Is Canon mirrorless taken seriously by the company?

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Canon mirrorless: [shopcountry 6091]

After reading Imaging Resource’s Dave Etchells interviewing Canon executives Go Tokura, Yoshiyuki Mizoguchi and Goshi Nakamura, I really wonder if Canon mirrorless will ever be a serious thing.

Canon’s answers to Dave Etchells questions about Canon mirrorless cameras and especially about Canon’s plans with the system and the technologoy, well, these answers are elusive and vague at best (as they were in another interview with Canon execs).

Some excerpts:

IR […] How do you see mirrorless fitting into Canon’s overall strategy generally? And are we likely to see more emphasis going forward, or do you view mirrorless as continuing to be more of a niche market rather than DSLR sales?

Yoshiyuki Mizoguchi: So in terms of how we look at the mirrorless market, I think there’s a regional variance that we can actually point out at the moment. Different regions have different penetrations in mirrorless market share.

[…] Canon offers both mirrorless and SLR products, and we will continue to do this. We will position those categories in that regard, and we would like to look at the ILC market as a whole to respond to the wide range of demands that are coming in with these two prongs.

IR: As you mentioned the mirrorless market is broadening, and with the EOS M5 Canon is now finally offering a true enthusiast-level mirrorless camera […] We’re wondering whether you see higher-end — if not professional — more enthusiast-level lenses on the roadmap for the EOS M family?

YM: I won’t be able to disclose any sort of future products, so there’s not much details that I can provide at the moment, but obviously there’s a growing demand for the enthusiast-level cameras. That’s why we’re seeing this progression of our camera series, and in a similar way we will start to see the strong demand for the lenses as well, for the enthusiast. We are looking at the market demand and seeing what sort of levels that we’re seeing, and we will probably be introducing products along with that.

Doesn’t sound exactly like “we cant wait to flood the market with high end EF-M lenses” nor it doesn’t sound as if Canon was fully committed to mirrorless (and their own EOS M system).

The interview touches more points (Dual Pixel AF, for instance) so be shure to head over to Imaging Resource to get the whole story.

Canon Australia presents “BLINK: Photography Tips for Beginners” short tutorials

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Canon Australia offers a respectable set of short video tutorials for beginners and not, named BLINK: Photography Tips for Beginners, covering everything you want to learn in short, simple and fun videos. The series of photography tutorials covers the fundamentals to help you get the basics right.

Click here to access BLINK: Photography Tips for Beginners video tutorials.

A bit of everything (EOS M6, EOS M5, LR presets, Sigma 14mm & 135mm, more)

Above: FIRST LOK: Canon EOS M6 at CP+ 2017 – Photogearnews


Above: $500 Canon DSLR vs $50,000 Arri Alexa Mini Camera – ISO 1200

Free Eric Kim Lightroom Presets 2017 – Eric Kim

Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II Sample Images – Photography Blog

Pixar Teaches You How Cameras Work in This Free Online Class – PetaPixel

Free learning provider Alison launches build-your-own camera drone course – DPReview

How to Test Your Lens – B&H Epxlora

Understanding Shutter Speed – B&H Explora

Travelling light: The EOS M5 advantage – CPN

Hands On With The Minuscule Canon M5 Mirrorless | First Impressions – SLRLounge

Photographing Iceland Using Ultra Wide-Angle Lenses – Photography Life

Sigma 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art Sample Image Gallery – Amateur Photographer

The new Sigma 14mm f/1.8DG Art – Is it an astrophotographer’s dream lens? – DIY Photography

Dealing with cold weather photography – Canon Snapshot

Canon EF 70-300mm F4-5.6 IS II USM sample gallery update – DPReview

Below: 5 Pros and Cons: Honest Review After One Year with Sony Mirrorless – Manny Ortiz

Photography Industry Health Check – Things are bad and going worse

Click the image above to get a bigger view (courtesy lensvid.com)

Our friends at LensVid posted their annual analysis about the photography industry. They put an extensive look into what happened in the photography market in 2016. And things do not look good, definetly not.

To sum up the figures immediately: LensVid computed there was 81% less volume in 2016 than in 2010. This seems to be a pretty drammatic figure, which makes me wonder for how long the industry can cope with it. And it is not just about compact cameras, but DSLRs, MILCs, and lenses too.

Some points that are worth to spend a thought or two about.

  • Smartphones killed the compact camera market
  • Mirrorless are not fulfilling their promise
  • The DSLR market is shrinking
  • Cameras are for older people

I do not know if what is listed above explains what is going on. For sure always less people believes the “mirrorless-is-for-pros” fairy tale, and the whole mirrorless hype is going to slow down. That smartphones cut a significant market share was already known. And likely the young and very young would never think to start shooting with a DSLR instead of their smartphone.

LensVid also made some (cautious) predictions:

  • In 2017 we can safely predict that the entire global market for cameras will drop below 20 million cameras (or 1/6 of what it was in 2010).
  • Over the next couple of years camera manufacturers will continue to cut jobs – just like Nikon recently did after their announcement on major financial loses.
  • We will also see less innovation as less and less free money will be available for R&D.
  • The professional segment will get much more attention and camera and gear prices will increase (as production costs will rise due to the decreased production levels).
  • Can all the existing camera manufacturers survive this change in the market? so far most of them did, barely. However given the fact that this market will likely never return to the levels that we have seen in the beginning or even in the middle of the decade – we will not find it surprising at all if one or more of the main manufacturers will not be with us before the end of this decade.

If this story catches your interest, the video above takes you further, or you can head over to LensVid for the whole story.

Another mention of Canon’s 2/3″ global shutter sensor with wide dynamic range

canon rumors

I reported previously about a global shutter sensor Canon is researching and developing. This sensor made it into the news again. Nikkei Technology reports about the Canon 2/3″ sensor with global shutter and wide dynamic range, which was first presented at ISSCC 2017.

From the ISSCC 2017 lecture, Nikkei reports:

The size, pixel count, pixel pitch and power consumption of the sensor are 2/3 inches, 2,592 x 2,054, 3.4μm and 450mW, respectively. In a demonstration after the lecture, the company used the sensor to take a picture of an electric fan whose blades are turning […]

Through […] improvements, Canon doubled the saturated amount of electric charge and widened dynamic range. Specifically, it increased the saturated amount of electric charge from 8,100 electrons with a frame rate of 120fps to 16,200 electrons with a frame rate of 60fps.

The dark temporal noise of the new sensor is 1.8 electronsrms. As a result, its dynamic range is 79dB with a frame rate of 60fps and reaches 111dB when HDR is applied.

Well let’s hope we see such a sensor in a Canon DSLR soon. Besides this utopian wishes, this is another report that shows Canon’s commitment to develop innovative sensor technology.

The slides below are from the ISSCC 2017 presentation.

[via Nikkei Technology]