Canon interview at Photokina 2014 - 7D Mark II - Magic Lantern - and moire

[mikegt]

Panasonic and Sony aren't taking losses on purpose (this doesn't make sense, logically speaking).

 

As someone who has owned his own business for over 20 years, I can tell you that is an over-simplified view of how businesses work.  Businesses willingly take losses if they feel that they will profit in the long term.  For example, Sony lost tons of money when they invested in Hollywood studios and various movies that did poorly at the box office. They kept at it despite their losses because they strongly believed that owning their own content would eventually give them an advantage.  Years ago Asian electronics companies lost loads of money trying to develop flat screen technology.  Legend has it that somewhere in Japan there is a mountain made of glass from all the panels that were scrapped.  They persevered, companies in the US dropped out of the business but the Asians kept going despite their losses and today, if you want to build something with a flat panel screen, you have to go to Asia to get it.  Same with camera sensors.  I suspect that is why Red was never able to ship Scarlet at the price point they originally promised and why Blackmagic cameras suffer from "black spot" syndrome on point light sources.  They are at the mercy of the Asian sensor makers, but can't say anything about it because alienating their suppliers would put them out of the camera business.

 

> I'd be pretty surprised if they don't at least match competition with their next releases though.  Time will tell.

 

Anything is possible, but so far that has not been their strategy.  In fact, they are a bit locked in now by that strategy.  How can they start offering 4K video on a $2K camera, and still get the pros to pay $20K for the same thing?

[Andrew Reid]

I don't agree with any of the above and I hope you were joking about the 'glass tower', that's just nuts.

 

They can still get pros to pay $20k in the same way Panasonic charge 3 times that for their 4K Varicam S35, yet give us 4K on the GH4 for $1699.

 

4K is mass market. GoPros and mobile phones have it for $500.

 

4K TVs can be had close to $1300.

 

4K is the new 1080p. Nobody shoots 480p standard def any more do they!?

[mikegt]

Andrew:

 

The mountain of glass as I said was a legend but the losses were real.  Manufacturing yields on early flat panels were terrible and yes they did scrap enough of them to make a very large pile of glass. Everything I stated as fact can be confirmed with a little research.  Sony's huge losses in the content business have been well documented in business publications and their own financial reports.

 

Red advertised Scarlet as being "3K for $3K".  It never shipped anywhere near that price point.

 

I labeled as "I suspect" the stuff at the end about Blackmagic.  We have no choice but to speculate on why their sensors have problems since they are unlikely to ever tell us what really happened, but we know they don't make their own so describing them as being at the mercy of their suppliers is factual.

[mikegt]

To those who don't believe a company would lose money on purpose, the poster child for that very strategy is Amazon.com.  Their business plan stated that they did not expect to make any profit for the first five years; instead they focused on building market share even if that meant losing money on many transactions. That strategy, considered by some to be crazy at the time, did eventually make them the world's largest online company.

 

Another example was the "dumping" of steel by Japanese companies in the United States market back in the Nineties.  They purposely sold steel at below the cost to manufacture it, taking substantial losses at the time, in exchange for the goal of driving U.S. producers out of business.

[tomekk]

To those who don't believe a company would lose money on purpose, the poster child for that very strategy is Amazon.com.  Their business plan stated that they did not expect to make any profit for the first five years; instead they focused on building market share even if that meant losing money on many transactions. That strategy, considered by some to be crazy at the time, did eventually make them the world's largest online company.

 

Another example was the "dumping" of steel by Japanese companies in the United States market back in the Nineties.  They purposely sold steel at below the cost to manufacture it, taking substantial losses at the time, in exchange for the goal of driving U.S. producers out of business.

ad. Amazon. apples and oranges, you can't compare startup company of any sort which invests first, needs funding and doesn't profit in the beginning for very obvious reasons to sony/panasonic now. Also, there is a difference between R&D cost and losing money.

ad. steel "dumping". Are you talking about a period after when Asian financial crisis hit? Firstly, please, link me to the details how Japanese companies were losing money by selling steel to the USA they probably couldn't sell anywhere else due to financial crisis where everyone was putting everything on hold/going bankrupt. Selling steel below US-market prices doesn't mean they were losing money on it. Even if they were selling below production cost it wasn't for reasons you mentioned. If you have no other places to sell, you are overstock but you still have to pay hundreds of your employees. What do you do? They had no other choices, that's hardly purposely, quite opposite in fact. You give more for less to keep you going (in this case you sell to the only market you can sell to - USA at lower prices). Then USA quite obviously wants to protect their market so they come up with "anit-dumping measures". Last but not least, coming up with an argument from times where market is heavily distorted is meaningless. It's always bad cause the market is not normal during these times so the argument is automatically bad as well.

