ARE Canon heading down the same track as Kodak

[pgeezer]

I think Canon successfully navigated the film-digital paradigm shift with the EOS 10D. Comparison prints to film showed that there wasn't much point to film anymore for me.

 

[Talys]

I've told my wife to bury me with my Canon. Hoping I'll be able to push 100 stops by then and not have red and orange hues on everything.

LOL...

1) Which one?
2) Which lens?

;D

 

[Ozarker]

I've told my wife to bury me with my Canon. Hoping I'll be able to push 100 stops by then and not have red and orange hues on everything.

LOL...

1) Which one?
2) Which lens?

;D

All of them.

 

[Hector1970]

I've told my wife to bury me with my Canon. Hoping I'll be able to push 100 stops by then and not have red and orange hues on everything.

LOL...

1) Which one?
2) Which lens?

;D

All of them.

Are you hoping to take them with you into your afterlife. You'll be found in 5000 years laterand marveled at as a king of his time. King Canon.

 

[Talys]

I've told my wife to bury me with my Canon. Hoping I'll be able to push 100 stops by then and not have red and orange hues on everything.

LOL...

1) Which one?
2) Which lens?

;D

All of them.

Are you hoping to take them with you into your afterlife. You'll be found in 5000 years laterand marveled at as a king of his time. King Canon.

An alien archaeologist will discover the remains, marvel at how the Canon lens still work.

 

[sanj]

Again, it is easy to dump on Kodak and say they just didn't adapt to the transition from film to digital, but they made most of the initial cameras and a lot of the sensors, too. But it was not nearly enough to offset the almost complete loss of film and related products because there was no digital substitute for them.

Exactly!

The vast bulk of Kodak was paper, film, and chemicals. It vanished overnight and they were left with huge amounts of infrastructure which had suddenly turned from being assets into liabilities. Everyone knew digital was coming, but the speed at which the p/s cameras took over was astounding.

Therein lies the crux of it.

A portion of internet forum experts believe that it will be at the same speed at which EF, EFS lenses and DSLRs will vanish, with EFM being too nascent to fill the gaps. Some people hypothesize that Canon will turn into another Kodak because by 2020, DSLRs will be specialty devices.

I don't agree with that assessment at all, because I don't think film vs digital is a good comparison with DSLR versus mirrorless.

Digital vs film had two massive benefits: photos no longer cost anything to develop and you could see your results right away. For those who were never film photography enthusiasts, it's hard to overstate those two benefits. I spent enough money on Ilford paper and chemicals back then to buy a really nice piece of camera gear every year. Because of these benefits, it was easy to look early shortcomings of digital, and then to rapidly buy significantly upgraded models.

The benefits between mirrorless versus DSLR are much more dubious if you're not interested in videography. For some photography tasks, mirrorless are a disadvantage (like wildlife/sports and flash/strobe photography), while for others, mirrorless have some nice advantages (like candids and street photography). But in either case, it's nothing near the difference between digital and film.

And finally, one of the most often stated benefits, size and weight, are practically all in consumer lenses, with pro lenses being as large or larger than DSLR counterparts, making the slimmer bodies an ergonomic disadvantage.

So, will mirrorless continue to gain traction? Absolutely, I think so. The lure of WYSIWIG is high, and the concept of grabbing frames off a camcorder is an appealing one. It's not a fad, and it's not going away. But at the same time, it's not a silver bullet and I think that DSLRs will remain more popular for a variety of tasks for the perceivable future.

How??

 

[Loswr]

How??

Because people will continue to buy dSLRs. If you look at the plots of CIPA data on MILC and dSLR shipments form 2012 onwards, the salient observations are that MILC shipments are essentially flat and that dSLRs shipments dropped substantially but that decline is leveling off.

But beyond that, the really key point when Kodak and Nokia are brought up is that film to digital and flip phone to smartphone were paradigm shifts, whereas dSLR to MILC is not. Like laser printers when ink jets came out a few years later.

 

[sanj]

How??

