m4/3 Competitor
Received some information about a possible Canon competitor to the Olympus/Panasonic micro 4/3 cameras.
Canon is researching such a camera design. There is a lot of close attention being paid to the success or failure of the system. Canon has no immediate plans to introduce such a camera to the marketplace, nor do they have any plans to become part of the micro 4/3 mount.
Canon’s interest seems to lie in making a CMOS based APS-C compact camera with a zoom. Not a new system. Leica and Sigma both have APS-C compact cameras now, albeit with a prime lens. Also, Nikon is rumored to perhaps have the same thing coming down their pipeline.
Another issue with a Micro Canon is the need for a 3rd lens format. EF-S and EF lenses would generally be too big on an EP1 sized camera. Do you think Canon really wants to get into that? If they did want a new lens format, medium format would be a far more desirable market.
All is not lost in the quest for a small camera body. You can expect a smaller Rebel down the line with an electronic viewfinder. It won’t be as small as the EP1 or GF1, but taking out the mirror box will shrink the size.
No new news on the often spoken about “G”MOS camera.
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“Canon’s interest seems to lie in making a CMOS based APS-C compact camera with a zoom”
this seems to make sense and canon will probably call this the Powershot Pro2 or Pro-whatever (more likely than a G-whatever). and while Leica and sigma chose primes for their fixed lens APS-C cameras, Canon won’t be the first to opt for a zoom, the very first non-SLR non-RF digital camera was… the Sony R1 which had a very nice 24-120 zoom, that cam was not compact at all, maybe canon will be the first to have a compact large sensor camera with a fixed-zoom lens (you have to say too many things in order to be able to say “canon is the first” rightfully here). as usual the camera will get some glowing reviews and publicity although it will be somehow crippled as usual with canon, announcement will be on a moonless gloomy day next autumn
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I’m sure that Canon is watching EP-1, EP-2, and GF-1 sales closely and has a small team working on a design in case it needs to react to this market quickly. However, I sincerely doubt any “go” decision has been made, especially as the bigger threat actually seems to be coming from Sony’s entry-level DSLRs.
DSLR sales are up, and as a result it is Sony much more than Panasonic or Olympus that is gaining share.
In terms of size segmentation, while men have three sizes in mind (“pants-pocketable”, “jacket-pocketable”, and “not-pocketable”), women also consider “pursable”.
The “pursable” segment is what the 1000D and 500D with the EF-S kit lens are aimed squarely at. I don’t think the size benefit of going to a mirrorless APS-C setup is worth what you get in this case for most women.
Fundamentally, you can’t get enough performance in man-pocketable optics to outperform a G11 – which trades photo quality for flexibility at the same size when compared to a MFT camera. (Smaller sensor allows smaller zoom lens.)