[mikegt]

ad. Amazon. apples and oranges, you can't compare startup company of any sort which invests first, needs funding and doesn't profit in the beginning for very obvious reasons to sony/panasonic now. Also, there is a difference between R&D cost and losing money.

ad. steel "dumping". Are you talking about a period after when Asian financial crisis hit? Firstly, please, link me to the details how Japanese companies were losing money by selling steel to the USA they probably couldn't sell anywhere else due to financial crisis where everyone was putting everything on hold/going bankrupt. Selling steel below US-market prices doesn't mean they were losing money on it if they had no other places to sell and were overstock. 

 

Lookup "trade" and "dumping".  Regarding Amazon, they were not doing "R&D". They deliberately operated at cost / below cost for years to build market share.  And, yes, to drive a lot of brick-and-mortar establishments out of business.  They succeeded on both counts.

 

Let's talk solutions instead of causes. Thanks to third-party companies, you can add some of the stuff Canon deliberately left off their more reasonably-priced cameras.  Here's a box made by Tascam, designed to attach to the bottom of a DSLR and it provides a headphone jack for monitoring, XLR connectors, level meters and controls, etc.  Very reasonably priced at $200, the only drawback I can see being that it adds a pound of weight to your camera and makes it more bulky to carry around.  Probably more useful for tripod than hand-held use. Any comments on this?

[Quirky]

A thread dedicated to Canon's new camera is filling with discussions about glass mountains and steel industry.

Hmm, the latest camera releases from Canon must be pretty boring.   :P

[mikegt]

A thread dedicated to Canon's new camera is filling with discussions about glass mountains and steel industry.

Hmm, the latest camera releases from Canon must be pretty boring.   :P

 

What do you think of the Tascam box for filling in some of the missing audio features?

[Quirky]

What do you think of the Tascam box for filling in some of the missing audio features?

 

Yes, that would be a decent save.  ;)

 

But with the tongue off the cheek and back inside the mouth, yes indeed, I'd be quite interested in getting one, and I've been eyeballing one already. Thanks partially to the $200 price tag. I'm a recovering audio geek, so no need for a lecture about the importance of good audio. 

I agree about the only major drawback, the amount of added bulk. But for certain kind of work that mostly happens with a tripod, anyway, and especially with a camera like a Canon DSLR, that's more or less a no-brainer, isn't it. I'd like to play with one out in the wild. I do have an external audio recorder (or two) already, but I might get another one soon. 

[tomekk]

Lookup "trade" and "dumping".  Regarding Amazon, they were not doing "R&D". They deliberately operated at cost / below cost for years to build market share.  And, yes, to drive a lot of brick-and-mortar establishments out of business.  They succeeded on both counts.

 

Let's talk solutions instead of causes. Thanks to third-party companies, you can add some of the stuff Canon deliberately left off their more reasonably-priced cameras.  Here's a box made by Tascam, designed to attach to the bottom of a DSLR and it provides a headphone jack for monitoring, XLR connectors, level meters and controls, etc.  Very reasonably priced at $200, the only drawback I can see being that it adds a pound of weight to your camera and makes it more bulky to carry around.  Probably more useful for tripod than hand-held use. Any comments on this?

 

I'm not going to derail this thread any further... Tascam looks nice, indeed.

[Damphousse]

To those who don't believe a company would lose money on purpose, the poster child for that very strategy is Amazon.com.  Their business plan stated that they did not expect to make any profit for the first five years; instead they focused on building market share even if that meant losing money on many transactions. That strategy, considered by some to be crazy at the time, did eventually make them the world's largest online company.

 

There are a million and one ways to lose money.  When someone overdrafts their checkign account that doesn't mean they are implementing the Amazon strategy.
 

 
Amazon is making money and taking the money it makes and EXPANDING its operations.  Panasonic was losing money and started SELLING or SHUTTING DOWN its operations.  And we all know which division is next.  From December 2013...
 

At various times GE was the largest company in the world.  It was run by legendary CEO Jack Welch.  I remeber when Welch gave a simple edict.  Every division had to be number one or two in their market or they were getting shut down.  The problem with mature markets like consumer electronics is being the number three/four or lower competitor just isn't sustainable in the long run.  Something has to happen with Panasonic, Olympus, Samsung, Fuji, etc.  Now the number one or two thing got taken to the extreme and Jack Welch backed off from that position years later due to his company missing opportunities due to rigidity.  But you look at various industries like cell phones and what do you see?  Apple is number one in profit followed by Samsung.  I couldn't tell you who number three is but I could make you a nice list of who has lost money in that industry and gone out of business.  Nokia comes to mind... and I own a Nokia phone.
 
Bottome line if you like what Panasonic is doing you better get your rear end into a store and buy one of their products in the next few months.  What you are seeing at Panasonic is engineers fighting to save their jobs.  This isn't some Amazon 5 year plan you are looking at.  These guys are working like they are going to be out of a job in a year and a half.  Only way to save them is to buy their products.
 

