What will be coming from Canon and when ?

jsmiller wrote:

All that you say may be true. Sensor technology is continuing to evolve, and the sensors we built in our own lab showed the same improvements, sometimes dramatic, with each new generation using better equipment. Before we stopped doing this, we reached QE of above 90% throughout much of the wavelength regions of greatest interest- near UV to NIR- and read noise of below 2 electrons, approaching the ultimate of what is possible. Sensors used in consumer cameras throw away a lot of light (the color filters are one noteable place) and could be improved a fair amount more in actual performance, but they are already quite spectacular compared to film. People in the high tech industry don't like to play catch-up, but prefer to jump over what others are using in their advances. This inevetably leads to alternating between being followers and leaders (if you are good at it.) Will Canon modernize-advance- their own equipment or start buying sensors elesewhere if they feel the need to jump forward again? Are they losing customers because of their current tachnology. Of course I can't speak for others, but I recently went through a lengthy comaprison of the Nikon D800 and the Canon 5D III and picked the canon as the better camera for me inspite of the older sensor technology.

The question is how much that the difference between the "old" Canon technology from those made by Sony and others affects a photographer's ability to get the images he or she wants. If that extra stop or two of dynamic range and lower read noise is essential or important for what you do while actually taking pictures for their own sake, not for "laboratory" anaylsis, don't buy Canon. I have been unable to detect any pattern noise or banding in my last two Canon cameras. It may be there, but if it is, it's below the level of being equivalent to 2-3 detected photons, and I simply never use such low S/N images taken with my camera that this is of any significance. So the question for the buyer realy is not what technology was used for making the sensor, but is its performace satisfactory for the buyer's needs. Each buyer has to decide that individualy.

Of course all of the above is just about sensors, but there is a lot more to a camera's performance than its sensor. Considerations of ergonomics, lens quality, focus accuracy, quickness of response, etc., all are important in considering which camera to buy.

Joe