The Canon EOS 70D is here

Yeah I’m a bit late but I actually work for a living here at Canon USA, so sue me. The EOS 70D is out, and you can see some of what’s to come with the 7D Mark II in there. Most importantly the new sensor with on-sensor phase detection autofocus, which, as far as I’m concerned is one of the best innovations we’ve had in a long while. This is going to open up a whole host of possibilities and new features, most of which Canon Inc. will introduce with the higher models.

I mentioned a few posts ago how I was wrapped up in an internal battle with Japan about the godawful 9-point autofocus system. Man that struggle alone lost me another 20% of my hair. I managed to convince Japan to step up the AF system on the lower models, and the 70D now has the same AF from the 7D, which is a big deal. Yes, take note, and you have me to thank for it.

Of course this means the 7D Mark II is gonna have to get the AF system form the 5D Mark III. Before you start smiling keep in mind that the price of the 7D Mark II is gonna be much higher than the 7D. But as far as I can see right now, it’s gonna be worth it. Especially with the frame rate we’re planning on having on it.

The only thing that concerns me right now is the image quality. But before I post about that I’m gonna wait for Japan to deliver the production firmware so I can be fair about it. I don’t know what it is with the Japanese and megapixels. I thought I had won that battle long ago with the 5D Mark III, but they keep on pushing it. I pray to God that the new medium format lineup gets ready soon so that the marketing department can masturbate all over the megapixels there while they leave the 35mm sensors where they are right now.

It’s a fucking shame that the 70D has the autofocus system that should have been in the 6D. Canon Inc. just completely fucked the 6D up by including such an ancient AF system on it. Mainly because of that crap autofocus system I can’t recommend that camera to people when they ask me. You’re just better off getting a 5D Mark III. And if you just can’t afford that, you better get the Nikon D600, tho it’s not that great compared to the 5D Mark III, which is still the best fucking DSLR in the history of human civilization, if we don’t look at the 1DX.

Van Niekerk – In theaters soon.

Van Niekerk, photographer by day and vampire slayer by night, did an ISO comparison between the 1DX, D4, 5D Mark III, 6D ad D600, which I think you should check out. It clearly shows the superiority of the latest Canon EOS models. Some of what he says:

1. To my eye, the Canon 6D and Canon 5D mark III behaved similarly in this aspect – high-ISO performance.
2. There is a definite (but not that an incredible) jump from the Canon 5D mark II, to these two cameras.

[..]
5. The Nikon D600 performed surprisingly poorly, especially if you think of how fantastic the Nikon D3s and Nikon D4 perform, and how the Nikon D3 was the high-ISO king for quite some time. The D600 that I had, did have the latest firmware, so I can’t explain the noticeable poorer performance compared to the other cameras.

Keep in mind that the 5D Mark III is slightly better compared to the 6D with regards to image quality for stills, and much better if you’re doing video (moire, aliasing etc.). Canon Inc. just fucked with the image quality on the 6D and totally sent everything to hell with the piece of crap 9-point AF system.

But what’s even more interesting here about Van Niekerk’s observations is with regards to the Nikon D600. The reason is because this, AGAIN, proves that those goddamn motherfuckers at DxO Labs are fucking fooling the entire industry with their bullshit benchmarks. Just take a look at the screenshot below. You’d think that the D600 is so much better compared to the 5D Mark III and 6D based on those scores. Yet, in reality things are completely different, and I’ve shown this before with my analysis of the piece of crap D800.

DXO Mark Sucks Balls

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, this isn’t a surprise to you. Why people still take those morons at DxOLabs serious is beyond me. I’ve given up long ago to understand this shit. I have better chances understanding my wife to be perfectly honest with you.

Yo’ kin’t go wrong wif a D800 acco’din’ t’them fuckwads at DXOLabs

Anyway, I’ve got a conference call that’s about to start with Tokyo regarding the new 14-24mm lens so until next time. Take care!

Canon Inc. rape, feature requests, and why the Canon EOS 6D sucks balls

Man what a weekend. What a weekend! Things are just so hectic around here I barely get any time to update the blog. But I have to do this update today because my previous post about Canon Inc. raping us all didn’t come across very well with some of my contacts at Canon Inc. To be honest, this happens quite often, but this time I feel that their criticisms do have some validity.

Yeah, it’s true that the 5D Mark III could be enabled to do all kinds of advanced stuff, as the guys from Magic Lantern have shown recently with their RAW video update. However, it may not be reasonable to expect Canon Inc. to just implement and enable any and all possibilities on such a camera. It takes quite a lot of work to implement and test functionality on a camera, and adding features — sometimes what may seem as even minor features — could simply mean a lot of additional engineering work, not to mention testing and Q/A work. And at some point you just have to stop adding stuff and release the product. Otherwise you could go on adding and developing to infinity.