Let's talk solutions instead of causes. Thanks to third-party companies, you can add some of the stuff Canon deliberately left off their more reasonably-priced cameras. Here's a box made by Tascam, designed to attach to the bottom of a DSLR and it provides a headphone jack for monitoring, XLR connectors, level meters and controls, etc. Very reasonably priced at $200, the only drawback I can see being that it adds a pound of weight to your camera and makes it more bulky to carry around. Probably more useful for tripod than hand-held use. Any comments on this?

On board audio is not some issue that is unique to Canon. I just bought the Tascam DR-60D for $150 when it was on sale at B&H for my BMPCC. Not much to say. Can't think of a better solution for $150. As you said it is bulky. It also doesn't come with a microphone. Some other solutions at least have built in mics so the whole solution can go on your hotshoe.... but with those solutions you won't get the quality nor the features.

Another thing to keep in mind is that thing eats batteries. I personally have not put this to the test. I use a USB power solution. You can get one of those lithium battery cellphone/tablet travel chargers and hook it up to the Tascam DR-60D. Now I run a mic with phantom power off the Tascam and never worry about power for either.

By the way there is a new model coming out called the Tascam DR-60D mkII.
 


The original DR-60D had one big problem. The gain is not smooth analog. It goes in steps. So if you ride the gain really hard you will hear audible clicks. I am not a sound man so I just set and forget. The DR-60D can be setup to record a quieter back up track in case your talent suddenly laughs or raises their voice. So being a one man band the gain riding has been a non issue for me.

[bertzie]

I don't agree with any of the above and I hope you were joking about the 'glass tower', that's just nuts.

 

They can still get pros to pay $20k in the same way Panasonic charge 3 times that for their 4K Varicam S35, yet give us 4K on the GH4 for $1699.

 

4K is mass market. GoPros and mobile phones have it for $500.

 

4K TVs can be had close to $1300.

 

4K is the new 1080p. Nobody shoots 480p standard def any more do they!?

 

Nothing is mass market until it makes up most of what Walmart sells. You're greatly overestimating what the market is doing.

[mikegt]

Okay, so we have an audio solution with the Tascam.

 

Another issue with recording video with Canon DSLRs is that they usually don't have peaking or other focus aids, in sunlight the LCD panel is hard to see and their optical viewfinders are unusable in video mode (a problem that mirrorless cameras don't have).  So some sort of third-party add-on viewfinder is needed, which attaches to the back of the camera and shades the LCD screen while magnifying its image.  I've been looking at the Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 2.5x (see pic below) but it costs $375.  There are cheaper viewfinders available, but Zacuto claims theirs is better due to anti-fog coatings on their optical elements, etc.  Anyone have any experience using the Zacuto or the cheaper alternatives out there?

[tomekk]

Okay, so we have an audio solution with the Tascam.

 

Another issue with recording video with Canon DSLRs is that they usually don't have peaking or other focus aids, in sunlight the LCD panel is hard to see and their optical viewfinders are unusable in video mode (a problem that mirrorless cameras don't have).  So some sort of third-party add-on viewfinder is needed, which attaches to the back of the camera and shades the LCD screen while magnifying its image.  I've been looking at the Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 2.5x (see pic below) but it costs $375.  There are cheaper viewfinders available, but Zacuto claims theirs is better due to anti-fog coatings on their optical elements, etc.  Anyone have any experience using the Zacuto or the cheaper alternatives out there?

 

I've got zacuto, it really is nice help. Not really sure if worth the price. I bought it long time ago, about 2 years ago. It's just a magnifier. I'd guess 3rd party companies matched it in quality by now if they wanted as it's nothing complicated, imho. If there is an alternative for half a price I'd buy it.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Tried most of the zucoto lower priced alternatives, nothing is as good. The only ones that work just as well are the ones with the similar price tag unfortuneatly. It's definitely worth the money for a DSLR video shooter.

[dafreaking]

http://www.amazon.com/GGS-Viewfinder-Magnification-ggs3-0x-LCDVF/dp/B005INALWG 

 

Works very very well. 

[Quirky]

http://www.amazon.com/GGS-Viewfinder-Magnification-ggs3-0x-LCDVF/dp/B005INALWG 
 
Works very very well.

 
Unlike the URL you provided. It works very poorly indeed.
 

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[Nigel Dyson-Hudson]

Great interview. Just confirms that Canon seems to only want to pave a cow path and not "eat their digital children." Look what happend to Kodak about 150 km up the road from me. From a mechanical view point mirrorless saves a bunch of moving parts which need to be moved out of the way to expose the sensor. Also 4k video gives one 8 meg stills, about the same resolution as a 30D.