StevenPA wrote:
Geoff, please provide a source for your information because all hard data that I've seen suggests that the 5D is doing quite well. Perhaps the small Australian market is an anomaly because in larger markets, such as Japan, 5D sales are doing quite well.
Look how steady the 5D sales have been. Look at how well it competes with cameras that are less than half its cost. Look at how those other cameras experience a surge in demand at introduction, which then tails off fairly quickly.
Steven - great graph
Firstly - the source for my post is literally me summarising a MSN conversation with a friend now working overseas who regularly catches up with a college buddy now working in DSLR marketing for Canon (as I understand it) and was recounting to me the details of a conversation (held at my request) to ‘fish’ for information. There is no technical support for anything – this verbal information captured second hand – with all the unreliability (“take with a grain of salt” etc) that implies…
That aside looking at the graph is very interesting in the context of the whole conversation / feedback I was trying to capture in the post. It seems to me that:
• Canon Kiss Digital N (EOS 350D I presume) has had its market share drop from 35% to 20% - which would explain the introduction of the 400D before the 40D etc that surprised many.
• The EOS 30D has dropped from around 13% at launch to 7 or 8% (and there’s a post earlier in this rumour thread suggesting it is now down to 3.5%!)
• The EOS 5D is generally varying between 3% and 7% market and as you say relatively steady.
• The overall Canon DSLR market share seems to have dropped by 15% or so over the last 6 months or so.
• Much of this market share has been taken up by the Sony A100, though there was an erosion over time with other models from Nikon etc.
• For the last year or so Nikon have has 30-35% market share through the combination of the D50, D70, D200 and D80.
• Pentax are also a bit of a rising star over the last few months,
This seems to (broadly) support the (second hand) marketing concern I was relaying in my post. If I was Canon I’d be worried and looking to promote some new models to regain market share. I would imaging the 400D will have helped (this doesn’t seem to be in the graph?
Also I refer to this quote from this thread (my underlining): Beni wrote: The 5D came out at £2500 here in the UK, at that price point it should have had weather sealing and the 45 point AF. The price and positioning put it in direct comparison to the EOS 3, also not technically a pro body, but without the features. The 5D is now selling at £1500 or so. How much of that £1000 difference (remember they're still making profit at the lower price) would weather sealing and the AF cost given that £1000 buys a whole EOS 1V new, never mind just two of its features!!! The D200 has it, the £600 Pentax has it for goodness sake!...Show more →
There have been similar price reductions for the 5D in Australia. I am sensing that Canon has had to on many markets reduce the price of the 5D to maintain market share over time…. So again this seems (to me) consistent with the report I received that Canon were disappointed with the sales of the 5D – beside – I guess we will never know what sales they expected!
Lastly (inspired by your excellent graph) I have been thinking about the lens sales and system concepts which I captured in my post (which was something I hadn’t really thought of too much before). Your graph brings that home to me. I would imagine that most 350D / Digital Rebel etc buyers stick to the kit lenses etc. And if they buy a new DSLR then they (I guess) would get the new kit lenses. However it makes sense that the 30D and above buyers are more generally body only buyers who are likely to invest in expensive lenses over time, thus creating both a degree of system lock in and (presumably) good profits for Canon on the lenses. And Canon would seem to be facing a significant decline in the prosumer market through the combination of the steady 5D and rapidly reducing 30D. So I can see why:
• There are significant rebates ongoing for the 30D and 5D in many markets for the last few months
• Canon would be “breaking” their 18 month cycle for the xxD to bring forward a 40D
• Canon would be upgrading (or perhaps as suggested splitting into 2 lines) the 5D range.
• Nikon and Pentax are bringing higher end camera features to their mid level cameras to gain market share (with good success it would seem)
• Sony bought Minolta and are pushing out the A100 as the first step of a DSLR range, linked to a substantial lens range from the Minolta legacy.
• It makes competitive sense (as so many seem to be requesting / hoping / demanding etc, for Canon to now do the same to maintain market share – after all the true cost of some of these features can’t be that great.
Again this graph is making “more real” for me (I’m a numbers person) some of the second hand messages I was reporting. Thank you for sharing it…
I can’t wait to see how Canon responds.. It seems to me a little like the car market now – with the completion over the last few years from imports etc. even “low end” cars now have lots of extras etc, previously only in the “higher end” models. All good for the consumer (which is us). The next couple of years should be very interesting indeed
Geoff
Edited by Geoff Costello on Jan 18, 2007 at 08:40 PM GMT
Edited by Geoff Costello on Jan 18, 2007 at 08:42 PM GMT
Edited by Geoff Costello on Jan 18, 2007 at 08:43 PM GMT
1. A camera manufacture must expect the worse conditions his camera will be used in and design the camera accordingly.
2. The fact that a professional photographer uses a certain camera model does not - by itself - make it a pro model. If that was true, each and every body would be considered a professional body. For instance, I know several pro photographers using 350D, 20D D70 D50 etc.
dturina wrote:
Is Mamiya 645 AFD II a professional camera? It has miserable autofocus compared to 5d, 1.2FPS frame rate, no weather sealing, and a rather plasticky look and feel.
