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It's weird for a "changing fortunes" article to only just mention Sony whose rise with their mirrorless cameras has been a huge success. Also it doesn't really

by nl 4y ago

It's weird for a "changing fortunes" article to only just mention Sony whose rise with their mirrorless cameras has been a huge success. Also it doesn't really explain why Canon is a "juggernauts" while Nikon has struggled. From a mildly interested observer, the Nikon and Canon DSLRs seems roughly comparable and Canon only has a slight lead in mirrorless (vs Nikon). What made Canon successful but not Nikon?

barkingcat 4y ago
Canon makes a lot more products than just cameras + lenses. They have printers, medical equipment, etc. Their market cap is roughly 4.18 trillion JPY Nikon makes cameras, lenses, medical and consumer lines, but their market cap is roughly 529.86 billion JPY So the Canon company is a lot larger. Sony itself is even more Juggernaut. They make a ton of things and market cap is about 12 trillion yen. Market cap doesn't tell the whole story, but you can understand why Sony and Canon are referred to as "juggernauts" compared to Nikon. On the imaging side of things, I think the current rise of casual videography is eating Nikon alive. Even if you don't have youtuber / OF aspirations, almost all cameras that sell today need to have some kind of video mode. Cell phones excel in this segment, being able to take short videos of people just walking around doing their day-to-day stuff, having fun, working, etc. In my opinion, video has taken the place in society that taking still photos had back in the 1980's and 1990's. Anything that goes viral these days is a video uploaded on worldstar or youtube or tiktok or instagram etc. Canon and Sony both have pro-video recording line (used in TV/cinema industry), and I think what they did was cross pollinated the video knowledge very early on with their consumer digital cameras. Nikon has always been a "stills first" camera company. They did put a lot of video features into their cameras, but it wasn't enough.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  The story I heard is that Nikon intentionally crippled their video recording modes (29:59 time limit?) for import/export tax reasons. Whereas apparently Sony and Canon didn't. Edit: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-001277-ASW_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-00127... So seems the full story is about the EU. Digital still image cameras (which were made in the EU?) were not taxed. Digital camcorders (which were mostly made in Japan) were taxed at either 4.9% or 14%. One distinguishing as to whether a camera was still or camcorder was "Whether the device can record at least 30 minutes of video." The law was repealed in 2019.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Canon have been guilty of this too.
  - jinto36 4y ago
    Canon absolutely did this, I have the first-gen of their first-gen mirrorless system, the EOS-M, and I run a 3rd party firmware on it (MagicLantern) to be able to bypass the 30-minute record limit. The same was true in many other cameras as well, that were marketed more for photography but were fully capable of decent continuous video (without overheating).
- hef19898 4y ago
  By all accounts, hear say of course as I never touched a mirrorless Nikon so far, the later gen Z cameras are great in taking videos. If anything Nikon was tad late to the mirrorless party.
  - barkingcat 4y ago
    Yup the later gen Z's are great for videos, but by the time they developed that line it was already way too late. Same story with mirrorless to be honest. Too little too late is the story of Nikon's plight with digital photography for the last decade. The thing is, they were really innovative in the DSLR space and could go toe to toe with Canon, but in the last decade or so Nikon has been late with each product focus (video, mirrorless, etc)
dboreham 4y ago
One difference is that Canon decided to design and manufacture their own sensors (modulo some point-n-shoot cameras where they use 3rd party sensors). This has been to their disadvantage sometimes, but right now it's a win because they can innovate quicker and invent proprietary features like dual-pixel autofocus. It was DPAF that put them squarely ahead of Nikon a few years ago. Nikon buys their sensors from Sony so they can never do this.
JALTU 4y ago
The answer goes back even further than my time in photography, which was over ten years ago at the transition from film to digital and DSLR video. Before digital, part of the answer was sports photographers all switching to Canon for autofocus. Before that, it was more of an even playing field with cameras (read: marketing). Back then however, Nikon had a semiconductor manufacturing machine business that supplemented their camera division. Incidentally, Canon stumbled, in a fashion, onto DSLR video. They apparently only added video after years of suggestions from media photographers. And then at first they got the frame rate wrong. A year or so later, the deigned to fix the bug and of course the rest is history: jillions of their lenses, and DSLR bodies, sold to established and aspiring video/film shooters alike. Meanwhile, Nikon clung to their roots trying to sell cameras to photographers and never overcame the Canon sports hegemony and video windfall. They had awful software and were even less responsive to the changing market than Canon was. Most of this is dredged up from memory. For details, and data, go back ten or 20 years on https://bythom.com/ https://bythom.com/

