# Camera ownership on Flickr: 2013-2014



## sparda79 (Jan 13, 2015)

It's interesting to see that Canon still leads the number of flickr user and 5D Mark III is the only full frame in top 10 Cameras Overall.
*
SOURCE*





Top 5 brands on Flickr, 2013-14 by Matthew Almon Roth, on Flickr




Top cameras overall on Flickr, 2013-2014 by Matthew Almon Roth, on Flickr




Top DSLRs on Flickr, 2013-2014 by Matthew Almon Roth, on Flickr


----------



## Diko (Jan 13, 2015)

"Lead" would not be the exact word to use... Quite little difference/distance in the DSRL table.


----------



## lintoni (Jan 13, 2015)

The EOS 6D is also full frame - so the only full frames are Canon.


----------



## rporterfield (Jan 14, 2015)

I'm seeing the 6d at number 10. Last time I checked, it was full frame.


----------



## ajfotofilmagem (Jan 14, 2015)

It is interesting to note that between 2013 and 2014, Nikon lost second place to Iphones...
Sony lost fourth place to Samsung (Galaxy?).


----------



## old-pr-pix (Jan 14, 2015)

Aren't T3i and 600D the same camera just sold in different parts of the world? Adding their % together would move them to the #1 spot on the DSLR list by a fair amount. I assume there is a time factor also associated with this listing... models that have been on the market longer naturally will tend to have more occurrences.


----------



## ajfotofilmagem (Jan 14, 2015)

old-pr-pix said:


> Aren't T3i and 600D the same camera just sold in different parts of the world? Adding their % together would move them to the #1 spot on the DSLR list by a fair amount. I assume there is a time factor also associated with this listing... models that have been on the market longer naturally will tend to have more occurrences.


Good point. Newer models will only have a great participation on Flickr after 1 or 2 years.

In the DSLR category, Canon T3i (also called 600D) reaches the top of the list, when considered to be the same camera model.


----------



## Tinky (Jan 14, 2015)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> Good point. Newer models will only have a great participation on Flickr after 1 or 2 years.



Will anybody be using flickr in 1 or 2 years from now? I dip in occasssionally nowadays if I'm researching potential locations, don't really post so much or contribute to forums nowadays tbh.


----------



## preppyak (Jan 14, 2015)

Tinky said:


> Will anybody be using flickr in 1 or 2 years from now?


Yes, for the same reason Myspace still exists and old photo sites like Photobucket, etc exist. People have TB upon TB stored there, it will survive for that reason alone.


----------



## Khufu (Jan 14, 2015)

Tinky said:


> ajfotofilmagem said:
> 
> 
> > Good point. Newer models will only have a great participation on Flickr after 1 or 2 years.
> ...



I think Flickr lost a lot (A LOT) of dSLR users when they saturated the environment with camera-phone shooters a little while back. It was around the time Instagramme or whatever refreshed its T&Cs and the world got in a pissy over them claiming too many commercial rights etc over people's uploaded photos - Yahoo overhauled Flickr in no time to accommodate the Social-media-socialites and the regulars were faced with a bit of a wtf?/cba situation. I used to really enjoy using Flickr when I was getting to grips with the 60D and legacy lenses... joining the "100 Strangers" project and Daily 50mm Challenge type groups was awesome fun and super productive! I'd actually recommend such challenges to a lot of Business/Professionals and rich twonks who've never really learnt to shoot properly before investing or setting up business... 

Just thinking about it I'm actually feeling mildly inspired to find new/old groups to join in the fun again with!

Also, I think I strayed a little prior to the above events when I started approaching the old upload limit for free accounts - I believe that's gone now though! I might have a nose around and see how I feel about it's present-day user experience...

Also, also, also... yeah, they count the Rebels/XXXDs separately. I remember that coming up in the past and concluding Canon are actually way on top of all those Nikon sales


----------



## sparda79 (Jan 14, 2015)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> old-pr-pix said:
> 
> 
> > Aren't T3i and 600D the same camera just sold in different parts of the world? Adding their % together would move them to the #1 spot on the DSLR list by a fair amount. I assume there is a time factor also associated with this listing... models that have been on the market longer naturally will tend to have more occurrences.
> ...





