PolarStarArts

No question. But not everyone has the money to buy an EOS R body or the RF lenses that are designed to go with it. The EOS R is a camera that appeals to professionals, wannabe professionals (i.e., well-heeled prosumers) and well-heeled consumers. The overall size of that market is relatively small and doesn't explain why Canon would suddenly stop putting 4K 24p or even 1080 24p in their lower-end cameras. Especially when those lower-end cameras have traditionally had some form of 24p for a very long time. And even more so when all of their competitors are continuing to offer it. In other words, Canon seem to be trying to protect small markets (eg., their Cinema EOS line) that account for a minority of their sales. It doesn't make any sense.

Which makes them no better than Canon are, with their penchant for incrementalism and never giving their customers what they really want.

The 16-55 lens, while a welcome offering, is a G-Master series lens, so is likely to be expensive. They're also bringing out a new 70-350 G-Master lens as well and this will be a good thing for anyone who has wanted a lens with that range without having to buy an adapter to use it. Since Canon screwed the pooch on the new EOS M6 Mark II, I may well be taking a serious look at getting either the a6400 or a6600 and saying 'sayonara' to Canon for good.

If underinvesting in the camera business is a smart move, then why are Canon still in the camera business at all? Why not simply cease manufacturing camera bodies and just make lenses for various camera manufacturers the way Sigma and Tamron do? The bottom line is that Canon got greedy and thought they could rest on their laurels, said laurels consisting of their deep and vast lens ecosystem.

Agreed. I think Canon are done. The Canon EOS M6 I own now will probably be the last Canon camera I'll ever buy, or own. I was so disappointed when Canon brought out their new EOS M6 Mark II. I was hoping that it would be a natural upgrade path for me. Sure, there's no crop factor in 4K, but there's no DPAF available either and the only mode you get in 4K is 30p. There's no 24p mode in standard HD, only 30p. If you want to shoot in 60p, you have to downgrade to 720p, which is barely HD in this day and age. That's nuts, if you ask me. The EOS RP full-frame camera is similarly crippled and has a horrible 4K crop. And it's overpriced. In Canada, a EOS RP with the 'kit' 24-105mm F4 L-series RF mount lens is $2899.00. That's a lot to ask for a camera that isn't even semi-pro grade and is aimed at dumb consumers who want full-frame but don't know any better. And don't get me started on the EOS R, which is almost $4K in Canadian dollars with the same 'kit' lens. The way Canon want people to do things is to buy one of their crippled stills cameras and then buy one of their XA- or XF-series camcorders if they shoot video and want 4K. Or, buy one of their Cinema EOS cameras like a C100, C200 or C300. Like a lot of people, I'm not made of money and can't afford to do this. I want ONE camera, one that does it all reasonably well, is affordable and won't suck all the cash out of my bank account. I demand good image quality and good autofocus when it's needed. I'm in the market for a new camera and looking to get into pro photography. My M6, nice as it is for purely still photography, won't cut it. I know a new camera won't make me a better photographer. But that's not the point. What I'm looking for is usability and features that will help me get the shots I want. And let me shoot video. The problem, as I see it, is that Canon have too many camera lines chasing too few dollars. And they're engaging in excessive market segmentation where they either withhold features buyers want, or put them just out of reach until they stump up the extra cash to get them, whether they can afford to or not. All in an effort to squeeze still more cash out of their customers. As a consumer, I don't like being forced to do anything, nor do I like the feeling of someone, anyone, trying to extract something from me. My next camera may well be a Sony A7II. Sure, it won't have 4K, but it will have XAVC-S video at 50Mb/s. The quality of video you can get in XAVC-S at that bit rate is pretty much equivalent to the quality you get from downsampling 4K to 1080p. My thinking is that if Canon take another 5 to 10% hit on their revenues and don't smarten up, they'll be exiting the camera business.

And it could all be as simple as a firmware update, as all the features are already baked in and the firmware simply permits or denies access to the features in question. If this wasn't so, people wouldn't be using Magic Lantern to hack their EOS M-series cameras and get features and capabilities that weren't present in the stock camera. I've always found 30p to be a bit of an odd mode, because it has a slightly 'live-TV' look to it (with 60i/p looking like soap-opera live). Not the slightest bit cinematic in appearance.

Why would anyone want to pay $1399 for a camera that lacks 24p? I wouldn't, not when I can buy something like a Panasonic G9 body for $1599 and a 14-140mm lens for another $650 and get not only 4K60p, but 24p as well? And get superior image quality, even though the G9 has only a 20MP M43 sensor?

