And before people start to panic: Yes, it uses pixel binning to get to this value, 8 mpixel down to 3 mpixel.
I love how Phil Askey puts it in words:
What makes the FE-250 stand out for us though, is that it scales new heights in sensitivity, offering an ISO 10,000 (yes, that's ten thousand) option (at 3MP). Now we may be jumping the gun here, but we suspect there may be some sacrifice in quality involved. Either that or Olympus has - in a £200 compact - re-written the laws of physics.
Acting marketing manager of Canon Australia , Darren Ryan, has publicly stated (Photo and Imaging News, Nov 06) who he nominates as Canon's main competitors, Ryan said "Clearly Sony across a vast number of categories, then Panasonic with Oympus..."
He said features that consumers are going to be looking for in the latest cameras are , following megapixels and zooms, image stability and face recognition. The article also goes on to say that Canon do not see Nikon as a threat and aren't even on the radar.
So Olympus have released the SP550 18x soom, wide angle lens, image stabilisation (finally!). Sony's new models have face priority. Where do you think Canons focus will be.
Well, in the DSLRs, you can expect the 40D to have face recognition and maybe 1080i output, but not a whole lot more apart from 10MP. Canon clearly sees Sony as a threat so expect the future 450D to have anti-shake. There probably won't be a model to match Nikons D40, they don't need to , the 400D is still the biggest selling camera in the world.
The market that makes the most turnover is in the lower price end, the Pentax K10D, The Sony A100, the Nikon D80 with the 400D on top. They won't tackle the D200. They can't dominate EVERY market segment, and they won't try. They have the 5D above the D200. Which also may mean they won't split the 5D as has been suggested. Maybe they'll upgrade it (my suggestion is not at PMA though).
This could end up being a more ho-hum PMA than even I suggested. Can't wait to read the threads about it if thats the case.
nikt wrote:
Acting marketing manager of Canon Australia , Darren Ryan, has publicly stated (Photo and Imaging News, Nov 06) who he nominates as Canon's main competitors, Ryan said "Clearly Sony across a vast number of categories, then Panasonic with Oympus..."
Well, if he had been in Canon's DSLR product management I would actually have cared.
Rusty1 wrote:
I'm afraid Greg and boissez may be more than just a little correct.
During Canon Inc's 60th anniversary in 1997, there were more compact cameras released in the market than EOS cameras plus more printers and office equipment.
This was due to the fact that the top management of Canon then was more inclined toward office equipment and consumer film cameras than catering to the EOS segment. Things changed from 2000 onwards after Dr Fujio Mitarai, who is the nephew of the founder of Canon Inc was appointed as President and CEO in mid-1999, who is himself a photo enthusiast just like his late uncle.
Prior to his appointment, film and digital cameras were separate divisions in the company. The camera side was in charge of EOS and compact film cameras while the early PowerShots were handled by the IT peripherals division. These early PowerShots were treated as nothing more than mere gadgets to complement the inkjet and laser printers.
Canon's share in the global market for consumer digicams before 2000 was outside the Top 5. In 2000, it made its foray into the Top 5 for the first time and aimed to be No: 1 by 2004! That goal came a year early in 2003!
On top of that, the CEO was there personally at PMA 2000 to gauge the responses of the visitors toward the EOS D30, which was showcased behind a glass box then in the Canon booth!
nikt wrote:
Well, in the DSLRs, you can expect the 40D to have face recognition and maybe 1080i output, but not a whole lot more apart from 10MP. Canon clearly sees Sony as a threat so expect the future 450D to have anti-shake. There probably won't be a model to match Nikons D40, they don't need to , the 400D is still the biggest selling camera in the world.
OK, not meaning to sound stupid but what is face recognition anyway and of what possible use is it? I mean if you don't have the mental capacity to know when you are taking a picture of a person are you really likely to have the financial wherewithall to be out buying cameras? People too dumb to focus on the face can't be a large enough demographic to invest a lot of R&D money in, can it?
Maybe I am mistaken in assuming that it has something to do with image creation. Is it an automatic system that recognizes the faces of terrorists and sends the pictures you take of them to Homeland Security with embedded GPS coordinates so they can be detained? If so, how do you think it will impact the yearly self-portrait thread?
Well, if he had been in Canon's DSLR product management I would actually have cared.
Ryans regular job when he's not acting marketing manager is Consumer Imaging Products Group, Manager, which includes DSLR's, by the way. And if he said in the same magazine that the '22MP 1DsmkIII' was being released, I bet you'd care then.
Face technology is a new feature found in cameras that the marketing department says should be there. Maybe some people haven't heard some of the things cameras have these days, I can help here, I know how current technology can escape us.
Tiny little entry level point-and-shoot cameras now have 7 and 8 megapixels and very high ISO specs. Not that the 7 or 8 megapixels is EVER EVER going to be used by 99% of people that buy these cameras since they will do nothing more than print a 6x4 but its there. They don't know the difference between ISO specs either and complain when their night time pictures at ISO 3200 look like shite.
Not that Canon would ever implement a feature for marketing sake would they. Especially that wonderful 'Direct Print' button. When you just absolutely positively have to print your professional wedding photos from your $3000 professional camera to a $69 bubble jet printer in 1 second.
Hrow wrote:
OK, not meaning to sound stupid but what is face recognition anyway and of what possible use is it? I mean if you don't have the mental capacity to know when you are taking a picture of a person are you really likely to have the financial wherewithall to be out buying cameras? People too dumb to focus on the face can't be a large enough demographic to invest a lot of R&D money in, can it?
