Opinion: Canon’s mounting woes
- Thread starter Canon Rumors Guy
- Start date
There were two separate statements, only the latter was supported by the data shown (which was included because I had the graphic handy). 1) As of last year, Canon had grown to become the #1 mirrorless brand (globally, which I didn't state but should have), and 2) They continue to dominate the overall camera market (which they've led for 20 years). Both statements are true, and while they are related, you are conflating them.
No, you are making the assumption that I am stating that. The statement to which I was responding was, "And look what happens when companies don't allow such innovation and restricting it. They don't, in my opinion, never go anywhere other than people moving away from it." Not 'people move away from mounts', not 'people move away from certain camera models' – the claim was that 'people move away from companies'. The data I posted were in response to that claim, and they show it to be false.
You are free to parse what is stated any way you want. But in doing so, you're creating a straw man – suggesting I was making a point that I did not, then arguing against it.
No, I don't realize that at all. Are you basing that claim on something other than BCN's annual rankings? If so, can you share those data? Here are the BCN market share data for MILCs in Japan from 2013 to 2017:
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
I don't see Canon being #1 in Japan in any year before the RF mount (I didn't go back to 2012, but I really don't think they led the Japanese MILC market the year the EOS M launched). Sorry, but if you're going to make statements like that, it's best if you have the data to back them up, yes?
Now, here are the BCN MILC rankings for the year the RF mount came out and following:
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Just to be clear, since apparently it's necessary, by posting those results I am not suggesting that Canon became #1 in Japan MILC sales in 2018 because of the RF mount. But it is worth noting that looking at the individual models, as EOS M models dropped down and out of the monthly BCN rankings, EOS R models took their place.
Another straw man. Also, Canon didn't 'pull away' in the camera market at all. They've had 45% ± 4% of the market for well over a decade. What happened was that Nikon used to be a close second (low 40s percent, typically) until several years ago, when they started bleeding buyers to Sony. Canon just remained stable, while Nikon lost and Sony gained.
YAPODFC. An abbreviation I coined a decade ago, meaning yet another prediction of d00m for Canon. You're implying the Canon is desperately struggling to avoid the demise of their camera division. Remember when they were d00med because they were so late to mirrorless?
No, they don't love us. But they've proven that they're very, very good at predicting the direction the market will take and making choices that will keep them successful. The overall market has shifted to mirrorless, but that's not due to a rise in sales of MILCs. They've been remarkably stable at 3-4 million units/year since CIPA started tracking them in 2012. What has changed is that DLSR sales have dropped dramatically. Frankly, it's impressive that Canon navigated the transition of a camera market that was 4:1 DLSR to MILC to a market that is now 1:4 DSLR to MILC and maintained their dominance of that market, including having become the #1 MILC brand globally (not just in Japan) for the first time last year, taking that spot from Sony.
DSLRs died. The EOS M line didn't die, Canon killed it. Is it possible that was just a mistake and they're now scrabbling to correct it? Sure, but history suggests they know exactly what they're doing. As I stated above, per BCN (with the caveat that the data are from Japan only), as EOS M sales dropped as Canon discontinued model after model, EOS R models took their place in the top 10 of the rankings – the R50, R10 and RP are all in there for last month (the M50 II is at #11).
Time will tell, but it's far more likely Canon is executing an ongoing plan to continue to dominate the market they've led for 20 years, rather than rolling the dice as you suggest.
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I agree with you that a (and I'll use apostrophes too) 'normal' person can make an impulsive decision based on emotions. Where I disagree is that I think at some point a 'normal' person will finally admit that their decision (which I don't care about except for when a statement like "canon abandoned me" is made) was not thought out with intricacy. I'm not a specialist on thinking in any kind of way, so my thinking could on this could definitely be abnormal.
I had really got a chuckle about the Fuji medium format, because I look into it occasionally (by the way, do you have any thoughts on their coming t/s lenses?). I've concluded that, for now, the reason to buy is if you want 100mp (could be very good if you want to shoot wide and crop, but have not idea how much at the shooting time). Oddly, I didn't notice that mentioned.
Whether normal or not, after that response to you about "non sequiturs," it was clear to me that there would not be some point of understanding.
