In an interview with the Dpreview team Canon explained why they don’t bet high on mirrorless:
DSLRs can capture the moment better than mirrorless, because you’re viewing directly, not through an LCD.
Another reason is:
In the US, in terms of total number of cameras sold, mirrorless cameras account for less than 20%.
But Canon “will continue to produce new mirrorless cameras and although our competitors in this field are very strong, we hope we won’t be beaten by them.“
Well these are the official answers from Canon. But I do believe they know that if they would go serious with Mirrorless they would have two negative side-effect:
1) They would compete against their own DSLR cameras. Not a smart move seen that they are the king of the market.
2) They would have to publicly the Mirrorless cameras and this would bring attention to a market segment where the competition is very strong.
My two cent: Canon (and Nikon) will only make a serious mirrorless system camera if Sony-Fuji-MFT will start to erode their DSLR market. That’s it.
14 Responses
Yes, Canon DSLRs are still superior to Canon mirrorless cameras 🙂 Also Nikon DSLRs are still superior to Nikon mirrorless cameras. But I think that Sony, Samsung and Fuji mirrorless cameras are much more competitive to DSLRs.
He is not wrong in why they are not making a statement in the mirrorless market since it’s still selling pretty well, but he is pretty wrong in simplistically minimizing the benefits of the EVF and Fuji’s X-T1’s EVF seems pretty good even for the worst EVF nitpicker and the tech will only get better.
I agree that by entering the mirrorless market they would acknowledge the market and put it in the spotlight adn that would also help their competitors but I can’t agree with the idea that just because you are strong in the DSLR market you should avoid the mirrorless market unless it starts to hurt you.
This “market cannibalism” mentality is the worst. Why is that a smart move? It may sound smart in the short term, but not in the long term. In this I’ve to agree with Steve Jobs, it’s better that you cannibalize your own products than letting others do it in your place.
It’s way better if YOU make the transition rather than being forced to do so and doing so without so much leverage. Sure, it would make their own sales go down, but they would be earning money by selling their mirrorless cameras. If they only make a move when mirrorless starts to erode their market, that will be a bit too late and there will be losses, there will be a price. Plus, by that time, their competitors would be much stronger, with more mature tech and system whereas they would be just starting it.
Unless Canon can really just drop the best mirrorless with a full line up of lenses whenever they want, I don’t really think that waiting for mirrorless to overtake them is the best approach. At least Nikon is doing some experiments and investing in the mirrorless tech with their Nikon1, Canon can’t even say that. If you take into account how Canon have been dealing with the video market, they are just comfortable selling by inertia marketing.
So, as long as they are selling, they are not losing and they can use that as an argument that they are “right” but that’s totally counter-innovative and if they keep this posture, they may end up paying a price in the long term. DSLRs will always have their place, even more when size is not an issue but for everything else, mirrorless’ size and its other advantages will really earn points. Mirrorless cameras are starting to reach a certain level of maturity, and bit by bit, the weaknesses are disappearing while the strenghs are surfacing.
Fuji started as just a niche camera and now they are showing how it’s done, in a span of just 2 years, they really created a system from the ground up. Micro4/3 is also stepping up, the IQ and ISO is not an issue like it was once and their AF, Panasonic’s video, Olympus’ IBIS are top of the class. And although I still can’t figure it out if Sony even have a direction since unfortunately they seem to change their mind quite often, they brought a FF mirrorless. We’ll see how all of this develops but mirrorless market have been pretty fun to follow.
Exactly right…. Does anyone remember Kodak?!?!
“DSLRs can capture the moment better than mirrorless, because you’re viewing directly, not through an LCD”.
This reasoning is nonsense. In a DSLR your are not viewing the scene directly but after reflections on a prism and through the lens. We also could say a better way to see the scene is through a rangefinder as there is not the lens involved or even through a sportsfinder made of wire that has not optical elements at all. The only important here is the quality of the view and some EVFs are now bigger, brighter and overall better than most OVFs. Which do you prefer, the small viewfinder in a Rebel/Kiss camera or the XT1 EVF?
I’ve never looked through an EVF… The big question is how good/realistic/usable is an EVF compared to an OVF?
EVFs are very very good now and of course give you a live view of setting, filters and exactly what the image is going to look like before its taken. BUT they can very massively in terms of quality. OVF are still stronger in terms of focus speed, start up time, colour/realism, so OVF still win but a good EVF is more then enough for most now
EVF in some ways are better, what you see is what you get. They take some getting used to, but once you learn to turn off image review blackout time is comparable to fast SLR.
Most evf are not that great. For example I see rainbow effects in sequential ones, like those mounted in the samsung nx20/30, in the old sony, in the gx7 and other cameras.
Two great evfs (and also huge) are those in sony a7 and in fuji x-t1. Also the one in fuji x-e2 is very good.
Ppl voting the ‘unlike’ to me should say why they don’t like my posts. They are just ridicolous, otherwise. 🙂
This Canon guy hasn’t shot a concert from 15 rows back, with a camera held high on a monopod, and using his android phone to remotely shoot his camera.
I have shot several concerts with my NX300 in this manner. And when I update to the NX30 (or NX Pro), I will be in an even better position to shoot remotely.
You can’t do this with an OVF.
Yes you can, With a Canon 6D you can do all of the Above. I’ve done it with both an Android and iPhone. Canon has an app called “EOS Remote”, that controls mostly everything.
The remote evf in nx300 is a joke. No mode selecion, just auto, no raw. I wouldn’t use it even to take snapshots for the internet. Most cameras today, including canons, can do much, much better. The nx30 has an improved evf remote app (though far from being perfect), that could theoretically used with the nx300 (that has the same processor) but samsung is NOT implementing it in the 300, to differentiate the cameras. Shame on samsung for that.
He’s right…all DSLR are better then HIS mirrorless camera….as for those from Sony, Fujifilm and Olympus…they all have mirrorless cameras that that are better then anything Canon has of equivalent price…
Ha!