor, because you consider the "new" analog, by virtue of a different and more filmy aesthetic response respect to the CMOS sensor.

I argue that there is still reason to produce compacts, perhaps aiming for a more intelligent and niche-oriented strategy in favor of a certain type of photographers, and in this Ricoh is the absolute leader. Have you ever tried to pull a compact out of your jacket and shoot?