Nikon maintains DSLR lead over Canon

SMS wrote:
frederick wrote:
SMS wrote:


It's true that few amateurs would ever buy something like a 50/1.2 AF
lens, even if it were possible for Nikon to make one--which it isn't.

Please don't make stuff up.
Nikkor have made F mount 50, 55, and 58mm f1.2 lenses.

Not in AF. You can figure out the reason. It's been discussed a lot.

Yeah - back in the early 90s.
The only reasons I've seen is that the AF drive coupling takes up room
in the "throat" of the lens, so irrelevant in that any new lens would
almost certainly be AF-s.
The other reason is that rear element diameter is too wide for
electronic contacts when attempting to "chip" the lens using standard
components, but I doubt that is true if there was to be a new lens, as
there is a flange on the 50mm f1.2 extending rear of the mount outside
the diameter of the rear element by a few mm, and the head of the
contacts themselves extend outside of the inner diameter of the bayonet.
Some creative work with carbon fibre composite might be required.

"Alan Browne" wrote:
Tony Polson wrote:

Pentax came to anti-shake rather later than Minolta, but their system
works far better. So far, the K10D has the best in-camera anti-shake
system of any DSLR. Not only does it give a reliable 2.5 to 3 stop
improvement, it also tilts the sensor slightly, better aligning it
towards the incident light rays.

It does not tilt the sensor at all. It rotates the sensor around the lens
axis. Mainly to compensate for shutter depression which induces a "roll"
around the lens axis.

Hehe. One of the things I like about the medium format "bricks" (Hassy 500C,
Mamiya 645) is that the shutter can be squeezed between forefinger and
thumb, which imparts minimal shake with very small axial components. The
35mm SLR/rangefinder design is much worse.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.photo.digital.slr-systems.]
Jeremy Nixon wrote:
SMS wrote:

Mount some Nikon AI lenses to a Canon digital D-SLR and see the
capabilities you gain versus mounting the same lenses to a Nikon D-SLR.

I'd rather have no metering, than have the lens stopped down to shooting
aperture while trying to compose the shot.

First compose, then stop down, then meter. Like, you know,
first pillage, *then* burn.

BTW, when Canon changed the lens mount from FD to EOS, they also
produced a professional quality lens adapter. It wasn't cheap (over
$200) but it worked well. They had a cheaper adapter for amateurs.

Oh, come on, be honest. It was a 1.3x teleconverter

1.28x.

that only worked
on a small number of long telephoto lenses.

Pray tell, which lenses are the most expensive? Normal, WA
or tele?

The cheaper one couldn't focus to infinity.

When did Canon offer that one?

Yeah, that's really looking after the users, there.

Yeah, Canon could have cluttered their bayonett with 4
different ways to close the aperture, 3 different methods of
determining the lens type, 3 different ways for AF --- all of
them incompatible to each other --- and so on.

Or Canon could go on and switch cleanly from pure mechanics
to electronics, and do it right.

If you wonder why Windows needs multi-GHz-CPUs just to show you
a stupid simple desktop, it's because they did it the former way.
But then, Windows is rewnowned for being secure and stable
and error-free.

-Wolfgang

And lo, ray emerged from the ether
and spake thus:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:43:10 -0400, CoolPix wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:12:36 +1200, frederick wrote:
obviously your a nikon fan fredrick, funny but i choose a Canon 30D
O you're I
over the Nikon D200 and i can assure you i made the right choice. I do
I I
own Nikon P1 and possibly Nikon sells more lower end cameras then
Canon which makes up for the larger share of the market. They are both
quality cameras manufactures, I did have a sales girl/shop owner try
camera manufacturers
to sway me from Canon to Nikon as she said she did not like the Canon
CMOS Senso, funny how Nikon is now using CMOS in there top of the line
sensor their
dslr.
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk..._128284.h tml

Don't people proof any more, or are they simply illiterate.

They're illiterate by any current literacy standard. I weep for the
children.

--
Aaron
http://www.fisheyegallery.com
http://www.singleservingphoto.com

And lo, Rita Ä Berkowitz emerged from the ether
and spake thus:
per wrote:

IS/VR on *ANY* lens of 50mm and wider is totally impractical and is
so ineffective that it is nothing more than a sales gimmick. Simply
put, IS/VR
does not work at these focal lengths.

That's funny, a Panasonic FZ8 or a Canon S3IS have focal ranges of
just 6-72mm and their vibration reduction systems are certainly
effective. /per

Hmm. We're talking dSLRs here, not point and shoot cameras. P&S cameras
have in body IS/VR and their focal length is very different from what a
traditional dSLR is. Both Nikon and Canon made a technical blunder by
putting VR/IS in the lens instead of the body on dSLRs. Then again, they
might have done it from a marketing perspective of where they can sell us
more expensive lenses. In-lens VR/IS does not work on lenses of 50mm and
wider since it is a physical impossibility.

Rita

Rita, calm down.

http://www.singleservingphoto.com/20...1/where-is-is/

There are plenty of good reasons to put IS in the camera or the lens.

Also, I think you misspoke. There is a physical limitation imposed by
in-camera IS after certain focal lengths on the long end because of
the amount of sensor motion required. All of that is explained pretty
well in Canon's Rebel whitepaper (linked from the above page).

