Are We Headed Toward a Future Where Cameras Become Subscription Platforms?

Camera makers have started putting firmware features behind paid unlocks and subscription platforms — this post tracks who’s doing what and why it matters for cameras you already own.

I get that camera firmware is not the most exciting topic. It might be about the most mundane aspect of photography. And yet it’s incredibly important. And since I try to keep on top of camera firmware updates, I’ve been noticing that they seem to be getting not only more frequent but also meatier.¹

We’ve become used to firmware being mostly about fixing features that aren’t working as intended or relatively small tweaks. And we’re used to thinking of the camera primarily as a hardware device. Which makes sense, because for nearly all the history of cameras existing, that’s precisely what they’ve been.

But the relationship between camera and firmware has been shifting.

And, I’d speculate, we might soon see a dramatic and growing divergence between the camera as a hardware platform and the software that drives it. In fact, it’s already started. But there’s every chance it will become far more central to our relationship with our cameras.

I want to be clear on two things up front:

1. I’m speculating. This is more about reading the tea leaves than based on any hard evidence of camera manufacturers’ product roadmaps. But there are some pretty interesting signs out there.
2. I’m not advocating for this. There are some intriguing possibilities. But there are also possibilities that I wouldn’t like, frankly, that are ripe for going too far. And those make me a bit uncomfortable as a camera end-user.
   

Cameras as cars

For a good analogy, look at what’s been happening with cars.

They started out entirely analog, where a home mechanic with some manual skills could repair just about any part of it.

Then they added electronic features. The home mechanic might have been able to see where the problem was, but it would require a professional auto shop to plug the car’s brain into the network to fix it.

We’ve long been at a point where we’re almost totally reliant on computers to fix cars to even tell us what the problem is. Newer cars are like a mysterious black box, controlled by a computer brain. (And tractors. It turns out John Deere tractors have been firmly on this path, too, as a way to control the service pipeline.).

But car manufacturers have sensed not only opportunities for economies of scale for servicing cars, but they’re looking at ways to build on and monetize that. The most obvious has been to consolidate control of repair and servicing.

But they’ve also been dipping their toes into the world of offering a la carte features that can be enabled by software. Some early examples are extra features like GPS navigator and OnStar subscriptions.

Tesla has taken this to new levels. The most headline-grabbing subscription add-on is for its autopilot features. Other car makers are also getting in on the added-features-by-subscription game. And it’s likely just an early preview of what’s to come.

It hasn’t always gone entirely smoothly. A couple of years ago, BMW dropped plans to offer a monthly subscription to unlock the heated seats feature. The cars already had the necessary hardware, but it was locked without paying a monthly subscription fee. An outcry forced BMW to back down on that one. But that was probably more about choosing the wrong feature to explore than indicating that subscriptions are a dead-end.

It’s a natural progression of the optional extra culture around cars. Except that rather than swapping out any hardware or choosing the feature package at the time of purchase, it’s a matter of unlocking software features. And with wireless updates, it can be done wirelessly and instantly, with no trip to the dealership necessary.

The next evolution of cameras as a platform

OK, so what have cars got to do with cameras? It comes down to the hardware being a platform and whether camera manufacturers want to go down that path of finding new revenue streams.

Of course, many cameras have long been platforms all along. Basically any camera that takes interchangeable lenses is fundamentally a modular platform. And add accessories like flash and triggers. RED has pushed that to new levels in the high-end cinematography world with their explicitly modular approach.

But what I’m talking about here is taking things way beyond that. With the relationship between the physical hardware and the code that drives it shifting.

Analog, mechanical cameras obviously didn’t require firmware. There was not much about them that a skilled repair agent or tinkerer couldn’t fix with some screwdrivers, some rags, and maybe some sandpaper (or, obviously, maybe some new glass if needed).

Whether you pick up a Leica from the 1940s, a classic Oly rangefinder from the 1960s, or a Canon or Nikon SLR from the 1970s, so long as it has been well-cared for and maintained, there’s every chance it works just as well today as it did when it came out of the box way back when. And if it doesn’t, a skilled camera mechanic can probably get it back into working condition.

As the first analog cameras hit the market with electronic features like autofocus and auto-exposure and automatic film advance, those features required firmware, but only of the most rigid and, by today’s standards, basic type. In most cases, it couldn’t even be updated, let alone accessed by the end user, and a coding glitch could make the camera unusable.

But today’s cameras — especially the newer mirrorless cameras with fewer mechanical moving parts — are more software-driven than they’ve ever been. They’re increasingly become imaging computers. Phones used to be just phones, but they’ve become way more than that. Cameras might be headed in a similar direction. And that’s where opportunities lurk.

Camera features as subscription add-ons

So far, we’re mostly used to camera firmware in the form of bug fixes and tweaks.

Sometimes we might get some new features.

But what if camera manufacturers start embracing the income stream possibilities of subscription features?²

This is the direction we seem to be heading. We’re getting into the era of iterative development, where the camera is treated as a platform, more like a computer.

A real-world example: GoPro

Much of this is speculation at this point, but it’s not much of a leap to this kind of future, and some manufacturers have already been venturing in this direction.

One of the companies that has quietly been pioneering this, although not yet in a fully marketable way, is GoPro. For the most part, new models do include some physical updates to the camera. Maybe it’s a new chip (the brain of the camera), and they’ve been developing their own so as to have more complete control over this.

But they have also released cameras that are, as pieces of hardware, are entirely identical. The only difference is in their firmware. They were models known as the GoPro HERO5 Black and the GoPro HERO (2018). Many manufacturers have done something similar, but they at least make the effort to dress up the hardware differently, even if it’s only a tweaking of the camera’s shape or button locations.

