Well panpen, I don't know about the 15 lbs. of cameras carried around your neck that you allude to, or even the Facebook posts, but yeah, I can definitely relate to the amount of equipment and effort it takes to produce hundreds of sales worthy 4x6 prints for purchase at events, such as St. Patrick's Day themed parties, because that's what my crew and I do. So yeah, I tend to stick with equipment that is reliable, fast handling, easy to use, and produces consistent, repeatable results job after job. Stuff like portable commercial grade dye sub printers, Apple computers, etc., and my Canon DSLRs. Pro or not? Don't know and don't care. I just like being paid, on the spot, for my photos. Always have. Those are the choices that work for me. I hope your choices work as well for you. :))

Jerry, you are a rebel. Your camera needs are unique. Of course Canon's offerings don't appeal to you and your special breed of specialists. It's just that for the rest of us hum drum unwashed masses Canon is just fine, in fact it meets our boring needs to take excellent photographs day in and day out - hence the market leading position. Carry on with your niche activities.

This is not a casual fact. Upgrades are an extremely important part of camera and most other sales. Note realizing that your company has not had a major upgrade in sensors for 7 years is unthinkable. I suspect he was just playing dumb. Either way he was not credible.

7 years without a major full frame camera upgrade and 5 years without a major APS-C upgrade seems foolish....unless you believe Canon was not capable of an upgrade.

SCHNELL!!! SCHNELL!!!

Canon sensors are the best? Under what rock have you been hiding.

Re 5ds vs 5diii...here is what Michael Risedal had to say...Michael is a very respected, experienced and technically knowledgeable photographer:

5ds better QE than 5dmk3= better sensor, now it depends on the CFA Canon will use in the new camera, conditions are there that this will be Canon's best camera IQ wise so far.

The new 5d will skates 8 around the old 5dmk3 even in low light and the same file size as in 5dmk3.

End of citation of M. Risedal.

As to Maeda's interview...who cares what he said? I cannot believe that people are giving this interview this much weight. This is standard CEO boilerplate.

I think many are just using this as an excuse to bash Canon because they can. My guess is that no matter what he said, most of the same people would be finding some other fault. And most of the critics were not intending on purchasing Canon gear.

So, in other words, the 5DS is all about the sensor. I thought it was all about the lenses. Please make an effort to contain your Canon fanboyism with some modicum of consistency.

I love this one: "As to Maeda's interview...who cares what he said?" Wow. The Managing Director and Chief Executive, Image Communication Products Operations at Canon gives an interview and you say, "Who cares what he said." Uh, OK.

So, even though it's been spelled out for you countless times, it's not Canon's equipment that's being called into question here, but the attitude that Maeda expressed. Oh, I forgot -- who cares what Managing Director and Chief Executive, Image Communication Products Operations at Canon says or how Canon sensors compare, and have compared for the past 7 years, to the competition. What was I thinking?

First, my defense of the overall Canon system is to counter this Canon is doomed attitude that we read on this forum. It doesn't mean that the new camera won't have a better sensor. And the fact that the sensor is better doesn't mean that I believe it's all about the sensor. That's a straw man argument.

And yes, who cares what this guy said. Do you read the comments of the CEO's of all companies you patronize? The CEO of the company that builds your car? How about the CEO of the hotels you stay in. And on and on.

I've read quite a few comments from CEO's and other execs from companies, and they usually mean very little. If you want to overreact to his words and make it like he committed the unpardonable sin, then so be it.

Re: "First, my defense of the overall Canon system is to counter this Canon is doomed attitude that we read on this forum."

Who said Canon is doomed? What is being said is that there are better ways to go about things than how Maeda expresses it.

Re: " And the fact that the sensor is better doesn't mean that I believe it's all about the sensor. That's a straw man argument."

The straw man argument is that anyone is saying it's all about the sensor. In case you forgot what you typed, I'll quote it for you:

"It's the glass that really matters" and "When choosing a camera, all of them are more than sufficient for most people's needs" as if the sensor didn't matter, and matter a lot. In fact, the *only* reason anyone would buy the 5DS is for the sensor.

Re: "I've read quite a few comments from CEO's and other execs from companies, and they usually mean very little."

Then interviews should be cut from CEOs' job descriptions.

Oh Great Bustard...you seem like you want to engage in a game of gotcha journalism, both with Mr. Maeda and now with me.

I'm not running for any office, so I don't care. Read this forum and you will see many people stating that Canon is doomed in one way or another, comparing them to Kodak, Nokia, etc...I think you too can see that...so notice I didn't say you specifically said Canon was doomed.

