We cant rule out any more quakes

[mreco99]

Everyone mentions about delays after the quake but no one has really mentioned the fact that its not out of the question (god forbid) another big one will hit in the next year. I think canon or anyone else soley reliant in that region, should spread production over a much wider area.

[steven63]

While we can't rule out another quake, we can't rule one in either.  But we should take note that this quake was a very rare one and that Japan is otherwise built to withstand large quakes.  Remember, it was the resulting tsunami that took out the power station and not the quake.

As for Canon dispersing their production to limit their exposure to 9.0 earthquakes and the resulting tsunami...

1. That's an expense they probably would rather not invest in for training/equipment/land and buildings (considering the frequency of 9.0 quakes).  The investment in making the precision equipment required to manufacture high quality cameras and lenses is not cheap I am sure and would be akin to moving Intel out of their production facilities (just maybe on a smaller scale).

2. Where do they move to that wouldn't expose them to other natural (or manmade) calamities at the rate of 9.0 earthquakes?

[danpekr1857]

I agree.
Canon need management to step to the plate and spend some of there profits.
Sony his on there heels, and while they have the best glass Nikon has the bodies.
If they fall behind with long delays they will not regain the lead.
 My thoughs, Dan

[adamdoesmovies]

I agree.
Canon need management to step to the plate and spend some of there profits.
Sony his on there heels, and while they have the best glass Nikon has the bodies.
If they fall behind with long delays they will not regain the lead.
 My thoughs, Dan

It must count for something that Nikon got hit just as hard, if not harder...

[CR Backup Admin]

Actually, more quakes (aftershocks) are to be expected.  Aftershocks continue for a long time after the original quake

They usually are smaller and diminish over time, but a large one would not be totally unexpected.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftershock

Impact of aftershocks are dangerous because they are usually unpredictable, can be of a large magnitude, and can collapse buildings that are damaged from the main shock. Bigger earthquakes have more and larger aftershocks and the sequences can last for years or even longer especially when a large event occurs in a seismically quiet area; see, for example, the New Madrid Seismic Zone, where events still follow Omori's law from the main shocks of 1811–1812. An aftershock sequence is deemed to have ended when the rate of seismicity drops back to a background level; i.e., no further decay in the number of events with time can be detected.

Land movement around the New Madrid is reported to be no more than 0.2 mm (0.0079 in) a year,[6] in contrast to the San Andreas Fault which averages up to 37 mm (1.5 in) a year across California.[7] Aftershocks on the San Andreas are now believed to top out at 10 years while earthquakes in New Madrid are considered aftershocks nearly 200 years after the 1812 New Madrid earthquake.[8]

[skitron]

FWIW Japan sits atop a subduction zone and consequently will always have significant quake activity. Google "subduction zone" or "Pacific ring of fire" if you want to read up about how they work, it's pretty interesting stuff. The following link is a very nice and easy way to review seismic history of Japan since 1900 (be sure to play with the date sliders!) :

http://maptd.com/interactive-map-japans-seismic-history/

An interesting fact about the most recent quake in Japan is that land masses above subduction zones are known to rise and fall significantly in relationship to mean sea level (up to tens of feet) as pressures are built and released in the subduction zone below...and this has in fact occured as is seen in a few reports of previously developed coastal areas now experiencing tidal flooding. So even though the earth's crust is rock, it very much behaves as plastic (in fact geologists use a term "plastic deformation" when describing)

A second interesting fact is that the so called "warning quakes" and "aftershocks" for the mag 9 event both measured over 7 magnitude and didn't make the news as individual quake events while a 5.6 in Spain just made the headlines. Since Japan is atop a subduction zone a mag 7 in Japan is not that uncommon and so they build for it (as does Canon) and therefore the damage isn't much and not newsworthy. That is why we didn't hear anything about the 7.3  two days before (Mar 9).

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/significant/sig_2011.php

http://www.fnet.bosai.go.jp/waveform/view.php?plot=1day&code=KSN&comp=Z&tm=2011030900&LANG=en

Of course a 9 is a big deal anywhere since the magnitude scale is not linear but exponential, meaning a 7 is twice what a 6 is and 8 twice what a 7 is and so forth. LOL, I knew my geology degree would come in handy one day...I got mine right in time for the big oil bust of the '80's and the joke back then was if you had your PhD it stood for 'Pizza Hut Dude' since no jobs. 

