Any serious FF Canon mirrorless on the horizon?

But are you actually happy with Sony's lens lineup?

All of the f/4 zooms are fairly disappointing to me and Sigma hasn't supported the mount yet.

Zeiss' upcoming Batis line looks appealing, but we haven't seen any reviews yet.

mclaren777 wrote in post #17571021
But are you actually happy with Sony's lens lineup?

All of the f/4 zooms are fairly disappointing to me and Sigma hasn't supported the mount yet.

Zeiss' upcoming Batis line looks appealing, but we haven't seen any reviews yet.

There are some holes in their lens line-up, but they've covered an impressive amount of ground in a mere year and a half, and if this trend continues, we should have a full fleshed out portfolio of lenses (outside of super-telephotos) within a couple of years.

I've never used the Sony FE zooms, but they measure similarly to their Canon counter-parts.

The native primes, a few of which I do own, are among the best in their respective focal lengths.

Sigma hasn't released an FE lens yet, but they have commented that they have plans to do so.

Outside of native lenses, you have the ability to adapt just about anything out there, so long as you're willing to learn to manual focus (which is very easy with the focus peaking system). In that context, there's no shortage of lenses out there. Also, there's a bit of enjoyment that comes out of experimenting with vintage lenses.

I got tired of canon, rebranding old models and in terms of camera tech not really innovative. Thats why i jumped to sony. I mean sony is not doing everything right, the A7R has a lot of quirks but at least they do something to go a step ahead. You may argue about the shutter button or some incomplete features compared to the well thought out canon DSLRs but when it comes to IQ the sonys really beat pretty much everything up ive used and thats whats important to me. In addition, sony has come up with a fantastic choice of lenses, and is continuing the development of the FE mount as good as it can be.

Then there is zeiss which starts to make very nice lenses exclusively for the FE system as well as other specialized and good lenses. And dont forget all that nice leica, voigtländer and other legacy lenses out there. I started to love manual focus because those lenses are usually very small and light, yet still give very nice image quality

I rented the A7r for a week just to see what it was about. I used it entirely with EOS lenses.

For me, I was expecting resolution, size and weight, and DR to be the biggest draws of the camera, in that order. For me, the biggest advantage ended up being the ability to focus accurately using the EVF. Playing with jpeg contrast settings allowed focus peaking to work very accurately, and when that was not sufficient, magnified view always worked, but a little more slowly. Where I might have taken several frames with my 5Dii and chimped to see focus results, I could know before the shot what I was going to get.

I have been using Magic Lantern on my 5Dii for a long time, and it has made that camera close to what I am looking for, at least on a tripod. The A7r, however, has all the advantages (for me) of ML on the 5Dii, with a magnified loupe permanently attached to the rear LCD, for both tripod and handheld use. Plus resolution, plus dynamic range. And it is smaller and lighter, but that's just gravy as far as I'm concerned.

Canon won't make it because most customers are stuck on size and weight being the advantages of mirrorless, but for me, it is the EVF, and I would love a more solid (than A7r), really weather sealed mirrorless body that was native EOS mount. Failing that, maybe a mirrorless with fully functional use of EOS lenses on a Canon made adapter, as Sony has for A mount on FE (but w/o pellicle mirror). In order to have faster EVF, it would probably need to be somewhat bigger and heavier, but I personally would be very interested in that camera.

Not gonna happen though, at least not from Canon.

I don't think I'm ever going to share your feelings on mirrorless cameras.

I've spent extensive time using the Fuji X-T1, the Sony a7ii, and the Olympus E-M10 and I've deeply disliked all of them.

I've found them to be so undesirable, in fact, that I wouldn't even spend $100 if I had the opportunity to buy one (assuming I couldn't resell).

I believe you guys that you earnestly enjoy shooting with them, but it's unlikely that I ever will. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

What was wrong with them to make them so deeply disliked?

Almost everything.

I disliked the size, the shape, the sounds, the controls, the menus, the EVF, the image quality, the AF, the boot times, the battery life, etc.

For me, the experience of using a mirrorless camera was a lot like using a high-end P&S camera. It felt like a massive step backwards.

I understand the market (parents who feel awkward using larger cameras or landscape photographers who use tripods and don't need good AF), but I'm clearly not the target customer for mirrorless cameras (and that's fine).

mclaren777 wrote in post #17573084
Almost everything.

I disliked the size, the shape, the sounds, the controls, the menus, the EVF, the image quality, the AF, the boot times, the battery life, etc.

For me, the experience of using a mirrorless camera was a lot like using a high-end P&S camera. It felt like a massive step backwards.

I understand the market (parents who feel awkward using larger cameras or landscape photographers who use tripods and don't need good AF), but I'm clearly not the target customer for mirrorless cameras (and that's fine).

