Canon announced a new Rebel yesterday. Capable of shooting in HD (720p), it is a serious alternative to the 5D. It is not 1080p but lets be honest, 720p is excellent, I resample everything to this size or smaller anyways so this isn’t a problem for msot people.
In fact, the first thing that came to my mind after seeing this announcement was WTF? The general consensus over why the 5D firmware is crippled as always been the fear of Canon to cannibalize sales of the “real” video camera. Yet, they put on the market a camera that cannibalizes sales of the 5DMrkII. There is something seriously broken in the Canon marketing department!
Don’t get me wrong, this new Rebel is going to be an incredible success, even more so than the 5DMrkII. The problem is that I (and the community) was expecting a new firmware, not another crippled camera. It seems now obvious to me that we won’t see any manual control for DSLRs, except maybe with the next release of the 1D line later this year.
Canon, I will be very happy if you prove me wrong!
Comments
Nikon will probably release a DSLR with Full HD Video and full manual control soon (or at least some manual control)
That will also probably force Canon to give to their customers what they should have already been given: full manual control in video mode, wich is completely possible via Firmware update (no hardware change, no redesign, no big cost to Canon at all)
Competition is a VERY good friend in this case (and lot more)
The one problem I am reading about with the new rebel is the fact that Canon went and messed up the video again. Instead of going down to the magic number of 24fps, they dropped it to 20fps, no one knows why. This means you could never get any of these videos to play properly on a DVD player.
Actually it does 30fps@720p. 720p is way enough for most people anyways. In fact, they should not have put the 1080p in the first place to prevent all this bad press and confusion.
