JC
Senior Member
Magnus,
Enough with this phantom contract! Maybe before you continue with this idea, you should read the following post and reply.
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&page=1&message=1417111
Be well,
JC
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EOS 1v
- Thread starter Mark Georgieff
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Enough with this phantom contract! Maybe before you continue with this idea, you should read the following post and reply.
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&page=1&message=1417111
Be well,
JC
Steve Farmer
Forum Enthusiast
I advocate a middle-of-the-road view of "the contract." On one hand I believe a contract existed/exists. Although Kodak have demonstrated considerable ignorance of the photography marketplace, I don't believe that they're stupid enough to have developed the DCS 520/560 without a contract with Canon that would have guaranteed them a supply of camera bodies and some period of noncompetition in which to recover their investment. Such a contract would have seemed beneficial to Canon IF, at that time, they did not intend to produce a "professional level" digital SLR. On the other hand I have no knowledge of the terms or dates of this contract, and I haven't seen any reason to believe that anyone else knows anything, either -- at least, not anyone that's talking.
Good shooting!
Steve Farmer
JC
Senior Member
Steve,
With all due respect, anyone's "belief" in a contract does not establish its existence or the terms of that contract. No one has substantiated the existence of any contract between Kodak and Canon limiting Canon's ability to market a pro digital SLR. Of course, there was a contract to supply bodies, but your reasoning concerning a period of non-competition would apply to Nikon, as well, and the D1 series has been around for what now seems like ages. Why would Canon be barred for a period longer than Nikon? The arguments go on and on. Go down the thread of the post I attached and read Eamon Hickey's insightlful post. In the end, there is NO evidence that Canon's delay in introducing a pro level digital SLR is attributable to any agreement with Kodak. And until such evidence is presented, it is a baseless rumor.
JC
Z (is real)
Veteran Member
JC wrote:
[...such a contract would apply to Nikon...]
What makes you say that? Nothing says Kodak negotiated the same contract with both companies. Also, Nikon never resold the Kodak products based on their bodies under the Nikon brand. (There was no equivalent to the D2000/D6000 branding.) That a contract did exist and it prevented Canon from announcing certain products doesn't strike me as at all farfetched.
The problem with the whole contract story is that people want to assign it an end date and then use that date as the time Canon will announce a product. This would be a ridiculous thing to do even if one knew the exact terms and timeframe of the contract. Which is not public info, so none of "us" know... If folks are putting trust in press releases, then I'd say Kodak saying that they aren't building any more Canon body based digital SLRs for the forseeable future marks a pretty good endpoint to the contract .
-Z-
[...such a contract would apply to Nikon...]
What makes you say that? Nothing says Kodak negotiated the same contract with both companies. Also, Nikon never resold the Kodak products based on their bodies under the Nikon brand. (There was no equivalent to the D2000/D6000 branding.) That a contract did exist and it prevented Canon from announcing certain products doesn't strike me as at all farfetched.
The problem with the whole contract story is that people want to assign it an end date and then use that date as the time Canon will announce a product. This would be a ridiculous thing to do even if one knew the exact terms and timeframe of the contract. Which is not public info, so none of "us" know... If folks are putting trust in press releases, then I'd say Kodak saying that they aren't building any more Canon body based digital SLRs for the forseeable future marks a pretty good endpoint to the contract .
-Z-
Jimbo51947
New member
I don't think that their first revision of the Pro Digital SLR will be a 6 mega Pixel because the rest of the market isn't at 6 mega pixel's yet (without cheating or interpalating save for Nikon). Being that Canon doesn't have a pro digital body yet though, they could shock the market with something like that but I think that Canon will be and release a pro digital body at a lower resolution to control the cost of the unit and compete in the market. I don't think that people want to go through the whole D2000 (aka Kodak DCS 520) thing again.
Z (is real)
Veteran Member
The Kodak DCS760 has a 6 megapixel sensor (not full frame). The D1x is a 5 and small change megapixel sensor (legitimately). The idea that 6 megapixels is a huge advance in the pro SLR market is unfounded. Full frame would be a significant step, though Contax and Pentax have been threatening to do 6 megapixel full frame for more than a year now and one imagines that sooner or later they'll actually have a product.
-Z-
JC
Senior Member
Way to go, Z! Now, do you want to quote what I really wrote, instead of what you said I wrote? I never said the contract would apply to Nikon. But, of course, that shouldn't stop you from changing what I said so that you could criticize it.
