Well, some entry level Canon stuff was announced today. Among various point and shoots (one of which has GPS…neat) was the new Rebel offering (image courtesy of dpreview):
No surprise there, more of the "incremental feature adjustments" that makes Canon's lower end so…odd. Let's take a look at the main changes from the T2i (550D) and the T3i (600D). Courtesy of "oldscotch" via reddit.com are the following key differences:
- Vari-angle display
- Scene intelligent Auto Mode
- 'Basic+' creative controls in scene modes
- 'Creative Filters' can be applied to images in playback mode
- Multi-aspect ratio shooting (3:2, 4:3, 16:9, 1:1, previewable in Live View)
- Integrated Wireless flash controller with multi-flash support
- 'Video Snapshot' mode
- Auto Lighting Optimizer now adjustable in 4 levels
- Feature Guide
- Image rating (1-5 stars)
- Eye sensor for LCD display replaced by 'DISP' button
- Marginally larger and heavier
Shall we categorize a bit? Let's make a table, where one column represents hardware improvements, and the other represents software improvements:
| Hardware |
Software |
| Vari-angle display | Scene intelligent Auto Mode |
| Integrated Wireless flash controller with multi-flash support | 'Basic+' creative controls in scene modes |
| 'Creative Filters' can be applied to images in playback mode | |
| Multi-aspect ratio shooting (3:2, 4:3, 16:9, 1:1, previewable in Live View) | |
| 'Video Snapshot' mode | |
| Auto Lighting Optimizer now adjustable in 4 levels | |
| Feature Guide | |
| Image rating (1-5 stars |
Notice I've left out "heavier" and "removal of eye sensor" as improvements, because….they aren't. So, what you're left with is a bunch of firmware changes, a small screen improvement (depending on who you ask), and a "trickle down" feature (albiet an awesome one) from the 7D that was likely trivial to implement. So, does it really take the Canon engineers 12 months to write some pretty basic software code and add some small hardware improvements? Guess so. Maybe the marketers spent all that time finding that consumery sweet spot, and told the engineers with 3 months left in their schedule. Alas, all that said, Canon knows what they are doing, if their 2010 profits are any judge.
I was quite excited to see the 200-400 being developed. The integrated extender is gold…what a great idea! Just look at this beast (image courtesy of dpreview):
Canon is doing really strong the telephoto space, it seems, with all of the fresh new lenses they've released. IIRC, they now have a 200/2, 300/2.8, 400/2.8, 500/4, 600/4, 800/5.6 that are all less than 2 years old. I expect most other manufacturers to follow suit, and then maybe Canon can work on something like that sexy, sexy Nikon 14-24 2.8.
Complaining aside, my new Dell U3011 arrives tomorrow, to replace my randomly fried Samsung 24 incher that is off for repair. Hoping to rock a triple monitor setup once I grab another vid card for some SLI action. I'm also pretty excited to have a monitor with a decent color gamut…I've been holding off on photo editing ever since my Samsung died, since my only means of doing so is on a very yellowish old Dell 20 inch flat panel. There is something to be said, though, that this 6 year old 20 inch Dell, that has been transported at least 10 times, once across the country, has had absolutely zero issues. Meanwhile, a 1 year old Samsung that hasn't moved since it was purchased randomly fried itself one day.
