The Digital Journalist, December 2006, Issue 110

[KKH]

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0612/contents.html

[KKH]

Extracted from Tech Tips by Chuck Westfall, Director of Media & Customer Relationship, Canon ->

Here's a recent quote from Mark Cohran on the "Canon Digital Photography Forum" at Photography-on-the-Net forum...

"There have been some indication from Canon (Chuck Westfall) that the 1D line will merge in the future, but there haven't been any press releases that I've seen recently that have supported this statement."

And there are others you can find if you Google the right terms. Back to early 2005...So--Chuck--now's the time to set the record straight (especially since the search at old RG's forum is currently not working). Did you (or someone from Canon) say "they'll merge sometime in the future" or "at the next release"? Or were you just trying to say, between the lines "things have changed?"

I never said that the EOS-1D and 1Ds model lines would be merged. As best as I can tell, this line of thinking is based on the alleged comments of another Canon executive (Mr. Takaya Iwasaki) who was interviewed a couple of years ago by a European digital camera Web site.

http://www.e-fotografija.com/artman/...icle_440.shtml

Jernej: "At the moment you have two high-end cameras. Will the next generation be just one, high-speed and high-resolution camera?"

Takaya: [nodding] "Yes."

Back to Chuck: I strongly suspect that Mr. Iwasaki was simply acknowledging the question rather than answering it. This type of reaction is quite typical in Japanese culture. Another possibility is that he simply misunderstood the question. After all, he's not a native English speaker, and neither were the folks who interviewed him. In any case, I strongly doubt he meant to answer this question affirmatively.

It's interesting to note that Mr. Iwasaki's October, 2004 interview was followed very closely in the same month by an interview with another Canon Inc. executive, Mr. Tomonori Iwashita, who incidentally holds a much higher position in Canon's global organization [Chief Executive, Image Communication Products Group, Canon Inc.] than either Mr. Iwasaki or I. Mr. Iwashita was asked a similar question by a Japanese digital camera Web site. Here is a relevant excerpt from an English translation of that interview:

http://hobday.net/canon/

At the present time Canon has 35mm full-frame sensors, 1.3x sensors, and 1.6x sensors, a lineup of three different sizes. End users have various complaints about this, such as lenses behaving differently depending on the body, and difficulty switching between high-end and low-end bodies. Do you have any plans to consolidate your sensor offerings into either 1 or 2 sizes?

"We feel that the ability to use different sensor sizes is a strong point of digital cameras. Rather than consolidating into fewer sensor sizes, we feel that different sensor sizes offer various strong points to different users. For users who wish to make use of the full range of their EF lenses, full-frame sensors are best. For those searching for the fastest frame rates, 1.3x is best. For the most cost-sensitive users, the APS-C 1.6x size is ideal."

Back to Chuck again: In my opinion, this quote is much more in line with Canon's philosophy regarding the use of several sensor sizes. It echoes my response on the subject, which I posted on Rob Galbraith's Web site in September 2003:

"Canon's digital SLR design philosophy is to provide a range of camera models to cover clearly defined market segments. For the foreseeable future, this is going to involve a range of sensor sizes from APS-C (as in EOS Digital Rebel and 10D) through APS-H (as in EOS-1D) to full-frame (as in EOS-1Ds)."

My statement was true then and it remains true today. I have no intention of discussing Canon's future plans in detail, but it wouldn't surprise me to see us continue to manufacture several distinct sensor sizes, if that's what it takes to offer the best camera performance in each DSLR product category.