And yes people will buy the 5ds for the sensor improvements. That doesn't mean that the lenses don't matter, that other factors don't matter. Everything matters, it's the entire system. And whether someone needs the 5ds sensor improvements or not, it will still sell very well, above every mirrorless brand for sure. My point is not to defend everyone's purchasing habits, but to note that the 5ds will sell well.

I think we basically agree on many points, but you get very obsessed with Mr. Maeda's comments. I say it's all part of the games that CEO's play when they give interviews.

Re: "I'm not running for any office, so I don't care."

You sure have a lot of comments about this article for someone who doesn't care.

Re: "Everything matters, it's the entire system."

No kidding. Rather at odds with how you characterized it in your OP:

"It's the glass that really matters; invest in lenses moreso than camera bodies. When choosing a camera, all of them are more than sufficient for most people's needs."

Re: "I think we basically agree on many points, but you get very obsessed with Mr. Maeda's comments."

Again, for someone who claims to be of the opinion the interview with the Managing Director and Chief Executive, Image Communication Products Operations at Canon means nothing, you sure have a lot of comments about it, wouldn't you say?

It's always perilous intellectually to create these type of analogies. It's like comparing every war to WWII.

Canon is not like Nokia or Kodak vis a vis Nikon, Sony, et al. Now all camera companies are in a way like Kodak or Nokia, but they had their Kodak moment of disruption when Apple introduced the iPhone. That's been the real disruptive shift.

Canon doesn't face the kind of threat from other camera companies; they've already had the rug pulled out from under them by smartphones, but so has every other camera company.

There exist, in the market for sometime, something called the Zeiss Otus and Leica Summilux and APO lenses. There is also the world's best autofocus 50s , the 55 1.4 FE sony.
I guess "amazing" to canon is pretty relative.

Magneto: the Zeiss Otus lenses are terrific, but even more expensive than Canon glass, in general larger and heavier, no AF, and currently available in only 2 focal lengths. No zooms, no wide angle, etc. Now Zeiss does make some other terrific stuff beyond the Otus line, but again, no AF, no zooms, etc. The presence of Zeiss does not negate the excellence of Canon glass, nor its more complete product line.

As for the Leica lenses...yes, fantastic. But only for Leica bodies, more expensive, no AF. And if you want to talk about crippled camera bodies, let's talk Leica M.

Sony has some good Zeiss glass...but nowhere near the selection of Canon. So sure you can cherry pick one great lens for Sony FE mount, but you know that you have to consider the entire system.

Where are the long telephoto lenses? Macro? Great versatile zooms?

Overall, Canon has the best lens lineup in the industry; only Nikon comes close.

He said Fuji lenses. As in Fujifilm- as a good example. Fuji film lenses are excellent.

no one can confirm about the 5DS yes... but 7DII does still use the outdated 500nm process. every company has moved on, except Canon.

magneto: I hope advancement doesn't slow down...but please read Laforet's article and tell me where he is wrong. If the economics don't hold up, then the advancement will slow down. It takes money to fund all that R&D, and you need customers to actually buy it.

Smartphones will keep on getting smarter. Companies like Apple have the software and processor expertise. Look at the recent ad campaign by Apple about pics shot on iPhone 6. Wait a few years and see how the iPhone camera will have advanced. Most people value convenience and connectivity and nothing on a dedicated camera will beat a smartphone for that.

If the market for dedicated cameras keeps eroding, then we will be left with only pro's and high end hobbyists. Pro's don't need a new camera body every year; in fact most prefer to stick with a model for longer.

The 7D2 is a bargain. Go try it's AF and you'll know what am I talking about. But study the manual first before use!

Not sure what your point is. I mean, here are others making thousands of dollars not using Canon equipment.

No said, or implied, anything bad about Canon's lenses. Indeed, the new releases get praises all around. It's Canon's sensor tech, which lags, and has lagged, behind the competition for years, combined with comments like:

"I wasn't actually aware that it had been seven years!"

and:

"There's nothing in particular that we learned from Nikon or Sony..."

that inspire the comments posted here. Combine those with:

"Users of the 5DS and 5DS R have much higher, stricter standards. So we set the ISO cap in accordance with what we felt that they would demand and require."

and:

"So rather than looking at our competitor’s mirrorless cameras and regarding them as a threat, within Canon, our team who’s working on mirrorless should view the DSLR team as a threat. They should view the high-end compact cameras team as a threat. The threats that our mirrorless cameras team face aren’t from other companies, they’re from other divisions within our company."

