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Canon has sold its last film camera

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Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#81

Post by ISL »

gnarcoregrizz wrote: post #34
bitL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes…

Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself. That said, Canon has historically been th…

There are plenty of Canon and Nikon rumors regarding a mirrorless option; the proof will be in the pudding. The A7 III is Sony's shot at Canon's full-frame jugular.

I, too, surprised myself by recently purchasing a 6D (I, not II -- why increase weight and dark noise?) on both lens-selection/lock-in and quickness concerns. I was surprised to find that I loved being able to leave the camera switched on all day in the mountains and draw/shoot/stow in seconds, with 1000+ images on one battery. Barring substantial advancements in sensor/display power consumption, no mirrorless camera can match that property. Furthermore, it is an instrument I can handle/adjust quickly and reliably with gloves on in harsh conditions. For a week at temperatures between -20 and -30 C, the 6D (and iPhones kept warm) operated normally while friends with mirrorless cameras suffered shutdowns.

The three things, from my perspective, that Canon really lacks are 0.5-1 stops of dynamic range in the sensor (SNRs are competitive across all brands, an underappreciated fact), silent electronic shutter, and Sony's incredible array of on-plane focus sensors and focus algorithms (Canon's DPAF may actually compete, if turned loose/optimized further). Sony's eye-detection AF must be a game-changer for portrait photographers.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#82

Post by gambiting »

bronson wrote: post #65
macintux wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ferrari doesn't matter market-wise.

If that's true then why does everybody know who they are?

Why would there be a correlation here? Ferrari could disappear tomorrow, and it would have zero effect on the automotive market.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#83

Post by Finnucane »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
_ph_ wrote: post #26

This is not very surprising news - very recently I was wondering who still sells film cameras. Digital has surpassed film in almost every way. It is however quite scary to see technology completely go away which was so common not long ago, sometimes even completely lost as technology. You can’t buy proper Polaroid film any more, many other important film materials are completely gone as well.

> You can’t buy proper Polaroid film any more Yes you can: https://eu.polaroidoriginals.com/

That's a rebranding of the Impossible Project. It's not actually a Polaroid product.

Not long ago, Fuji discontinued the pack films that worked in a lot of older Polaroid cameras.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#84

Post by msbarnett »

ISL wrote: post #81
gnarcoregrizz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself. That said, Canon has historically been th…

There are plenty of Canon and Nikon rumors regarding a mirrorless option; the proof will be in the pudding. The A7 III is Sony's shot at Canon's full-frame jugular. I, too, surprised myself by recently purchasing a 6D (I, not II -- why increase weight and dark noise?) on both lens-selection/lock-in and quickness concerns. I was surprised to find that I loved being able to leave the camera switched on all day in the m…

> Sony's incredible array of on-plane focus sensors and focus algorithms (Canon's DPAF may actually compete, if turned loose/optimized further)

I'm reasonably convinced that DPAF will probably work out better than Sony's approach in the long run – every photosite essentially doubling as a PDAF sensor seems more future proof than scattering 100+ dedicated PDAF sensors over the chip.

The problem with the latter is that if Canon can develop the software to really exploit DPAF (there's no reason in principle that you couldn't, say, let users chain together an arbitrary number of pixels into selectable AF points placed wherever they want outside of the extreme edges of the sensor), there's no good response with dedicated PDAF, because the more dedicated sensors you place on the chip, the more pixel gaps you create, and the more demosaicing algorithms are forced to infer pixel colours with missing mosaic values. There comes a point where the visual quality will suffer.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#85

Post by gnarcoregrizz »

ISL wrote: post #81
gnarcoregrizz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself. That said, Canon has historically been th…

There are plenty of Canon and Nikon rumors regarding a mirrorless option; the proof will be in the pudding. The A7 III is Sony's shot at Canon's full-frame jugular. I, too, surprised myself by recently purchasing a 6D (I, not II -- why increase weight and dark noise?) on both lens-selection/lock-in and quickness concerns. I was surprised to find that I loved being able to leave the camera switched on all day in the m…

Eye-detection AF is huge. It's so difficult to get the perfect portrait. I think most people end up using preview mode and manual focusing, which is a pain and takes a while.