Khufu said:


> Also, also, also... yeah, they count the Rebels/XXXDs separately. I remember that coming up in the past and concluding Canon are actually way on top of all those Nikon sales



They do clarify that at the bottom of the post:

*"Why do cameras appear twice in the top 10? Our tools for labeling cameras do not currently automatically group the same hardware with different regional names (e.g.Canon 600D/T3i). This is something that we are hoping to address soon."*


----------



## Khufu (Jan 14, 2015)

> They do clarify that at the bottom of the post:
> 
> *"Why do cameras appear twice in the top 10? Our tools for labeling cameras do not currently automatically group the same hardware with different regional names (e.g.Canon 600D/T3i). This is something that we are hoping to address soon."*


Heh, well it's a year or three since I last checked these stats out and that statement does sound kinda' familiar... 
I guess all this _hope_ that Yahoo invest in their products doesn't always get things done - but it's nice that they're open to trying!


----------



## Mitch.Conner (Jan 14, 2015)

preppyak said:


> Tinky said:
> 
> 
> > Will anybody be using flickr in 1 or 2 years from now?
> ...



Myspace still exists? Holy crap.



lintoni said:


> The EOS 6D is also full frame - so the only full frames are Canon.



Honestly, that surprised me.


----------



## sparda79 (Jan 14, 2015)

Mitch.Conner said:


> lintoni said:
> 
> 
> > The EOS 6D is also full frame - so the only full frames are Canon.
> ...



Is it possible that other brands (Nikon & Sony) having a shorter product cycles being one of the reasons?


----------



## distant.star (Jan 14, 2015)

.
Flickr is a graveyard -- has been for some good time now.

I have no interest in the shovels they are using to dig the graves.

The woman running Yahoo kills everything she touches.


----------



## martti (Jan 14, 2015)

distant.star said:


> .
> Flickr is a graveyard -- has been for some good time now.
> 
> I have no interest in the shovels they are using to dig the graves.
> ...



Fully agree on Wahoo. now, what would be your photographic site of choice?


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 14, 2015)

distant.star said:


> .
> Flickr is a graveyard -- has been for some good time now.
> 
> I have no interest in the shovels they are using to dig the graves.
> ...



Got some real examples, or just feeling a bit misogynistic?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-07/google-loses-most-u-s-search-share-since-2009-while-yahoo-gains.html


----------



## Tinky (Jan 14, 2015)

preppyak said:


> Tinky said:
> 
> 
> > Will anybody be using flickr in 1 or 2 years from now?
> ...



Myspace. Hahaha.

Could have said Geocities.... 

You've missed my point, of course. The world is on facebook, flickr is increasingly an irrelevance. Just an opinion of course.


----------



## martti (Jan 14, 2015)

So Flickr is no good but it is the best there is.
What can we do? I know, we can get outraged about it!
#thatwoman!


----------



## Steve Balcombe (Jan 14, 2015)

distant.star said:


> Flickr is a graveyard -- has been for some good time now.



That really isn't true you know. It achieves that balance between being centred on the photographs while retaining a very important social element better than any other site I know. There are other photo gallery sites, some of them visually very good, but socially they are pretty sterile. There are obviously sites which major on the social side but the photographs come a poor second.

I don't have any actual statistics, but anecdotally I'm seeing people who moved away from Flickr drifting back.


----------



## lintoni (Jan 14, 2015)

dilbert said:


> The interesting numbers are growth from 2013 -> 2014:
> Nikon +0.8%
> Canon +0.4%
> Sony +0.7%
> ...


You _really_ don't have a grasp of how numbers work, do you? 

As there are no absolute numbers given for the size of the sample from which the ratios are derived, to talk of growth is totally erroneous - the sample size could have diminished by half, or conversely it could have doubled. 

Further, the numbers show that Canon has strengthened its position as the most popular camera of Flickr's users.

Now, I'm sure you're not really foolish enough to believe that these numbers are causing any concern, whatsoever, to Canon's executives, so why do you waste your time making such asinine posts?


