PolarStarArts

No question. But not everyone has the money to buy an EOS R body or the RF lenses that are designed to go with it. The EOS R is a camera that appeals to professionals, wannabe professionals (i.e., well-heeled prosumers) and well-heeled consumers. The overall size of that market is relatively small and doesn't explain why Canon would suddenly stop putting 4K 24p or even 1080 24p in their lower-end cameras. Especially when those lower-end cameras have traditionally had some form of 24p for a very long time. And even more so when all of their competitors are continuing to offer it. In other words, Canon seem to be trying to protect small markets (eg., their Cinema EOS line) that account for a minority of their sales. It doesn't make any sense.

Which makes them no better than Canon are, with their penchant for incrementalism and never giving their customers what they really want.

The 16-55 lens, while a welcome offering, is a G-Master series lens, so is likely to be expensive. They're also bringing out a new 70-350 G-Master lens as well and this will be a good thing for anyone who has wanted a lens with that range without having to buy an adapter to use it. Since Canon screwed the pooch on the new EOS M6 Mark II, I may well be taking a serious look at getting either the a6400 or a6600 and saying 'sayonara' to Canon for good.

If underinvesting in the camera business is a smart move, then why are Canon still in the camera business at all? Why not simply cease manufacturing camera bodies and just make lenses for various camera manufacturers the way Sigma and Tamron do? The bottom line is that Canon got greedy and thought they could rest on their laurels, said laurels consisting of their deep and vast lens ecosystem.

Agreed. I think Canon are done. The Canon EOS M6 I own now will probably be the last Canon camera I'll ever buy, or own. I was so disappointed when Canon brought out their new EOS M6 Mark II. I was hoping that it would be a natural upgrade path for me. Sure, there's no crop factor in 4K, but there's no DPAF available either and the only mode you get in 4K is 30p. There's no 24p mode in standard HD, only 30p. If you want to shoot in 60p, you have to downgrade to 720p, which is barely HD in this day and age. That's nuts, if you ask me. The EOS RP full-frame camera is similarly crippled and has a horrible 4K crop. And it's overpriced. In Canada, a EOS RP with the 'kit' 24-105mm F4 L-series RF mount lens is $2899.00. That's a lot to ask for a camera that isn't even semi-pro grade and is aimed at dumb consumers who want full-frame but don't know any better. And don't get me started on the EOS R, which is almost $4K in Canadian dollars with the same 'kit' lens. The way Canon want people to do things is to buy one of their crippled stills cameras and then buy one of their XA- or XF-series camcorders if they shoot video and want 4K. Or, buy one of their Cinema EOS cameras like a C100, C200 or C300. Like a lot of people, I'm not made of money and can't afford to do this. I want ONE camera, one that does it all reasonably well, is affordable and won't suck all the cash out of my bank account. I demand good image quality and good autofocus when it's needed. I'm in the market for a new camera and looking to get into pro photography. My M6, nice as it is for purely still photography, won't cut it. I know a new camera won't make me a better photographer. But that's not the point. What I'm looking for is usability and features that will help me get the shots I want. And let me shoot video. The problem, as I see it, is that Canon have too many camera lines chasing too few dollars. And they're engaging in excessive market segmentation where they either withhold features buyers want, or put them just out of reach until they stump up the extra cash to get them, whether they can afford to or not. All in an effort to squeeze still more cash out of their customers. As a consumer, I don't like being forced to do anything, nor do I like the feeling of someone, anyone, trying to extract something from me. My next camera may well be a Sony A7II. Sure, it won't have 4K, but it will have XAVC-S video at 50Mb/s. The quality of video you can get in XAVC-S at that bit rate is pretty much equivalent to the quality you get from downsampling 4K to 1080p. My thinking is that if Canon take another 5 to 10% hit on their revenues and don't smarten up, they'll be exiting the camera business.

And it could all be as simple as a firmware update, as all the features are already baked in and the firmware simply permits or denies access to the features in question. If this wasn't so, people wouldn't be using Magic Lantern to hack their EOS M-series cameras and get features and capabilities that weren't present in the stock camera. I've always found 30p to be a bit of an odd mode, because it has a slightly 'live-TV' look to it (with 60i/p looking like soap-opera live). Not the slightest bit cinematic in appearance.

Why would anyone want to pay $1399 for a camera that lacks 24p? I wouldn't, not when I can buy something like a Panasonic G9 body for $1599 and a 14-140mm lens for another $650 and get not only 4K60p, but 24p as well? And get superior image quality, even though the G9 has only a 20MP M43 sensor?

