Point-and-Shoot Cameras Take Focus Off Accessories, Dealers Say

Amateur photographers increasingly are buying cameras that seem to do everything short of aiming and pushing the shutter button--and local retailers have mixed feelings about the trend.

Lens shutter cameras, also known as “point-and-shoots” or compact 35-millimeter cameras, came on the market at the end of the 1970s and have since blossomed into a $550-million-a-year industry. The new cameras automatically focus and flash, and some even have built-in zoom lenses and automatically load, wind and rewind film.

Their growth alarms some retailers because they may be replacing sales of more profitable 35-mm. single lens reflex cameras.

Amateur photographers who are more interested in the quality of their pictures than in the hobby of photography tend to buy lens shutter cameras, said Willard N. Clark, editor of Photo Business, a New York-based monthly. “They want to point the camera, push the button and get a perfect picture.”

In a lens shutter camera, the viewfinder is one end of a straight hole through the camera, allowing the photographer to see parallel to the lens, not through it. Electronic wizardry adjusts the focus and length of exposure. The lens is built into the camera.

A photographer using a traditional single lens reflex camera looks through the viewfinder and, by a series of mirrors, sees the subject through the camera lens. Twirling the lens brings the subject into focus, and rotating the aperture ring adjusts the opening of the lens to let in the right amount of light, thus avoiding over- or underexposure. Lenses are interchangeable and detachable from the camera. Autofocus lenses have also become available for SLRs in the past two years.

Lens shutter cameras use 35-mm. film, which has a larger negative and thus yields better photos than the 110 and 126 cartridge film used by the lens shutter’s predecessor, the fixed-focus Instamatic, said Ted Fox, director of market research at the Photo Marketing Assn. in Jackson, Mich.

Prices of lens shutter cameras range from less than $60 to more than $400. SLRs cost $150 to more than $2,000, including one lens.

Cost and convenience have allowed lens shutter camera sales to outgrow sales of SLRs. About 5 million lens shutter cameras were shipped to U.S. dealers in 1986, up from 2.3 million in 1983, according to the Photo Marketing Assn. But only 1.9 million SLRs were shipped in 1986, down from 2.2 million three years before.

Sales of disc cameras have plummeted to 3 million from 5.1 million in the same period. Lens shutter cameras are more versatile and produce better enlargements than disc cameras, said Bill Schiffner, managing editor of Photographic Video Trade News in Woodbury, N.Y.

Local retailers said the trend toward lens shutter cameras continued during the recent holiday season. “The SLRs did nothing this Christmas. It was just point-and-shoots this Christmas,” said Louis Feldman, owner and manager of Bob’s Photographic Center in South Pasadena.

The explosive growth of lens shutter cameras has rescued manufacturers from the stagnation of SLR sales, only to create a new problem, particularly for retailers: The simpler cameras need few accessories beyond batteries and a carrying case. Sales of such highly profitable add-ons as lenses and flash units have stagnated. “The retailers are not very happy. . . . You don’t make money on the prime object, you make money on accessories,” Clark said.

“The point-and-shoot camera seems to have killed a lot of the (accessory) market,” Feldman complained. “I think the Japanese hurt their own market by pushing these.”

Lens shutter camera buyers seldom come back for anything other than batteries or camera cases, he said. But selling a battery can be quite profitable, he added. “We sell it for double (of wholesale) or list.”

The hope of camera merchants, however, is that the simplicity of the lens shutter is not just stealing sales from more expensive cameras but also bringing in new customers who would never have bought a camera otherwise--and may eventually trade up to an SLR. Specialty camera dealers surveyed in April, 1986, thought that 15% of their lens shutter buyers had never owned a camera before.

CHANGING STYLES IN CAMERAS

TYPE OF CAMERA

1983 SLR: 12%

Lens shutter: 13%

Instant: 22%

Disc: 29%

110-126-other: 24%

TOTAL SALES 1983:17.8 million

CHANGING STYLES IN CAMERAS

TYPE OF CAMERA

1986 SLR: 11%

Lens shutter: 31%

Instant: 20%

Disc: 18%

110-126-other: 20%

TOTAL SALES 1986: 16.4 million

Source: Photo Marketing Assn.