----------



## old-pr-pix (Jan 15, 2015)

dilbert said:


> The interesting numbers are growth from 2013 -> 2014:
> Nikon +0.8%
> Canon +0.4%
> Sony +0.7%
> ...



What? How do you figure that? These are essentially "usage" measures of Flicker aligned contributors. It says nothing about sales of new models. How do you think the data would look if all the pro sports shooters and all the photojournalists put all their images on Flicker? And then, there is the question of time in market. Older models naturally have more hits. For example, where is 7D II on the list? Is that because it isn't selling well? I don't think so.


----------



## lintoni (Jan 15, 2015)

Absurd.


----------



## Don Haines (Jan 15, 2015)

Wow!

So much wrong on the survey! No idea what the methodology is.... Is it counting by pictures or by owners, what about multiples, why is only 42.1 % of the cameras in the " big 5 ", how many were undetermined, what is the margin of error, what is the sample size, what is the accuracy? 

You can't say anything significant from the results, so why bother reading conclusions from it?


----------



## Roo (Jan 15, 2015)

Don Haines said:


> Wow!
> 
> So much wrong on the survey! No idea what the methodology is.... Is it counting by pictures or by owners, what about multiples, why is only 42.1 % of the cameras in the " big 5 ", how many were undetermined, what is the margin of error, what is the sample size, what is the accuracy?
> 
> You can't say anything significant from the results, so why bother reading conclusions from it?



Agreed. Any conclusions are made on some rather large assumptions.


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 15, 2015)

dilbert said:


> Roo said:
> 
> 
> > Don Haines said:
> ...



Dilbert, since you seem to be sincere on this point I'll try to explain why the data from Flickr are not definitive.

First, the good: they're careful to explain what they counted: "_We estimate camera ownership per-week by only counting a camera once per-account, per-week, to compensate for community members uploading different quantities of photos._" OK, that much is good

Because they use metadata from images, the method has some problems:


They may have more than one camera, e.g. DSLR plus iPhone. We have no idea in what order their cameras were purchased, so we can't infer their "upgrade path."
The photos posted to Flickr may be different from the photos posted on their portfolio site; e.g. SmugMug or Zenfolio, e.g. casual vs. serious photography.
We don't know how may of the counted Flickr accounts are paid vs. free,which would likely correlate the kind of camera used.
We know nothing of how well Flickr users represent the broader "market" of serious photographers: are they the serious ones, or is Flickr just a step up from FaceBook? Certainly there are some great photos on Flickr, but are they the rule or the exception?
In short, the data are "accurate" for Flickr users, but we have almost zero correlation to the greater market due to the confounding factors. I.e., we can't use these data to tell what kinds of cameras people want.



Regarding Amazon: Amazon's sales rankings are hourly (that's a problem); however, when multiple snapshots are taken over time, it can provide a reasonable pictures of Amazon's overall sales, though not perfect.


Though Amazon is not the only online retailer, they're huge.
Amazon's market tends to be the general online-shopping community: there's no reason to believe they're a niche camera retailer, so their sales numbers are likely a good approximation of the purchase habits of the online-purchasing market.
There are probably a good number of people who like to buy local rather than online; I have no idea what fraction they comprise, but I know that a lot of local camera stores have closed over the last decade.
Amazon is not a true global seller, so is best a representative of the U.S., and other markets only to a lesser extent.
Amazon's rankings represents sales of cameras, period. No inference of camera from image.

In short, Flickr can't be used at all to infer what cameras people want and will pay for. Amazon data, though far from perfect, goes some distance to that conclusion.
I hope this helps.


----------



## DominoDude (Jan 15, 2015)

Fully agree with a bunch of you who think before you type.
If the statistics are derived from submitted EXIF information, then it could be skewed because some photographers don't publish their EXIF. If it's based on tags on images, then it can be just as biased.

Plenty of smartphones comes with preinstalled apps that makes it very easy to synchronize the images taken on the phone up to a Flickr-account. In some instances that even takes place on all images taken on the phone, whether you publish them or not. How are those photos counted? With an ordinary dSLR you have to put in some manual labour before your shots gets uploaded and visible to the general public.