One thing I can't understand is why Canon keep doubling down on stupidity. Earlier today I visited the Canon eStore to see if any info re the new EOS M6 Mark II had been released. I noticed that the site was pushing a camera model I've never seen before and didn't know existed - the Rebel T100, which is going for $379.99 (in Canadian dollars) and includes a kit lens. I also noticed that virtually everything listed for sale on the site can be financed through a company called Paybright, with payments running over 12 months and an APR of about 14%. A lot of items are on sale, too, with some relatively deep discounts. Now here's where I think the 'doubling down on stupidity' part comes in. No other camera manufacturer I know of needs to resort to using a third-party lender to help them move their product. No other camera maker is making super low-end cameras at a super-cheap price to collect a few nickels and dimes from the bottom end of the market. No other camera maker is resorting to a virtual blow-out sale to move product. Yet Canon still insist on bringing out crippled camera models that don't sell that well, and overprice the non-crippled products (EOS R, I'm looking at you) and lenses and then wonder why their sales revenues have dropped 64%, but keep running blow-out sales for some products and use third-party financing. There's a huge disconnect here.

Interesting, although as always, the devil is in the details. What kind of crop will the 4K feature have? And if the only 4K mode is 30p, then I'll be giving this a miss, even though the camera otherwise looks like a potentially good upgrade to my existing M6. I think what Canon could mean by 'image processing' is that the 4K files are processed via the Digic 8 processor. I wonder too, if this could mean that the camera will not have a clean HDMI output?

Well, people keep buying Sony cameras in spite of the deficiencies you mentioned, so Sony probably feel little need to change things. I had a Sony a6000 and it wasn't that difficult to use, despite the menu system being clunky while the LCD display lacked touch functionality and wasn't very big or bright. I learned to adapt, even though I frequently wished that the menus and user interfaces were as good and intuitive as the ones on Canon cameras. Plus, their refusal to hire qualified UI/UX engineers to improve usability of Sony menu systems, their use of cheap displays (as opposed to using better, more efficient AMOLEDs) are probably just attempts to shave every penny they can off production costs to increase profits. They're probably already well aware of Black Magic and their superior user interfaces, so shoving a BMCC4K in a Sony official's face isn't likely to do much.

It's a shame they left. Their NX1 and NX500 cameras seemed to offer the ground on which Samsung could have been a very successful camera manufacturer.

I own a Canon EOS M6 with the EV-DC1 viewfinder and thought I would try shooting video with an old Canon FD-series 35mm lens and a EOS to FD adapter. Here is the result. It's not the greatest video ever, but it is what it is. I had no difficulty nailing focus because the focus peaking feature on the M6 is excellent and easy to use. Plus, when your subject is more than 6 metres (20ft) away, the focus ring on the lens will be (or should be) at infinity so that everything will be in sharp focus anyway. If there's anything I've learned from this experience, it's that auto focus is great, but it's an aid and not always a total replacement for good focussing skills. If the rumoured Canon EOS M6 Mark II does end up having uncropped 4K, I might pick up a Mark II body so I can shoot in 4K. If not, I'll get a M50 body and some C-mount lenses with an adapter so I can compensate for the extreme crop in 4K. in_wortley_village.mp4

With big drops in camera sales and revenues, the introduction of 4K60 in affordable mirrorless cameras that previously would not have had it, seems to me to be a sign the camera makers are running scared and now have to start pulling out the stops on features to shore up their rapidly position and reduce or halt the bleeding. I mean, seriously, when mobile phones can offer half-decent 4K quality for $1000 or less, I can't help but wonder why a company like Canon felt that withholding such a feature from many of their cameras was going to be a viable long-term strategy. I think Canon will be surprised to discover that their professional cine camera lines will do just fine, as the pros who can afford such cameras aren't interested in shooting with DSLRs or tiny little mirrorless cameras anyway.

I always thought that the XC10 had potential as a sort of cine/documentary camera, but Canon had the opposite idea and marketed it to photojournalists and videographers who need to deliver short clips of content to the web. I considered getting a used XC10, but before I did, I downloaded a copy of Canon's XF Utility and then downloaded native .MXF samples from the web. Couldn't figure out how to make the XF Utility to work to import the footage, so I had to transcode the .MXF so I could determine whether my computer was powerful enough to handle the higher bit rates. Needless to say, I was not impressed. If the XC10 is aimed at photojournalists/web videographers, then footage should be a lot easier to ingest into your editing programme. And so I didn't buy an XC10.