What about field cameras? A Linhof Master Technika has very much sub-par autofocus, frame rate and weather proofing.
The point is, not all professional photographers have the same demands. Some are quite OK with 0.5 FPS and manual focus if they're shooting a 503 'blad with a tethered digital back in a studio, others need 8FPS for a soccer game. Some need the best image quality, some need the fastest performance, some need the highest resistance to dust, sand, humidity and vibrations, some need a purely mechanical camera, and some need a good compromise. 5d is a tool of choice for a very large group of professionals - wedding and studio, for instance, while it's unlikely to be chosen for sports, wildlife and war photography. A lots of landscape/nature photographers prefer 5d because it is relatively light and easily replaces medium format film. It works in all circumstances where Mamiya 645 AFD II could be used - and is a better camera, too. Things need to be put in perspective. ...Show more →
No argument here, it's all relative. Sometimes the best tools for the job aren't the top-end ones (say the guys doing advertising work with digital camera arrays - they use 40 or more bodies, don't need to be pro spec).
Nonetheless they aren't pro cameras.
We're messing up two things here: pro cameras and pro users - they're not one and the same.
dturina wrote:
Is Olympus E-1 a professional camera? It is defined as such by the manufacturer, and is built like a tank, certainly up to Canon 1D standards. However few professionals actually use it because it has slow autofocus, only 5MP resolution and not very good high ISO. 5d, however, has excellent resolution, excellent high ISO, very fast autofocus etc., but it is not made to withstand severe abuse. It certainly looks as well made as my EOS 3 - maybe even better. If EOS 3 is a professional camera (and it certainly was advertised as such), 5d is as well. But do have in mind that "professional use" means different things for a studio photographer and a war photographer. Me, I couldn't care less about how the manufacturer defines it, I care for what I get in the actual package. If I put it alongside EOS 3 and can't really tell which one is more "professional", then I don't really care....Show more →
Can't comment on the Oly, but the 5D is more aligned to the EOS 5, not the EOS 3. EOS 3 had the 1-series AF, control layout, and most of the build and functions.
EOS 3 was a detuned EOS-1V (born from the same separate engineering section as the regular cams), whereas the EOS 5 was a 'souped up' EOS 100.
I said it back at the time, and I'll say it again. The 30D was the wrong product for Canon when it hit market. If Canon wasn't ready with a competitive model, they should have waited 6 months. At this level, many shooters expect 10+ Mpx, whether they need it or not. Canon has not delivered, and while I appreciate the improvements that went into the 30D over the 20D, it is still, essentially, a 20D. That's not a bad thing, but 8.2 Mpx doesn't sell against 10+, even if the high-ISO performance of the 8.2 Mpx is better.
Canon lost market share at this level precisely because they chose not to compete. Now they have to resurrect the $1000-1500 price range with a big product. The 30D would have been that product had it incorporated higher pixel count and perhaps the anti-dust feature of the 400D, though I'm not certain that Canon had the higher-pixel sensor ready at the time.
I cannot speak on Canon's desired sales level for the 5D, since I don't know what they expected. Surely, they didn't expect it to outsell the $1300 30D given that it's much more expensive. That would be silly - there aren't that many hobbyists & pros that have that much disposable income. I consider it a bargain compared to the competition in terms of image quality per dollar, but that is a somewhat subjective analysis.
The initial price in the UK of £2500 (wow, that was alot higher than it was in the US) was designed to rape all the buyers that just HAD to have the camera when it first came out. It is a typical pricing practice in the electronics industry to have a higher price initially to take advantage of the price inelasticity when an eagerly anticipated new product is introduced -- especially one without a direct competitor in the market. (I should also point out that in addition, unit costs usually decline over time for electronics products, and DSLR's are no exception).
It also seems that the initial price in teh UK was significantly higher than it was in the US and Japan. In the US it was introduced at about $3200 (£1640) and now is generally sold for about $2500-2600 (£1335) after rebate. Accordingly the price drop in the UK appears for be about 3 times what it was in the US. I think, generally speaking, the Europeans get raped on pricing much more than the Americans, Japanese or Asians (Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.).
In my view, the pricing decline on the 5D was wholly anticipated -- and was grossly overpriced in the UK (and perhaps, EU) at introduction relative to the rest of the world. It also seems to me that the camera would have been VERY profitable for Canon in the first few months, and I suspect it is still a nice little earner for them.
Could somebody please find the accepted authoritarian definition of a professional camera so that this argument could end and we can again begin speculating on the next product?
10DFT wrote:
Could somebody please find the accepted authoritarian definition of a professional camera so that this argument could end and we can again begin speculating on the next product?
Why don't we start with yours?
Or rather, how you would label the EOS-1 series cameras in relation to the other cameras in Canon's range.
After all, pros use everything and anything - it's just a label. I put it to you that the term 'professional' when applied to camera bodies is the generally accepted label.
10DFT wrote:
I'm looking for the authoritarian definition, not an opinion. Unfortunately, I've seen only the latter, and my opinion would only be more of the same.
There is none - but there is accepted terminology/referencing.
