New Canon Camera & Lenses

[BernardLanguillier]

Resolution is the major feature of the photographic process. Always has been and probably always will be. The camera has lots of useful purposes apart from snapshots for the masses. Any resolution gains will be much appreciated by astronomers and scientists in many fields. Once the technology has been developed, it will probably be made available to anyone who's prepared to pay for it, even if some or most of the people who buy it can't or don't want to fully use it.
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We will see what happens. I think that these high end gadgets will mostly never make it to the grand public, just like carbon brakes have never made it from F1 to our everyday cars.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Once most people reach the conclusion that the camera they have is good enough for their usage, they will stop buying new stuff that bring no additional value and that will be the end of fast paced technological improvement.
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Im not so sure Bernard...  

If that were the case, nobody would have upgraded from Nikon's F4 to the F5, Hasselblad 501 to 503 or Canon EOS 1 to 1n.  Take cars -- how many folks upgrade from a perfectly good 2 or 3 year old vehicle to the same newer model?  My point is consumers will always consume new products, even when they contain only marginal or incremental improvements over their existing equipment.  And manufacturers will always continue to offer us marginal, incremental improvements in their products for that very reason.

The lone exception is perhaps when the consumer views the device simply as a tool -- IOW a plumber is unlikely to buy a new wrench unless his existing one of that size breaks.  And I would agree there are a few photographers who view their cameras as tools -- it's just that none of them participate in these forums  

Cheers,

[DiaAzul]

Resolution is the major feature of the photographic process.
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I'm not really sure that I can agree with that statement - I could, however, agree with a statement along the lines of capturing the moment is the major feature of the photographic process.

Consider the rise in popularity of camera phones and there use by teenagers to take pictures and then send them via MMS to their friends, blogs and other interested parties. This is still photography and is the process of capturing and sharing a particular moment. I don't think anyone here would state that a camera phone is the tops for resolution or quality, but for the purpose of capturing and sharing the moment it beats the pants off a 1DsII (though I believe that the 1DsIII will have the same sensor but integrated bluetooth and cameraphone ;-)

As to the point that demand, or need for, a new camera will dissipate once the peoples desire for resolution (and dynamic range) is met is a fallicy which misses the dynamics of product management/marketing. There is always an improvement that can be made to a product and/or its image and latent (either realised or unrealised) demand which can be met through innovation.

As an example. If I asked do you think bluetooth would be a good addition to a Canon DSLR then most people would say no (mainly because it is associated with mobile phones and connecting a handsfree headset). However, if I then explained that you can by a bluetooth GPS receiver for USD20 which can be connected to the camera wirelessly (i.e leave the receiver in your bag and use the camera) such that your location is embedded in the image when you take the picture - then people may start to get interested in such a concept.

If you could then start using bluetooth so that you could adjust flash settings remotely, or configure the camera and release the shutter via an application on your mobile phone, then perhaps people are starting to think of other imaginative applications that can be developed just be including a USD1 Bluetooth transceiver into the camera.

It's about time we changed our concept of how the camera should work to best meet our workflow and how we can improve its usability by incorporating new technology rather than labouring on about pixel pitch, resolution and dynamic range - though still recognising that resolution is important there are other ways to differentiate a product that Sony and Samsung will be focused on long before Nikon and Canon.

[BernardLanguillier]

As to the point that demand, or need for, a new camera will dissipate once the peoples desire for resolution (and dynamic range) is met is a fallicy which misses the dynamics of product management/marketing. There is always an improvement that can be made to a product and/or its image and latent (either realised or unrealised) demand which can be met through innovation.
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Demand will not disapear. It will just stop to be driven by increased resolution.  We will move back towards a market where replacement of dead gear, desire for new features etc... drives most of the demand.

This will prevent companies like Canon and Nikon to continue investing huge amounts for more mega pixels which was the discussion at hand. They will focus instead on blue tooth as you pointed out.

Cheers,
Bernard

[DiaAzul]

We will see what happens. I think that these high end gadgets will mostly never make it to the grand public, just like carbon brakes have never made it from F1 to our everyday cars.

Cheers,
Bernard
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Not a good example of technology transfer - Carbon brakes are not really suitable for everyday road use as the are not effective until hot. On the race track constant use keeps them at an effective operating temperature, however, on the road they are unlikely to get warm enough to be as effective as the more commonly used grey iron.

The only thing which stops technology transfer is if (a) their is already a more appropriate solution ( cost issues have not yet been overcome.