Z (is real)
Veteran Member
Here is a longer excerpt from JC's post:
[
... but your reasoning concerning a period of non-competition would apply to Nikon, as well, and the D1 series has been around for what now seems like ages. Why would Canon be barred for a period longer than Nikon?
]
And the answer could be any of the following:
1) Canon negotiated a reseller agreement and Nikon did not. (Which is actually what happened to external appearances.) Kodak may have insisted on a non-compete in return for allowing Canon to resell the DCS 520 and 560.
2) Canon was negotiating from a less advantageous position than Nikon. (I believe the DCS 520 and 560 were introduced after the corresponding F5 based bodies.)
3) Nikon simply negotiated a better deal. (Or worse, if Canon ultimately made more money on the whole thing. Who knows?)
4) There was no such non-compete in either contract and the whole thing is just BS.
-Z-
Jimbo51947
New member
I agree, what I should have said was that it is not yet common-place in the market. A 6 Million pixel image sensor at full frame is not an easy thing to manufacture. For every 100 6Mp sensor's manufacturered roughly 88 of them are tossed due to failing to comply with standards (at least with quality manufacturers - Kodak etc..). This in turn costs thousands even millions of dollars annually. The bodies are simple to make but until manufacturing technology catches up with the demmand for higher end full frame CCD or CMOS chips, it just isn't economically feasable to put out a 6Mp chip into a camera body to compete (price wise) against Nikons D1 lineup at a slightly lower res.
Steve Farmer
Forum Enthusiast
I see that we are in (violent) agreement. I, and probably most other folks, took your statement "Enough with this phantom contract!" to mean that you did not believe there was any contract between Kodak and Canon. In response to that I was stating that there MUST be/have been a contract. I see now you meant that there is absolutely no evidence that this contract is delaying Canon's announcement of a new digital SLR. I agree. Of course, it is still possible (for example, Canon may have agreed to a longer period of noncompetition in exchange for some concession from Kodak), but there is no evidence to support this over other equally possible alternatives.
Good shooting!
Steve Farmer
JC
Senior Member
Steve,
You're right -- I'm just tired of people saying that Canon has not come out with a pro SLR due to a contract of which no one has evidence. (This is especially so since Kodak has ceased producing digital cameras with Canon bodies.) Although such a non-competition agreement extending beyond the period of Kodak's production may conceivably be possible (although the contract providing Canon bodies to Kodak always seemed to benefit Kodak more than Canon, especially given the Canon's limited marketing effort behind those with the Canon label), there is, as you say, no evidence to support this. On the other hand, we can appreciate the difficulty in producing a 6MP or greater CMOS or CCD at full 35mm size, coupled with a buffer large enough for such high resolution at 9 fps (all rumored attributes of the coming SLR).
In the end, none of us really know why the camera has not yet been released. But ignoring the technological hurdles and blaming a contract whose terms have never been divulged (but nevertheless change in rumors starting three years ago) makes no sense.
Thank you for helping clarify.
JC
Al Goldis
Senior Member
What "thing" is that?
D
David morel
Guest
You can take this for what you pay for it...but I was talking to a pro-photographer, actually a great, world acclaimed shooter that use Canon. He recently got a d30...he is gradually going into the digital world. I was talking to him about the d30 and asked him if he had heard anything from Canon about the Pro Digital...
He said two things:
1) It will not be a replacement for the d30...totally different market...a true pro camera...
2) They expect it by November...
I thought you would all like to hear this...
He said two things:
1) It will not be a replacement for the d30...totally different market...a true pro camera...
2) They expect it by November...
I thought you would all like to hear this...
Stefan58175
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Here's what i heard from an english newspaper photographer, covering wimbledon and talking to the canon-guys there.
They actually said it's gonna be mid september for the release !
Stan Disbrow
Veteran Member
Jim,
Not quite right. The market does have a 6mp camera that doesn't 'cheat', but it's not the Nikon. It's the Kodak.
The Nikon D1x interpolates the data from its' 5.5mp imaging chip to get to the 6mp output. It's actually losing 1 out of every 4 horizontal pixels to gain 3 vertical pixels for every 2 original ones.
The Fuji S1 uses a honeycomb arrangement of pixels and winds up interpolating in between every original pixel to double the number of pixels in the output. I figured I mention this since Fuji took so much heat for advertising this as a 6mp camera at first.
