Video-disabled Canon EOS - would you buy one, if offered?

[briansquibb]

Why not ask a more logical question such as:

"Would you buy a 28mp with 8fps for $2500 if it had no video?"

But the question should be grounded in reality. Canon couldn't sell that camera at $2500 if they have to R&D a new sensor, new focus system, etc; and they knew the market was smaller than the original market that put the 5dIII at $3500. I mean, sure, I'd GLADLY take my dream camera at half the reasonable market price, but it has no practical application as a poll, everyone would answer yes to getting their dreams.

So that is a 7D with an uprated sensor - $2500 sounds eminately possible if the design was simplified at conception

The OP did not mention a reduced price so that argument is irrelevant

I believe the question should be modified to be:

would you buy a optimised still camera without video

If the answer is a resounding yes - then perhaps a second question might be asked

How much would you be prepared to pay

 

[Quasimodo]

From a marketing point of view I think the video capabilities are a product of the 90's convergence 'ideology'. I think that both the still and videocapabilities are brilliant. However, IMHO, there seems to be two different kinds of people who buy those cameras for different purposes. I know several people who bought the 5D II for filmproduction (and they never use it for stills, but were so impressed with its videocapabilities at the low price point. On the other hand, most of my friends, myself included only use the camera for stills. Speaking only for myself, the reason I do not shoot video with it (the 5D II) is because I am not good enough, and the lack of AF makes it hard, given that you must know where people are going to move and be positioned - to be able to use any fun apertures... I would be happy to have video capabilities if they could provide me with AF, thus giving me the opportunity to use all my expensive glass for other than stills.

 

[AvTvM]

I believe the question should be modified to be:

would you buy a optimised still camera without video

If the answer is a resounding yes - then perhaps a second question might be asked

How much would you be prepared to pay

I did not want to ask for specific price points for specific levels of cameras/feature sets.

What I am interested in is to get an idea, how much DSLR-purhcasers appreciate video capability. At current it seems, they would be prepared to pay quite a bit more for a video enabled camera than for a stills-only camera. But lets see, how the poll continues. It will be open for 7 days.

I do believe Canon should be able to sell a video-only cam with a large sensor and 5d3 video capabilities for USD/€ 2000. After all, they could leavy off the entire mirror box, mirror+submirror assembly, entire phase-AF system, large prism, mechanical shutter unit, optical viewfinder ... all of this is not neede for video. Actually it is rather in the way of an ergonomical video cam. All of these items are fairly expensive in terms of production cost ... both parts and labor - with a lot of small-tolerance fitting and adjustments. A 5D3 without these items might really be possible for 2k [given Nikon's D800 price point for the hybrid stills/video D800].

Canon, Nikon and even more so Sony (with the SLT design that defintiely compromises stills capture in a big way!) are all bundling video plus stills in DSLR-Cameras and are not offering purchasers a choice of
a) optimized for stills only [@ somewhat lower price, since savings are not so huge]
b) optimized for video only [@ substantailly lower price]
c) compromised - video and stills [@ current price or even more, since many purchasers seem willing to pay]
but only offer c)
... trying to push "convergence".
To me, that would really mak sense, if those cameras were not digital but analog and require film, that would also be sold by the camera manufacturer. Then, pushing the user bnase towards a more film-hungry video would sound like a great marketing strategy. But for all I know Canon and Nikon are not producing digital media. Sony is, but only at a small(er) scale, after its proprietary memory stick desaster utterly failed.