Canon screwed themselves (or did they?)

Toni Nikkanen wrote:
frederick writes:

You could start with the mirror/prism system. It's clearly different from the D50.
I wasn't even thinking of anything so fundamental as the circuit prism,
sensor, shutter, circuit boards, LCD. I was hoping that RichA might be
able to name a part that was the same. Despite superficial similarities
(same colour - similar dimensions?) they are actually completely
different with few if any obviously "shared components". But even
reviewers who should know better refer to the D80 as "D200 internals in
a D50 body". It isn't.

frederick wrote:
They did that long before DSLRs.
Good marketing when the cameras with distinctive white lenses are so
visible in TV coverage etc - even if some are now not Canon lenses.
On the back of it they rule the cheap end of the market for dslrs and
compacts with comparatively poorly specified products.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean to imply here.

Canon owns pro 35mm digital because they're offering cameras with great
performance, with low noise, and with 35mm sensors. All of these
factors come into play in the pro market, and Canon's definitely
outperforming the competition on all of these fronts. They own and
control both their (less expensive than others') chip production as
well as their whole "DiGiC" image-processing unit... and the interplay
between the two of these is key to their low noise success. That they
own both means they can keep prices down for consumers without having
to pay a fixed price to another company for chips. It's a smart
business model, that they've funded well, and it is working for them.

As for their consumer cameras, I don't know how "well-specified" they
are, but everytime I help a friend pick a point and shoot digital, I
find that Canon's offerings deliver better pictures. As sexy and
interesting as some of, say, Panasonic's new offerings are, they're
just too noisy. Sony's got some decent gear, but even Nikon's point and
shoots aren't really impressing.

Meanwhile, people need to stop pretending like the Digital Rebel line
is pretending to be something it isn't. I'm not the kind of
photographer who would have bought a film Rebel, and I never did. The
Digital Rebel line is the same camera with digital guts. If you were
the kind of photographer that had an Elan, then you're out of luck if
you're expecting that the Rebel is the camera you're looking for... you
want the 20d or 30d. People can call it plasticy, cheap, or whatever
the Hell they please... but it still delivers beautiful pictures,
better than most of the competition in this price segment, at a low
price in a body that hasn't changed much from the time it was a film
camera. The target market for the camera doesn't care, and they aren't
the consumers you'd expect to care. The more serious photographers that
would care aren't meant to consider the Rebel. It's as simple as that.

Will

In article
, Pete D
writes

"JC Dill" wrote in message
.. .
On 8 Oct 2006 11:15:05 -0700, "RichA" wrote:

The consensus seems to be a jump from the 350 to the 400 isn't worth it
from an image improvement perspective,

This is true for almost any single product jump.

Most people don't jump to a newer model (of anything) until there are
2 (or more) model upgrades. E.g. most camera owners didn't jump from
10d to 20d, but some did jump from 10d to 30d. Most didn't jump from
300d to 350d, but some did jump from 300d to 400d. Most didn't jump
from G1 to G2, but some did jump from G1 to G3. Etc. (I don't know
the Nikon product line well enough to give similar examples but I'm
sure they exist there as well.) I own a Canon 1DMII, I'm not jumping
to a 1DMIIN. That doesn't mean the N isn't a good camera - it is
selling like hotcakes but I bet that most buyers are either A)
replacing an older (than the 1DMII) body or B) are first-time buyers
in the DSLR market.


Interesting you say that because I know two Canon users that went from 10D
to 20D for the faster handling. One bought a 350D first but took it back and
swapped it for the 20D.

There is probably a bigger value jump going from 10D to 20D than from
most other one-generation hops - the 10D was the last Canon APS-C DSLR
that would not take EF-S lenses.

David
--
David Littlewood