A move is taking place

Somehow, this slipped under the radar.

It would appear that Canon are moving their European HQ. Currently they have a kind of split system, with one half based in Amstelveen in the Netherlands and one half based in Stockley Park (near Heathrow) a little outside London. Well, that is all set to change according to the news.

Canon Europe are moving from the Netherlands to Stockley Park. This will mean the UK will be the hub of their European operation. What does it mean for us as consumers? Probably not much really, but it may have some effect for Canon UK - the British sales office for Canon. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

According to reports, around 200+ roles will be moving from Amstelveen and it will be happening over the summer period. I'm sure it won't be easy persuading that many people to move from the Netherlands to England, so if you're at all interested in working for Canon, it might be worth keeping an eye on the national job advertisers to see if any come up.

There is more info on the web and in this article from the Daily Telegraph.


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That didn't take long

Technology doesn't stand still does it? And despite the world's woes with the economy and downsizing of manufacturing, it seems Canon are still making cameras by the truck-load. Yesterday the press office thought fit to let us all know that Canon has just reached another milestone in the history of camera production - the 10millionth consumer D-SLR appeared out of the factory. 

Since the only started with the EOS 300D in 2003, that equates to over 1.6million cameras per year! 

How many of them have you got? Hit the comments and let us know...

Press release

3 April, 2009: Canon has announced that it has produced over 10 million consumer D-SLRs (digital single-lens-reflex) worldwide since the launch of the EOS 300D in 2003.
Canon’s D-SLR products have achieved consecutive no.1 rankings in GfK’s consumer hitlist since 2004. Starting with the Canon EOS 300D, the market-leading spot was passed to the 350D in 2005, the EOS 400D in 2006 and the EOS 450D in 2008 (GfK WEU14 Jan~Dec for each respective year) and it is hoped the trend will continue following the recent release of the EOS 500D.

“Canon remains at the forefront of this consumer market growth with a market share of 40 per cent in Europe (GfK WEU14 Jan~Dec 2008) which we account for our commitment to consumer demand and our passion for high-quality image,” said Rainer Fuehres, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging (CCI), Canon Europe. “We hope that the release of the EOS 500D will further strengthen our market position this year.”

The increasing volume of consumer-orientated D-SLR models on the market has also driven an increase the volume of lens sales. Canon’s EF lens portfolio is now the world’s most extensive and popular range of D-SLR lenses, with over 60 models and 40 million sales worldwide.

Canon recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of Canon SLR (single lens reflex) cameras, having launched the Canon Flex in May 1959. Over 50 million Canon SLRs have been sold worldwide and Canon SLR cameras are accepted as the benchmark standard for amateur and professional photography.

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New photography products from Canon

A quick bit of new products news from Canon, they've got a new entry level consumer camera, the PowerShot A480, a 10MP, 3.3x zoom model that comes in a range of four colours and has a 2.5" LCD. Seems like only yesterday people were asking how would they cope if cameras could reach 6MP, surely that would be enough for almost anyone!

The next product, and this one slipped by unnoticed at the beginning of this month, is the new low cost two thousand + VAT, XEED SX800 projector. We're a fan of XEED projectors in the main, they are just about the best way to show your photos off with a digital projector we know. Professional photographers and The Royal Photographic Society like them too, praise indeed. This new SX800 model is the lowest cost XEED projector with 1400 x 1050 pixels resolution you can get. From reading the specifications it looks like there's no digital connection to the projector, just the old analogue VGA ones. This means you can't plug a camera with a HDMI port straight in to the projector with a DVI to HDMI adapter. Also DVI connections are preferred for picture quality and the possible lengths of cable runs.

1400 x 1050 pixels is termed SXGA+ resolution, and is much higher than a lot of mainstream projectors that only offer 1024 x 768 pixels. The benefit of the higher resolution is your projected images look so much better; fine detail is only part of the story, the colour and smooth transitions of tone are simply amazing.

