Did Canon USA make the right call?

lumierephotography wrote:

meland wrote:

lumierephotography wrote:

whakapu wrote:

Canon USA has damaged the brand by alienating a group of potential customers and demonstrating a lack of confidence in the product. Correct call would have been to import the m but in small numbers and priced above the cost of shipping grey market. When the original M didn't sell they might also have considered bundling it in deals with full frame DSLRs.

I would agree. Canon has damaged its brand with several thousand Canon loyalists. Most people, as others have noted on this forum, either haven't even heard of the M cameras, or don't care. Since Canon is a large international corporation that sells millions of lenses and cameras as well as many other products, such as business machines, this is of relatively little importance to them. And even among those for whom the brand is damaged, most of will come flocking back when the offer us what we want, which they will if the numbers grow from a few thousands to hundreds of thousands. That is what happened after the switch from FD to EOS and it became very clear that Canon, not Nikon, had made the right decision, it spite of all the second guessers. The EOS mount allowed Canon to create lenses, especially long telephotos, that pros wanted and they didn't care that Canon had abandoned them earlier. Pretty soon, at any major sporting event, the white lenses significantly outnumbered the gray ones.

I thought it was interesting that it apparently took several weeks for Amazon.jp to sell out of the 25,000 M3's they were offering for pre-order, in spite of the fact that they were serving an international market, including much of the US interest in the M3. 25,000 units to Canon is a drop in the bucket.

I was traveling in Venice, Italy for a couple of weeks earlier this month. Everyone seemed to have a camera, mostly DSLR's. I did notice a number of Sony's, Lumix, many Canon DSLR's as well as Nikons. I only saw one M, other than mine. It was carried by a very professional looking photographer who had a Nikon DSLR and a Sony A7 on either side on a dual Black Rapid straps. There in the middle was a Canon M with the 22mm lens. The only one I saw out what had to be several hundred cameras in the almost two weeks I was there.

Mark

I'm not sure exactly what your point is as your argument seems to switch back and forth.

It seems I was't very clear in what I wrote and will try to clarify now. There were several points that I was addressing that may have become muddled.

1) Canon has in the past made business decisions that have been widely derided as wrong and were predicted to cause the company severe harm. Over time, however, Canon's business decisions have turned out to have been ahead of the curve.

2) Mirrorless, and the Canon M line in particular, are currently relatively niche markets, especially in the US and Canon is making business decisions based on this.

3) The market is fickle. While people may be unhappy with Canon currently for their decisions, once Canon decides to jump fully into the mirrorless market, which I think they will, the past will be forgotten and people will buy what seems to be the best product for them at that time.

As an aside, I have almost fully shifted to the M line for my photography, despite the limitations so I do have a vested interest in how Canon approaches its mirrorless cameras. I have a 5D Mk II and the 24-105 L, a 70-200 f2.8 L and the 100mm f2.8 macro lenses. I had a 17-35mm L and the 100-400mm L but sold them. I took the 5D and the 24-105 with me to Venice, but used it very little. I didn't even take the 70-200mm as it was too big and heavy. In Venice I used the 5D for early morning photography and took it with me for a one day car trip into the Dolomite mountains north of Venice. For the rest of the time, walking through the city, taking the vaparettos, and sightseeing the M with my four M lenses was the best choice. I was able to fit all that, plus a 270EX flash, extension tubes, filters the EF adapter and a Lensbaby lens set in the rotating waist pack of my MindShift Gear Panorama 180 backpack. That left all of my photo gear highly accessible and the whole top of the pack available for a table top tripod, rain gear, jackets, personal items and anything we purchased during the day. If I had taken my 5D and comparable lenses the weight would have been very uncomfortable during the days of walking and sightseeing and would have taken much more space in my pack. I had ordered the M3 when it was available for preorder, but it arrived two days after I left for Venice. It would have been very nice to have, especially the EVF in bright sunlight, which is what we encountered for most of the time. In looking at my M pictures in Lightroom, however, there isn't a striking difference between the M and 5D photos. If I print them in a larger format difference may become apparent. I will see going forward.

Mark

Clear now.  Thanks for that.