A class that used to be built around tiny sensors has outgrown its original meaning as the smartphone pushed it into niches
Compact cameras used to dominate the market. Every manufacturer made tens of new models each year, typically differentiated by pixel count, zoom range and screen size. Plus, usually, a single model with a tunnel viewfinder for the “no viewfinder, no sale” faction, which almost nobody bought.
They were a huge part of the camera market: twenty years ago, compact cameras made up 88% of Canon’s unit sales.
You might have noticed that this is no longer the case. Smartphones obliterated the mass-market compact camera, initially through convenience and then increasingly by combining multiple exposures to surpass small-sensor compacts in terms of image quality, too.
But there’s been an unexpected consequence of the death of the mainstream compact: the remaining models are the ones that aren’t compact.
This has left us in an awkward position. We always used the term ‘compact’ to mean any camera on which you couldn’t change lenses because, with very few exceptions, they were the small ones. But, now that the mainstream compact has died, we’re instead left with the more ambitious models, the ones whose larger sensors and longer lenses continue to offer things that smartphones don’t. The Panasonic L10 isn’t especially compact, the Sony RX10 V won’t fit in most pockets, the Fujifilm X100 series is almost as large as the rangefinder cameras it mimics and then there’s the Fujifilm GFX100RF.
All of them ‘compacts’ by our standard. None of them particularly compact.
We can’t call them point-and-shoots, because the models that survived are precisely the ones that you do more than simply frame and click with. We can’t call them fixed-lens cameras, partly because it’s just not a phrase we’ve ever heard anybody use, and also because it can be misunderstood as meaning ‘camera with a fixed focal-length lens.’
So what do we do? Is it really worth trying to come up with a new term, to describe what it ultimately a handful of niche products? Or do we just accept that progress has caught us out again, and that most attempts to arrange cameras (or the world) are imperfect, and prone to their original meaning being outpaced by history?
Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.