----------



## DominoDude (Jan 15, 2015)

I don't think we can draw conclusions about sales numbers or the number of owned photographic devices. Numbers collected are more likely coupled to usage and how that's distributed among the Flickr accounts.

I leave it to lobbyists, politicians and propagandists to wrongfully use statistics. To collect data with one purpose, but trying to apply it to another scenario is more than prone to errors.


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 16, 2015)

dilbert said:


> but if the sample set size from flickr is large enough (for example their entire userbase)


I think this is the problem: for the sample to have any validity at all it needs to be a representative sample. The point I'm making is that, regardless of size, there's insufficient information in Flickr's data collection to infer beyond the Flickr user base.



> So whilst all of the above issues you mention may be in flickr numbers, there is no way to account for them specifically and similarly there is no reason to expect that they would favour or disadvantage


More importantly, though, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't. In order for a statistical sample to be valid, you have to be demonstrably confident that it isn't skewed. While the Flickr survey is interesting for what it is, it simply doesn't contain enough data, and there are too many confounding factors to allow me to exclude the risk of bias to use it to infer camera ownership and/or recent purchase.


----------



## Roo (Jan 16, 2015)

I imagine its easy to skew the numbers on flickr. I shot with 2 different 7Dii cameras at a tennis tournament the other day. Both were supplied to me by CPS while I shot 2 sets for the day. I've posted a few images on flickr while others that were there could post their images from the same cameras and how would that be reported by flickr? My conclusion is that there are no useful conclusions that can be drawn about camera ownership or purchasing from the data. Amazon data is different matter.


----------



## old-pr-pix (Jan 16, 2015)

Seems like most of us are convinced the data is interesting, but *not a forecast of future buying trends*. For those still unconvinced, consider this:
1) Top 5 manufacturers only total 35% (2013) and 42% (2014) and only 3 of the 5 are "camera" companies. Who are the other 60-65%? Must be a whole lot of companies (probably a lot of smartphones?) since they each have to have less than ~2% share (2013). Or, is there 50% of data that the EXIF is missing or can't tell manufacturer? Maybe there are a significant number of scanned film images? That would be a huge bias in the data.
2) This data is still a reflection of how often people post pictures using cameras they bought sometime in the past. Recent models are overwhelmed by the field population (and usage) of long-standing camera models. It doesn't indicate buying preferences for the future. Go back several years in the Flicker data -- could it be used to forecast the onslaught of smartphones when Apple and Samsung were not even reported in the data? Only if you look over several years data can you see the smartphone invasion coming.

At best, a casual look at the data over only two years shows changes in the posting habits of the existing population of cameras/users. Only very sophisticated analysis over several years looking deep into the data and how it is collected could anyone draw any conclusions about future sales trends. And that would require an assumption that technology wouldn't change. Any new innovations would potentially destroy the analysis.


----------



## Don Haines (Jan 16, 2015)

Survey taking is both an art and a science. It is very hard to frame questions properly to avoid bias, and it is very hard to mine an existing pile of randomly collected data for trends.

To have any significance, this survey would have to somehow only look at pictures taken from cameras bought in 2014.... and at that, it would only have significance as a representation of flicker users.... not the general public.

I have no way of verifying this, but my suspicion is that a disproportionately large number of advanced users will both be shooting with a DSLR and that those users will be editing with software like photoshop or lightroom and stripping out the EXIF data.... this would result in an under reporting of "fancy" cameras and a large "unknown" group. This factor alone destroys the accuracy of this survey.


----------



## rfdesigner (Jan 17, 2015)

PropeNonComposMentis said:


> Seriously! you guys are still on this.
> 
> There is only *One rule*, *One truth* : *Statistical Analysis is for the [size=14pt]Ignorant.[/size]*



Not true at all.

It simply matters what you're measuring and how.

I've used statistical analysis for volume electronics production test. No problems with stats there, a very handy predictive tool.

The problems come in (mis)using stats when measure people as they are highly complicated and there must always be some kind of simplificaion somewhere which degrades reliability.

