Who the fuck needs a Rebel T3i or a Rebel T3?

The entire photo industry collectively yawned yesterday when we announced the new EOS Rebel T3i (EOS 600D) and T3 (EOS 1100D) cameras. Understandable since these cameras offer very little more compared to the older models that they are replacing. Canon Inc. could just as well have skipped these releases and waited till next year when they have some real improvements to add. So the 600D got a swivel screen, big fucking deal. The 60D has a swivel screen, and right now, its price is just about $100 more compared to the 600D. You have to wonder what Canon Inc. was thinking when they decided to go ahead and introduce the 600D at $800. I’m at Canon USA, and trust me, even we don’t fucking have a clue. Those morons in Japan are seriously out of touch with reality and this has been the case for the last 4 years. If you have a 600D costing $800, and a 60D costing close to $900 right now, who the fuck is going to buy the 600D?

I had Tokyo on the line this morning, and on some level I could understand them. The issue they’re dealing with right now is that the Nikon D7000 ruined their plans. The 60D was supposed to sell for $1100, and the 600D would sell for $800 and that would make more sense if you look at the feature and price difference. But in the aftermath of the Nikon D7000 release, the price of the 60D dropped to almost $900. This is understandable since the D7000 offers a ton more compared to the 60D for just $1200. There’s no way Canon Inc. would still be able to sell the 60D for $1100. This completely fucked up our plans. Financially and marketing-wise this is a fucking disaster for us. Sure, Canon Inc. could have changed the plans, but it was already too late. By the time the D7000 got released, the 600D product cycle had progressed too far to make drastic changes so they decided to just go ahead as planned and deal with this shit until the next update. The devastation caused by the D7000 is enormous and it won’t be until the end of 2011 until we will fully see the extent of the damage it has caused.

But I hope those fucking morons in Tokyo have learned their lesson now and have seen that releasing slightly re-heated versions of older products every year is not a strategy that’ll work from now on. If you look around the web, nobody the fuck talks about the 60D, 600D and the 1100D. That’s because they’re fucking boring. There’s nothing new worth talking about. This is the complete opposite of the way Nikon and Sony handle things. When the D7000 got out, everybody raved about it for fucking weeks. I got sick and tired of hearing about how cool the D7000 was. If I had to go through another 2 months of that I swear I’d jump out of my goddamn office window. But that’s because Nikon went out of their way to innovate with the D7000 and surprised everyone with exciting new features, one of which is the great image quality. This is the kind of product that gets people excited and motivates them to buy. You’re not likely to find the D7000 in stock anywhere right now, because everyone wants one. In contrast the 60D is available everywhere and the price only drops because nobody the fuck wants one and the same will be true for the 600D. In fact, we’re going to have to offer rebates on the 60D and 7D in the coming month to sell as much of them as we possibly can during the D7000 stock shortage. A planned $100 rebate for the 60D is going to bring down the price much closer to the $800 introduction price of the 600D making you wonder even more why the 600D exists. This is how bad the situation is for Canon right now.

View a conference call (transcript) I had with Canon Inc. here on YouTube:

There will be no acceptable excuse if the next 5D fails to impress. Canon Inc. has had enough time, and I personally made sure they also received enough feedback  for them not to fuck this one up.

But we also announced some cool new lenses. And when it comes to lenses, everyone has to admit that we fucking rock! A 8-15mm f/4 fisheye zoom lens? Fucking awesome. A 200-400mm f/4 super telephoto zoom with a built-in 1.4x extender? Fucking brilliant! That is the kind of innovative thinking I hope Canon Inc. will carry over to their DSLR body design process because we seriously need it there. The 200-400mm lens is a fucking master piece. After everyone stopped yawning because of the 600D and 1100D, all of their jaws hit a crater in the ground in front of them when we announced the 200-400mm f/4 lens.

The EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x zoom. If this image doesn't instantly give you some serious wood, then not even Viagra can help you.

I’d like to see those hacks at Nikon copy this one. I just know they’re going to add 1.4x extenders to all of their lenses now, maybe even where it doesn’t make sense. I’ve already shown in my previous post how they copy all of our cool products. And what’s fucking hilarious about this is that they copy our strategies completely, the good aspects AND bad aspects. HAHAHA fucking brain-dead wankers. They were so obsessed with copying our Holy Trinity group of primes for example, that in the process they even copied our bad quality control and had their lenses back focus just like ours. You just can’t make this shit up. HAHAHA, what a bunch of fucking idiots. Hey Nikon morons, our lenses back focusing or inconsistently autofocusing is NOT what makes them popular, OK? You guys might want to leave that out. Nikon’s behavior reminds me of the time when I was cheating back in high school and was copying someone else’s answers during exams, the good AND bad answers. Needless to say, the teacher not only knew that I cheated, but he also knew exactly who’s work I copied. At that time it kept me busy for weeks, I kept wondering how the fuck that teacher knew. I even beat up the girl who’s work I copied several times because I blamed her for telling on me. But of course now I know better.

Apart from the 200-400mm f/4 lens we also launched the 500mm f/4L IS II and the 600mm f/4L IS II lenses, both of them beauties. I’ve been playing with prototypes of these lenses since August last year and my wife has been complaining ever since about feeling neglected. If there’s one thing the Japanese engineers at Canon Inc. are good at, it’s designing big sensors and big lenses. I’m not going to repeat myself and make the obvious joke here again, but I do have to say that this reminded me of my good friend Tony:

Me: You trying to compensate for something Tony? Tony: Absolutely! (I'm not making this up)

Canon Inc. are so desperate right now to show that they still matter in this industry that they’re now even starting to announce the development of new products instead of just the actual product launches we’re used to. It started last year in August when the competition was launching all kinds of exciting new products, and all we had to show was the 7D with integrated barcode reader (LMFAO). And let’s face it, when all you’ve got to show is a 7D with integrated barcode reader, you had better bust your ass off searching for any other bits of information that you can also release together with that in order for people to take you seriously. So Canon Inc. had to quickly “announce the development” of the 8-15mm f/4 fisheye lens and the 500 and 600mm lenses about a week after they announced the 7D SV and everyone pointed and laughed at them. Doesn’t matter that those products wouldn’t be available for at least 7 months. And the same is true again for the 200-400mm f/4L IS II lens we announced yesterday. The 600D and 1100D just made everyone yawn so Canon Inc. needed something a lot more exciting to show off. And it worked, people initially yawned but then started paying attention again because of the 200-400mm lens, even though all Canon Inc. can tell us is that the lens will be available “sometime in 2011” and it is essentially vaporware right now. Succesful PR manipulation at its finest. You can be damn sure Nikon is paying attention too, because who knows they might need to copy these PR skills in the future.

Anyway, I’m off to play with my prototype 200-400mm lens now. Let me hear what you think of all of this.