by nl 4y ago

barkingcat 4y ago

Canon makes a lot more products than just cameras + lenses. They have printers, medical equipment, etc. Their market cap is roughly 4.18 trillion JPY Nikon makes cameras, lenses, medical and consumer lines, but their market cap is roughly 529.86 billion JPY So the Canon company is a lot larger. Sony itself is even more Juggernaut. They make a ton of things and market cap is about 12 trillion yen. Market cap doesn't tell the whole story, but you can understand why Sony and Canon are referred to as "juggernauts" compared to Nikon. On the imaging side of things, I think the current rise of casual videography is eating Nikon alive. Even if you don't have youtuber / OF aspirations, almost all cameras that sell today need to have some kind of video mode. Cell phones excel in this segment, being able to take short videos of people just walking around doing their day-to-day stuff, having fun, working, etc. In my opinion, video has taken the place in society that taking still photos had back in the 1980's and 1990's. Anything that goes viral these days is a video uploaded on worldstar or youtube or tiktok or instagram etc. Canon and Sony both have pro-video recording line (used in TV/cinema industry), and I think what they did was cross pollinated the video knowledge very early on with their consumer digital cameras. Nikon has always been a "stills first" camera company. They did put a lot of video features into their cameras, but it wasn't enough.

ethbr0 4y ago
The story I heard is that Nikon intentionally crippled their video recording modes (29:59 time limit?) for import/export tax reasons. Whereas apparently Sony and Canon didn't. Edit: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-001277-ASW_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-00127... So seems the full story is about the EU. Digital still image cameras (which were made in the EU?) were not taxed. Digital camcorders (which were mostly made in Japan) were taxed at either 4.9% or 14%. One distinguishing as to whether a camera was still or camcorder was "Whether the device can record at least 30 minutes of video." The law was repealed in 2019.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dboreham 4y ago
  Canon have been guilty of this too.
- jinto36 4y ago
  Canon absolutely did this, I have the first-gen of their first-gen mirrorless system, the EOS-M, and I run a 3rd party firmware on it (MagicLantern) to be able to bypass the 30-minute record limit. The same was true in many other cameras as well, that were marketed more for photography but were fully capable of decent continuous video (without overheating).
hef19898 4y ago
By all accounts, hear say of course as I never touched a mirrorless Nikon so far, the later gen Z cameras are great in taking videos. If anything Nikon was tad late to the mirrorless party.
- barkingcat 4y ago
  Yup the later gen Z's are great for videos, but by the time they developed that line it was already way too late. Same story with mirrorless to be honest. Too little too late is the story of Nikon's plight with digital photography for the last decade. The thing is, they were really innovative in the DSLR space and could go toe to toe with Canon, but in the last decade or so Nikon has been late with each product focus (video, mirrorless, etc)

dboreham 4y ago

One difference is that Canon decided to design and manufacture their own sensors (modulo some point-n-shoot cameras where they use 3rd party sensors). This has been to their disadvantage sometimes, but right now it's a win because they can innovate quicker and invent proprietary features like dual-pixel autofocus. It was DPAF that put them squarely ahead of Nikon a few years ago. Nikon buys their sensors from Sony so they can never do this.

JALTU 4y ago

The answer goes back even further than my time in photography, which was over ten years ago at the transition from film to digital and DSLR video. Before digital, part of the answer was sports photographers all switching to Canon for autofocus. Before that, it was more of an even playing field with cameras (read: marketing). Back then however, Nikon had a semiconductor manufacturing machine business that supplemented their camera division. Incidentally, Canon stumbled, in a fashion, onto DSLR video. They apparently only added video after years of suggestions from media photographers. And then at first they got the frame rate wrong. A year or so later, the deigned to fix the bug and of course the rest is history: jillions of their lenses, and DSLR bodies, sold to established and aspiring video/film shooters alike. Meanwhile, Nikon clung to their roots trying to sell cameras to photographers and never overcame the Canon sports hegemony and video windfall. They had awful software and were even less responsive to the changing market than Canon was. Most of this is dredged up from memory. For details, and data, go back ten or 20 years on https://bythom.com/ https://bythom.com/