But GoPro didn’t bother with that. They met their marketing cycle with a “new camera” where the only difference was the software (or firmware) code that came preinstalled on it.

And yes, some talented coders who were also GoPro end-users soon found a way to unlock the locked code. So long as you were willing to risk breaking the warranty, you could turn your cheaper camera into the more expensive version by pre-installing a hacked version of the code.

Firmware for accessories

It used to be that user-updatable firmware was only for cameras. But it’s now also used on lenses, adapters, flashes, and just about anything else where code helps run the show.

Sigma lenses were one of the first examples that I personally ran into with this. They developed a dock for their newer lenses that allowed the user not only to update the lens’s firmware but also to tweak the focus and stabilization settings.

That’s why newer cameras (mostly ones that take interchangeable lenses) often come with categories of firmware codes. There’s a code for the camera’s firmware. And a code for lens firmware. And a code for mount adapter firmware. And so on. And all of those also happen to be channels for targeted fixes and features.

What kind of features might they start with?

There’s some pretty low-hanging fruit that would seem prime targets for this kind of thing.

Here’s a couple of basic examples that come to mind.

Film emulations

If you’re not shooting with one of the more retro-focused cameras like those from Fujifilm or Ricoh, you might not realize just how big a deal film emulations are.

These are basically expertly crafted processing presets or recipes designed to emulate the look and performance of classic film photography.

It’s something that appeals particularly to precisely the kind of photographer more likely to buy one of these types of cameras.

For now, these are included free as a core part of the camera firmware. And Fujifilm has already demonstrated that it can add and tweak film emulations as part of a firmware update.

But what if these were made optional extras for a subscription? Or end-users could sell their own emulation recipes through a marketplace / app store hosted by the camera manufacturer?

Niche & specialized features

Many modern mirrorless cameras are wonderfully versatile. Great for shooting stills and shooting high-end video. And that has become pretty much the norm. Some lean more one way than another, but that’s more a case of emphasis.

But not everyone needs all those features.

For instance, I mostly shoot photos. I rarely use the high-end video features of my main cameras. And while I appreciate Log recording and advanced LUTs, the reality is that I don’t use them much on my core cameras. Ditto on high-bitrate audio recording. In fact, if my primary cameras didn’t have any video features at all, I’d be completely fine with that so long as it meant a) the price was reduced, or b) better features and performance due to focused specialization.

Conversely, there are probably a lot of videographers who don’t need some of the niche still photo features like pixel-shift high-resolution photographs.

Specialized features like those seem like natural places to start if a camera manufacturer wanted to introduce a la carte features.

Rather than release an entirely new camera model, they could consolidate their manufacturing to a smaller number of cameras-as-platforms and enable features through software.

It would be a way for end-users to only pay for those features that they choose to use.

What’s next?

Beyond that? Who knows? Maybe cameras will become like phones. Phones used to be just phones. But they’re now platforms with third-party markets for features and capabilities.

Maybe we won’t really own the hardware anymore, instead leasing it and getting upgraded versions each year. Or paying subscriptions if we want to continue to use certain features. And features being removed when licensing agreements expire.

We’re not there yet (thankfully!). For now, manufacturers want to keep everything tightly controlled. But one has to wonder whether it won’t be too long before we start seeing that. It’s likely to come with some good parts, and a healthy dose of the bad.

Again, I want to emphasize here that this is not something I’m advocating or wishing for. I’m conceptually against nickel-and-diming.

But it’s also worth acknowledging that one of the recurring features of the world we live in is the exploration and increasingly aggressive mining of income streams.

What could possibly go wrong?

A lot. A whole lot.

When we buy a camera, we expect it to work now and keep working. This goes beyond camera manufacturers going out of business or exiting the field or fading from relevance, like Blackberry and Nokia did with phones. I have cameras that I’ve owned and used for 30 years. Many people have cameras that are much older. I don’t want cameras to become short-term consumables.

But a software-driven product is ripe for all sorts of potential problems. Hacking. Glitches. Licensing changes. Deliberate hobbling by manufacturers. Or just plain incompetence.

Basically, for all the whizz-bang features it might enable, it also opens things up to the potential for a world of hurt and frustration.

An easy example is the mess Sonos has made recently of its updated app. I like Sonos speakers. I own Sonos speakers. But a poorly executed overhaul of its app has deeply frustrated many long-time users.

As more of your possessions rely on software — including your car, phone, TV, home thermostat or tractor — the manufacturer can ruin them with one shoddy update.

Shira Ovide, “Why this company’s biggest fans turned against it,” Washington Post, 17 May 2024.

Notes & References:

1. Some good recent examples are the massive firmware updates that Nikon put out for the Nikon Z9 and Z8, each of which greatly enhanced the feature set of those cameras. [↩︎]
2. There’s another aspect to this that’s related but in a slightly different direction. It’s when camera manufacturers intentionally release cameras that aren’t yet ready. That is, they get the camera manufactured and start selling it. Any planned features that aren’t ready for primetime when the camera starts selling can be added once the camera is already in the users’ hands. It cuts down the camera launch lead times, meaning they can start taking in money sooner.
   
   GoPro has been a repeat offender of this, often releasing cameras that can’t quite meet the marketing materials at the time they start selling them in stores but then adding the missing features later. They’ve done this with features like compatibility with official accessories (the wide-angle lens), the latest version of software stabilization, and so on. When you buy a new GoPro these days, you can’t just take it out of the box and start shooting — you first have to update the firmware before doing anything else. [↩︎]