And, well...

@Richard Franiec

Re: "I trust that what he is saying is exactly what he is believing in."

For a fact. But what he is believing in is that the competition does not matter. Only what Canon does matters.

Re: "Let others cut each other throat and see who remains in the game. If there is anything left, we'll deal with it on our own terms."

I'm not sure why one would think that of Olympus, Panasonic, Fuji, Samsung, and Sony, only one will be left. But let's say that only one will survive. When Canon enters that cage, not having paid attention to the competition, well, let's just say it probably won't go well for them.

However, that's not what Maeda is thinking. He's expecting people to buy Canon because it is Canon, and Canon is the best regardless of how it compares to the competition, which is why they pay no heed to the competition. I wonder if Leica might not pay him more to do the same job.

"Canon doesn't bleed the money to produce flashy and trendy cameras...."
You mean like better sensors with higher resolution and improved dynamic range.?
Trendy, like smaller easier to use cameras?
There is a reason even Maeda is saying it is time for Canon to speed up.

The thing is, they have got a big share right now, but it will be going downhill if they keep staying in the past & keep slowing down in manufacturing & developing

@Jahled: I guess Microsoft said the same thing back in 2009 with Internet Explorer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_StatCounter).svg

Come to think of it, I bet Nokia thought the same thing.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833017ee7da0bed970d-pi

Canon's slide (if it does not innovate as much as its competitors) will be less rapid (mostly due to people with large lens collections and newbies who only know the "Canon" name), but I would definitely not shrug off the threat like both you and Mr. Maeda seem to be doing.

Remember...Nokia stayed on a steady course. Sometimes, you need to veer from that steady course to embrace the future.

Yes Charrick, Fuji is a perfect example, they had nearly vanished & then they did a 180 & now they are becoming bigger and better.

And oh god don't mention Nokia please, it makes me cry on the inside, I own the last nokia phone to come out with it's own operating system.

They were nr1 by a mile in cellphones & refused to change, same thing happened to Kodak & they joined the Digital SLR market to late.

Olympus also did a big change going from four thirds to focusing mainly on micro four thirds & gaining a large market.

Its Japanese lingo and I can see people just don't understand this and trying to assume things including DPR folks. I used to work for a Japanese technology company and this is the way they answer questions. You’re always get a simplistic single line answer and they'll will not provide options in their answers. Definitely seems ignorant for western folks and seems arrogant as the result but it's not. Also, why shouldn't a leader in an industry be arrogant? Furthermore who is DPR to them? Since majority of camera makers are Japanese, maybe DPR should hire a Japanese or persons familiar with the Japanese corp lingo to carry out interview plus try to make sense.

Ok, I see your points.

This was the part that seemed a bit ignorant to me:

"Looking at all of the mirrorless cameras out there, there’s nothing that really frightens us."

and it reminded me of Apple competitors mocking the iPad on first release calling it a toy and it will fail etc. Then all of a sudden there was a mad rush for all the companies to make their own competitor version once they realised their ignorance got the better of them.

why would it "frighten them".

canon's holding onto over 40 marketshare of all ILC's .. MILC's outside the fandom over the past 3+ years that CIPA beens tracking has basically remained a steadystate as far as market shipments.

he's actually being quite truthful - people publize when they "leak" ie: move from canon / nikon and cry rivers of joy over a fuji camera - however for each one of those - 3 other people purchase a canon camera.

Frighten? no.

Concerned or a bit worried? perhaps - but what frightens canon more I would assume would be smartphones versus anything else.

when 1 billion smartphones are being sold per year - that's what scares and should scare any camera company at this point.

Speaking of CIPA, the problem is that DSLR shipments are dropping. Also, given that most people buying mirrorless systems or large sensor compacts might have probably bought a DSLR if they had no other choice, you can look at mirrorless and large sensor compact sales as being sales lost by DSLR manufacturers.

Yes, smartphones have hit the camera makers hard and pretty much eliminated P&S cameras. But that is something that camera makers can do nothing about anymore - they lost that market to electronic companies. They may still make a buck from providing sensors and lenses, but there is no product they can come up with to be competitive at that level anymore.

What they need to worry about now is the remaining small segment of people that still are interested in buying a dedicated photography/video device. Those people will be the customers that all the companies will be fighting for now. And a good chunk of them buys mirrorless cameras, so it is not wise to ignore that preference.

@Vignes: For your starting points, see my other two comments up in this page related to CIPA data. They address the dent made in the Japanese market leading to Canon's experimentation with the EOS-M in that market.

