Mirroless is NOT doomed. It's just waiting for Canon and Nikon. No
need to force it until they have to. DSLR sales are still very strong
and the R/D on the basic technology is long since paid off. Canon's M
was a means of addressing the "if you give me a mirrorless camera, I'm
leaving" nabobs. It was never meant as a serious effort, just as a
defensive move. Canon will absolutely launch a new mirrorless in 2014
and it will be a decent answer to S/F/O/P's efforts. I have no doubt.
I do expect Nikon will till 2015.
Canon has been silent for too long. Something is up. I mean,
seriously, this is the company that dominated the industry by out
engineering the competition every which way AND north. If I was the
competition, or had just bought a full-blown system from one of the
other guys, I'd be concerned right now.
I say this because of the lukewarm reception to the Sony A7. As
brilliant as this camera is (and it is very good), there is something
missing--other than just lenses. It is failing to connect with the
buyers. Part of that is the price, which is on the high end of most
people's comfort zone, but another thing is that it's SONY. Olympus
has a brilliant camera with the OM-D series, and has a very vocal
support among the enthusiests, but is missing the dealer network it
needs to survive. B&H is doing well, but the dealers I talk with
indicate that the sales of Olympus gear are very spotty. There is a
rush and then nothing. This one dealer in Denver was praising the
incredible sales of the EM5, but then admitted that he sold more
Canons every week then he did ALL Olympus cameras for the year. So,
it's all relative.
The soccer moms who want a decent camera to take pictures of little
Johnny at little league are still buying Canons.
I would suggest that it still comes down to lens mounts. Canon has
been successful because they haven't touched the lens mount since
dynomiting the FD mount. Nikon has been pretty good with their mount,
but screwed up with too many different series of AF systems. Olympus?
Sony/Minolta is an odd duck because it supports the old lenses (and
very well), but they do their classic Sony by introducing and
obsoleting systems at a drop of the hat. We all know about Olympus and
we'd have to be blind loyalists to deny that m43 is the flavor of the
month. Pentax still supports the screw-mount, I guess, but nobody buys
Pentax--I've never seen one in the wild.
Meanwhile, all eyes are on Sigma. The NYT technology guy LOVES Sigma.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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