Don't blame the stats, it's not their fault they're misused.


----------



## Zv (Jan 17, 2015)

Steve Balcombe said:


> distant.star said:
> 
> 
> > Flickr is a graveyard -- has been for some good time now.
> ...



Yup, I'm one of them who drifted back. Tried 500px but decided Flickr was good enough for a place to store pics in decent quality incase someone wants to see my work. All I needed to do was clean it out a bit. The social aspect of it has been dead for a long time though, haven't noticed it getting any better.


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 17, 2015)

dilbert said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > More importantly, though, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't.
> ...



I can tell you're sincere, Dilbert, but apparently you've never taken a class in statistics, even a basic one. The word "bias" in this case is not an accusation against Flickr, it's a potential flaw in the data. I'm not saying at all that Flickr may be biased, I'm saying the _data may be biased in a way that prevents us from drawing certain conclusions_. Again, this is not a conspiratorial assertion, it's a statistical assertion. I'll let you read the *Wikipedia article* on it.




> And let me pose some questions for you...
> - how would flickr introduce bias? I'm not saying they're introducing it, I'm saying they don't have enough data to eliminate pre-existing bias in their data.
> - what does flickr have to benefit from bias? Again, I'm not saying it's intentional, I'm saying it's unavoidable due to the data they have.
> - what outcome would flickr see as a result of it being biased? Actually, I don't think they were trying to be biased: they were very clear about what they were trying to do and how they did it. I simply believe there is insufficient data to go beyond what they've done to draw any conclusions about what future cameras purchases people are likely to make.



Answers to the above are in-line in blue.

In summary, Dilbert, Flickr's data can lead to a valid conclusion summarized as: "among all Flickr account holders who keep metadata in their images, the prevalence of cameras is given in the chart below..."

What they did NOT say, and which would NOT be true, is that they can extrapolate that to the entire camera-buying community to infer what kinds of cameras people would like to buy.


----------



## lintoni (Jan 18, 2015)

dilbert said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > dilbert said:
> ...


Which is an entirely unwarranted assertion. Personally, I'd hazard a guess that the average smartphone photographer doesn't even know what EXIF data is, let alone how to strip it from their photographs.


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 18, 2015)

lintoni said:


> dilbert said:
> 
> 
> > Orangutan said:
> ...



I have to agree with lintoni: it certainly might be true; however, there are too many "but what if" situations to be confident that it's likely to be so. Dilbert, we'll just have to disagree on this point.


----------



## Orangutan (Jan 18, 2015)

dilbert said:


> Original blog link:
> 
> http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/01/13/camera-ownership-on-flickr-2013-2014
> 
> ...



Why? There are all kinds of possibilities to explain the data in other ways. While your explanation is plausible (i.e., could be true), there's nothing to distinguish it from other plausible explanations as the more likely option.


----------



## Don Haines (Jan 18, 2015)

dilbert said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > ...
> ...


agreed... this crosses all manufacturer boundaries....


----------



## zim (Jan 18, 2015)

Maybe it's just me that finds 2/3rds of the original posts images from flickr no longer available  ;D

and of the image thats left it would seem from this argument that Apple sell more phones than Samsung, by a lot. :


----------



## sparda79 (Jan 19, 2015)

People here argues about numbers as if lives are at stake...


----------



## martti (Jan 19, 2015)

sparda79 said:


> People here argue about numbers as if lives are at stake...



Flickr's unfair statistics are an excellent excuse to get outraged about a subject that really is a non-issue.
There are no Nikon or Canon smartphones. All the people in the First World are carrying around an Android or an iOS device and their markets are expanding in China, India and Latin America. Samsung is the world leader in smartphones. it would be surprising if Flickr's figures would not reflect this somehow.

Let's get outraged: #flickrnotfair


----------



## rfdesigner (Jan 21, 2015)

martti said:


> All the people in the First World are carrying around an Android or an iOS device



Really?!

maybe it's 100% of 20 something city types.. but that is a very long way from everyone.. I seem to remember market penetration is about 50% so far.


----------