For the rest of your commentary, see my comment a bit below here in the page. Yes, Canon can make a great mirrorless system, but they have a dilemma around positioning it - whether that is what prevents them from building it or they really don't care and don't trust the technology, I cannot tell and they may not have reached a consensus within the company either.

7d2 has no banding. The new 5d's will likely follow and have no banding. The 7d2 exposure system is the best Canon has ever made. I was out into snow and mid day sun the other day with blue sky and clouds and with AV, iso 100, EC 2/3, Evaluative, often pointing in direction of the sun, 500+ shots -- I could not get a bad exposure. The new exposure system on my 7d2 controlled the shadows and highlights within the dr of 12. I was prepared to go into my rapid fire bracketing and use the 5 min post process of two shot blending in Lr and PS as Hans wrote his 11 page paper in the 1 d forum for his 5d3, vs his d810, but I never needed to. All new 5d's will have the latest exposure system controlling exposure within Canon's dr of 12 - my best guess based on what they already have with the 7d2.

Northrup has a great recent video -- see below. 7d2 sensor has finally caught up with industry - is one of his points.
The biggest point he makes is -- it takes forever these days to improve CMOS much further -- so glass, glass, glass -- versus body (once you update to Canon's latest bodies 6d, 7d2, new ones...that have finally caught up with no banding and are now at industry standard iso ). Canon has done a great job on glass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OtIiwbAZi8

How often do you get to chose ISO 100 for sports/action photography? In my experience, its very rare as one needs fast shutter speeds. Maybe if you are doing some special effect or its a setup shot with lighting one would be using ISO 100. Bottom line is that at ISO settings where it counts, the 7DII is a far better camera for sports/action than the present equivalent Nikon's or Sony's.

Surely no one can think that Canon can remain the market leader without ever listening to their customers? Maeda said at the time of the 7d2 launch that there has been requests for more pixels and that they are working on it...now about 5 months later they have delivered...sure we all wish it could have been earlier but that s how it is...I am sure that this camera will be properly sorted with none of the vibration issues of the d800 and alpha 7's. I see many D800's for sale around here...not that I think its a bad camera at all but for me at least there is now more choice without having to buy into another system....

In regards to Paul B Jones, while me leaving Canon will not keep the CEO awake at nights, when a million people like me go to another brand, then perhaps his sleep wont be so sound. I did not want to leave the Canon family and have to learn a complete different system but the bottom line is Sony (and therefore Nikon) have dramatically moved ahead in image quality.

Well the mirrorless market hasnt grown even a fraction of the predictions so maybe Canon were the wise ones not to invest all their R&D into that, but rather into known and dependable sellers...no matter how cool your cameras and sensors are if the company doesn't exist in the future it was all in vain

Jpino so if marketing is the easy road to success I wonder why everyone isn't doing it?

And how do you think Canon sees the customer as opposed to say, Nikon? And how is it working for them?

Would you say the new 11-24mm lens was out of touch with customer demand and how about the image quality and design? Does that smack of a company that relies only on marketing to sell these products and that is behind the times?

money and arrogance is not everything, some of us value job satisfaction :D

@Thoughts R Us

Your 35 comments here defending Maeda's comments have made it more than clear that you feel his words are words of wisdom from the greatest camera manufacturer on Earth.

However, others clearly have a different opinion of jewels like:

"I wasn't actually aware that it had been seven years!"

"There's nothing in particular that we learned from Nikon or Sony..."

"Users of the 5DS and 5DS R have much higher, stricter standards. So we set the ISO cap in accordance with what we felt that they would demand and require."

"So rather than looking at our competitor’s mirrorless cameras and regarding them as a threat, within Canon, our team who’s working on mirrorless should view the DSLR team as a threat. They should view the high-end compact cameras team as a threat. The threats that our mirrorless cameras team face aren’t from other companies, they’re from other divisions within our company."

He could have just said, "We just do what we do, and that's all there is to it."

@GaryJP:

Re: "The DR issue is situational and for me very rarely an issue. Half the people who bang on about it do not understand that. More would be nice but it's not a deal breaker. It is still preferable to cooked raws."

One could say the same about f/2.8 vs f/1.4. And, so far as I'm aware, Nikon's RAW is no more cooked than Canon's.

Re: "It is the new pixel count. For those who believe, nothing else matters."

Well, Sony sensors beat Canon's sensors not only on DR, but pixel count and banding. Now Canon has pulled out ahead in terms of pixel count, but how long before Sony sensors match or beat that?