I would think that in-camera or in-lens IS would become *more*
effective at shorter focal lengths because less and less compensatory
motion is required. The opposite is true for long focal lengths where
very, very small motions of the camera result in extremely large image
motions, requiring similarly large IS motions to compensate.

--
Aaron
http://www.fisheyegallery.com
http://www.singleservingphoto.com

"Aaron" wrote:

Also, I think you misspoke. There is a physical limitation imposed by
in-camera IS after certain focal lengths on the long end because of
the amount of sensor motion required. All of that is explained pretty
well in Canon's Rebel whitepaper (linked from the above page).

I wonder about that. IS gives you two or three _stops_ of handholdability,
and what that says is that if you are shaking 4 or 8 times a _distance of
shake on the sensor_ that would give you a sharp image, IS will hold that 4
or 8 times to within that limit for sharpness.

So the distance corrected on the sensor is independent of shutter speed.

Anyway, I saw a page put up by a Pentachnista that had a monster cheap tele
with a stack of TCs for an effective length way over the 300m Canon claims
Pentax can't do. And it did it fine.

Maybe a zillion dollar Canon lens would have been sharper. Maybe. But in for
the rest of us, in-camera IS is seriously cool.

I would think that in-camera or in-lens IS would become *more*
effective at shorter focal lengths because less and less compensatory
motion is required. The opposite is true for long focal lengths where
very, very small motions of the camera result in extremely large image
motions, requiring similarly large IS motions to compensate.

I'd think IS for shorter focal lengths might even be harder,
since to be useful, you have to hold the image still for longer periods. To
make IS interesting on a 17mm lens, which I can handhold at 1/15th quite
nicely, it'd have to track (potentially more complex) camera motion
perfectly for 1/4 of a second.


David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Tony Polson wrote:
Alfred Molon wrote:


In article , Tony Polson
says...


That is complete nonsense, because sales of compact digital cameras
have stalled, and in some markets are actually going down. Meanwhile,
sales of DSLRs are still growing strongly, at 20-30% year-on-year.

In absolute numbers or in Euro or dollars?
The number of sold units of
compact cameras should be way higher.



Yes, the number of compacts sold is way higher than the number of
DSLRs sold. In Japan, the #1 top selling DSLR is the #10 selling
digital camera, because the first nine places are taken by compacts.

But the number of compact cameras sold is static or reducing, whereas
the numbers of DSLRs sold is going up by over 50% year-on-year n
Japan, with the value of those sales increasing by 20-30%.


Do y'all mind posting some sources?

"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:
David J. Littleboy wrote:

I'd think IS for shorter focal lengths might even be harder,
since to be useful, you have to hold the image still for longer
periods. To make IS interesting on a 17mm lens, which I can handhold
at 1/15th quite nicely, it'd have to track (potentially more complex)
camera motion perfectly for 1/4 of a second.

BINGO! Now add to that what IS can do with current technology, nothing
other than muddy the image. You would need a highly sensitive motion
detection array feeding software that is highly predictive and intuitive.
This is why VR/IS could never work on WA.

Still, since handheld with extreme wide angle works (enough of the time to
be worth trying) down to 1/15, but that 1/8 is really out of the question.
I'd think that if the in-camera IS made 1/15 reliable and 1/8 worth trying,
it'd be worth crowing about.

I've put up a question on a list dense of Pentachnista's to see what they
say.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Tony Polson wrote:

And then you buy Canon anyway, despite the fact that it is a long way
from being #1. That's because you are a Canon shill, and that is what
Canon shills do.


Actually, if I were just starting out, with no lenses or flashes, with
$1000 to spend, I'd buy the D80 rather than a Canon 30D. If I wanted to
spend only $700 on a body, I'd buy the Canon XTi. It's the D40/D40x that
you really want to avoid.

No One wrote:
Tony Polson wrote:
Alfred Molon wrote:


In article , Tony Polson
says...


That is complete nonsense, because sales of compact digital cameras
have stalled, and in some markets are actually going down. Meanwhile,
sales of DSLRs are still growing strongly, at 20-30% year-on-year.

In absolute numbers or in Euro or dollars? The number of sold units
of compact cameras should be way higher.



Yes, the number of compacts sold is way higher than the number of
DSLRs sold. In Japan, the #1 top selling DSLR is the #10 selling
digital camera, because the first nine places are taken by compacts.
But the number of compact cameras sold is static or reducing, whereas
the numbers of DSLRs sold is going up by over 50% year-on-year n
Japan, with the value of those sales increasing by 20-30%.


Do y'all mind posting some sources?

Actually it's the rate of increase that's declining for point and shoot
cameras, not the absolute number sold, while the SLR's rate of increase
is increasing.

"http://tech.netscape.com/story/2007/01/31/japanese-digital-camera-growth-to-slow-in-2007/"

IDC predicts actual unit sales will start decreasing in 2009.

Canon is building a new sensor factory because D-SLR sales are so strong:

"http://www.photonics.com/content/news/2007/July/16/88379.aspx"

I would expect Nikon to be ahead of Canon now. Canon really hasn't
responded to the D80 with a higher resolution prosumer level camera, and
they haven't come out with a new low end model to compete with the
high-volume D40/D40x.