Reddit user Bryce Hoeper recently broke an old Zeiss Ikon Contina L he purchased for $7 from Goodwill after it took a nasty tumble down some stairs. After being bummed for a while, he stumbled upon Timur Civan’s experiment with sticking a 102-year old lens on a modern DSLR, and decided to attempt the same thing. He spent a few hours taking apart the camera body to extract the lens, then super glued it to a Canon body cap that he cut a hole in, allowing the lens to be mounted to his Canon 5D Mark II. Read the rest of this entry »
design mind has an interesting post titled “Aged to Perfection” that explores the issue of whether or not consumer gadgets age gracefully as time and use wear them down. They specifically compare a 3-year-old iPhone with a 7-year-old Canon compact film camera:
The camera’s emulated metallic finish is only surface-deep and its wear tends to emphasizes awkward artifacts of the injection molding process used to create it. At this point the Canon camera’s shell looks like garbage while the iPhone’s is starting to resemble something more like an heirloom pocket watch.
They also make the point that a product’s original “new” look normally only lasts a brief amount of time, while the user is forced to live with the “aged” look as the product decays. It would be interesting to see how modern cameras compare in terms of their “aged” look rather than what they look like out of the box. Have your cameras aged well?
Here’s an interesting look at what the aperture blades on a Canon 18-55mm (the kit lens for many DSLRs) look like. The video above shows the blades moving into position at 120fps. This happens every time you shoot a photograph and in the blink of an eye. Read the rest of this entry »
Technicolor just released a new Picture Profile for Canon DSLRs, and recommended that ISO be used in multiples of 160. Andrew Schär decided to test this using his Canon 60D, and found that in terms of the amount of noise present in the footage, ISO numbers that are multiples of 160 are best (i.e. least noise), followed by multiples of 100, and finally multiples of 125 being worst. Read the rest of this entry »
Production issues experienced by Canon and Nikon (caused by the earthquake and tsunami) may soon allow competitors to eat into their dominant DSLR market shares and, according to a story by USA TODAY, Sony is pegged as one of the main benefactors:
Canon has 44.5% of the digital SLR market, followed by Nikon at 29.8%, Sony with 11.9% and Olympus at 5.1%, IDC says.
[...] At a time when many Canon SLRs are hard to find, due to production issues, the Sony models are not only in amply supply, but discounted to sell with special promotions.
[...] Sony has the name recognition, and ample shelf space in prominent stores.
These gains would likely be limited to first time buyers who are looking for their first DSLR — camera owners already committed to Canon or Nikon’s mounts are unlikely to switch systems just because of a temporary shortage.
Market research firm IDC released its findings about the worldwide digital camera market recently, with interesting details about the current market shares of camera manufacturers. From 2009 to 2010, Canon’s share remained perfectly constant at 19%, while #2 player Sony increased its share from 16.9% to 17.9%. Nikon also grew from 11.1% to 12.6%. The worldwide market for digital cameras is also growing — last year it increased 10% to 141 million cameras sold. Read the rest of this entry »
This 4GB USB flash drive looks exactly like a miniature Canon Digital IXUS 200 IS compact camera. Not sure whether it’s simply a concept design or something that’s actually available for purchase… Anyone know?
Update: Apparently Canon has given these out at press events in the past. Anyone know if these can be purchased?
Here’s a video comparing the mirror and shutter curtain mechanisms of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Nikon D700, and Nikon D7000 DSLRs. It’s pretty surprising how much the Canon mirrors bounce compared to the Nikon ones…