Well, if what we are seeing in the Magic Lantern (ML) camp with their EOS M cameras now being able to output 5K video after installing the ML software is any indication, then all of the features (e.g., 4K, 1080p HDMI output, etc.) were already there and baked into the firmware all along. And Canon were simply hiding them from their customers.

While not quite as cheap as the original A7, the A7II offers 50mbit/s XAVC-S format. To my eyes, XAVC-S at that bit rate more or less looks like what 4K does after being downsampled to 1080p. So while you don't get 4K with the A7 or its successor, you do get video that looks better and has a substantially higher bit rate than typical AVCHD cameras can offer.

Wow. That is amazing. What I found most impressive was how they could digitally manipulate the landscape and place rocks and other geographic features anywhere they wanted to.

I estimate that the day you are forecasting is about 10 years off. Here's why. There is still a large cohort of people aged 45 - 70 that didn't grow up with smart phones or social media. They know traditional cameras and are still interested in them. That cohort will age 10 years over the next decade of course, with the result that today's 45 year-old will be 55, the 55 year-old will be 65 and so on. Barring disability or severe illness, they'll still be active photographers. The 70+ part of the cohort will start to drop out of the photographic markets of course, as they die off or become too old to continue their hobby. As the global population is aging and there are more older people than younger now, sales of traditional cameras will still be relatively steady, although there may be some retrenchment in the camera manufacturing industry and makers may have to simplify their lines down to just three or four models at most to cope with declining camera sales. Eventually a plateau will be found, even if it's lower than it used to be. Smart phones are making incredible bounds in terms of their photographic capabilities, but... There are no smartphones currently on the market that have credible telephoto zooms that can offer lossless image quality. Add-on lenses are somewhat variable in terms of quality and smart phones were never designed to accept them. Some makers, like Hasselblad, did bring out cases with a built in camera and the phone itself would simply act as a control interface and means of storing the images taken, but this idea never took off and it only fits Motorola Moto Z phones from 2016. Computational photography is still in its infancy. There are currently no smartphones that can offer variable apertures down to f22. Battery life is still an issue with many smart phones, necessitating add-on battery cases that increase the weight and bulk of a smart phone. Then you have the problem of what to do if you're using add-on lenses that can only be attached to the camera using a special case or a clip. Smart phones have yet to be optimized for photography. To see what I mean, consider that when taking a picture with a smart phone, you first have to wake up the phone, then tap the camera icon and then shoot. With most dedicated still cameras you just have to turn the camera on, and as the boot-up phase is very quick or almost instantaneous, you're ready to shoot in no time. I'll concede that I'm splitting hairs here. Even with computational photography, there are limits to how much quality and capability you can get out of the 1/2" image sensors most phones have. These limits are dictated by physics. The reason why point-and-shoot cameras as well as low-end bridge cameras have declined so rapidly is that the smart phone is the modern-day equivalent of a Brownie camera. A smart phone is relatively convenient to use and produces images that are 'good enough'. As for low-end DSLRs, these are dropping in popularity because people are finding they can get a better DSLR or mirrorless camera with more features and capability for not a lot more money. Or, they're willing to make the stretch for a better camera and are willing to use a credit card to get the leverage to buy one. Another reason why camera sales have declined overall is that we are currently in a state of flux. That is, we're going through a transition in camera technology - moving from traditional DSLRs to mirrorless. People are interested in and clamouring for mirrorless cameras, but the manufacturers are still coming to grips with how to make good mirrorless cameras. As a result, people are hanging on to the cameras they have and are waiting for the manufacturers to get up to speed in their mirrorless offerings.

In the UK and Canada, this is known as the 'never-never plan'. As in, "You'll never finish paying for it and you'll never own it." LOL I suspect the expression originated in the TV rental industry in the UK.

I could see Black Magic entering the fray with one or two stills-oriented cameras that can shoot video as well.

Maybe a form factor like Sony's NEX-EA50, as shown below? The design had potential because it accepted E-mount lenses, but it didn't sell well and disappeared from the market very quickly.

