scott f wrote:
I think releasing a product before it was ready, has seriously damaged their reputation.
And what would people say if they had waited until RG was happy? Do you think their reputation would be any better?
scott f wrote:
I think if all they had done was plunk the 5D sensor in a mark2 AF system at 8 or 9 frames per second, they would have had a winner.
So no 1.3 crop solution? I think that's an interesting idea, but I'm sure we would have still had many people complain if they just reused the 5D sensor.
Curator wrote:
I'm not going to say Canon did or didn't know that there were AF issues before the camera was shipped. Those that work for Canon are the only ones that know for sure.
I'm just wondering if photographers, not gear collectors, would have been better off if Canon had not shipped the Mark III yet due to RG's complaints. I'm sure there are some that have had problems that may say yes, but there are many others that have no issues.
Would Canon as a corporation be better off if the best they had was still the Mark II series? If this were the case, I think we would see even more people convert to Nikon with the feeling that Canon had fallen way behind.
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It does not really matter to me as I did switch and it would have been better for them to have waited. It cost me many photos and time, money I could not afford to waste. I would like to see it be right for all those that still have it and know it plagues resale. The better canon is the better Nikon will be too. Bottom line is I care that it is right thats all.
Wickedfn4u wrote:
No they should not have released it knowing it still had an issue. If you read his first review Canon states they know that it has a focus issue but that this is a preproduction model and would be addressed before production.
Does that mean they didn't fix anything relating to AF before the product was finally released? As we've seen from Canon's firmware updates and service notices, there are many things that can cause AF issues.
Curator wrote:
Does that mean they didn't fix anything relating to AF before the product was finally released? As we've seen from Canon's firmware updates and service notices, there are many things that can cause AF issues.
I don't think it is very productive to argue about whether or not Canon tried to make fixes/adjustments to the Af between the point RG had a go at it, and the point it was released to the public. The point is that it still wasn't ready.
They didn't "need" to make RG "happy" before releasing it, it just needed to work properly. From the amount of firmware, upgrades, tests, hardware fixes, adjustments and so on, it is pretty clear they didn't do much between the drawing board and production.
Curator wrote:
Does that mean they didn't fix anything relating to AF before the product was finally released? As we've seen from Canon's firmware updates and service notices, there are many things that can cause AF issues.
They may have made some changes but it was still there.
Your right does not matter if they should or shouldn't release it, they did. To their credit they are still trying to sort it out.
Wickedfn4u wrote:
Which does not? the part that they would release a product with an issue or that you would believe in a company (which up to that point I felt did a great job) to produce a product that should perform as specified in it literature?
Well, there's the part where you state that Canon released the camera in the full knowledge that it was a pup. That a pre-production model happened not to work perfectly is no indication of a conspiracy theory - every review I've ever read of a camera at pre-production stage (and there are plenty of them) comes with similar caveats.
It would be very foolish business practice indeed to knowingly release a flagship camera as flawed as some reckon the Mk III to be, and I for one don't believe it for a second.
Besides, can anyone really believe that Canon should have pulled in every Mk III at the first hint of trouble, when it was far more likely that user error would be the issue?
Donning a hair shirt and going public with Mea culpas (or the Japanese equivalent) at the first inkling that - just maybe - something wasn't right, was never going to happen, and it is madness for anyone to expect that it would.
RG's allegations had to be fully investigated by Canon (if only to rule out user error, which - as this thread demonstrates - is still not out of the question); a fix identified; resources found and rolled out to deal with the problem; processes put in place to support and implement the fix; and to monitor its effectiveness so that if more had to be done down the line it could be.
That stuff doesn't happen overnight, and back here in the Real World Canon did a very good job all told, given the complexity of the job at hand.
scott f wrote:
They didn't "need" to make RG "happy" before releasing it, it just needed to work properly.
But it does work properly for many people and exceeds what the Mark IIn was capable of doing. At this point we're still not 100% certain that this problem only exists in some cameras, or if it exists in all cameras, but only in a very specific set of conditions.
