Source: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39001469,62052998,00.htm
By Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com
Apr 08, 2009
The camera industry and photographers, having just gotten accustomed to the arrival of video in point-and-shoot cameras, are just now beginning to grapple with its arrival in the more serious dSLR realm.
Chuck Westfall (Credit: Canon)
Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon’s professional products marketing division and a 26-year veteran at the Japanese company, is in the thick of it. Nikon was the first to market a dSLR camera equipped with video, the D90, but Canon offers video in two dSLRs: The high-end EOS 5D Mark II with a large sensor the size of a full frame of 35mm film, and the EOS 500D, a more affordable mainstream model.
These cameras combine high-definition video–1,900 x 1,080 pixels at 30 frames per second in the case of the 5D Mark II–with dSLRs’ advantages when shooting in dim conditions and with a broad variety of lenses. But even though today’s video dSLR features hold some appeal to enthusiasts and professionals, they’re something of an awkward afterthought. dSLRs and those who use them that haven’t yet had much time to adapt.
Welcome to the world of digital photography where change is incessant. In an interview with CNET, Westfall talked not just about video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame dSLRs from Sony and Nikon, and the changing flash card format.
Q: The age of the video dSLR has begun. A lot of people using high-end cameras are set in their ways, and video is a radical difference for a lot of them. How does that change the camera design, the marketing, and everything you have to do to sell a camera?
Westfall: Right now we’re at an early stage for all this. Actually, the camera design itself has not changed that much yet. If you look at a camera like the 5D Mark II, it’s really been intentionally designed as a still camera first and foremost. The video feature is definitely a very important addition to the camera, but it really is an option as opposed to the main purpose. One of the things we’re hoping to accomplish with this approach is to give our still photographers–the bread and butter of our business–the opportunity to try something different without necessarily taking them out of their comfort zone in terms of the camera shape, size and layout. I’d say that a very key element, at least in terms of the 5D Mark II, is that it does have a full-frame sensor. This has a big impact on image quality in terms of low noise and angle-of-view issues, but it also has tremendous importance to a still photographer in that the look and feel of the movies are very similar in terms of perspective, angle of view and depth-of-field. The familiarity that photographers already have developed in terms of what lenses they’re going to pick can be carried forward.
Q: We pretty rapidly went from “Wow, freaky, video!” to “How come it can’t do all the things I want it to do?” For example, setting the aperture or locking it at a certain ISO–why are those features not there?
Westfall: In the beginning, we had to take into account that there is going to be a fair amount of users out there who are into the customization aspect, but the overall customer profile on this camera (the 5D Mark II) includes a lot of amateurs as well. Anything we can do to give those customers automation on the basics of video, including exposure, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO are things that will make it easier to produce high-quality footage without that much experience.
One of the other issues is that adding the full range of manual controls on this camera makes it a much more complicated instrument. It’s not necessarily that we’re never going to do it, but it’s a generation 1.0. We’d like to get some market feedback, which we’ve already received now, before we start making any serious changes to the overall feature set or design.
The video-enabled EOS 500D from CanonQ: Do you think video is going to be pretty much standard in every dSLR henceforth?
Westfall: We don’t want to guarantee that. It is going to depend on the overall market strategy. But at this stage, the image processors we’re using, especially DIGIC 4, are powerful enough that it really makes it very easy for us to add that feature without increasing the cost.
Q: How’s the low-light performance compared with reasonably high-end HD video cameras?
Westfall: It’s actually a lot better. In part it has to do with the size of the pixels on the sensor. Compared to a camcorder, they’re huge. We’re looking at 6.4 micron pixels on this camera (so each pixel is 6.4 millionths of a meter on edge). By comparison, on the CMOS sensor in the Vixia series’ 3-megapixel CMOS we did, that was only a 1.7-micron pixel pitch. The difference between 6.4 and 1.7 is quite substantial. As a result, you’re going to see an improvement, especially in the noise quality.
Q: The 5D Mark II debuted a notch cheaper than the 5D, and everybody wonders what the trajectory is for full frame. We have Sony and Nikon providing some competitive pressure in the full-frame market. Is the low price because of the competition, because the technology is cheaper, or some other factor?
Westfall: I think there are elements of all those things involved in pricing. You’ve got to be competitive in the market. On the other hand, the manufacturing issues that have been developing over time have worked out in our favor as far as lowering costs. We’ve a lot more experience than any other companies in terms of developing full-frame CMOS since we were the first out there back in 2002 with the EOS 1Ds. All that experience including the design as well as the manufacturing have really worked out in our favor to make the costs more reasonable.
Q: What’s the future trajectory? Are prices going to come down further? Are the people buying a 50D today–the higher-end enthusiast market–going to be making the jump to full-frame? Or is there always going to be big quantum leap between APS-C (the smaller sensor size used in mainstream dSLRs) and full-frame?
Westfall: We’re going to evaluate the market overall in terms of pricing issues and try to offer the best combination of features for the money. Value is very important to everybody, especially in this economy. That doesn’t necessarily mean we would avoid a full-frame sensor just to cut cost. On the other hand, we can’t really say that a low-cost full-frame camera is going to be something we’re definitely pursuing. We generally take it as it comes to see if we can find a spot in the market for the lower-priced full frames.
