Are Canon EOS prosumer bodies falling behind?

who is behind depends on what week/month you look at, it goes in cycle.

 

i'm not worried about Canon bodies, I would like to see better kit/consumer/prosumer lenses from Canon, e.g. a Canon kit lens with the quality of the Nikon 18-70 DX.

Patrick makes a good point about kit lenses. The 18-70DX is by far the best I have come across, quite useable with the D200 & D2X even. If you are serious about getting photos both IS and tripods are not just tools, they are essential. Of course it does depend on what you shoot. If it is landscapes,you need a tripod. If you do street & travel, IS makes a world of difference. Many of my best travel & street shots would not have been possible without IS.

> 'Real' photographers just do their thing without worrying about what the other guy thinks.

 

I love trite answers like that. Thanks! As if I give a flip about what tools you or anyone use. I was expressing my opinion, formed over the years -- and that is -- sort of an anti-marketing rant. I'd rather have improved lenses, larger sensors, less noise, and more dynamic range than all these gee gaws.

I'm a real photographer. I've taken real photographs. I'd like to have IS.

So, Ken, I assume that you have a precise definition of what a "real photographer" and a "pro" are, and that you have reached your conclusions by talking to an extensive number of them ?

 

I consider IS to be the most important innovation in lenses for the last decade (note: I own 3 Gitzo CF tripods). Folks who use Canon full frame digital bodies know how much time it takes to spot.

Real photographers use whatever possible to get the shot. They don't give a damn. They just

wanta get paid. f that means a stupid gadget, hanging from a palm tree, or paying off an

official they do it. I'd venture to guess IS rates much higher on the list than MLU or tripods

while stalking Hollywood meat from a tree or house top.

"I'd rather have improved lenses, larger sensors, less noise, and more dynamic range than

all these gee gaws."

 

It's not trite. It's thoughtful. Of all the grand masters of photography, who wandered

around and nitpicked other people's choices of equipment?

 

IS is not a geegaw, and I'm surprised that you would assert it is. It's a very useful tool.

Even if you don't want to utilize it out of some Luddite dedication to the 'hard core' of

photography, you must admit its utility.

The original poster may have had good intentions but i can see why a flame war starts each time this subject is broached.

<P>The cold hard truth is that way too many canon owners are stupidly arrogant about 'their' brand!

<BR>Face it people -he's right! The other brands are giving entry level users exactly what they want.

<P>Personally i was about to upgrade to the 400D this time round but now i must seriously reconsider.

<BR>They could have added in body image stabilization but chose not to.They could have fixed the silly handgrip but fluffed it.They could have given slightly better high ISO performance with the better microlenses but instead cynically chose to take the low ground of more un-needed megapoxies.

<p> It's sad to see but after several years of class leading performance canon is pretty much taking profits :(

<BR>Hopefully they have some serious improvements in the pipeline because the others are not standing still.

<P>The day somone develops an inexpensive way of adding on-chip noise reduction to CCD chips ,canon's CMOS will be history

I shoot concerts and nighttime events. IS is a godsend to me, since most of the time, I'm not allowed to use flash, nor would I want to. And using a tripod or even a monopod is out of the question.

 

There's plenty of light in dark rooms if you know how to exploit it. IS just gives me an extra edge. I could do without it, but it is there and I know how to best utilize it.

Ron, your laments of the 400D are spot on, true, absolutely, no question about it.

 

However, what you wrote still does not remove the the fact that the 400D will provide less noise then ALL the competition at the price point...and at the end of the day, best noise performance will ALWAYS trump in-cam stabilization, and any and all other so called features combined time 100.

 

It's about image quality. Only. And if one accepts this, then the ONLY camera worht buying in that price-point is the lowly, backward, way behind Canon EOS 400D.

 

The Sony, Pentax, Oly, the entry level Nikons, heck, the pro Nikons, in my book they're ALL inferior to the lowly Canon EOS 400D because they all provide worse noise abatement then the 400D, and even with their in-cam anti-noise algorithms, you lose precious image detail.

 

As for the competition's eye-control focus, their 4/3 lens systems, their in-cam stabilizaions, face recognition, mp3 player stuff, well that's all BS if the end result is noise city at ISO 400 and faster.

