For those complaining about the 6 month lead time, I agree wholeheartedly that this is a 'first strike' sort of announcement to protect big dollar / big glass folks from jumping ship.
I know jumping ship is both rare and impractical, but when there are (numerous?!) $10k lens purchases at stake, this announcement -- albeit
very early -- makes a lot of sense. Anyone who (a) is already in the Canon fold, (b) is a birder/sports-type guy
and (c) is on the verge of a big new glass purchase should be reassured by this announcement.
I say this b/c
at the time of announcement of specs (not when the AF illumination issue came up, which came up later, during use), the biggest complaints I noted on the forums were:
- Where are is my huge megapixel body / crying that Nikon won some nonsensical 'better spec' battle (regardless of whether you agree with this, it was an overwhelming chatter point in the forums, and not just by fanboys)
- Why can't we have video AF?
- Where is my uncompressed video?
- Why can't I get AF F/8 at the center point for 1.4X F/5.6 or 2X F/4 extender use? (Granted, this seemed to be more on the 1DX front than the 5D3 front)
- Where can't we have spot metering at the selected AF point like the 1DX? (Okay, no one really complained about that other than me, but I'm still putting it on this list.)
As some of these are only addressable via new hardware, at least Canon is hearing out it's users and tackling what it reasonably
can tackle. You can't exactly replace the sensor with a firmware change, right?
Shouldn't we keep our feet on the ground here? Or am I trying to reason with a mob in full bloom? :-P
- A
