Donnie G

As long as I can continue to add 3rd. party plug-ins to Photoshop CS4 & Bridge, I'm a happy camper. I don't need or want CS6, the cloud, or Lightroom. Once I became comfortable with recording my own actions and using layers, I found that there was nothing that I couldn't do if I wanted to with CS4. To me, every version after CS4 was just filled with fluff and marketing hype, and those are things that I prefer to sell to others rather than buy for myself.

These cameras are a very nice freshening up and redo of their excellent K-30 series. I hope that their colorful marketing strategy attracts enough attention to get people to actually pick one up and try it. These cameras deserve to be winners. Go Pentax!

The larger sensor and more reasonable pricing should make this camera competitive with Canon and Nikon's enthusiasts P&S offerings. The only problem I see is that the market for those cameras is shrinking, not growing. So unless Pentax can grab a substantial share of that market, I don't see how this camera will help their bottom line. Still, I hope it does well.

If it's true that there's a sucker born every minute, then it's a certainty that somebody will buy the thing, just not me.

Microsoft? What's Windows? Sounds like just another pane in the glass to me. :) I love my Mac.

fz750, While I admire your passionate post, I still have to ask, if you feel as though you've been neglected by Canon, then why haven't you switched to one of those impressive Olympus 4/3 or Nikon or Sony cameras? I know that I certainly would have if I felt as negative toward my current brand as you seem to.

I think that the average tech consumer has become so spoiled that they actually believe that every new product cycle is going to bring with it a new major, groundbreaking, life altering technology that trumps whatever came before it. Change is good, but a highly consistent and predictable level of performance and operability from product cycle to product cycle is not a weakness either. In fact, it's a major strength of Canon's army of Rebel bodies that has kept that product at the top of the worldwide sales charts every year since it was first introduced to the camera marketplace. Canon just celebrated the production of over 90 million EF lenses, and you can bet that well over half of those lenses were attached to a Rebel DSLR when they were sold. Customers know what they're getting when they buy a Rebel, and they love em.

@ yabokkie

A higher resolution sensor may be a wet dream for the gear heads among us, but there's nothing wrong with any of the Rebels image quality as a practical matter. I used a Rebel T3i to photograph graduations, birthdays, baptisms and more without a single complaint from any of my customers about IQ. Not only did the camera pay for itself, but it payed for the upgrade from the 18-55 kit lens it came with to an excellent EF-S 15-85, the battery grip, spare batteries, extra SDHC media cards and more in just one summer. I don't know about you, but that's how I judge a camera's image quality and value.

As for STM vs. USM lenses, they are designed to appeal to 2 different types of photo enthusiasts. Video enthusiasts for STM and stills enthusiasts for USM. Canon is merely playing to it's strengths among it's new class of customers who favor video performance over stills, but want to be able to do both with little or no post processing involvement.

The Canon T5i and SL1 Rebels are on a mission. IMHO, their mission has absolutely nothing to do with trying to impress the pixel peepers with a new higher density megapixel count, especially since 18mp seems to be the sweet spot in terms of IQ vs. file size for most consumers opting for an APS-C body camera. No, the mission is to introduce current and future Rebel owners to the advantages of using the relatively new silent focusing STM lenses as the lenses of choice for video capture. And the best way to do that is by offering the consumer a new kit. I fully suspect that there will be a STM L-series lens coming soon. My guess is 24-105 L.

So don't bet against Canon, because they are really good at what they do. Don't take my word for it. Just ask Contax, Kodak, Minolta, Konica, and all the other forgotten or soon to be forgotten camera companies. It's not about the camera sensor or the film or the body. It will always be all about the lenses folks.

This is hardly news since the smartphone camera crowd is very happy to give away their images just to see them posted anywhere. It's part of the social media trend of getting the bragging rights for being the first to post a new picture online. These days, people post every image they shoot, no matter how trivial it is or what the quality parameters are. There is simply no way that a pro news photographer can compete with "FREE" content contributors no matter how good the pro images are. The media outlets are just taking advantage of this trend that places zero value on media content. It's an acceptable outcome because the end users don't seem to care one way or the other.

Congratulations Canon! Also, it's great to see the haters posting in force because it validates that Canon is still at the top of its game. Can hardly wait to hear the howls from the haters when Canon reaches that 100th million lens milestone in February or March of next year.

