世論 What Japan Thinks

In Japanese, an SLR is 一眼レフ, ichigan refu, very much a direct translation of Single-Lens Reflex camera. However, it can be a bit of a mouthful and the Japanese do like abbreviating things, and along with compact digital camera (which is a direct loan word from English), there are many abbreviations that people have adopted. To find out what they are, goo Research conducted a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 29th of September 2008 1,084 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

I usually call my point and click (a pink Lumix) a digi-camé in both Japanese and English. I’ve never really had the reason to call a digital SLR anything in Japanese, however.

Research results

Q1: To distinquish it from a digital SLR, what do you call a compact digital camera? (Sample size=1,084, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Digi-camé	706	65.1%
Compact digi-camé	138	12.7%
Com-digi	54	5.0%
Compact digital camera	39	3.6%
Digital camera	32	3.0%
Camera	14	1.3%
Picture device (Shashinki)	1	0.1%
Other	21	1.9%
Never had to distinguish it	144	13.3%

Calling a camera a shashinki (写真機) would perhaps be like calling a record player a gramaphone.

Q2: To distinquish it from a compact digital camera, what do you call a digital SLR? (Sample size=1,084, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Single-lens reflex	268	24.7%
Digital single-lens reflex	230	21.2%
Digital single-lens	209	19.3%
Single-lens digi-camé	79	7.3%
Digital single-lens reflex camera	69	6.4%
Digi-single	46	4.2%
Single-lens	37	3.4%
Camera	27	2.5%
Digi-camé	26	2.4%
Digi-single-lens	20	1.8%
Single-lens reflex digital camera	11	1.0%
Digital camera	2	0.2%
Picture device (Shashinki)	1	0.1%
Digi	0	0.0%
Other	25	2.3%
Never had to distinguish it	152	14.0%

Next they were asked about the recent development of movie recording for digital SLRs. Just 30.3% had heard about this, and then everyone was asked the following question.

Q3: Do you think movie recording functions are necessary on a digital SLR? (Sample size=1,084)

Needed	4.2%
Nice to have	51.8%
Don’t feel it’s really needed	33.1%
Not needed at all	10.8%