🚨 What Camera Giants Could Have Done:

🚨 What Camera Giants Could Have Done:

The world has gone mobile, and it feels like every day I’m watching creators capture life from mountaintops, skateparks, river paths, and beaches — all with tiny cameras that fit in a pocket. 🌍✨ It’s wild how fast everything has shifted. We want AI tools, waterproof builds, vertical-first video, seamless apps, and gear that adapts to movement instead of slowing us down. 🎥⚡ But when I look at the camera giants — Canon, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic — I can’t help but shake my head a bit. They once defined the future… yet somehow missed the biggest revolution creators have ever seen.

It reminds me so much of Kodak — brilliant engineering, iconic brand, but somehow blind to the tidal wave forming right in front of them. 📉 And here we are again, only this time it’s Canon and Sony watching GoPro, DJI, and Insta360 sprint past them with ideas that should’ve been theirs. If you’ve ever strapped a GoPro to your bike, filmed a hyperlapse downtown with an Insta360 X4, or watched the DJI Action 5 Pro bring Winnipeg’s golden hour to life… you know exactly what that shift feels like. Those companies got it. They built tools for real people living real days. 🚵‍♂️🔥 Meanwhile, the old giants kept polishing mirrorless releases while the world drifted somewhere completely different.

And honestly? The part that stings is knowing they could’ve owned this space. They had the money. They had the brains. They had the reputation. But they didn’t have the courage. 💭💔 Instead, they watched from the sidelines while GoPro invented the category, DJI refined it, and Insta360 reinvented it again and again with modular builds, 360 reframing, and AI tools that make creators feel unstoppable. They had every advantage — and still missed the train. 🚉💨

Leica was the exception. Instead of pretending they could reinvent action cams overnight, they teamed up with Insta360 — and it worked. Beautiful glass, gorgeous color, forward-thinking design. 🤝📸 That collaboration showed what the old guard could do if they dropped the ego and embraced the creator economy instead of resisting it.

🚨 What Camera Giants Could Have Done:

🌄 Final Thoughts

There’s something almost poetic about watching giants stumble while smaller, hungrier creators and companies push the world forward. It reminds me of filming a sunrise — you can stand there, hesitant, worrying about settings, doubting your timing… or you can hit record and trust the moment. 🌅✨ DJI, GoPro, and Insta360 chose to trust the moment. They took risks. They listened to real creators instead of boardrooms. And as a creator myself, I feel that shift every time I hold one of these little cameras in my hand. They're not trying to impress me — they're trying to empower me.

What sticks with me is how deeply the creator economy has changed everything. In the old days, gear companies told us what storytelling should look like. Now it’s the opposite — creators lead, gear follows. ⚡📱 That’s why the brands that ignore real-world needs end up fading into irrelevance. Every time I shoot a POV ride through Winnipeg, capture Arlo & Mongo in slow motion, or film Linda by the water at golden hour, I can feel how much the tools matter. Not because they’re fancy — but because they let you stay present while still capturing something real. 🎥💛

There’s a part of me that still hopes Canon, Sony, Nikon, and Panasonic wake up. They have the soul of photography in their DNA. They just forgot how to see the moment coming. 🧭 If they ever want to reclaim the space they lost, they’ll have to stop behaving like hardware companies and start behaving like storytellers. They’ll need creators at the table — not executives polishing spec sheets. They’ll need to build ecosystems, not just cameras. And they’ll need the humility to follow, not just lead.

But until that shift happens, the momentum belongs to the innovators — the ones who aren’t afraid of new angles, new formats, new workflows, and new ways of seeing. 📸🔥 That’s why I cover this stuff the way I do on G4G. Because at the end of the day, creators deserve tools that keep up with their imagination. And the companies shaping the next decade won’t be the ones with the biggest factories — they’ll be the ones with the boldest vision. 🌍✨