Photography news sites have long bemoaned Canon’s lack of commitment to the mirrorless market for years. As Sony, Panasonic and Olympus embraced the new technology, Canon, (and Nikon) were arguably conservative.
And, while both brands have released mirrorless offerings, one product yet to see the light of day is a full-frame mirrorless camera.
However, this could soon be about to change as a number of photo rumour sites have reported multiple articles and information that suggests ‘the big one’ from Canon may soon be announced.
Taking a bigger-picture view, Canon made an important announcement during its recent Corporate Strategy conference - a public document that you can read in full here. Not only did Canon state that it needed to up its game with technology; ‘We already maintain high market share in each of our businesses, however, we are confident that further market share gain is possible. To realize this, we will continue to launch competitive new products this year as well. ”
Canon's latest mirrorless model is the compact M50!
More importantly, Canon clearly stated its intention to aggressive pursue the mirrorless market. “In addition to our overwhelming share of the DSLR market, we will go on the offensive and work to expand our sales in the mirrorless camera market, which is exhibiting remarkable growth. This will allow us to reach our goal of 50% market share of the entire interchangeable-lens camera market. ” A graph to accompany this quote suggested the brand wanted to to hit that 50% target by 2020 - given this is less than two years away, surely a big launch is planned soon?
Adding further meat to the bones, rumour website Canon Rumours reported some features found on a prototype full-frame Canon mirrorless. As always, it’s always worth taking this sort of information with a pinch of salt until formal confirmation, but the unnamed source disclosed that the prototype had a top-down LCD and that the flange distance looked too short for an EF mount – although no lens was attached to the body so this couldn’t be further confirmed. Also, the source reported that when the shutter was pressed, the burst rate appeared to be in excess of 10 frames per second.
Given the time window already mentioned, and the fact no major launches were announced at the recent CP+ show in Japan, it now seems likely that Canon could choose the Photokina show in Cologne, Germany (September 26-29, 2018) to pull the covers off its full-frame mirrorless. Canon has previously chosen Photokina to launch cameras such as the 1DX MkII and 7DMkII.
Do you think Canon are about to launch a full-frame mirrorless and what other features would you like to see on such a camera?
. digitalrev.com2018-3-16 03:00
