For years we have used your products but you have started to lie on your laurels. The past 5 years has brought out nothing new and nothing really worthwhile.
Sure - you've rehashed the 5D several times, rehashed the 20D many times as well as rehashing the Digital Rebel many times. These are just rehashes of tired old products. A two year old could have been more innovative.
I am an avid photographer. I love photography. I am very disappointed by the cameras available in 2014 as they are so little different (insignificant tweaks excepted) from my 8 Megapixel 30D. When I go out taking photographs, do I take my 30D? Hell no. I'm more likely to use my phone camera (which is also 8 megapixel). Yes the 30D images are clearer and technically better. The problem is that the 30D and none of the current Canon line-up really cut it any more. I certainly wouldn't spend money on something that's not really any different from my 30D.
What can you do to rescue the situation? Think about it - a camera manufacturer whose offerings are eclipsed by a mobile phone camera! Let me offer you some suggestions and explain why my mobile phone is my camera of choice.
- My phone is small and almost always in my pocket. You need to make your cameras and lenses smaller. That Canon EOS M was an April Fool's joke, wasn't it. You do have something better that you're waiting to release that's actually compact, don't you?
- My phone puts GPS coordinates on every picture regardless of whether I'm in a cellular coverage zone or not. None of the current Canon cameras do that. Sure - you sell a GPS add-on unit that makes you look greedy and incompetent. GPS is just an itty bitty little chip that would run happily off the camera battery. I'm certainly not paying $1K+ for a camera then God knows how much extra for an add-on GPS unit that should have been built-into the camera.
- My phone uploads images via wifi as I pass through a wifi hotspot so that when I get to enter my blog, I can just select an image to include easily without having to mess about with moving my memory card from the camera to a reader or connecting my camera to the computer via a cable. It's all done wirelessly and before I even sit down. Sure - I could use one of those Eye-Fi thingies to do it and in fact I actually had one but found it so poor in use that I threw the miserable thing in the trash.
I suggest, Canon, that you pull your finger out and get to work. It's time to stop resting on those laurels - they're flat enough already. You need to start doing the following (perhaps some other manufacturer will do it first and I'll end up switching brands):
- Put a GPS logger into each camera
- Put a wifi connection into each camera. Bonus points if it works automatically with all wifi hotspots worldwide without needing a touch screen.
- Make a truly smaller mirrorless camera. I'm sorely tempted by the Nikon 1 system and that's a big hint about the direction I could well go in.
- Do some genuine innovation. Slightly bigger sensors, slightly more megapixels, live view - they don't count - that's just playing games.
- Invest in LED flash units.
Take note, Canon, I'm watching you closely and will happily jump ship if there's no great improvement from you when my 30D dies. I simply don't care about losing money selling the flashes and lenses - they've lost so much value already that I just don't care any more.
I'm amazed that such a waste of resources continues to be produced. All of these chunky great directories end up in the trash just like this one. I hate to think how many trees are murdered just to produce landfill like this. If I had a fireplace, it would probably have made excellent kindling but I don't so it just becomes landfill.
I rather suspect that if Canon doesn't shift its collective arse and produce cameras that are as easy to use and as useful as a mobile phone camera, that Canon will become a mere footnote in history.
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