Jonathanjk’s Weblog

Interesting article in so much for the quotes from a Canon Engineer who provides an insight into a supposed conflict between his department and the marketing department over the soon to be released Canon 5D mkII.

The employee told Tech Digest that Canon have the technology to “blow the competition away” in terms of image sensors, but are instead being asked to focus on headline figures like the number of megapixels a camera has.

While this in itself is interesting; that Canon technically have a better camera on the side lines, what I’m more curious about is this quote from the article instead.

It’s true that megapixels are often used as a benchmark to compare cameras on, but until the media change their reporting style, the pressure from the marketing department will remain on the engineers.

Tech Digest is now reacting in favour of not soley concentrating on megapixels being the only aspect with which to say a camera is good or not.  Tech Digest will now consider any camera given to them for review in overall merit.  I doubt they will change anything by themselves but I’m glad to see that Tech Digest also asks that we as customers become educated on all aspects of camera technology before making a decision and that this should force marketing departments to pull back on the pressure they apply to engineering departments.  Sounds like common sense to me and it is something that is long overdue in the camera industry*.  Many a time I’ve heard people in camera shops want a particular camera because they heard it has the more Megapixels than the other ones on the shelves.  

I hate car analogies but I would like to think nobody buys a car concentrating only one characteristic of whatever car they want to buy.

* On reflection I believe things are already changing since the Nikon D3 or D700 didn’t overtake over the 3 year old Canon 5D in megapixels and instead concentrated on other attributes.  With SONY though, I think they wanted to make an impact with their full frame camera to show how serious their intentions are.