Maybe I am mistaken in assuming that it has something to do with image creation. Is it an automatic system that recognizes the faces of terrorists and sends the pictures you take of them to Homeland Security with embedded GPS coordinates so they can be detained? If so, how do you think it will impact the yearly self-portrait thread? ...Show more →
It is very common in the P&S crowd to frame a picture without thinking about where the focus censor is located. Haven't you ever seen a picture of two people where they are out of focus and the background is sharp? That is a really common problem. Face recognition addresses this. The camera detects the faces and focuses on them. Incidently, it was Nikon that had the first cameras with this feature. The new Digic 3 cameras have this.
Yeah , your right Warren. The Fuji S5 pro is also the first DSLR to announce the implementation of the feature. The benefit they claim in their marketing is that it will locate up to 10 faces then you can quickly check focus by it zooming each face for you. On the Point-and-shoots its not a bad feature in practice. I'm not yet convinced about it on the DSLRs. However, it is what it is.
First if this is covered in the PMA rumor post I apologize. The post is really big and takes a really really long time to sift through 8 million predictions. But if this needs to be deleted or moved into that thread I understand.
Now that the short grovel is out of the way....
Generally when does Canon announce their new products? I seem to recall a post short while back mentioning they would announce during Jan. But that is quickly coming to an end. I noticed the Olympus announcements today on DPreview so I'm guessing it should be right around the corner. Will they do an announcement before the rebates end or wait until after? Just being a curious cat.
And yes...I still have 9 lives left (although tinkering with the waters pre PMA may cost me a few from those sitting anxiously rocking back and forth on their hands) — at least that's what all of my yes men tell me
I think face recognition in point & shoot cameras is quite useful actually. Most of them don't have a convenient means of selecting a focus point, if any at all, and most of them do zone focusing across the entire image, not just the center. Even if they did use center point focus, it can be difficult to focus and recompose on a point and shoot camera. For these reasons it makes sense to incorporate face detection algorithms in to the autofocus (which I believe also works differently from a DSLR's autofocus module in the first place). If it means fewer blurred faces from missed focus by the camera, I'm all for it.
As for DSLR's, I am doubting it will make it there. How can the camera detect faces without sampling the whole image? Right now it only checks for line contrasts based on the relatively simple autofocus module CCD. Unless a whole new autofocus system was designed, I don't think it's possible. A P&S is able to implement this because it samples the entire (or parts of) the imaging sensor and uses that to determine focus, so it can use the additional information to detect and track faces in the scene too. This of course is not possible with current DSLRs because of the mirror blocking the light path to the sensor.
It would take a radical redesign of the entire camera to incorporate face detection in to a DSLR.
It could be any time between now and the end of PMA (first week of March). Most likely time, I think, is between 10 and three days before PMA.
I do not think Canon will try any splash at Superbowl (as one poster in another thread suggested) because that is such a crazy scene that it is easy to get lost among all the potato chips and frogs and other junk.
Not to be put off by depressing thoughts of facial recognition in the next gen DSLR's I thought "I wonder what is (as alleged by my rumour source) making Canon 'very excited' about their new 1 series camera?"...
>>New high ISO / High DR sensor?
>>Merged 1D and 1Ds
>>MF Killing resolution
>>Direct Print now works over Wi Fi
Then I thought of those odd "Canon is going to release a MF Digital " rumours that pop up every now and again.... While I can’t believe in the double size sensors (the image circle of the EF mount only just fits in the 36mm part of the current 24mm by 36mm FF) sometimes in seemingly mad rumours there is the grains of truth…
Then I looked at my 5Ds EF mount in the camera...
Interesting... My sense is that (just) you could change the sensor size to 36mm by 36mm instead of 36 x 24. Looking in the camera there seems to be more than the 8mm clear before the electrical contacts at the bottom. I suspect that the SLR mirror action would need to change (sideways or down perhaps) so as to not snag the lens... However I see no reason why you couldn't get a 36 x 36mm image out of any existing EF series lens... Indeed, if the mirror action was changed enough it may be possible to mount the EF-S lenses and electronically crop...
Imagine it - a 36 x 36mm sensor - that’s 50% more pixels for the same sensor pixel size... If we are thinking 22Mp for a APS sensor this new APS_M format would be 33MP...
Now this is just total speculation (after all the rumours are few and far between)... But imagine it.... All those L series lenses reused... Seriously targeting the Hasselblads etc at 1/2 to 1/3 the price...
Oh, and with electronic cropping you could still have very useful resolutions at FF, 1.3 and 1.6 crop...
From a marketing sense you'd have entry level DLSR at APS-C, Mid level at FF and Top of the line at MF or APS-M (beautiful )
So is it possible? (I'm sure those with a greater technical knowledge of the EF mount would be able to answer) Try this link for some illustrations http://www3.xitek.com/xuetang/camera/mount.htm
Would there be a market for it (I'd say absolutely if the price is right)...
Imagine - that would take Canon's pro series lead to a new level...
That would be something to get excited about... (even better than that Wi Fi direct print)
If not this time - maybe for the future
Edited by Geoff Costello on Jan 26, 2007 at 02:08 PM GMT
Edited by Geoff Costello on Jan 26, 2007 at 02:09 PM GMT
Kamil, the face technology for DSLR is after you shoot. You are correct. The only SLRs cameras that could possibly to it before taking the photos are the Panasonic and Olympus currently. I can see how people mistaken what I wrote about it being while composing like the p&s's.
Hi Geoff, I'd love to have some insight into the 1D thats been mentioned. A square sensor would certainly be enough to be 'very excitied' about, wouldn't it.
Edit: I hate spell check, I can stuff words up all by myself without a 'spell checker'
