Opinion: The camera manufacturer believes that it needs to move its products as far upmarket as it can to garner more profits.With the recent Canon 5D announcement out of the way, the time has come again to speculate about Canon's future products.
It's true that the digital imaging market is thriving. But do the images get adequate protection from filing solutions?
I quizzed Canon's executives about full-frame and crop-frame products coexisting within their product lineup. In response to my queries, Canon execs bluntly told me that the period of explosive growth is over for camera sales.
The company believes that it needs to move its products as far upmarket as it can because the high end is where the profit is.
They implied that the 5D is a trailblazer and that we can expect more full-frame mainstream prosumer camera releases by Canon. As such matters go, I expect them to be cheaper.
While it remains to be seen whether Nikon will ever release a full-frame digital, it is certain that Canon has in the past been able to make lots of money from the standard 35-mm lens range, and there is no reason to doubt their ability, or their intention, of milking this cash cow.
Rumors of the death of full-frame digital have been, to quote Sam Clemens, greatly exaggerated. The same may be true of medium format digital, where Hasselblad and Phase One are hanging on tenaciously.
Click here to read more about Canon's recent camera announcements.
As for Canon's immediate future, I would expect some new ultra low-end SLR announcement now that the high end has been dealt with convincingly.
One further conjecture that makes sense is that the 1DsIII—or whatever the high-end successor to the 1DsII is called—will be released in about one year with the same body-shape as the just announced 8MP EOS-1DIIN with its extended buffer.
Canon has just retooled for a face-lift of the magnesium casing, and they will wish to amortize their investment.
Of course, Canon might also fast-forward right now, and surprise us all with an intermediate 16MP version, a 1DsIIN with just the new shell and large screen but with the same sensor as the current 1DsII.
The amateur digital SLR marketplace is once again getting crowded with Canon, Nikon, Konica/Minolta, Pentax and Olympus active, and Sony as a potential entrant.
But archiving and printing remains an issue if the images taken by this generation of amateurs is not to be permanently lost when their computers become landfill.
Paradoxically, the risk of permanent image loss is smaller with consumer cameras, and many owners of the cheaper devices will choose to print in a minilab, and thus transfer their images to an optical disk.
It's clear that so far Canon and others are failing the amateurs by not providing a simple and affordable bulk filing solution.
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A similar issue affects bulk printing. If I can take 40 pictures in five minutes with any consumer camera, why should it take me longer than five minutes to print them?
The camera industry expects the PC industry to participate in solving these problems. They see the computer as a required intermediary for home backup and printing.
But why would the camera makers want to leave money on the table for the computer industry?
Edmund Ronald has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, but he is currently on a sabbatical as a photographer in Paris. He can be reached at photofeedback@gmail.com.