Rebuying M50 did seem truly bizarre. I thought it was all amusing and I'll remember it for a while, especially gems like "L lenses are shit' along with 'fuji had lots of dials and buttons.'
Congratulations! I noticed we made it to page 23!
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I think it is appropriate to take many of these numbers with a bit of salt. As far as I can see, neither Canon nor Sony break out consumer cameras in their financial reporting. Sony has professional and broadcast products rolled into the same group and Canon has both cinema cameras and network cameras (i.e. Axis) rolled into their imaging group. Unless you have a really trustworthy source of detailed info for both companies, it is very hard to isolate the dollars related to camera sales. It is easier with Nikon and OM systems who make camera gear primarily, but Canon and Sony, not so much. Sony also has a habit of moving products to different divisions pretty regularly which tends to mess up trend lines, albeit that doesn't seem to have happened in the last couple of years.
It is also interesting and instructive to plug "camera' in the search box on Amazon. Who knew that "Minolta" was still making cameras. Looks like Sony either sold off the name or never got it in the first place (currently being sold in the US by "Elite Brands"). The next twist is to look at best sellers in the P&S category (anybody there you know?). Third, in DSLR best sellers, Canon absolutely dominates (1 Nikon entry in the top 50). Lastly, the mirrorless best seller category is reasonably shared between Sony and Canon, but note that the R6 pops up several times in the DSLR category, so the data sort is somewhat suspect.
On this forum, we have a notion of what a camera is and who makes them, but our view is narrow. We look at Japan industry reporting and think we are seeing the whole picture. AFAIK, there is no consolidated report on cameras made in China/Thailand/Taiwan/whatever and on a worldwide market basis, that number is likely much larger than we might think.
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yeah that was ALWAYS the problem when trying to write up articles on marketshare was figuring out what was what from the sony, canon, nikon and olympus point of view. The we are #1 press announcements were IMO, even worse. You'd have decipher the lawyer speak to figure out what exactly they were including in that.
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I removed the post, don't want to cause a ruckus.
A lot of Canon's patents on IBIS were in the later part of 2018. it was certainly being thought of during the release of the R/RP but most of the work was done well before then. RF mount was designed in 2016/2017 from my recollection.
Canon had to do ALOT for the R5/R6 release including get their new fab lines working.
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Ruckuses are fine (within reason)
The R and RP were stopgap bodies on the way to the R5 and R6 - as always its hard to tell how many were actually sold, so whether they were successful in a business sense is impossible to know unless you're in Canon Head Office. They introduced the R mount by adapting existing sensors etc, with a few mainly trophy lenses, without the full package of features like IBIS which were still being developed. They were never an end in themselves.
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The main reason for me for not getting an R was because it like the Z7 didn’t have the AF that Sony had shown was possible. @neuroanatomist had reported that he was finding BIF difficult with the R. The R5 was the great breakthrough by Canon, breaking the AF barrier.Ruckuses are fine (within reason)
The R and RP were stopgap bodies on the way to the R5 and R6 - as always its hard to tell how many were actually sold, so whether they were successful in a business sense is impossible to know unless you're in Canon Head Office. They introduced the R mount by adapting existing sensors etc, with a few mainly trophy lenses, without the full package of features like IBIS which were still being developed. They were never an end in themselves.
