Another Good Enough Point
A few months back, we commented on the concept of the "Good Enough" point -- when the state of development of a technology is far enough long that it satisfies a broad range of needs and further differentiation becomes more about marketing and fashion instead of technology. Our previous article discussed iPods and MP3 players, but we now seem to be approaching a similar point with cell phone cameras.
As reported yesterday by Poynter's E-Media Tidbits, Sweden's second largest daily (the Göteborgs-Posten, where as it turns out, one of my in-laws works) published its first cell phone camera picture. The reporter beat the photographer to the scene and took a picture with his cell phone. The picture itself can be viewed here.
In today's E-Media Tidbits, Göteborgs-Posten's Johan Boström raises the core issue faced by newspapers given the progress of technology:
With 17 photographers and more than 150 reporters, it's more likely that the first G-P journalist arriving at the spot is a reporter. If the reporter carries a small digital camera, inside a mobile phone or not, the chances to get a complete story are better. We have experienced this many times and today the rule is: the best photo wins.
Ebay started the assault on newspapers by chipping away at one of the primary revenue streams -- classified ads. Then blogs made it very easy for anyone to publish regular daily content. Now with cell phones turning everyone into photographers, it continues to be rough times for newspaper publishers.
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Since I had been mobloging most of the day, when I came across this article naturally I was interested. I guess this will start a new trend, just as the camcorder did. From VentureBlog: Another Good Enough Point A few Read More
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Andrew Anker at VentureBlog suggests in Accelerating Acceleration that technology adoption life cycles are compressing. Alex Pang at FutureBlog summarizes the points: -The product uptake curve is accelerating -The laggard market is disappearing -New pr... Read More
Andrew Anker at VentureBlog suggests in Accelerating Acceleration that technology adoption life cycles are compressing. Alex Pang at FutureBlog summarizes the points: -The product uptake curve is accelerating -The laggard market is disappearing -New pr... Read More
Andrew Anker at VentureBlog suggests in Accelerating Acceleration that technology adoption life cycles are compressing. Alex Pang at FutureBlog summarizes the points: -The product uptake curve is accelerating -The laggard market is disappearing -New pr... Read More
I am all for cameras. However, the key phrase here is "best photo". Perhaps for some traffic accidents and other quickly happenning events the first photo is the best photo; however, for most events another ten minutes are not going to make the difference, but a professional photographer's skills would. More importantly, let's not be blinded by the size of the camera in question. There was nothing preventing the same reporter from using a small or not-so-small digital camera on the scene for the last couple of years. And before that there was nothing preventing a reporter from using a regular film camera either. So the news seems to be only that the photo was taken with a small cell-phone based camera. That, IMO, is hardly real news.
That said, it would be more interesting, and perhaps threatening to staff photographers if the picture was taken, transmitted and published before the photographer arrived on the scene. I am sure this will happen soon, but as the emphasis remains on getting the best photograph, a good newspaper photographer has a while left in the newsroom.
BTW, there is another "good enough" point happenning to larger digital cameras right now -- Canon just announced a new digital SLR - 300D - that is beased on the low-end Canon Rebel body and will retail for $899. This is a new record for a full-featured figital SLR with an awesome (resolution and quality-wise) 6.3 megapixel CMOS sensor. Canon already pushed the pro prices down with the Canon 10D selling for $1,500; and now it is offerring a credible, and the only exisintg alternative to the all-in-one prosumer segment. Sadly, a lot of the feature differences between the 10D and the new 300D are actually artificial, created by disabling some software inside the camera. I wonder if anyone, and how soon, will re-enable them.