When did you tried XT1? Maybe when it had older firmware. I used to shoot sports, 1 series, 300f2.8, 500mm f4. Now moving from 5dmk3 to XT-1. No long lens from Fuji but 50-140mm f2.8 is as good as 70-200mm f2.8 IS II and AF for tracking is getting better every day. I can get better shots with someone coming at me than even older 1 series like 1dmk2, 1dmk3. That says a lot. Now contrast based focussing has draw backs but it is quite accurate. And none of focus adjust issues at f1.2, f1.4. I can nail more shots with XT-1/56mm f1.2 than 5dmk3/85L. Indoors dSLR better as Fuji is not senstive enough but new firmware suppose to help. And EVF on XT1 is one of the best IMHO.

mclaren777 wrote in post #17573084
Almost everything.

I disliked the size, the shape, the sounds, the controls, the menus, the EVF, the image quality, the AF, the boot times, the battery life, etc.

For me, the experience of using a mirrorless camera was a lot like using a high-end P&S camera. It felt like a massive step backwards.

I understand the market (parents who feel awkward using larger cameras or landscape photographers who use tripods and don't need good AF), but I'm clearly not the target customer for mirrorless cameras (and that's fine).

Fair points, and these are many of the reasons I still own a 5DIII.

That said, rapid advancement has been made in bridging the gap between DSLR and mirrorless for things like AF, boot speed, etc. At some point the gap will be nill, and will likely reverse, as removing the mirror yields certain advantages not possible on a DSLR. no mirror calibration issues, more accurate AF in general, higher FPS burst rates, more intelligent AF (i.e. eye focus), ability to track focus across entire frame, more intelligent viewfinders (live exposure and DOF preview, focus peaking, zebra patterns, etc), in body image stabilization, sensor shift.

The biggest bottleneck to mirrorless cameras right now is probably the processors, as bootup speed, and the speed of the hybrid AF systems utilized by them are highly processor intensive. The speed and efficiency (draw on battery) of processors improve very rapidly over time, however, and again, I suspect that the gap between mirrorless cameras and DSLR's will be bridged in 1-2 generations (2-3 years). The technology is already in place for this to happen, its simply a matter of further refining existing designs.

Once that happens, I'm ditching my 5DIII!

Canon rarely does things first, but often does things best. Because I have no immediate use for a FF mirrorless ILC, I am content to observe.

Monito wrote in post #17580156
Canon rarely does things first, but often does things best.

The EOS M disagrees

mystik610 wrote in post #17580203
The EOS M disagrees

Only if you think Canon's current EOS M is all they are going to do.

Monito wrote in post #17580903
Only if you think Canon's current EOS M is all they are going to do.

There isn't any indication that they're doing any more than that anytime soon. 3 years and two generations later, the EOS-M 3 is still over-priced, still performs at the level of the Nex-5 from 2010. And the lens selection is severely lacking.

I have no doubt that Canon will jump into mirrorless eventually. The big question is when, and how far Sony will have developed their cameras and lens line-ups by the time Canon jumps in. i.e., Sony has very aggressively built out their portfolio of FE lenses in a year and half, and every year that Canon waits puts them that much further behind. There's also a learning curve for any company in the consumer electronics space, and it takes time to refine the technology and improve the products to become 'the best'. Mirrorless cameras compete in a separate market segment than the market for DSLR's that Canon is dominating. The EOS-M is proof that they can't necessarily leverage their brand and jump in and take the APS-C market by storm, when Sony has many years of experience ahead of them. Sony has pulled too far away from Canon for them to dominate the market for APS-C mirrorless cameras, and that's quickly become the case in the market for FF mirrorless cameras as well.

mystik610 wrote in post #17581502
The EOS-M is proof that they can't necessarily leverage their brand and jump in and take the APS-C market by storm...

True, but I don't think that was Canon's intent.

They know that the mirrorless market is still small potatoes, and it seems obvious to me that they aren't going to go all-in until that changes.

People like to call Canon foolish for its current offering, but I'm 100% confident that its top brass knows far more than we do. I bet they are intimately aware of the market trends on a level we couldn't comprehend.

mclaren777 wrote in post #17581565
True, but I don't think that was Canon's intent.

They know that the mirrorless market is still small potatoes, and it seems obvious to me that they aren't going to go all-in until that changes.

People like to call Canon foolish for its current offering, but I'm 100% confident that its top brass knows far more than we do. I bet they are intimately aware of the market trends on a level we couldn't comprehend.

Because management teams never have bad reads on the market and their consumers right? Look up quotes from Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis (Co-founders of RIM) regarding capacitive touch screen displays....you'd be surprised how out of touch the top brass of companies, particularly very large corporations, can be.

Generally in the consumer electronics space, the market rewards innovators and cultivators of new markets, and punishes those who wait for the market to mature. Going back to the smartphone market, RIM had this market on lock, but when a competitor offered compelling innovations and product offerings, they sat on the sidelines as consumer tastes changed faster than they could react, and the rest is history.

Canon is fully capable of being an innovator, however, based on their management presentations, corporate filings, etc etc, it does not seem to me that it's their priority to grow their imaging division. As a corporation, they seem more interested in spending 2.8 billion dollars to acquire a surveillance company to further diversify their business units.

This is in stark contrast to Sony, who has divested itself of several business units, and is focusing its growth efforts on a handful of business units....among those units, includes their imaging division (in which they recognize mirrorless cameras and high-end compacts as their greatest growth opportunity)