Curator wrote:
But it does work properly for many people and exceeds what the Mark IIn was capable of doing. At this point we're still not 100% certain that this problem only exists in some cameras, or if it exists in all cameras, but only in a very specific set of conditions.
And that is probably the truth of the matter, I think it's pretty clear some cameras performed much worse than others, but depending on the user, it might never be apparent. I once read a post by a very satisfied user, who later , in another thread, admitted that they didn't use servo mode very often........so go figure?
Curator wrote:
Do you feel they shouldn't have released the camera until RG was happy?
Exactly.
RG is a beta tester for Canon and that means that they trust his judgment. Therefore fixes are to be made and given to him for a second evaluation until he gives it the 'Pass' mark. All that needs to be done before the launch.
That's really a common practice in every company. You do not release a product before your QA/QC team approved it. That is especially important when we are talking on a flagship model.
Yakim Peled wrote:
You do not release a product before your QA/QC team approved it.
I've got some bad news for you sunshine...QA does not have the final say on whether or not a product will be released (this may not be the case at smaller companies though). It is the responsibility of QA to test and find any potential problems before a product's scheduled release, and these problems are given different severity levels. Do you know the severity level that was given to this problem? If it only happened at a specific time of day and temperature, and day of the week for all we know, do you think that it would be classified as a show stopper?
Curator wrote:
I've got some bad news for you sunshine...QA does not have the final say on whether or not a product will be released (this may not be the case at smaller companies though). It is the responsibility of QA to test and find any potential problems before a product's scheduled release, and these problems are given different severity levels. Do you know the severity level that was given to this problem? If it only happened at a specific time of day and temperature, and day of the week for all we know, do you think that it would be classified as a show stopper? ...Show more →
Well, I've got some news for you sunshine (what does that mean anyway?). I work in a big company (Orange) and we don't release any product/service with defects with severity show stopper, 1, 2 or 3. Never. Most of the time (almost always) 4 and 5 are also fixed.
Now, lets think it together and consider it logically. You have a flagship model aimed at sport photographers. How can an AF problem not be a show stopper or at least severity 1?
Yakim Peled wrote:
Well, I've got some news for you sunshine (what does that mean anyway?). I work in a big company (Orange) and we don't release any product/service with defects with severity show stopper, 1, 2 or 3. Never. Most of the time (almost always) 4 and 5 are also fixed.
Now, lets think it together and consider it logically. You have a flagship model aimed at sport photographers. How can an AF problem not be a show stopper or at least severity 1?
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
Well I've got more bad news for you, Sweetpea (Sunshine had already been used, I was out of ideas ). Big companies do this a lot. Automotive companies knowingly release vehicles with badly situated fuel tanks which, if struck by another vehicle in a certain way, cause the car to incinerate the occupants. Big companies weigh up the potential costs of going to court and paying off fines against the costs of not releasing a product on time or having to order a major recall once the product is in general circulation. Canon (and I'm not SAYING they confirmed this as an issue very early on) would have looked at the risk factors, the relative pittance that the imaging division contribute to the annual balance sheet, the number of people who would be affected by the issue and then carried on in exactly the way they have by trying to patch the leaky mark 3 boat at the back of the shipyard whilst preparing their shiny new mark 4 flagship at the front.
But at least you have to give them some credit for continuing with their support of the product and still working on fixes (possibly at the sharp end of pitchforks being waved about by angry sports photographers), lesser companies would pretty much bin the thing as a lost cause or at least go for plausible deniability.
Yakim Peled wrote:
You do not release a product before your QA/QC team approved it. That is especially important when we are talking on a flagship model.
farscapes wrote:
Automotive companies knowingly release vehicles with badly situated fuel tanks which, if struck by another vehicle in a certain way, cause the car to incinerate the occupants.
Particularly when certain television news programs add explosives to the gas tank to "demonstrate" the danger.
Yakim Peled wrote:
How can an AF problem not be a show stopper or at least severity 1?
Not getting 100% of a sequence of shots in focus is an AF problem. Do you feel that a flagship model shouldn't ship if one out of ten shots has a focus problem? How about two out of ten?