I'm not sure that for all users, at all times, for all applications, less noise at high ISO will

always win against in-body AS every time. What about the person who slaps their Pentax 50

f/1.2 on their anti-shake body? They are able to keep shooting in less light than we Canon

users are.

Hmmm. Interesting choice.

 

But . . .given the choice of clean ISO 400 with IS, or clean ISO 800 without IS. . . .I think I will pick 400 with IS.

 

And it is not a given that the XTI is noise free at ISO 800. Afterall. . .it is a new sensor in a low end dSLR coupled to a processor Canon no longer puts into mid-range P&S cameras.

 

It will be interesting to see what Canon's next move is. I was not expecting Digic III chips in the new P&S cameras.

Pavel, if it's all about image quality than go buy a cheap 4x5 view camera... and save a bunch of money. No Canon or Nikon can come close to competing with that but it's not terribly convenient to use. My point is that ergonomics and usability are extremely inportant to me at least.

i'm still not sure why everyone compares the nikon d70s with the 350d and now the d80 with the 400d... surely the d80 is going to have more on it because it's more expensive... just like the 350d compared to the d50? considering the 350d and the d50 are the entry level cameras is it not worth making the comparison on those instead?

Keep your eye on the bottom line.

 

The Canon 5D is the only prosumer camera out there. It is in its own class.

 

Features come and go. Features are for comparing equally matched cameras like the new Rebel, Alpha, and D80. It kind of looks to me like the D30 and D200 have been hung out to dry by the emergence of this new 10mp class. The main feature of importance missing from the 5D is the price. Buy three for the price of one. . .it does seem over-priced. on the other hand, if the D2X was the same price as the 5D, I think many folks would still prefer the Canon.

 

When someone does introduce something with a full frame and 12+mp, it seems likely that Canon will be ready to introduce something new and better.

Don't get me wrong, Canon is probably the best system to be in if you can afford it and if you want to be in a comprehensive system. Though I think if you are an enthusiast after a good body and a handful of lenses you could probably have a better Pentax system for half the price.

 

I guess I was struck by what Pentax was offering in its K10D. For nearly the same price of the 400D you get weather sealing, anti-dust, in body IS, a much better 11 point auto focus with 9 cross-sensors, 10 mega poxies (thanks Ron), a series of useful program modes, dedicated raw toggling button, AF mode switch on the body instead of in menus and an excellent pentaprism finder. Most of this actually looks very useful to me.

 

Granted Canon will have the edge on noise and the most comprehensive lens system, but even low noise is of no help if you are stuck working your way through menus when the action happens.

 

I doubt Canon will even bother to offer these features in a drebel. Maybe they are pouring all their money into sensor development. I don't know. But instead of all the good things they could have done they gave us the cursed direct print button.

 

In addition, I don't think they have introduced a new lens for under $600 in the last five years.

no one knows how good the autofocus is. If the 22-bit A/D is 4 million times better than 12 bit (as Pentax clumsily attempted to hint in their press release), a system with 9 cross sensors must be 256 times better than the 1 cross sensor of the 20D/30D/5D!

 

wait for the test reports, *then* it's OK to freak out

Interesting thread...I just have a few comments.

 

No other digital camera manufacturer has such a wide sweeping array of bodies to suit the requirements of such a wide scope of photographers. PERIOD. Nikon would be the closest in that list.

 

I don't think canon's going to stop - DIGIC III is an example of that. Solving the issues around the 10Mp sensor as they claimed they had a problem during the 30D production start were solved was another. Nikon came out with the D200 arguably last November (snicker) even though one could argue really for a mid spring / summer release really.

 

Bodies will leapfrog each other across manufacturers. The more of one component that gets made, the less the overall cost it is for manufacturing. So the costs will continue to drop. Rumour has it that Canon came out with a one mask method of doing a FF sensor...we'd all love that :)

 

Canon doesn't have to do much to leapfrog whatever tactical advantages people think the D200 has, or the Sony Alpha, etc,etc - because they aren't the ones essentially playing catch up.

 

After Canon completed development on the 5D (the last real "new" body), you think their engineers went..that's a wrap...okay, have a nice 2 year vacation! Whereas the other manufacturers are still essentially struggling to now play catchup with even older Canon technology. Nikon really in the last 6 months (realistically), Sony just this summer. Canon has been busy all that time making their "new" versions.

 

Keep that in your mind if you think that Canon is falling behind.