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I don't want to open another discussion within a discussion in which there are already various hot topics, but just one dash related to the quality of the EOS R in relation to the R6, or rather the poor quality of the R6... Very soon after the original R came out, I bought it . Since it proved to be a great camera through my work, a year later I bought another one. A little over two years ago, I decided to buy an R6 so that it would be my primary body for photography, and the two R's would be used almost exclusively for video work. However, already at the start R6 shows its poor build quality and numerous bugs - the main dial "skips", the right audio channel has completely random drops in the sound, occasional random freezes, semi-freezes for a few seconds after a video clip is recorded (if a video is recorded parallel on two cards), creaking of the card cover, a completely different color profile compared to any other Canon I had the opportunity to use (especially in video), etc... Someone will say that these are faults that should have been resolved through service , but there were so many of them that I decided to get rid of that camera - otherwise I keep my cameras for quite a long time, maybe above average. The R5 came as a replacement for the R6, and it's a completely, completely different story compared to the R6 - a truly top-notch camera in terms of build quality, reliability and performance characteristics, the kind of build I'm used to from Canon. I just recently sold my oldest R as it was almost 5 years old and replaced it with an R6 Mark II. I wanted to give Canon another chance to "fix what they did to me" with the R6. What I want to say is that very often we look at the equipment only on paper and very often after studying it only virtually. I myself am sometimes not immune to such actions. In reality, and especially those who have the opportunity to use some equipment in the long run, often see that the characteristics on paper are less important, and the ones brought by reality are much more important. Now a couple of analogies with cars immediately come to mind (because I worked in the car industry for too long), but I will refrain because supposedly as soon as a car is mentioned, the discussion goes to *****.Ruckuses are fine (within reason)
The R and RP were stopgap bodies on the way to the R5 and R6 - as always its hard to tell how many were actually sold, so whether they were successful in a business sense is impossible to know unless you're in Canon Head Office. They introduced the R mount by adapting existing sensors etc, with a few mainly trophy lenses, without the full package of features like IBIS which were still being developed. They were never an end in themselves.
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Well, for build quality they're basically the same camera, and photo/video resolution apart, 95% of the camera functions are the same.
I have never tested the R5, but considering they were presented together, and they share 95% of their functions, I find strange that you could have found such pivotal differences, as my R6 has always been perfect.
But I bought it more then 1 year after it come to the market, so maybe all the bugs had already been fixed with the most recent firmwares at the time of my purchase.
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I am glad that there are those whose experiences are positive with the R6. It is often mentioned that R and RP were some kind of door stoppers, paperweights even, but this is mostly said by those who never tried to work with these cameras or those who used them for situations for which these cameras were never intended. (BIF, sports...). For what I shoot, the R is a very nice camera.
Unfortunately, my experience with the R6 was very negative overall, but the R6 had its positives, without question.
I've never had a Canon camera shorter than that R6. I got rid of it as soon as I could.
And I'll say it again, on paper the R5 and R6 may be very similar, but in reality they proved to me to be two cameras on two different levels.
The R6 Mark II is OK so far, but it's still too early for me to give my final verdict. I don't like how loud the IBIS unit clatters when the camera is turned off to the point that I am very reluctant to take it on any kind of photo walk. But it also has good qualities, so it remains to be seen what time will bring.
P.S.: In addition to the distinct rattling of the IBIS, a bug has been present on the R6II from the beginning - occasionally, without any possibility of recreating the event, it happens that the EVF does not turn on when the camera is raised to the eye. There have been two FW updates since I've had the R6II, but neither fixed that bug. The problem occurs 3-4 times during the day with 3000-4000 photos taken. I have not experienced such a thing with any of the previous cameras that have a proximity sensor on the EVF.
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I believe that 5D4 is better for BIF compared to R. But the R brought me a huge jump in AF reliability and precision, of course, for what and how I shoot (and compared to any DSLR I've tried up to that point). The precision and reliability of the face and eye tracking alone easily led me to buy the R, and later another, and I've never regretted it.
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I think Canon are just trying to protect their IP with the RF mount. The licensing of the RF mount would be another source of income in a market that's going down due to Smartphones, and could also be a quality check to see if these lenses meet Canon's standards with compatibility with future firmware etc.
From a business perspective Canon don't appear to need unapproved third party lenses to help with sales.
From a business perspective Canon don't appear to need unapproved third party lenses to help with sales.
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Not one single bug or freeze with my early series EOS R. It certainly isn't a "features perfect" camera, yet absolutely reliable. When I read about the numerous bug-fixes needed for the following R cameras, I sometimes wonder if the camera industry (not only Canon) hasn't skipped some development steps or if the products have just become too complex to master all (most) algorithms.
I'd certainly welcome a longer production cycle and development time...
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I had only one glitch with R at the very beginning of my work with it - sometimes it would happen that the camera would freeze. But since I was able to reproduce the problem without any problems, I very quickly found the cause of it - the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS I 128GB. As soon as I switched to ProGrade and Angelbird UHS II cards, the problem never happened again (and the 64GB and 32GB Sony UHS I cards never had any problems either).
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