[BernardLanguillier]

Not a good example of technology transfer - Carbon brakes are not really suitable for everyday road use as the are not effective until hot. On the race track constant use keeps them at an effective operating temperature, however, on the road they are unlikely to get warm enough to be as effective as the more commonly used grey iron.

The only thing which stops technology transfer is if (a) their is already a more appropriate solution ( cost issues have not yet been overcome.
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Exactly my point. Ray mentioned astronomy as one possible source of future inspiration for consumer goods.

My intend was to show yet another example of devices performing at very high levels that just have no use for normal usage.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Andrew Teakle]

Film isn't dead because of digital, it's just being relegated to a specific class of art medium as an "old" technology...  Except for X-ray
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Film-based Xray is also being superseded. As a dentist (and no, I don't own a P45...earlier thread) I've been using digital Xray for several years. It is VERY expensive so only used for tiny intraoral devices or in scanning back-like arrangements. Film Xray will be around for a long time yet, I suspect.

Anyway, I digress...

[Ray]

Resolution is the major feature of the photographic process.

I'm not really sure that I can agree with that statement - I could, however, agree with a statement along the lines of capturing the moment is the major feature of the photographic process.
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David,
Capturing the moment is certainly A major feature of the photographic process, but resolution is more fundamental. Without sufficient resolution, the subject or target is not recognisable and the photograph is essentially useless, except for those rare examples where some photographers are trying to turn blurry images into abstract photos, something which I don't find interesting, and I suspect most people don't find interesting.

I know you are probably going to counter with the argument that once resolution has reached a certain level, then it ceases to be an issue and capturing the moment becomes paramount, but I would say that sometimes the most interesting moment is some unnoticed activity, perhaps some distance away in the background, that is hardly recognisable because our camera didn't capture the scene with sufficirnt resolution for zooming in during post processing.

In other words, when (if) silicon wafers and sensors, or some other technology superceding that process, become as cheap as chips and computer processing power increases to the point where handling huge files is no problem, you might as well have the extra resolution , if it's affordable, because there's no disadvantage to having more resolution than normally required, but there might be a disadvantage to having less resolution than occasionally required.

[macgyver]

Resolution is needed only to convey a point.  To me a camera's speed is far more important than its resolution, but all that speed means nothing if you can't see what you shot.

I think Mike Johnson once said something on his blog to the extent of how it's interesting that the vast majority of what is thought of a famous or iconic or imporatant photography was made with cameras vastly inferior to what we complain about today.

Think about that.

[Ray]

I think Mike Johnson once said something on his blog to the extent of how it's interesting that the vast majority of what is thought of a famous or iconic or imporatant photography was made with cameras vastly inferior to what we complain about today.
Think about that.
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I've thought about it and would pose the question, 'Was the vast majority of famous and important photography made with cameras vastly inferior to other cameras of the period?' I think you'll find the answer is, No. And the reason such cameras were inferior to what we use today is, it's not possible to take a photograph in the past with a camera of the future.  

[jani]

[...] because there's no disadvantage to having more resolution than normally required, but there might be a disadvantage to having less resolution than occasionally required.

That's not quite true. A higher resolution results in stronger demands on camera stability.

In-camera or in-lens stabilisers become a requirement, and these stabilisers will have to counter micro-vibration in otherwise "stable" tripods etc.

[benInMA]

I would argue that's not true.

Compare a 12mp image and a 6mp image.   The 12mp image will reveal shake that the 6mp one won't under the same circumstances.  But downsampling the 12mp image to 6mp image should erase the shake.

The 12mp camera has given you no disadvantage, you just have a higher burden to exploit all 12mp.

I don't downsample my DSLR images very often for this reason but I do it a bit more often with P&S pictures.. might as well create a clean JPG by downsampling to reduce the impact of noise.

I agree with Ray here.. though I am not quite on the same page in terms of general lust for more resolution.

[Ray]

I agree with Ray here.. though I am not quite on the same page in terms of general lust for more resolution.
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Could that be because you don't have a wide format printer, Ben? My lust for resolution is not so great that I would spend more than A$5000 on a camera. I could justify the purchase of a 5D on the grounds it was slightly less expensive than the D60 I bought a few years earlier, although that was partly due to the rising value of the Aussie dollar.

We should also bear in mind that according to the generally accepted standards of perceivable resolution on an 8x12" print from a normal viewing distance of around 10", the 5D is not quite good enough. If one takes the lower figure of 4 lp/mm on the print, it makes it comfortable, but not with the higher figure of close to 7 lp/mm that people with keen eyesight are supposed to be able to see, and not to mention the extremely high resolutions required for line art and text.