Q: With 21 megapixels on Canon’s high-end dSLRs, are we reaching practical limits for resolution? There’s discussion that image quality now is limited by lens optics, even with pro-grade L lenses, regardless of the technical challenges of higher sensor resolution.
Westfall: As always, Canon’s bottom line for digital imaging is the ongoing improvement of overall image quality, especially for printed output. With that goal in mind, Canon does not consider 21 megapixels “a practical limit” for sensor resolution in the 24 x 36mm imaging format. Higher sensor resolution is only one element of overall image quality. However, the evolution of the EOS-1Ds series from 11.1 megapixels in 2002 to 16.7 megapixels in 2004 and 21.1 megapixels in 2007, together with advances in digital image processing, has clearly shown improvements in terms of lower noise and finer detail in printed output at any comparable ISO speed setting. The larger the print, the more noticeable the improvement. I would expect this trend to continue in future products. I would also expect to see further improvements in the optical performance of Canon EF lenses over time.
Q: How about Sony? I think it is up to No. 3 in the dSLR market. Does it strike terror into your heart, or has Sony not made enough gains to make you lose any sleep yet?
Westfall: On the dSLR side, the company are making some headway, but it’s still according to our information slightly below 10 percent of the market. So Sony is an important factor, but it is not as frightening to us at this point as it could be, theoretically. We’re watching the company and seeing how it holds.
Q: Can you be more specific about the issues they have?
The first dSLR to record full-HD video clips, the EOS 5D Mark II.Westfall: One of the things that is an issue for any company besides Nikon or Canon is the huge installed base of owners that already own our lenses. Has Sony, being a relative newcomer, got enough user base to be able to chip into that share? The SLR market is not just camera bodies, it’s also the lenses. For some customers it’s even more so the lenses.
Q: Canon a few years ago demonstrated a 5D with an OLED (organic light-emitting display) screen. I just saw some cheap OLED keychain displays that cost US$60 or so. What’s the timeframe for building OLEDs instead of LCDs in the cameras? It’s a much higher-quality image and there might be battery advantages as well.
Westfall: It is a higher-quality image, no question about it, and the power consumption is lower because of the design. It’s a very efficient design. Canon has been developing that technology for quite some time. We showed our prototype in 2005, and here we are four years later. I think the bulk of what’s been going on in that interim is perfecting that technology not just in terms of performance but also in terms of manufacturing process. I can’t give you a timeline today, but we’re a whole lot closer now.
One of the things I could tell you about is that in 2008, we purchased a manufacturing facility for OLEDs, so in Japan, we’re creating the infrastructure to be able to bring this online. The issue for us is not just the perfection of the technology and lowering of the manufacturing costs, it’s also being able to generate the quantity of these devices to satisfy our needs across an entire range of consumer products. If you look at our global production, we are somewhere in the vicinity of 25 million or so compact cameras every year, and it’s growing. For digital SLRs last year, we did 4.4 million. That’s just cameras. Then you could start talking about the Pixma inkjet printers–a great many of them have LCD displays.
Q: The overall camera market, on the compact side, is flat or down overall. How’s that affecting Canon specifically?
Westfall: We’re still very optimistic. We’ve been No. 1 since 2004, and we’ve been building our market share recently. We see that as opportunity for further growth even if the overall industry is shrinking slightly this year. The fact is that even in these tough economic times, people still need to record their memories. The use of digital photography for that is not going to go away.
Why don’t we have a snappy compact digital camera. One that focuses quickly and shoots very quickly. There’s a big lag still.
Westfall: It’s actually gotten a lot better. Every year, it keeps on getting better. The one thing that is always going to be an issue is the autofocus system being part of the actual image sensor instead of a separate module. The so-called contrast-detect autofocus simply takes a long time to execute. We’re making some inroads on that from the processer speed and the intelligence of the focusing algorithm to cut that down to the minimum level.
Q: It’s also an issue once you have Live View in a dSLR, especially with video. That seems to me a major disconnect when people move from the point-and-shoot world. You can use Live View, but it’s really not very satisfying because of the focus problems. When are we going to see that fixed?
Westfall: It’s clearly a need that’s going to be addressed. My guess is that in the next stage the product design engineers will have to think about a dedicated ASIC-type chip (application-specific integrated circuits are tailored for specific functions) that is really geared primarily to that task so you can speed up that operation without affecting other camera performance issues.
Pretec’s 32GB SDXC card, a world’s first.In storage, CompactFlash and SD seem to be the winners. You support both, and all your compacts use SD. What’s the timeframe for the new SD standard, SDXC, arriving?
Westfall: I’m pretty sure it will be available in the industry by the end of next year.
Q: What are the big advantages of that besides just capacity?
Westfall: There is really an advantage in terms of data writing speed. That has a big impact on performance issues such as shooting movies. If you’re going to be shooting high-resolution, 30 frames-per-second HD video, you really need speedy data transfer. I’m very interested from a personal perspective when this standard comes out if they will get past this existing file format issue where the maximum individual clip is limited to 4GB. I think that should go away, and hopefully, the SDXC standard may offer us a path to accomplish it.
Q: Is SDXC good enough that you could get rid of CompactFlash and move solely to XC and its successors?
Westfall: Theoretically there’s no reason why you’d have to stick with any of the legacy formats if SDXC is all that it’s hyped out to be, but we don’t necessarily want to change our entire strategy at this point.