Because people will continue to buy dSLRs. If you look at the plots of CIPA data on MILC and dSLR shipments form 2012 onwards, the salient observations are that MILC shipments are essentially flat and that dSLRs shipments dropped substantially but that decline is leveling off.

I still am curious how mirrorless are better for street and bad for wildlife...

 

[Talys]

How??

Because people will continue to buy dSLRs. If you look at the plots of CIPA data on MILC and dSLR shipments form 2012 onwards, the salient observations are that MILC shipments are essentially flat and that dSLRs shipments dropped substantially but that decline is leveling off.

I still am curious how mirrorless are better for street and bad for wildlife...

Mirrorless are great for street because they make ambient light photography easier. An electronic viewfinder means you can how light is captured rather than have to imagine it, which is a skill that photographers take many years or decades to acquire.

DSLRs are superior for wildlife for a few reasons:
- The OVF is always available, even when the camera is in sleep or being brought up to eye level; the blackout lag is significant.
- At the high end, autofocus through OVF is faster and more accurate.
- There are no refresh or lag issues.
- Batttery life: wildlife photographers can wait for a very long time to get a shot. This kills battery life in an EVF. You can stare through an OVF for 20 hours, take 300 pictures, and still be at 75% battery. You'll go through a bag of batteries on EVF.
- Mirrorless, at the moment, means focus by wire. Mechanical focus has great benefits for wildlife photography, because as a human, I can rotate the focus ring to CLOSE to where I want it a lot faster than a computer can, and let the computer resolve the end of it.
- Practically, I get much higher keeper rates when comparing DSLR to mirrorless when photographing birds in flight
- Weight is not really an issue for many action/wildlife photographers. They're used to packing huge rigs, and the lens is going to dwarf the weight of anything on the body anyways.
- Ergonomically, a larger body has benefits when the lens is much larger.

There are other reasons, but that should give you an idea.

 

[criscokkat]

Again, it is easy to dump on Kodak and say they just didn't adapt to the transition from film to digital, but they made most of the initial cameras and a lot of the sensors, too. But it was not nearly enough to offset the almost complete loss of film and related products because there was no digital substitute for them.

Exactly!

The vast bulk of Kodak was paper, film, and chemicals. It vanished overnight and they were left with huge amounts of infrastructure which had suddenly turned from being assets into liabilities. Everyone knew digital was coming, but the speed at which the p/s cameras took over was astounding.

Therein lies the crux of it.

A portion of internet forum experts believe that it will be at the same speed at which EF, EFS lenses and DSLRs will vanish, with EFM being too nascent to fill the gaps. Some people hypothesize that Canon will turn into another Kodak because by 2020, DSLRs will be specialty devices.

I don't agree with that assessment at all, because I don't think film vs digital is a good comparison with DSLR versus mirrorless.

Digital vs film had two massive benefits: photos no longer cost anything to develop and you could see your results right away. For those who were never film photography enthusiasts, it's hard to overstate those two benefits. I spent enough money on Ilford paper and chemicals back then to buy a really nice piece of camera gear every year. Because of these benefits, it was easy to look early shortcomings of digital, and then to rapidly buy significantly upgraded models.

The benefits between mirrorless versus DSLR are much more dubious if you're not interested in videography. For some photography tasks, mirrorless are a disadvantage (like wildlife/sports and flash/strobe photography), while for others, mirrorless have some nice advantages (like candids and street photography). But in either case, it's nothing near the difference between digital and film.

And finally, one of the most often stated benefits, size and weight, are practically all in consumer lenses, with pro lenses being as large or larger than DSLR counterparts, making the slimmer bodies an ergonomic disadvantage.

So, will mirrorless continue to gain traction? Absolutely, I think so. The lure of WYSIWIG is high, and the concept of grabbing frames off a camcorder is an appealing one. It's not a fad, and it's not going away. But at the same time, it's not a silver bullet and I think that DSLRs will remain more popular for a variety of tasks for the perceivable future.