There's nothing wrong with saying you prefer Canon and Canon works for you. But every argument against Sony's sensors not being any big deal over Canon's sensors is the same argument that can be made that FF has nothing over APS-C.

"So the main indictment from what I see is that Canon sensors have less DR at low ISO than the competition. OK. But does that merit the vitriol?"

Similarly, do people complaining that the limited DR is a limitation for them merit vitriol? Because they get lots of it here and in the forums.

Canon's MILC has yet to gain traction. Sony seems to be doing much better.

nunatak: the point is this: it doesn't matter who is doing better in the MILC market; it's small; it's stagnant. Sony may be doing better, but not that great. Sony is in trouble as a company financially. They are closing their Sony stores in the US. When their MILC cameras sell well they are sold at a significant discount.

Canon's dslr's far outsell Sony's MILC's. That's what counts.

@Thoughts R Us - I think it's more a case of US consumers not being educated or aware of mirrorless. I run into people almost every day who are completely unfamiliar with mirrorless, and I have to show them that A) my mirrorless camera has the same sensor size as a DSLR, B) that I can change lenses on my mirrorless camera just like a DSLR, and C) that my mirrorless camera delivers equal image quality to a DSLR. DSLRs are popular because that's what people know and that's what they are familiar with, thanks to many, many years of DSLR existence.

But over time, as more consumers become more familiar with mirrorless cameras, they will grow in popularity. It won't happen overnight, but it will eventually happen. And this silly myth that US consumers aren't buying mirrorless cameras because they are smaller will finally be put to rest.

The irony is that I know a lot of casual DSLR owners who disklike their DSLRs because of their larger size! And they wish they'd known about mirrorless!

Let's be real: this is an interview and you have to accept that there is a way that a CEO of a Japanese company responds, which isn't the same as if you and I were having a conversation.

This interview means nothing and reveals nothing. The people who bash Canon because of a few words uttered in this interview don't have a clue as to how these type of interviews function.

And when all is said and done, Canon will still have the number one market share in dedicated cameras, and all of these critics will just be more noise on the internet.

@Thoughts - it reveals everything, because look at what they are doing? Other than for lenses they have become followers. They have become slow & have even admitted at times at trade shows that they have no worry or fear & just want to milk, milk, milk for all they can. Even if that is good for them, & I don't know that it's ideal even in the short term or even good at all in very long term, but it's not best for users.

What is the sense of crop mode only for jpgs in the 5Ds? So crop mode in RAW can a feature for the 5DsII of course. WHy did they remove MFA from the 40D at the last second? So the 50D would have that as an extra feature. Why did they take MFA out of the 60D? So it could be a 'new' feature for the 70D.

I mean even something as minor bit as AutoISO they treated like the king's gold&dribbled out a few coins round by round & it took over a decade to make it work properly despite it being perhaps one of the single most trivial things they've had to implement on a DSLR.

@Thoughts -
Why are they sitting on tons of advanced sensor patents? It appears they have patents that could make for some pretty fine dynamic range. But all the patents they have appear to need smaller circuitry than they can make at their main DSLR sensor plant and they just want to keep milking that for all it's worth apparently. As long as everyone keeps buying they won't ever move DSLR sensors to a modern plant and make use of advanced technology. Or risk loosing a tiny bit of margin per copy by going external for sensors or sensor manufacture.

They created the DSLR video revolution, but already it sounds like most of the serious guys having moved on, fed up with the glacial pace. They did pick up some sales in the Cxx among the bigger budget serious but appear to have lost a ton of sales in the lower budget end.

I agree that every company should just put out products that represent their best effort every time, and not hold back. To me that would in the long run make the most money.

That being said, we don't know how much was this kind of intentional holding back to force upgrades later, and how much represented a good business or engineering decision. Sometimes it may seem to be just holding back but there may be a good reason why.

Let's also look at the bigger picture. They aren't holding back on lenses; their latest releases all great, some even spectacular. Their cameras are very well built, with very little QC issues. Roger Cicala from lens rentals has inspected some recent Canon lenses and cameras, and they show very high quality worksmanship and design inside. Canon also offers industry leading customer service.

These are not hallmarks of a company holding back to milk customers or not caring about its customers.

Paul.B.Jones

I. Own. EOS 620. EOS 5D. EF 100/2.8 Macro. EF 50/1.4. And. RS-60T3.

Even. If. Not. I'd. Still. Have. The. Right. To. Post.

I think most of the people who don't like this interview like their Canon cameras, and they wish they can have better Canons in the future.
If your logic were right then all the criticism in this world are nonsense. "You have a problem? Go away."