[Rob Barron]

Whilst I can see abirkill's reasoning about marketing, I think there is one part missing:

The battle for sales over the last few years has been massive and Canon has been winning hands down so far. Nothing to do with which are the best cameras or anything, I am simply referring to item sales. There have been many battles in the general enthusiast market....

The biggest battle was the first to get one out that was under a grand. Canon succeeded but the market soon flooded with loads of cameras all getting cheaper and cheaper so then the battle becamse to get one out there for under £500. We have passed that milestone and now have several around that price.

The battle now is not to add to the myriad of entry levels and not to keep the professionals happy (they already are and are not needing to spend out more thousands on another upgrade) so the middle ground area is hotting up big time. Canon are not fools, they are mapping their way forward very carefully. They went for a major upgrade in the lower range to sell more of the 400D, not only by new sales but also upgrade sales. They had to go up a level to fight off the competition and let's be honest.... they succeeded big time! The 400D is the best DSLR for anyone looking to move into the DSLR arena for the first time and has won every head to head in mags and things that I have seen in the last 6 months.

So, where are they at with the middle ground? They smashed the scene wide open with the 10D which at the time was a stunningly good step up from the previous D60 and earlier D30. Then they pushed the bar up a significant step again with the 20D. They stabilised at that point, listened to their market user and asked what things were missing that they really wanted? They knew the resolution thing was not critical as few people were printing out at bigger than 12" x 8" and the users at this level were becoming a lot more savvy about how much difference a couple more megapixels would make in reality: not that much!

So, they went for an upgrade that added a larger viewing screen, spot metering and a few other internal functions. No new pixels this time. Most people saw it for what it was: a 20D Mk II, definitely an improvement but not enough to tempt the 20D users to upgrade en masse. 10D users went for it in their droves of course.

So, where do they go from here? Who is their biggest rival? No question there, definitely Nikon with their D200. So whatever they do now has GOT to better the D200, at least in terms of numbers that they can use in adverts! They have to match or beat the pixel count because there are several DSLRs with 10mp and so this one has to be right up there. Will it be 10 or will they steal a march and go for a 12mp sensor? Have to weait and see.

Whilst it is true that the 1.6FOVCF sensor does enable the use of the more central portion of lenses and thus cheaper lenses can be used because the edge losses are not so apparent, Canon know their sales figures and they know that sales of L series lenses have absolutely gone through the roof in the last 3 years so there are plenty of people out there with lenses good enough to go full frame. I never thought I would ever have one a few years ago but through keeping my eyes peeled like a hawk for Ebay bargains I now own four. The two lenses I own that are not L series are the 100mm f2.8 macro, pin sharp and perfectly capable of going full frame, and the nifty fifty which is no problem at all.

I do entirely agree though that the EF-S lenses will be of little use so that could be an influencing factor. But there is one possible route they could choose to go....

Instead of going full-frame they could split the difference and go for a 1.3FOVCF sensor. That would be a very suitable middle ground which would enable telephoto lenses to still gain an advantage over film focal lengths, wide angle lenses to be much more useable without having to go down to a 10mm lens and more pixels without going for greater pixel density so that noise can be reduced significantly.

What about that option? Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Rob