Or rather, how you would label the EOS-1 series cameras in relation to the other cameras in Canon's range.
After all, pros use everything and anything - it's just a label. I put it to you that the term 'professional' when applied to camera bodies is the generally accepted label for this style and/or positioning of camera.
10DFT wrote:
Could somebody please find the accepted authoritarian definition of a professional camera so that this argument could end and we can again begin speculating on the next product?
I'd personally classify the 1-series as "heavy duty", the xxD and 5D as "intermediate duty", and the Rebel/xxxD as "light-duty", rather than "professional", "hobbyist", and "snapshooter". But I would think that the design of each individual camera goes well beyond the term "professional" or "amateur" or "hobbyist" or whatever. The 1Ds series is certainly aimed at a different function than that of the 1D II, though they, like all cameras, overlap in their function.
Based on the marketing angle:
I don't think it's any stretch to say that the 1D II is aimed at the sports/action professional, though I don't doubt that there are a multitude of 1D2's in the hands of non-earning shooters, as well as photographers that don't specialize in sports photography. Likewise, it would seem that the 1Ds II would be aimed at the pro for use in the studio or on a remote set.
As for the rest of the lineup, I would say that there's much more gray area. Some posters have said that the 5D is aimed at pro users, while others have not. I haven't paid a lot of attention to the ads for the 5D or the 30D, though both have been touted as having "pro-like" features. I do know that a _lot_ of self-employed pros use 10D, 20D, 30D, and now 5D's for their profession. And I know of some news organizations that have 20D's for their staff photographers (the Chattanooga Times Free Press is one such newspaper), perhaps for the economics of the situation or perhaps because that's all that is really needed for that type of work.
Again, a lot of that is based on what I see in marketing/selling from Canon (and again, I'm not paying a great deal of attention to their ads). I'm frankly not one to put a great deal of faith in the words of the marketers - after all, their job is to promote and sell. Throwing the word "pro" into an advertizement or promotion is a useful selling tool, but I'd take it with a grain of salt.
Geoff Costello wrote:
That aside looking at the graph is very interesting in the context of the whole conversation / feedback I was trying to capture in the post. It seems to me that:
• Canon Kiss Digital N (EOS 350D I presume) has had its market share drop from 35% to 20% - which would explain the introduction of the 400D before the 40D etc that surprised many.
• The EOS 30D has dropped from around 13% at launch to 7 or 8% (and there’s a post earlier in this rumour thread suggesting it is now down to 3.5%!)
• The EOS 5D is generally varying between 3% and 7% market and as you say relatively steady.
• The overall Canon DSLR market share seems to have dropped by 15% or so over the last 6 months or so.
• Much of this market share has been taken up by the Sony A100, though there was an erosion over time with other models from Nikon etc.
• For the last year or so Nikon have has 30-35% market share through the combination of the D50, D70, D200 and D80.
• Pentax are also a bit of a rising star over the last few months,
This seems to (broadly) support the (second hand) marketing concern I was relaying in my post. If I was Canon I’d be worried and looking to promote some new models to regain market share. I would imaging the 400D will have helped (this doesn’t seem to be in the graph? ...Show more →
This info is a little back-dated.
The Sony A100 sales has PLUMMETED since then.
But Nikon's combined sales for D40/D80/D200 has overtaken that of Canon in December even though the 400D is still the current best-seller.
Quite true. It seems that the A100's sales were good for the first 2 weeks after it was introduced (as all the pre-orders were filled and entered the statistics, and all those patiently waiting for one finally got one), and have essentially been falling ever since.
But Nikon's combined sales for D40/D80/D200 has overtaken that of Canon in December even though the 400D is still the current best-seller.
I've always understood that Nikon enjoyed a much healthier market share in SLRs in Japan than anywhere else in the world. Almost to the point that Nikon is the preferred brand of discerning photographers over there.
Probably a legacy of the dominant pro-market share that they once had prior to Canon changing to EF mount 20 years ago.
Anyway, it may explain why the figures seem a little unrepresentative on a world scale to me.
Oh how these 'what is pro versus what is not pro' discussions make me laugh! If you make money from published photography then to my mind it is simple, you are a professional as it is your business. Me simply owning a 1D2N does not a pro make, but I am trying!
Anyway, back on topic, I would love to see a dual role 1Dxxx model, 22MP for studio work (for me is more than enough) plus a 8.5fps+ and 10MP+ sports/wildlife crop mode. We will never know for sure but at a minimum I would like (and buy) a 1D2N replacement with 12MP thats it. With a MLU button if possible. Couldn't care less about dust reduction software.....
As a matter of interest (can anyone tell that I'm mid editing a boring wedding and trying to find any excuse to do something else? ), although it is true that the pro market is only a small percentage of Canons actual DSLR sales, I wonder what the percentage of 1D mkII's and 1Ds mkII's sold to pro's is compared to those bodies sold to amtuers with lots of money? I know the 5D is a very mixed market, probably a good 50/50 but I would expect that the pro bodies are being sold to pros in the main and that is the statistic that canon will be looking at and thinking about when upgrading. Not that this is actually relevant in any way but we must talk about something till the rumours start actually appearing!
