READ ON at NY Times


Mike Johnston of TOP wrote this relevant piece over a year ago: The Online Photographer: Micro 4/3 is the Big Kahuna

It's way too early to count out Canon in any photographic market - mirrorless or otherwise. However the latest announcements from CP+ indicate growing third party support for the mirrorless market leading system, Micro Four Thirds and Sony NEX.

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Amin
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I found this interesting from the Mike Johnston article:

"On the other hand, Micro 4/3 really does seem to have it right: the sensor is big enough, but not too big; small enough, but not too small. The cameras are right-sized, the lenses are right-sized. Everything's in balance. Everything fits."

This makes sense because the main goal of the designer of 4/3rds was to do exactly that. Match camera size, sensor size, and lens size perfectly so they all feel natural and balance as they should, which is something that was never approached in a scientific manner with any other format before.

I'm not suprised by this. Here in the U.S., I still see tons of Canon SLR's being sold to young families to get those pictures of their kids. Most local big box stores don't have a single mFT camera. Some have a few NEX and a few Nikon 1 series. I don't know if its the market strategy or just a better informed consumer, but mFT doesn't seem to have the penetration here. But if mFT is being sold overseas, in Europe and Asia, like Canikon is sold here, its no wonder that Canon is struggling overseas.

imho I don't think we can directly draw indication of mirrorless market from this. Canon is more than a camera company. They have investments in other industries in well including computing software, printer, and optics (remember they're an optics company first).

we can make a more compelling argument that it's their compact camera lineup that's been suffering more. With newer smartphones that have better camera capabilities within them. the need for a compact camera diminishes and Canon used to dominate that market.

Argument can also be made that more selections in DSLR have been made available by competing company such as Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, etc. that are taking away their market share.

Canon's printers compete very well with Xerox etc. the slowdown in China (and ongoing Japan economic uncertainty), unrests in Europe, and skepticism of North America still looms businesses to invest in new equipments. Also consider Canon had suffered greatly with its production from the earthquake, leading to production delays.

Can an argument be made that this news is an indication of the future trend of mirrorless market? Possibly. Is it a convincing argument? Probably not. Canon is a blue chip company. I think when Canon and Nikon start fully committing resources and R&D into mirrorless like Sony, Panasonic and Olympus have(I still think they're dipping their toes at the moment with the EOS M and Nikon 1), then we can safely say that the mirrorless market is making a run against mirrored cameras :)

Canon is huge. When I was overseas, one country I visited referred to printed paper copies as Canon copies, like how we refer to copies in the USA as Xerox copies!

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Jonathan
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www.jonathanfriolo.com

To be honest... Canon and Nikon are likely the only companies that are going to be profitable out of the Camera players we care about. Oly is in the hole, Sony is in the hole, Panasonic is in the hole...

Panasonic is mostly losing money on its TV's from everything I've read. Funny thing is, I love my Pansonic Plasma tv...lol.

I was at the brick and mortar camera shop last night and asked the salesman if the EOS-M is selling well. He said that he's processed more returns than he has sold. And that he's taken more returns on the EOS-M in the last few weeks than on all Sony NEX cameras over the last few years of sales.

Hi Amin ..
This was expected as Nikon and Canon are not understanding fastly changing dynamics of digital photography. DSLR segment will be dead in this decade and so will Nikon and Canon if they dont change with the time . Photographers dont need those mirror , its these giants who refuse to update their manufacturing facilities and start to come up with mirrorless version of cameras including FF.
Cheers
Bhupinder

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Sounds to me like you want Canon & Nikon to cross-over and dominate the Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera market.....

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