I'm not at all unhappy with my choice to get the 6d. It's a great camera, and Canon's lenses have all been great. Even though I've always wanted a smaller full frame, any size improvement to the body is negated by the glass unless you get a fixed pancake lens. Good point about mirrorless battery life as well, I don't usually consider it that much since its easy to carry a spare, but I had an eos-m a while back and the battery life was frustrating. Unfortunately, it got trashed in reviews which I think set mirrorless back a bit for canon. Sure the autofocus was garbage, but the 22mm f/2 kit lens for it was amazing (one of the best I've used) and it was the smallest inexpensive camera with the best IQ/$ imo, and it had an aps-c sensor. The rest of the competition was doing m4/3. I remember you could pick up the kit for around $250 or so shortly after it came out.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#86

Post by Finnucane »

ekianjo wrote: post #19
jonknee wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the scheme of things there is almost no market for medium / large format cameras (digital or otherwise).

Of course there is a market. Look at used cameras, they sell at very high prices. There is no "mass market", but there is definitely one with quite a few people willing to pay premium for high end film cameras.

A couple of years ago I bought a Hasselblad 503cx w/80mm lens, paid about $1000 for it. Also, a 50mm CF that cost me around another $400. So relatively expensive for a 25-year-old camera, but in inflation-adjusted terms about 10 percent of it's original price. Some desirable cameras still have some value, but a lot are going for pennies on the dollar.

I paid more for the 'blad than either of my 4x5's.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#87

Post by giobox »

msbarnett wrote: post #33
bitL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes…

Canon had an early lead in sensor noise (they bet big on CMOS early on when most of the market was treating CCD as the future), from the early 2000s up until Sony moved to on-chip ADC around 2009-2010 and Nikon adopted their sensors wholesale. It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony…

Exactly this. Canon had significant performance advantages in the mid 2000s thanks to their bet on CMOS technology when almost everyone else believed CCD had superior image quality. This really showed in the clean high ISO performance one got in their DSLRs vs the competition at that time, and it took a long while for competition to really catch up.

This reminds me when the first “affordable” DSLRs from canon and Nikon arrived - both 6 megapixel models (the Canon 300D/Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70). The D70 was the better camera in a great many ways, but many buyers still chose the 300D to get access to the incredibly good for the time low noise CMOS sensor. I can’t count the number of discussions I had with friends looking to get a first DSLR debating the relative merits of those two landmark cameras. A later firmware hack for the 300D that gave it almost all the features of the more expensive 10D made this debate very interesting as well.

The past 5 years are less impressive though, for sure, with the great sensor hardware from Sony etc.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#88

Post by vanderZwan »

mauvehaus wrote: post #61
vanderZwan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, The Impossible Project managed to bring back polaroids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Originals

The Impossible Project seems to be the happy coincidence of a number of people who qualify as miracle workers and the manufacturing equipment not being scrapped. I am awed by the work they're doing, even if I've never shot a Polaroid picture in my life.

Well, said miracle workers used to work at the manufacturing plant, and were the ones who ensured the manufacturing equipment didn't get scrapped. That was point of their whole initial campaign!

But yes, they deserve a lot of respect for what they achieved :)

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#89

Post by acomjean »

ekianjo wrote: post #29
ghaff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point I was probably spending 10s of hours a week doing B&W darkroom work so I have a certain nostalgia for it. I also spent lots of time playing with developer chemistry, etc. But, no, I don't really miss it. It was an enjoyable hobby but it was also a pain to the degree that it was a process you had to go through in order to arrive at the final photograph. And color slides were just always a finicky and fair…

> And color slides were just always a finicky and fairly expensive way to take and show photos. When I was a kid in the 80s color slides sessions with a projector were awesome. Since we don't really use projectors anymore and our screen sizes are somewhat limited, I think we have lost something by moving to digital.

Some friend and I did a "show and tell" slide show nights with friends and beers. Most "shows" were trips, though a few other things were covered. One friend had a digital projector another had a screen. It was fun. We did it for a number of years. tried it outside once, bugs were attracted to screen...

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#90

Post by [deleted] »

snowwrestler wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and pass Nikon until the digital era. Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and…

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