The poll is open for a few more days, but the trend has been the same since the first day.
A quick summary, as of right now 45 people voted. 41 voted in the "consumer" portion and 18 voted in the "professional" portion. For my thoughts, I combined the "never and rarely" categories as I would assume 4K is not an important to these people and the "sometimes and often" categories as these people would likely value 4K capabilities in their camera.
On the consumer side:
- Never ( 27 votes) + rarely (6 votes) = 33 people of 41 (80.5%) where 4K is likely not important to them
- Sometimes (3) + often (5) = 8 people (19.5%) where 4K is likely important to them
Professional side:
- Never (12 votes) + rarely (1) = 13 of 18 (72.2%) do not use or minimally use 4K in their professional lives. What is interesting, is if we assumed the people that did not vote fall into this category, it would actually be 40/45, or 88.9%, do not use 4K in their professional lives (which would include non-professional photographers/videographers).
- Sometimes (2) + Often (3) = 5 people of 18 (27.8%) who voted in this category where 4K is likely important to them in their professional lives. Again, if we assume the people that did not vote in the professional category did so because they do not use 4K in their professional lives, this would be 5/45 or 11.1%.
Next, I will point out that 5 people sometimes/often use 4K professionally, and 8 as a consumer, these likely overlap. Maybe not all people using 4K professionally also use it as a consumer, but I am thinking most do, so maybe 4 of the 8 people who use 4K as consumers were pros also using it (again, skewing the data a bit considering forum members). Which, if you remove them, drives the consumers using 4K numbers down to less than 10%
I did leave 4K a bit vague and this was intentional (sorry for any confusion), but really, I wanted to see if people were using it at all vs just in their photography lives. For example, there are certain photography youtubers that make a huge deal that 4K is needed for their broadcasts. Based on this, maybe it isn't so critical.
So, a few conclusions, at least my thoughts:
- 4K is a niche market. If you go with these numbers, 10-20%. But, this is likely high compared to general populations or even general photographers as this forum likely skews toward people passionate about photography/video/technical gear, are technically oriented themselves, and that have enough resources to invest in technical gear. I am actually a bit surprised here, I really wonder how small the actual 4K market is.
- Professionally, 4K is a bit more important. People are using 4K, but it is still around 1/3rd. I am sure a few non-professional photographers voted here (which was fine), then this would be a bit higher (separate "pro only" poll would be needed for this). And, of course, there will be professional markets where 4K is likely critically important.
All that, and it becomes really easy to see why Canon is not emphasizing 4K to the extent some would say is needed. It is simply not a feature being used by a majority of their customers or (likely) professionals. Even years after we started talking about 4K, it still hasn't arrived. This might be why we have not seen a follow up to the 1DC.