When the mirrorless race started in earnest in late 2018, no one knew who would come out on top. Three years later and more than 10 full-frame mirrorless cameras my bodies, the answer is clear: the Canon Moto is winning, and they did it by going “all in” on the RF mount.
To understand how and why Kane has done so well, let’s turn the clock back to mid-2018 and solve the options placed before Canon and Nikon on a full-frame finish called the “Mirrorless Revolution.” After 5 years of fast-innovation Sony was trapped in the segment, and there will be both competitors for the full-frame crown, they chose to challenge them differently.
Nikon: All work, no flash
Even though they’ve been talking nonsense for the last few years, Nikon has clearly come to play. One card slot aside, in August 2018, the company released two great first-generation cameras, with two very different and well-defined functions, at two different resolutions and price points. The Z8 should be a high-resolution still camera for owners of the D850 who wanted to go mirrorless, while the Z6 tried to enter the video community.
It was a comprehensive practical plan. Practically, in fact, it failed to really entice a critical audience for the success of the Z series outside of Nikon’s established userbase.
- When comparing the workhorse Nikon D850, the professional shooters and the technical camera review community found the Z7 lacking. Of Tofocus was not the same, the vintage screw-drive lens was not supported by the FTZ adapter, and the single card slot was an original deal breaker for the event shooter who is accustomed to using another card as a fail safe.
- The young, Sony-, Canon-, and Panasonic GH5-toting influencers and aspiring YouTubers didn’t see anything there that was exciting enough to pull them away from the brand they already bought. This was always going to be a tough audience for Nikon. Almost no established YouTuber shoots with this brand, and the company has yet to really try to win that audience. So despite the excellent video specs on the Z6, there was no “wow factor” like 6K video, a built-in ND filter or a piece of greedy glass that could set them apart.
In other words: Nikon is playing it safe. They released a fairly adequate pair of cameras and a set of very practical lenses that were very functional, but lacked enough “flash” to draw someone from the brand they were already using. As first-generation products, the Z6 and Z7 successfully prevented many Nikon Stalwarts from jumping ship while waiting for improvements in various variants of the Mark II and (eventually) Mark III, but nothing more.
In the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, camera manufacturers are competing on the battlefield of eyeballs and emotional appeal, No logic. This is a lesson that Nikon has yet to learn. When they continue to expend full steam-forward developed resources for two mounts at once, they are losing more and more land during the day.
Cannon: All going inside
From the beginning, Canon realized that if you were going to steal market share from a company as established and popular as Sony – or at least stop the bleeding, you needed to give people something exciting … something to brag about.
This is difficult, as the camera looked at my technology strictly, Canon was not yet ready to compete in 2018. The first EOS R, although perfectly fine for the average consumer, was the bunch’s weakest full-frame mirrorless debut. Very expensive, useless function bar gimmick, 1.7x crop in 4K, slow continuous shooting, single SD card slot to set its feature on launch; On the eve, EOS R was primarily released for some time to buy Canon as they finalized the technology coming in EOS R5 and EOS R6.
But Canon could not catch a flick on YouTube. Not every influencer is stuck with them seeing you say “the truth about Canon EOS R and why Canon fails”. How did they get the camera out worse than the Nikon by purpose by a wide margin?
Three reasons: underrated marketing, a very large user base that is committed to Canon and Canon products, and their biggest driver of their success – they immediately started releasing surprising, exciting, wow-factor glasses to get people excited about the future. RF mount.
Unlike Nikon, which is still Announcing plans for more DSLRs and F-mount glass in 2021, Canon went all-in on the RF mount, transferred all their resources to RF lens development and freed up the type of glass that you normally only get when you trust the mount. Create. Is here to stay. While Nikon was saving most of its f / 2.8 zooms and all its fast primes for 2020 and 2021, Canon came out with the kind of lenses you can make for your friends (and enemies) who shoot Sony: they immediately Separated by -70mm f / 2 and 50mm f / 1.2, then those lenses with * two * variables of 85mm f / 1.2 and 70-200mm f / 2.8 which are different than we have ever seen before.
Complaints of not having enough affordable glass were muted, as Canon was too busy considering the foundation right now for the next several years for its RF mount. And if you haven’t heard, they plan to release 14 more lenses in 2021.
Two strategies, one winner
To be sure, Canon had other advantages over 2019 and 2020. For many years, the company had disappointed its user base with a modest DSLR that fell short of expectations, relying on the solid performance of the Dual Pixel AF to stop bleeding. While Sony was purposely releasing better cameras. You could say that Canon just woke up in time
But the story of Nikon and Canon’s full-frame mirrorless debut is the story of two completely different strategies, one of which had the desired effect.
The success of the full-frame mirrorless Canon – both in terms of sales in terms of purpose, and subjective in terms of stimulus for its mirrorless products – is the result of a large paying “all-in” strategy. They realized that Sony would do nothing less than make a full-fledged attack on territory and would make all their R&D dollars the first to make RF Mount the future of Canon cameras – first with provocative glass, and later with crazy specs like 8K video. The DSLR and EF mount would hurt development, and Canon was not afraid to say so on record.
Nikon’s performance – not a passive failure by any means, but certainly not the success they were hoping for – is the result of a makeshift strategy that forces them to split a limited R&D budget between a DSLR / F-mount shooter and a seducer. . There will be mirrorless converts. As if to end my point, as I end this column on Tuesday morning, 11/24, Nikon rumors Published a report on the company’s plans for 2021: two new DSLRs and “many new F-mount lenses.”
Cannon is winning because they have chosen to go all out. Nikon will continue to struggle until he does the same.
About the author: D.L.Kade Is an art, science and technology writer, and editor-in-chief of Petapixel. While he doesn’t write op-ads like this or review the latest technology for creatives, you’ll find him working in Vision Science at Washington University, publishing a weekly Triple Point newsletter, or sharing personal essays on the medium.
