FROM THE EARLY 1970S onwards, Canon and Nikon have dominated the professional camera market, establishing a duopoly which has resisted all attempts at wresting away some significant market share. Over the decades there have been creditable attempts by Olympus (undoubtedly the most successful with its OM System), Minolta, Pentax, Leica and Contax. More recently the major challengers have been Fujifilm, Sony, Panasonic and Olympus (again), all promoting mirrorless camera systems as the brave new world of professional photography… while the top guns have doggedly held onto the D-SLR.
One of the reasons for this is that, quite simply, they could. When you control as much of this market sector as they do, you can call the shots. Initially at least, there were plenty of good reasons to keep buying D-SLRs…