Photonic Shunkan

It looks like my predictions are off as Canon has announced the development of the 1DX Mark III: https://photonicshunkan.blogspot.com/2019/06/prediction-canon-will-put-pellicle.html https://photonicshunkan.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-canon-1dx-ii-successor-will-be.html That's OK—since I originally predicted that the move to a pellicle mirror would take another product cycle after the 1DX Mark III. You have to make predictions bold even when you know there is always going to be a chance of being wrong. I wrote: "I thought it would take another product cycle of the 1D line for this to happen given Canon's conservatism, hence my prediction that it will take another 4-8 years, but it may be happening sooner than thought. It might even materialise before the 2020 Olympics." There were false rumours about the Mark III having an extraordinarily fast frame rate, which were little more than rumours, and which made me hope that Canon would ditch its conservatism and mo...

I have said it before, and I am reiterating it yet again. Canon has no choice but to reintroduce the pellicle mirror into the EF mount DSLR line of cameras: https://photonicshunkan.blogspot.com/2019/05/prediction-canon-will-reintroduce.html The key factor is that there are too many EF mount users to be able to expect them to dump this mount for mirrorless EVF cameras . The only way to modernise the EF mount line is by reintroducing the pellicle mirror. This will give the camera live exposure preview along with all the other features that are drawing users to mirrorless EVF cameras. Canon will probably introduce IBIS along with eye detect AF because the Nikon D6 is going to get IBIS just like the mirrorless Z mount bodies have already got it (once Nikon adopts a feature Canon follows suit). There is a rumour that Canon is ending its 7D lineage of cameras . I predict that at the same time that the 1D line is upgraded to a pellicle mirror model, the 7D line will also be upgraded to...

The latest news is that a Canon ambassador has been found talking about an upcoming camera that can shoot at 30fps: https://www.canonrumors.com/a-new-canon-dslr-seems-to-be-getting-teased-on-social-media-by-a-canon-ambassador/ People are commenting that the camera must be designed to shoot at 30fps in the mirror up position, which is totally absurd. That is like saying that the mirror is a redundant piece of equipment that needs to be locked up and forced to get out of the way for the camera to function properly. It is much more likely that the 1DX Mark II successor will have no mechanical reflex mirror but that it will instead have a pellicle mirror. That way, the mirror does not need to be moved out of the way for it to function and contributes positively to the accuracy of the autofocus. Some may wonder if Canon has found a way to get the reflex mirror to move fast enough to achieve a 30fps frame rate, but that is unlikely. At some point, Canon have NO CHOICE but to elim...

This is a bold prediction, but Canon (and Nikon) will reintroduce the pellicle mirror into their DSLR line camera systems some time within the next 4-8 years. The last pellicle mirror camera released by Canon was the EOS-1N RS introduced in 1995 and only discontinued in 2001: A semi-translucent pellicle mirror replaces a moving reflex mirror that lifts up to capture the image. The key prediction being made here today is that the pellicle mirror will return to a 1D equivalent camera some time in the next 4-8 years. Nikon, in the more distant past, has also had pellicle mirror film cameras like the Nikon F2H from 1976, and they too will introduce a pellicle mirror digital single-lens translucent mirror (DSLT) camera with an electronic viewfinder (EVF) replacing an optical viewfinder. Canon tends to be more conservative than Nikon but in this instance Canon appears to own recent patents relevant to pellicle mirror cameras, whereas no DSLT relevant Nikon patents have be...

I've found myself thinking this seemingly simple question with an obvious answer: what are mirrorless cameras? And further what is the point of them? Now you might answer that everyone knows what a "mirrorless" camera is. They are very popular after all. The trouble is that a pinhole camera made from a shoebox has no mirror and is, therefore, a mirrorless camera. The earliest daguerreotype cameras introduced in 1839 were also a mirrorless design. ILLUSTRATION: SUSANNA CELESTE CASTELLI, DENSITYDESIGN RESEARCH LAB; SOURCE: GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM Contrary to popular opinion, rangefinder cameras are also mirrorless cameras. Why? Simple: they have no mirror! So what makes 21st-century "mirrorless cameras" different then to daguerreotype cameras and rangefinders from the nineteenth to early twentieth century? The answer is the electronic viewfinder. We should really call them "mirrorless electronic viewfinder...