Nikon and Canon were committed to lens IS when they introduced it while film was the (only) main choice. It was not possible to move the film! With that committment came a very subtantial investment and a large lens lineup with this feature. Now that pretty much the world is digital and the technology and the media (CCD) have made in-body IS possible, it may cause a shift in their thinking, but it may be that they are waiting for the market to prove the technology before they jump in.
agreed.
--Do you think that Canon is moving towards Body-IS? I've been
thinking about this and came up with few theories/possibilities I
want to share with you.
As you know, Pentax, Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic (do I miss one?)
all offer on-body IS, which is really tempting. You can even get
the new Pentax K100D for around $600, and get some old good lens
for it, which is a great bargain for DSLR. How do Canon and Nikon
react to this future threat from the agile newcomers? I came up
with two possible scenarios:
1. Canon joins the bandwagon by using body-IS on its next DSLR.
It's good for consumers but somewhat bad for Canon. It might kill
the market for Canon IS lenses, which we all know is Canon's cash
cow. Prices of IS lenses will drop significantly.
2. Canon decides not to include body-IS on next DSLR. Canon might
loose the market for entry-level DSLR to Pentax and the other
newcomers, which is also bad. Even worse, before Canon even knows
it, it's lost significant market share to the DSLR newcomers.
Personally if I were Canon, I would go for #1. Create DSLR with
body-IS. Yes, it'll probably kill the market for IS-lenses but
Canon can secure the market for entry-level DSLR. Now, I said that
it might kill the market for IS-lenses, because professionals
would still go for IS lenses for their 1d/1ds DSLR. If I were a
pro, do I want to use DSLR used by amateurs (even if it has
body-IS)? No. So I think the market for IS-lenses would only
decline, not die.
Failure to join the body-IS DSLR market might create worse
consequence for Canon. It's going to lose significant market for
entry-level DSLRs, which I believe is huge. So, for Canon, make
body-IS for the next xxxD and xxD DSLRs and leave IS-lenses for the
pro.
Just my thoughts. What do you think?
--
Sincerely,
Yohanes N. Mangitung
..personally I would ratehr have a camera wheere the sensro was not rigidly fixed, say it could float on magnetic fields which might help, like the K10D!
It doesn't actually follow that either the Minolta implementation could not be improved for more reliablity, or that the totally different implementation in the K10D would suffer from similar problems.
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Interestingly, Canon in their 'futures' paper talk about routinely using ISO6400 - that appears to be thier plan rather than in-body IS.That might help for airplanes but probably not. Having to track
vertically means you have to tip-toe or kneel down to keep your eye
on the viewfinder.
But it doesn't help at all when you are crawling around on the
ground between tables and chairs to get shots like this one:
That was 3-stops below 1/f and already at f2.8 and ISO 800. I
would have needed about ISO 6400 to get that shot without IS.
--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
This is a very relevant question. The answer is probably that a long-term reliable in-body IS will not come cheap. If lens stabilization still remains superior both functionally and because it also stabilizes the viewfinder image, the argument in favor of in-body IS will be weaker.
If some products were rubbish, there certainly is no reason to be content with improvements based on that low standard.
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