No need for point-and-shoot? Not quite yet

Suzanne Choney • E-mail

Nintendo’s new DS portable game player will include a camera, and Samsung is coming out with a phone that includes an 8-megapixel camera, while Sony is reportedly working on a 12-megapixel camera phone.

Do you even have to buy a digital camera anymore?

It depends on your needs, but the answer for most of us is “yes” if you want good-quality photos.

Nintendo’s DSi, as it will be called, will include two cameras, and can be used by players to mix images and create new faces, a company official recently told The Associated Press.

Samsung’s 8-megapixel Pixon camera phone, due out this month in Europe, will also come with an LED flash, 16x zoom and autofocus. There’s no word on pricing yet, but phones with higher-capability cameras are pricey, often starting at $300 and up.

“Can you take a photo with a camera phone that takes as good a picture as a digital camera? That’s starting to be the case if you limit yourself to certain really high-end camera phones,” said Avi Greengart, Current Analysis research director for mobile devices.

“But in most cases, a $129 Canon or Kodak will take much better digital photos.”

Digital SLRs going strong
In the United States, the digital camera market is “slowing down after several years of very strong growth,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group market research firm.

“It’s a highly penetrated category at this point,” he said. “That's likely more to do with slowing sales than cameras being built into phones or other devices.”

One area of growth, however, is the digital SLR (single-lens reflex) category. “These are higher-end cameras that allow a great deal of flexibility for the photographer when compared with a mainstream point-and-shoot camera,” he said.

The market for digital SLR cameras is growing about 25 percent a year, with 2.7 million of them likely to be sold this year in the United States, said Chris Chute, IDC research manager, Worldwide Digital Imaging Practice.

It’s not necessarily because more photographers are getting serious about what they do, he said.

“The appeal is to people who have enough money to step up into digital photography because they’re pleased with the experience they got with their compact digital camera. And, the prices for SLRs used to be thousands and thousands of dollars, and now you can get a really nice product for below $1,000."

Chute said the average price of a digital camera is now $150 and is $800 for a digital SLR camera.

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