I don't know how many years you are talking with "Perceivable Future" for recording frames off a camcorder. I don't think it's as far out as many people think it is. You are seeing this happen on the consumer level with phones already - when you go to take a picture, the camera has already been taking video before and after the shot and some models allow you to choose the best of several pictures. As this becomes more widespread and expected, DSLR makers will need to incorporate that into their hardware as well, or risk being irrelevant to the regular consumer where quite a bit of the money is. I perceive a future where the camera has a setting for sports photographers and wildlife photographers where it just starts recording as soon as it is held up in a manner that suggests you are about to press the button to capture. Capturing will just tell the device "Hey, save the last x amount of time and post x amount of time" so that you can choose the image later.

 

[Talys]

Again, it is easy to dump on Kodak and say they just didn't adapt to the transition from film to digital, but they made most of the initial cameras and a lot of the sensors, too. But it was not nearly enough to offset the almost complete loss of film and related products because there was no digital substitute for them.

Exactly!

The vast bulk of Kodak was paper, film, and chemicals. It vanished overnight and they were left with huge amounts of infrastructure which had suddenly turned from being assets into liabilities. Everyone knew digital was coming, but the speed at which the p/s cameras took over was astounding.

Therein lies the crux of it.

A portion of internet forum experts believe that it will be at the same speed at which EF, EFS lenses and DSLRs will vanish, with EFM being too nascent to fill the gaps. Some people hypothesize that Canon will turn into another Kodak because by 2020, DSLRs will be specialty devices.

I don't agree with that assessment at all, because I don't think film vs digital is a good comparison with DSLR versus mirrorless.

Digital vs film had two massive benefits: photos no longer cost anything to develop and you could see your results right away. For those who were never film photography enthusiasts, it's hard to overstate those two benefits. I spent enough money on Ilford paper and chemicals back then to buy a really nice piece of camera gear every year. Because of these benefits, it was easy to look early shortcomings of digital, and then to rapidly buy significantly upgraded models.

The benefits between mirrorless versus DSLR are much more dubious if you're not interested in videography. For some photography tasks, mirrorless are a disadvantage (like wildlife/sports and flash/strobe photography), while for others, mirrorless have some nice advantages (like candids and street photography). But in either case, it's nothing near the difference between digital and film.

And finally, one of the most often stated benefits, size and weight, are practically all in consumer lenses, with pro lenses being as large or larger than DSLR counterparts, making the slimmer bodies an ergonomic disadvantage.

So, will mirrorless continue to gain traction? Absolutely, I think so. The lure of WYSIWIG is high, and the concept of grabbing frames off a camcorder is an appealing one. It's not a fad, and it's not going away. But at the same time, it's not a silver bullet and I think that DSLRs will remain more popular for a variety of tasks for the perceivable future.

I don't know how many years you are talking with "Perceivable Future" for recording frames off a camcorder. I don't think it's as far out as many people think it is. You are seeing this happen on the consumer level with phones already - when you go to take a picture, the camera has already been taking video before and after the shot and some models allow you to choose the best of several pictures. As this becomes more widespread and expected, DSLR makers will need to incorporate that into their hardware as well, or risk being irrelevant to the regular consumer where quite a bit of the money is. I perceive a future where the camera has a setting for sports photographers and wildlife photographers where it just starts recording as soon as it is held up in a manner that suggests you are about to press the button to capture. Capturing will just tell the device "Hey, save the last x amount of time and post x amount of time" so that you can choose the image later.

This may be a great way for someone with a smartphone to take the best photo that they can, but it's a terrible way for a photographer to take great photos.

One reason is that the shutter speeds of video recording are not the right shutter speeds for photography. Another important reason is that a lot photography is great because of modified light - that could be strobes, long exposures, reflectors, using short flash durations, filters, whatever. You just can't do that in the "record and pull a frame" paradigm.

I agree that smartphones and simple to use devices are crushing it in winning over people who want nice photos who have no desire to engage in the hobby of sophisticated photography. However, if you want to stand out from the pack as an amateur, and surely if you want to be paid as a professional for fashion, celebrity, corporate, weddings, events, sports, wildlife, or whatever... it's not going to be with the "grab a frame from a video" paradigm for a very long time yet.