One thing I can't understand is why Canon keep doubling down on stupidity. Earlier today I visited the Canon eStore to see if any info re the new EOS M6 Mark II had been released. I noticed that the site was pushing a camera model I've never seen before and didn't know existed - the Rebel T100, which is going for $379.99 (in Canadian dollars) and includes a kit lens. I also noticed that virtually everything listed for sale on the site can be financed through a company called Paybright, with payments running over 12 months and an APR of about 14%. A lot of items are on sale, too, with some relatively deep discounts. Now here's where I think the 'doubling down on stupidity' part comes in. No other camera manufacturer I know of needs to resort to using a third-party lender to help them move their product. No other camera maker is making super low-end cameras at a super-cheap price to collect a few nickels and dimes from the bottom end of the market. No other camera maker is resorting to a virtual blow-out sale to move product. Yet Canon still insist on bringing out crippled camera models that don't sell that well, and overprice the non-crippled products (EOS R, I'm looking at you) and lenses and then wonder why their sales revenues have dropped 64%, but keep running blow-out sales for some products and use third-party financing. There's a huge disconnect here.

Interesting, although as always, the devil is in the details. What kind of crop will the 4K feature have? And if the only 4K mode is 30p, then I'll be giving this a miss, even though the camera otherwise looks like a potentially good upgrade to my existing M6. I think what Canon could mean by 'image processing' is that the 4K files are processed via the Digic 8 processor. I wonder too, if this could mean that the camera will not have a clean HDMI output?

Well, people keep buying Sony cameras in spite of the deficiencies you mentioned, so Sony probably feel little need to change things. I had a Sony a6000 and it wasn't that difficult to use, despite the menu system being clunky while the LCD display lacked touch functionality and wasn't very big or bright. I learned to adapt, even though I frequently wished that the menus and user interfaces were as good and intuitive as the ones on Canon cameras. Plus, their refusal to hire qualified UI/UX engineers to improve usability of Sony menu systems, their use of cheap displays (as opposed to using better, more efficient AMOLEDs) are probably just attempts to shave every penny they can off production costs to increase profits. They're probably already well aware of Black Magic and their superior user interfaces, so shoving a BMCC4K in a Sony official's face isn't likely to do much.

It's a shame they left. Their NX1 and NX500 cameras seemed to offer the ground on which Samsung could have been a very successful camera manufacturer.

I own a Canon EOS M6 with the EV-DC1 viewfinder and thought I would try shooting video with an old Canon FD-series 35mm lens and a EOS to FD adapter. Here is the result. It's not the greatest video ever, but it is what it is. I had no difficulty nailing focus because the focus peaking feature on the M6 is excellent and easy to use. Plus, when your subject is more than 6 metres (20ft) away, the focus ring on the lens will be (or should be) at infinity so that everything will be in sharp focus anyway. If there's anything I've learned from this experience, it's that auto focus is great, but it's an aid and not always a total replacement for good focussing skills. If the rumoured Canon EOS M6 Mark II does end up having uncropped 4K, I might pick up a Mark II body so I can shoot in 4K. If not, I'll get a M50 body and some C-mount lenses with an adapter so I can compensate for the extreme crop in 4K. in_wortley_village.mp4

With big drops in camera sales and revenues, the introduction of 4K60 in affordable mirrorless cameras that previously would not have had it, seems to me to be a sign the camera makers are running scared and now have to start pulling out the stops on features to shore up their rapidly position and reduce or halt the bleeding. I mean, seriously, when mobile phones can offer half-decent 4K quality for $1000 or less, I can't help but wonder why a company like Canon felt that withholding such a feature from many of their cameras was going to be a viable long-term strategy. I think Canon will be surprised to discover that their professional cine camera lines will do just fine, as the pros who can afford such cameras aren't interested in shooting with DSLRs or tiny little mirrorless cameras anyway.

I always thought that the XC10 had potential as a sort of cine/documentary camera, but Canon had the opposite idea and marketed it to photojournalists and videographers who need to deliver short clips of content to the web. I considered getting a used XC10, but before I did, I downloaded a copy of Canon's XF Utility and then downloaded native .MXF samples from the web. Couldn't figure out how to make the XF Utility to work to import the footage, so I had to transcode the .MXF so I could determine whether my computer was powerful enough to handle the higher bit rates. Needless to say, I was not impressed. If the XC10 is aimed at photojournalists/web videographers, then footage should be a lot easier to ingest into your editing programme. And so I didn't buy an XC10.

Well, if what we are seeing in the Magic Lantern (ML) camp with their EOS M cameras now being able to output 5K video after installing the ML software is any indication, then all of the features (e.g., 4K, 1080p HDMI output, etc.) were already there and baked into the firmware all along. And Canon were simply hiding them from their customers.