Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge • Hacker News Board

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#121

Post by throwaway9d0291 » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:21 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #36

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #18

I used to work for Canon in a different division. It was an interesting company to work for, fantastic human-perks i.e. 2 weeks paid time off (not counted against vacation) if you got married, 1 week of paid time off if you moved. (not counted against vacation) You got your birthday off (paid and not counted against vacation). Upper (middle?) management were all dinosaurs, and stuck in their ways. The entire 'digital…

We live is a world with a distorted notion of success. About 1/2 the people I know who take photography seriously use Canon cameras. I'm also a happy Canon customer. How is this a sinking ship?

> About 1/2 the people I know who take photography seriously use Canon cameras. I'm also a happy Canon customer.

Social groups tend somewhat towards the same system, so this might have distorted the preferences of you and your acquaintances.

Also Canon is doing badly _now_. People aren't buying their _new_ stuff. You and your acquaintances likely own, for the most part, equipment that's at least a few years old.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#122

Post by throwaway9d0291 » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

michaeldorian wrote: post #118

Sony is out innovating them on every level. Faster releases, better features etc. Honestly as an enthusiast they deserve to tank. They’ve done nothing exciting in the space.

I own an A7RIII (and preordered an A7RIV) but I actually think Fuji is the most innovative right now.

In terms of image quality, my A7RIII blows my Fuji X-T3 out of the water but in _every other way_ the X-T3 is better. The ergonomics are fantastic (I love manual dials for all the settings), it has the kind of video you'd have to buy a Panasonic GH-5 for in the past, the out of camera JPEGs are much more pleasing to the eye (though I mostly shoot raw), the menu system is far more sane and it comes with features like focus stacking.

Plus, Fuji routinely adds new features to old cameras with software updates, while Sony for the most part tends to forget about a camera as soon as the new one is released.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#123

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

zazaraka wrote: post #14

The lack of vision at DSLR companies is mind boggling. Why can't I do light editing and post to Instagram directly from the camera? Why can't download the photos directly to a phone? Why can't I charge from a micro-USB/USB-C cable? I get it that pros don't need these features, but how hard are they to implement? The camera is already $1000+ dollars, how much more could adding a touch screen, a SIM card and a beefier…

There is lack of vision/innovation in the actual photo-taking too.

All high-end phones take tens or sometimes hundreds of raw frames for every photograph, and then combine them to reduce noise and get more dynamic range than the tiny lens and sensor would otherwise provide. The combining process involves using a gyro to remove camera shake and optical-flow to undo the effect of anything moving in the scene.

As far as I know, no DSLR camera does this. You need to be able to take ~100 frames at 120fps or more, and either store it as RAW (ie. 10's of gigabytes of data), or process it realtime. Phones process it realtime on the GPU or with dedicated silicon.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#124

Post by jinushaun » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 10:51 AM UTC

zazaraka wrote: post #14

The lack of vision at DSLR companies is mind boggling. Why can't I do light editing and post to Instagram directly from the camera? Why can't download the photos directly to a phone? Why can't I charge from a micro-USB/USB-C cable? I get it that pros don't need these features, but how hard are they to implement? The camera is already $1000+ dollars, how much more could adding a touch screen, a SIM card and a beefier…

When was the last time you bought a DSLR? My 2 year old low end camera (Canon T7i) has touch, HDR and send to phone. I shoot and send the photo to my camera then upload to Instagram all the time. Photos no longer collect dust on SD cards.

I agree, they aren’t innovating fast enough.

I would love getting rid of the mini USB charger. Why can’t cameras use micro usb like every other non-Apple usb accessory? Different power specs?

The HDR feature is so aggressive that it’s not really usable compared to my phone’s HDR. There should be a slider to pick how much HDR you want for each picture.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#125

Post by simonsarris » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 12:23 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #36

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #18

I used to work for Canon in a different division. It was an interesting company to work for, fantastic human-perks i.e. 2 weeks paid time off (not counted against vacation) if you got married, 1 week of paid time off if you moved. (not counted against vacation) You got your birthday off (paid and not counted against vacation). Upper (middle?) management were all dinosaurs, and stuck in their ways. The entire 'digital…

We live is a world with a distorted notion of success. About 1/2 the people I know who take photography seriously use Canon cameras. I'm also a happy Canon customer. How is this a sinking ship?

Seriously? Almost every photographer I know switched to Fuji or Sony.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#126

Post by souprock » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #120

souprock wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to have a main control dial or equivalent menu. It could be in the wrong position at power-on when I am in a hurry. I want the camera to always be fully auto at power-on, and I don't want to have to touch a main control dial to go into manual mode. Moving the settings should be enough. Aside from focus, there are 4 user settings (ISO,shutter,exposure,aperture) to control 3 physical settings (ISO,shutter,…

It sounds like Fuji does part of what you want. Fuji (at least the X-T3 I own) doesn't have an explicit "Aperture priority, shutter priority, auto, manual" mode dial like most cameras. Instead it has physical dials for aperture, shutter speed and ISO. The dials have "auto" positions and the shutter and ISO dials can be locked in place. So instead of aperture priority, you leave the ISO and SS dials in "auto" and chan…

You might not trust auto, but don't you trust the previous manual setting even less? It could have been under completely different lighting conditions.

Suppose you are up in a high desert. At night, you take pictures of blossoms by starlight. The next day at noon, you spot an interesting and rare bird of prey quickly flying by while holding an interesting prey item. Quickly you flip the camera on and take a photo. Oh bummer, the camera was still configured for starlight, and you'll probably never have another opportunity for a similar photo. All pixels are white.