@EinsteinsGhost

My earlier posts were an acknowledgement of my total lack of enthusiasm for all ILCs including the EOS-M. And that isn't likely to change even with the introduction of an EOS-M2, because I'm a hardcore optical viewfinder loving and phase detection AF spoiled DSLR fan. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm against smaller, lighter, stealthier design. It just means that I'm not willing to trade away my OVF and PDAF to get there. But that's just me! So when my long time camera manufacturer of choice offers up a product that's truly smaller, lighter, and stealthier than anything that has come before it, and in a familiar form that doesn't throw out my beloved OVF and PDAF to get there, then that's cause for celebration at my house. Canon is betting that there are a whole lot of folks who feel the same way I do. That's all I'm saying.

Some folks here have suggested that the Rebel SL1 is Canon's replacement for the EOS-M, I don't think it is. Here's why: Canon is a camera manufacturer that competes in all camera product categories from simple point & shoots through to Hollywood Cinema production equipment. The EOS-M was a 1st effort at an ILC, but not the last. Remember, Nikon had to rethink their ILC too. Whatever shows up as the EOS-M2 will be a much stronger competitor than the original. The only real question is where will Canon position the new ILC in relation to the rest of the Rebel line? My guess is right alongside the SL1 price-wise. It's all about having a product choice for every type of buyer.

@kaiser soze

Your observations about Sony and Panasonic ILC cameras are correct, but my point is that Canon's new Rebel SL1 shows the inherent strength of the DSLR design, which is its ability to evolve. ILCs and DSLRs will coexist alongside each other quite easily because they appeal to different customers, but one is not likely to replace the other, at least not within our lifetimes. Bottom line being that Canon is offering potential new ILC and DSLR buyers a new choice for the same money as the Sony and Panasonic offerings in a form factor that is already familiar and therefore comfortable to its established legions of loyal customers as well. My first impression of the Rebel SL1 is that it will be a major sales success. Why? Because I'm thinking of buying one or two SL1 bodies with fast prime lenses for myself, and I don't usually buy small cameras of any kind.

The T5i is just the routine annual freshening up of the Rebel line with a few tweaks to keep it current and at or near the head of its class, just like the T4i was to the T3i. No surprises here since the Rebel line still outsells its competition by a huge margin, and routinely doesn't get a major redo until after 3 or more product cycles. The new Rebel SL1 is the real news from Canon and is destined to make the Rebel line even more dominate than it already is.

I love hearing from all of the mirrorless interchangeable lens compact camera fans with their dire predictions of the pending death of DSLRs as the main stream enthusiasts camera of choice for the masses. As I understand it, the ideal ILC camera would be packaged in the smallest possible body that offers APS-C image quality, auto focus as speedy and accurate as phase detection AF, a large and sharp rear LCD for composing and focusing the image, excellent video capture, easy manual control, plenty of internal processing for raw and jpeg capture, an endless variety of lens choices, and oh, an eye level electronic viewfinder, (just in case).

Well ok, what if somebody offers you a camera with real Phase Detection AF and all of that other stuff on your ILC wish list, substituting an optical viewfinder for the EVF? Would that be acceptable to the ILC fans? Canon thinks so, and so do I. Call it an "ILCDSLR" or call it a hat if you want to. It's still a Canon Rebel SL1 and it's a winner.

The T5i is just the routine annual freshening up of the Rebel line with a few tweaks to keep it current and at or near the head of its class, just like the T4i was to the T3i. No surprises here since the Rebel line still outsells its competition by a huge margin, and the new Rebel SL1 will likely make the Rebel line even more dominate.

Photato,

I suspect that Canon and third party lens makers will address that issue when there are enough users demanding those APS-C wide angle primes to justify the cost of making them.

It always tickles me to see all of these posts about sticking big zooms on small camera bodies. C'mon, how many people actually do that? If you do , then why blame the manufacturer for the poor ergonomic fit that results from that union? After all, just because you can do a thing doesn't mean that you should do it. I think this new DSLR body from Canon would be a great street photography camera if paired with a fast single focal length prime lens from 24mm through to about 85mm. Canon already has plenty of choices in that focal length range, so lens availability isn't an issue (my favorites are the 50s).

Once people actually are able to get their hands on one, this new EOS Rebel SL1 will probably prove to be as popular as traditional Rebel bodies, if not even more so, thanks in large part to Canon's clever packaging that doesn't leave out anything important to the DSLR user experience. IMHO, the camera is a winner.

marike6,

If by better sensor you mean more pixels, then I have to disagree with you. 18mp are more than enough to do anything that a typical buyer of this class of DSLR might want to do with the files from this camera. Aside from bragging rights, more pixels are of little benefit to the user who rarely prints anything larger than 8x10.