Step up folks, step right up and place your bets on which camera maker will live long enough to be in business five years from now... Here are the camera makers I think are the most endangered, in order of risk: Canon Olympus Panasonic Pentax Least endangered: Fuji Nikon Most likely to be in business five years from now: Google Samsung Apple Why do I think Canon, Olympus, Panasonic and Pentax are most endangered? For starters, Canon is most at risk because it has rested on its laurels for far too long and relied on its deep and vast lens ecosystem to save the day. They've had a major loss in profits recently, and shareholders are starting to look at whether investing in Canon still makes sense. Their camera lines are predicated on excessive segmentation and incrementalism and don't offer what pros and consumers are after. They refuse to implement 4K properly, thinking they can force buyers to pay pro-grade prices for minimal 4K capabilities, while other makers are offering decent 4K capability for far less money. Olympus is also at risk because it keeps clinging to the Micro Four-Thirds system, which accounts for only a minority of the camera and lens market. Few pros use the M43 system. It's fine for consumers who don't mind low resolution, compromised dynamic range, mediocre AF, relatively poor low-light capabilities, noisy images above 1600 ISO, and like to pay top dollar for cameras and lenses. The cost of the lenses for Panasonic and Olympus, by the way, are due to both companies opting to have high-end lens makers build their lenses rather than doing the job in-house. For instance, their flagship camera, the OM-D E-M1x, is configured and marketed as a 'pro' camera, but the body alone is $3899. Add on say, an Olympus 12-200mm PRO for another $1200 or so and you're looking at a total system cost of $5K for a system that doesn't deliver pro-quality images. That's a poor value proposition, in my eyes. Panasonic: See my comments for Olympus above. They've been clinging to M43 for too long as well. Sure, they've brought out cameras with new 20MP sensors, but the increased resolution won't make up for the basic deficiencies of M43 sensors or the antiquated CDAF focus systems they use. The bright spot on the horizon for Panasonic is the introduction of their new full-frame cameras and lenses. Here's hoping further development in the full frame area will result in Panasonic releasing either an affordable full-frame camera, or a line of APS-C cameras that consumers can afford and will offer a good value proposition. Pentax: They make some good cameras, but the video they shoot leaves much to be desired, and they are expensive. Pentax have not innovated much either and they've achieved so little market penetration that hardly anyone knows they exist. And to think they once made 35mm SLRs and medium-format film cameras that were pretty much ubiquitous. And their parent company, Ricoh, is pretty much invisible despite recently bringing out a new camera model. As to the least endangered: Fuji make solid cameras, even if they're not barn-burners in terms of innovation. They can shoot solid 4K video. All they need now is to bring out a camera and lens system that can handle fast-moving sports and wildlife. Fuji also don't resort to the same kind of endless segmentation and incrementalism that Canon have. Their model lines are simple and understandable. Most of their lenses are reasonably priced, and the value proposition offered by Fuji is good overall. Nikon: Their Z6 and Z7 mirrorless full-frame cameras are solid, if a little pricy (but even still, they cost less than comparable Canon or Sony systems). You can use some older Nikon lenses without sensor cropping or other major compromises. Unlike Canon, who are trying to force their customers to buy pricy new RF-mount lenses. They seem to have a good base for bringing out a new APS-C mirrorless camera. While Google, Apple and Samsung are not camera makers, they are advancing rapidly in the field of computational photography. If they can bring out a new technology that puts mobile phone cameras on par with, or superior to anything extant within the traditional camera space, then they could potentially sweep all of the existing camera makers into the dustbin, at least where lower-end, consumer-grade and semi-pro cameras are concerned.

Much in the same way Canon are floating on their vast and deep lens ecosystem and think they don't have to innovate to survive.

I recently bought a Canon EOS M6. The only reason why I bought it is that the lenses that I bought with it, namely the 11-22 EF-M and 18-150 EF-M, are about half of the price of competing Sony E-mount lenses with similar focal lengths. And perform at least as well as the Sony lenses, if not better.

They don't need to exit the camera space, they just need to smarten up and make cameras that people want at prices they can afford. I realize they already do this to a certain extent with their low-end digital SLRs that are relatively cheap and appeal to middle-class mums and dads, but they need to innovate and appeal to more serious photographers as well, without trying to pull out every nickel they have in their pockets. I sense that Panasonic are smelling blood in the water as a result of Canon's woes. Why else would they bring out a professional full-frame camera and lens system out of the blue when they've had all their eggs in the Micro Four-Thirds basket for nearly a decade now? Even Sony are stepping up their full-frame game with the release of their A7R Mk IV camera that has a 61MP sensor. Both Panasonic and Sony appear poised to move into spaces where Canon are failing to innovate. They will profit hugely if Canon stop making cameras and lenses. I suspect that Fuji aren't far behind in this area either and may well release a FF camera too after they've had a chance to assess the sales of their latest medium-format release, the GFX-100.