Both of these schemes are clever ways to gain more output than there is input. However, there is one camera in the current marketplace that has a for-real 6mp imager that performs only the usual color interpolation to get from the imager data to the output file. That camera is the Kodak 760.
This is not new technology, though. The 760 is the third generation Kodak digital SLR to have a 6mp imaging chip in it. The predecessor came in two flavors: The 660 was based on the Nikon F5 body and the 560 was based on the Canon EOS-1n body.
Those were the second generation Kodak digital SLRs with a 6mp imager, the first series was the 460, based on a Nikon N90s (which I'm still using) and there was a Canon-based varient as well (although I can't recall the model number it had or which Canon film camera it used). These date back to 1995, well before Canon had anything in the digital SLR market and Nikon was still futzing about with that oddball E2 design they had with Fuji.
Something happened with the Kodak/Canon relationship in early 2000, since Kodak, for the first time, released a new digital SLR based only on a Nikon body - the high-ISO 620x. There was no 520x and there was even a line on the 620x webpage stating that there would be no Canon-based version forthcoming. I guess this is where that persistant rumor about a 'contract' came from.
Unfortunately, we now have a repeat of that same situation with the Kodak 760. There is no longer a Canon based version. That leaves the Canon shooters looking about for a used Kodak 560 or (im)patiently waiting for Canon to come along with their own camera to compete with the Nikon D1x and Kodak DCS 760.
Stan
Not quite right. The market does have a 6mp camera that doesn't 'cheat', but it's not the Nikon. It's the Kodak.
The Nikon D1x interpolates the data from its' 5.5mp imaging chip to get to the 6mp output. It's actually losing 1 out of every 4 horizontal pixels to gain 3 vertical pixels for every 2 original ones.
The Fuji S1 uses a honeycomb arrangement of pixels and winds up interpolating in between every original pixel to double the number of pixels in the output. I figured I mention this since Fuji took so much heat for advertising this as a 6mp camera at first.
Both of these schemes are clever ways to gain more output than there is input. However, there is one camera in the current marketplace that has a for-real 6mp imager that performs only the usual color interpolation to get from the imager data to the output file. That camera is the Kodak 760.
This is not new technology, though. The 760 is the third generation Kodak digital SLR to have a 6mp imaging chip in it. The predecessor came in two flavors: The 660 was based on the Nikon F5 body and the 560 was based on the Canon EOS-1n body.
Those were the second generation Kodak digital SLRs with a 6mp imager, the first series was the 460, based on a Nikon N90s (which I'm still using) and there was a Canon-based varient as well (although I can't recall the model number it had or which Canon film camera it used). These date back to 1995, well before Canon had anything in the digital SLR market and Nikon was still futzing about with that oddball E2 design they had with Fuji.
Something happened with the Kodak/Canon relationship in early 2000, since Kodak, for the first time, released a new digital SLR based only on a Nikon body - the high-ISO 620x. There was no 520x and there was even a line on the 620x webpage stating that there would be no Canon-based version forthcoming. I guess this is where that persistant rumor about a 'contract' came from.
Unfortunately, we now have a repeat of that same situation with the Kodak 760. There is no longer a Canon based version. That leaves the Canon shooters looking about for a used Kodak 560 or (im)patiently waiting for Canon to come along with their own camera to compete with the Nikon D1x and Kodak DCS 760.
Stan
JC
Senior Member
David,
I believe PhotoPlus Expo in New York is in early November, so that could be it. (What's the web code for "fingers crossed"?)
JC
Shane Verihogan
Member
Likewise I have been sneeking about a big studio here looking for smilar information from the main Canon guy there.This guy said a similar thing and I belive him because he had a physical D30 in his hands direct from Canon long before it was annouced to the public and he was shooting with a 70-200 IS lens before they even annouced it. He's been strangly silent on this Camera though except for admitting he knew more then he could tell.
I asked him everything about # of MP and focal ratio etc but he only smiled.
I asked him everything about # of MP and focal ratio etc but he only smiled.
So the D30 is not a PRO camera???
About time someone said this. It is all useless BS spectulation and I'm sick of it. Lets talk about cameras that actually exist for christs sake.
Tim Ludvigsen
Member
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Canon and Kodak HAD a contract that ran out in december of 2000.
Canon did not renew this because Kodak was taking to long with there patents. So Canon said Later. They do not have one any more.
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