If you are a professional portrait photographer you might want to consider a XEED; we've all heard that showing clients images projected large encourages larger print sales, now you can show large and with higher detail. As an extraordinary number of visitors here seem to be using Apple MacBook Pro computers with 1440 x 900 pixel displays, it's important to point out that the XEED's resolution almost matches the computer exactly.

Considering the typical DSLR image with it's 3:2 aspect ratio and plenty of megapixels, projection needs high resolution to show images at their best. When projected on a typical 1024 x 768 resolution projector your countless megapixels become 1024 x 683 pixels projected, or about 0.7 megapixels. A higher resolution SXGA+ machine like the XEED SX800 would be 1400 x 933 pixels or almost twice as much resolution with 1.3 megapixels.

If you have vertically oriented images don't do the calculation for a 1024 x 768 pixel projector!

Here's the press release and product information pages on Canon's website

PowerShot A480 : Press release : Website

XEED SX800 : Press release : Website

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Nano technology

Want even higher quality image files? Researchers led by a team at the University of Glasgow have been given a grant worth nearly half a million pounds to work on 'surface plasmon resonance'. Yep, you read that right.
Essentially they want to work at the particulate level of metals to try and make better use of the electron properties within the metals. By doing this, they hope to make the CMOS sensors more sensitive to light and colour and hence produce higher quality images.

Their research project is due to run until 2012, so I wouldn't hold your breath if you expect to see it in Canon's next dSLR!

More info on the story over on the BBC site.....

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50 years? Is it that long already?!

Back in 1987, Canon gave us the EOS system. It was a major departure from their lens mount to a new design - The Electro Optical System. That's 22 years ago now, and they've just reached another milestone - 50 years of SLR cameras.

They started in 1959 with the Canonflex SLR camera. Before that, it was range finders that were the mainstay of the Canon line, starting with the Kwanon (of which there is only one known surviving example) designed to compete with the German offerings by the likes of Leica. The Kwanon was in fact essentially a copy of the Leica II with square edges rather than rounded ones.

It's not just 50 years of SLR cameras though - as impressive as that is. In that time they've sold over 50million SLR cameras. In fact, it wasn't long ago they celebrated 40million lenses, and at the rate they're winging their way out of the factory, I wouldn't be surprised to see 50million lenses appear in the not too distant future.

So, congratulations on reaching this milestone Canon, here's to the next 50years.

As an aside to this, it's amazing to think that in 50years of making SLR cameras, they still broadly look the same as they've always done. In fact, SLRs don't look a huge amount different to rangefinders. So, will cameras still look broadly the same in 50years time? Hit the comments with your thoughts on how it will develop. And, in the style of this post from Joe McNally, feel free to tell us what you'd like to see in future Canon cameras!

Canon Official Press Release below:

United Kingdom / Republic of Ireland, 06 January, 2009: Canon today announces a milestone with the 50th anniversary of Canon SLR (single lens reflex) cameras. Canon has been building and selling SLR cameras since the launch of the Canon Flex in May 1959. Today, Canon SLR cameras have been accepted as the benchmark standard for amateur and professional photograph and, to date, over 50 million Canon SLRs have been sold worldwide.

The EOS series was born in 1987 with the EOS 650 and the EF-series (Electrofocus) lens system where the camera and lens communicate through electrical contacts rather than mechanically, as was previously the case. The EOS series and EF lenses have proved incredibly popular with more than 40million EF lenses sold worldwide. Incredibly, 10 million of these have been produced within the last 3 years, thanks to the most radical change in photography and the biggest boom – the move from film to digital.

It was the debut of the EOS 300D in September 2003 that really shook things up. The EOS 300D was the first affordable digital SLR aimed at general consumers and it took the world by storm while professional EOS-1 series cameras and EF lens are chosen by the majority of the world’s news and sports photographers.

And Canon continues to innovate to this day. The new EOS 5D Mark II is the first camera to record Full HD movies and opens a multitude of new possibilities for photojournalists and news photographers. Through ongoing investment in research and development and by listening to its users, Canon will continue to offer photographers the very best tools available and lead the image culture for the next 50 years.

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