Canon Swears Off Making Corsets, Whale Oil and 1-Series DSLRs

It’s as much news regarding Canon not making corsets as it is that they are opting to make the Canon 1Dx Mark III its last DSLR. Yet an interview by Canon’s CEO explicitly stating that fact made news across the photography blogosphere. But there are many things to go for a long time unstated in markets dominated by Japanese manufacturers.

Canon Making Whale Oil & DSLRs

Samsung waited a couple years before admitting to its camera user base that it had been out of the camera business for, well, two years. Canon has been insisting to its 1Dx Mark III user base that they still own and use the current Canon “flagship” camera, when clearly, that is simply a paternalistic pat on the head. While many criticize the online photography media market as full of rumor sites and fantasies, this is the sort of thing you get in an information vacuum.

It may be that Canon continues to churn out plastic box DSLRs like the Rebel series, simply because the volume remains significant… unless the supply chain issues cause them to sacrifice some of the low-margin lines for their chips to be repurposed in new products with higher profit margins and long-term customer prospects.

The R3’s release doesn’t just show the distance a professional mirrorless camera can exceed an equivalent DSLR, but it is the fulcrum around which the culture of professional shooters – at least the low-res ones – will pivot and join the mirrorless bandwagon. While this DSLR vs. Mirrorless topic has been a focal point of discussion for years, people moving to mirrorless now will find that the experience doesn’t change a whole heck of a lot. Canon’s market issue is that there remain many professionals that won’t believe that until they are forced to try.