[CR Backup Admin]

LOL, I knew my geology degree would come in handy one day...I got mine right in time for the big oil bust of the '80's and the joke back then was if you had your PhD it stood for 'Pizza Hut Dude' since no jobs.

The value of a college degree - any degree is that it generally shows that you are able to learn, that you are a hard worker, and that you can research and gather information to solve problems. (Naturally, there are a few exceptions, but very few)

As you know, you do not really come out of college prepared to immediately be a productive worker, but a company can be pretty certain that you will be successful, and will pickup what you need to know to do the job.  Yes, there are exceptions, but as I hired technical people for my company, It was unusual to have a degreed engineer who wasn't quick to pickup on the job.  Some might not have liked the job, and moved on, that also shows intelligence and ability.

Of course, lack of schooling does not in any way imply lazyness or a lack of intelligence.  My father had a 8th grade education, but was very intelligent, he lost both parents and had to work to exist.

[skitron]

The value of a college degree - any degree is that it generally shows that you are able to learn, that you are a hard worker, and that you can research and gather information to solve problems.

Very true. I think I read a stat where only 50% of college grads go on to work in the field of their major. And for me, it opened some lucrative doors over the years that would have been closed without it, so I'd definitely do it again even including the market bust.

[gmrza]

Of course a 9 is a big deal anywhere since the magnitude scale is not linear but exponential, meaning a 7 is twice what a 6 is and 8 twice what a 7 is and so forth. LOL, I knew my geology degree would come in handy one day...I got mine right in time for the big oil bust of the '80's and the joke back then was if you had your PhD it stood for 'Pizza Hut Dude' since no jobs.

Small correction: the Richter Scale is a logarithmic scale (to the base 10).  Thus, a magnitude 9 quake is 10 times more severe than a magnitude 8, and 100 times more severe than a magnitude 7!

So, if you compare the Sendai quake to the Madrid quake, the difference is 3.7 points on the Richter scale which is a nearly 5012-fold difference in intensity!

The intensity of the quake doesn't give the full picture though - shallow quakes tend to have a more devastating impact - this was the case in Christchurch.

[skitron]

Small correction: the Richter Scale is a logarithmic scale (to the base 10).  Thus, a magnitude 9 quake is 10 times more severe than a magnitude 8, and 100 times more severe than a magnitude 7!

Well I reviewed the stuff I learned 25 years ago and it turns out we're both wrong, though you are more right than I was... First the Richter scale is not used much any more (at least I did remember that much) and certainly wasn't used to calculate the intensity of the mag 9 Japan event because Richter is problematic beyond mag 7. Second, the energy released is about 32x per magnitude digit, so 5 is 32x energy released than 4. But 5 is 100x in terms of the measured amplitude on the seismograph than a 4, meaning the needle moved 100 times further on the paper (or virtual equivalents). FWIW, amplitude is actually measured in 3d these days meaning up/down, east/west, north/south and of course they can all be significantly different for any given event. All of this gets folded into modern 'magnitude' numbers from USGS and similar organizations around the world. Now how all of this translates to "how it feels" I have no idea...does a 5 "feel" 32x or 100x or some other multiplier more than a 4? Interesting question that would probably generate as much debate as "which lens produces the better IQ". All I can say is hopefully it isn't shaking over there when they are doing final adjustments to the 5d3 I end up with!

[Flake]

Well Japan have announced the closure of another nuclear reactor due the potential danger of another 8.0+ quake hitting within the plants operating life of 30 years.  The chance they gave was 87% which is about as close to certainty as it gets.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/05/20115910129549532.html

As for Nikon bodies being better than Canon, I cannot agree.  There maybe certain features which are better but there are others which certainly aren't.  I find Nikon bodies over encrusted with controls, I wonder how many people know that Canon bodies are designed to be operated with just one hand?
Then there's the future, with the Sendai facility badly damaged we'd have been expecting Nikon to move straight into production of the replacement for the D3s / D700 only from what I can gather Sony haven't delivered a new FF sensor to them so development can't even begin.  Unless Nikon choose to use the 24MP sensor from the D3x they're going to slip behind.  This isn't good for Canon users because if Nikon / Sony aren't pushing them they won't release the fully competetive camera they might have done, and hold back improvements until they're needed.