Anyway, thanks for the mention of Fuji. That sounds better than normal. Why can't you lock the aperture in place? Why do you need to lock something in place if there is a separate dial position for auto? (if not auto, isn't it locked?)

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#127

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 4:18 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #55

zazaraka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for an almost non-existent user base > the kind of person who spends >$1000 on a bulky and complex camera I'm talking about opening up a new market - instagrammers, who already spend money on ring lights, tripods for their phones, but who don't want to learn all the intricacies of using a DSLR camera + adapters + laptop. The DSLR camera makers focus on a constant/shrinking market of pros, while totally ignoring a b…

>I'm talking about opening up a new market - instagrammers, who already spend money on ring lights, tripods for their phones, but who don't want to learn all the intricacies of using a DSLR camera + adapters + laptop. The people who don't want to learn the intricacies of photography just use their phone. Unless you learn those intricacies, your phone will reliably take better images, because Apple have spent stupid a…

>The people who don't want to learn the intricacies of photography just use their phone. Unless you learn those intricacies, your phone will reliably take better images, because Apple have spent stupid amounts of R&D money on optimising their image post-processing.

Every SLR I've seen has an Auto mode. You don't need to know intricacies to put it in that mode and leave it there forever.

I don't know why people keep parroting that an iphone is capable of comparable images to an SLR, it's just not true.

Even on Auto everything and with the result shrunk down to 2 Megapixels, an SLR will take much more pleasing images. The short depth of field will be very noticeable. In anything close to lower light the difference will be astronomical. Like a nice image instead of a blurry mess that you immediately delete.

Yes, the differences will be noticeable on a phone screen. DOF makes a massive difference to the overall image.

You can't get around physics and the weight and size of those lenses are tolerated for a good reason. If it was only about control then you there would definitely be camera phones with all the functionality of SLRs.

When the lens is so hopelessly tiny there's no point trying to control anything else because you will hit the limits of the lens/sensor in basically any situation. You can't open the aperture wide enough to get a pleasing DOF, and you don't have enough leeway to control shutter speed. And forget about zooming. All of those things are advantages because of the larger lenses, and are the difference between nice photos and, well, cameraphone images.

I would definitely think Instagrammers, with their endless vanity, would be interested in anything that makes their photos more appealing.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#128

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #32

zazaraka wrote: post #14

The lack of vision at DSLR companies is mind boggling. Why can't I do light editing and post to Instagram directly from the camera? Why can't download the photos directly to a phone? Why can't I charge from a micro-USB/USB-C cable? I get it that pros don't need these features, but how hard are they to implement? The camera is already $1000+ dollars, how much more could adding a touch screen, a SIM card and a beefier…

Completely agree. Why don't they provide APIs so people can customize the behavior and processing? Take a look at this: https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/experimental-nighttime-pho... Using a relatively crappy camera on a phone, they were able to get great results merely because they can program it. As a simple example: I want to reduce high ISO noise by taking N photos and taking the median. This is an established t…

Casio had some cool features on their "High Speed" cameras. eg the EX-100 and before it the FH-100. It can buffer photos at 40fps while you half-hold the shutter, and then when you fully press the shutter, it will save a certain number of those frames from even before you fully depressed it. Great for catching, eg a bird taking off, or a sporting event.

It was an amazing feature but Casio has sadly exited the camera market now, and I haven't seen another camera with the same kind of feature.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#129

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

xster wrote: post #54

zazaraka wrote: post #14

The lack of vision at DSLR companies is mind boggling. Why can't I do light editing and post to Instagram directly from the camera? Why can't download the photos directly to a phone? Why can't I charge from a micro-USB/USB-C cable? I get it that pros don't need these features, but how hard are they to implement? The camera is already $1000+ dollars, how much more could adding a touch screen, a SIM card and a beefier…

Another department I doubt these traditional Japanese companies can catch up on is computational photography. I can take 5s handheld night time photos with adequate quality on a bunch of phones these days. There's still no way of getting anything useful out of DSLRs longer than 1/15s without tripods.

I'm not smart enough to do exact calculations with aperture, etc, but I think the amount of light taken in with a 1/15s exposure with a DSLR would be more than a 5s cameraphone image.

Just taking the area of the lens, say a 5mm diameter cameraphone lens is pi x 5^2=79mm^2 vs a DSLR, conservatively 60mm diameter is pi x 60^2=11309mm^2.

So 143 times the lens area, while your example exposure time is only 75 times more. So your example of a 5s exposure would be similar to a 1/30s DSLR exposure only based on lens area.

With the advantage of bigger sensor pixels and thus much better sensitivity, larger aperture, usually stabilization in the lens, and much, much less motion of the subject during that exposure as well, the DSLR still wins on absolutely everything except weight to lug around.

Re: Canon rush to reassure investors as camera profits plunge

#130

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #116

tomatocracy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say they haven't succeeded yet - and the signs aren't great. They needed to produce a knockout offering with the EOS R and RP I think - they were so far behind that unless they did, they would struggle to build market share. I don't know how many more chances the market will give them to get it right, sadly.

I disagree. Given their history and given their capability, I give them an excellent chance to hang on to their current dominant position. They're still producing drool worthy glass.. the RF 28-70 F/2.. the RF 50mm 1.2 is the tits. The new 600 F/4 III is sublime.

>The new 600 F/4 III is sublime.

It'd want to be, for $13,000!!