So yeah, maybe I was a little too hard on them in the previous post. Especially since Canon Inc. has shown us in recent years that they do listen. But during the discussion I also mentioned, and we talked about, the possibility of releasing an SDK along with some of our products that would enable other people to more easily extend their functionalities, and even introduce new ones, and basically add value to our products without us having to do very much ourselves. Wouldn’t it be nice if the guys at Magic Lantern, for example, could just use such an officially supported SDK to build cool new features everyone, including Canon Inc. could benefit from — instead of having to hack into and reverse engineer the products?

A company famous for using this strategy for many years now is Microsoft. They’ve been handing out development tools and sample code to software developers for free for years. And look how that has worked out for them. All kinds of programs exist within Microsoft for independent software vendors to get free software licenses to get them started building cool new software for the Windows platform. Sometimes you can even get some funding in addition to free licenses. This leads to more interesting software that runs on their platform, which leads to more value, which leads to more users, which leads to market share and sales, which leads to $$$$$.

With an official SDK from Canon Inc., developers could build on top of our existing products and add value to them, adding all kinds of stuff we couldn’t add ourselves, eventually leading to more interesting products and more customers. There are so many cool benefits I just don’t want to name them all here for the competition to steal.

And you’re not going to believe this, but I had this discussion last week, and lo and fucking behold, I almost fell off of my chair this morning when I saw that Samsung is already releasing the code for their cameras to open source developers.

Canon Inc. needs to act fast man. Who the fuck wants to develop for Samsung anyway? Their platform sucks balls. EOS is where the fucking power lies in this industry, as the guys from Magic Lantern have clearly demonstrated. If we had an official SDK out, people would be all over it.

Now, having said all of the above, this still doesn’t change the fact that for many features, Canon Inc. IS GUILTY of dumbing down and crippling products fucking INTENTIONALLY. That needs to be said. It’s just that it’s unreasonable to expect them to add all features that a product could be capable of supporting.

Just look at the goddamn 6D. I still haven’t written a post dedicated to this camera because honest to God, as soon as I think about this camera I get fucking depressed. Was it really neccessary to put a sync speed of 1/180th on it? Honestly? The fucking 5D Mark III is already crippled with 1/200th sync speed. Why in God’s name was it neccessary to go to 1/180th sync on the 6D?

And you know what pains me the most about this? Just a few days before the release of the 6D, I was on Twitter smacktalking The Lord of the Speedlights about how we already had built-in wireless capabilities via RT on our flashes, and how we’re going to show him that the 5D Mark IV would even have a 1/500th sync speed in the future.

Twitter discussion

And then, just a few days later, Canon Inc. totally fucking lets me down with the 6D and announces it with a sync speed even worse than the D600. When in fact I’m sure the sensor in the 6D would be quite able to handle at least a 1/200th sync speed. I’m just glad The Lord of the Speedlights apparently isn’t aware of this, and never replied to my last tweet to publicly laugh at me and rub the 6D fuckup in. That would have been quite embarrassing.

This kind of intentional crippling of products is just not necessary man. Seriously. The same thing can be said about the 9-point piece of fucking shit autofocus system on the 6D. I keep saying this, but who the fuck releases a camera with a fucking 9-point AF system these days? Honestly? Not only that, but with just one goddamn cross-type point in the center? Really man, that was just not necessary. The 6D could have benefitted from at least the AF system from the 7D. Releasing it the way it is right now at that price is simply criminal behavior. Even the image quality was purposely degraded.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, don’t waste your money on a 6D. Get a Nikon D600, or save some more to get the 5D Mark III. Just pretend the 6D doesn’t exist.

Apart from the 1/500th sync on the 5D Mark IV, I’ve also told Canon Inc. that people want exposure metering linked to the selected AF point. Those of you who have been continuing to spam my inbox with this request, please stop. I know about it, I’ve told Japan, and I keep reminding them. Emailing me about it every other day isn’t going to help right now.

And the same also goes for second curtain sync on our new 600EX-RT flash system when using the wireless capabilities. I already told Japan you guys want that feature. Honest to God, I don’t know why it was left out. Please stop asking me. And the same also goes for being able to set the flash zoom setting on the slaves wirelessly from the master or the ST-E3-RT. This one boggles the mind, I agree. Canon Inc. added the capability to set flash power levels from the master and the ST-E3-RT, but somehow forgot to also let you set the zoom setting wirelessly. So if you want to change the zoom setting on your flashes, you still have to fucking walk up to each and every one of them and do it manually, defeating the entire point of having wireless control over them.

I hope to God that they add these features soon via some kind of firmware update because the kind of emails I receive on these issues almost daily would make even Joe McNally blush uncomfortably while reading.

I’ll be back soon with more. In the mean time keep spamming your local Canon reps with these feature requests!