360Photography

We asked, and you responded. Thousands of you, in fact. We’ve already voiced some opinions about what we’d like to see from a full-frame mirrorless camera from the remaining two of the ‘Big Three’ manufacturers. So when Nikon went public with its development announcement recently, and with rumors swirling about something big coming from Canon, we turned the microphone over to you – our readers. We asked what you wanted to see from a Canikon mirrorless, and here’s what you had to say.

The number one request across the board was for full compatibility with existing lenses. When Sony created the E mount, it was starting (almost) from scratch and primarily aiming to attract new customers rather than maintain an existing base.

Ironically, creating a new system is much more daunting for Canon and Nikon since there are literally millions of F and EF-mount lenses in circulation, a huge number of them in the hands of working professional photographers. These customers just need their gear to work and can’t afford the time or expense of replacing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of lenses and relearning an entirely new system. Equally as important are Canon and Nikon’s non-professional users, who even if they wanted to, couldn’t afford to replace their ‘old’ lenses overnight.

For these reasons, we would hope that ensuring compatibility with these legacy lenses will be a major priority for both Canon and Nikon and we weren’t surprised to see this concern reflected in our poll results.

Nikon’s 1-series showed that the company knows how to make a fast hybrid AF system, and Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus has been impressing us for years

Coming in second is a request for a high resolution sensor, followed closely by a sports-ready AF system and a lifelike viewfinder in third and fourth place, respectively. It remains to be seen how ‘pro’ any eventual full-frame Canikon mirrorless product/s will be, but we know from interviewing senior executives at both companies that matching the DSLR viewfinder and autofocus experience is key to their vision of what a competitive high-end mirrorless camera should look like.

If nothing else, Nikon’s much-maligned 1-series showed that the company knows how to make a fast hybrid AF system, and Canon’s mirrorless-ready Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus has been impressing us for years.

Many of you want to see in-body stabilization too, which we’ve come to really appreciate in the Sony a7/a9-series, as well as in mirrorless ILCs from Olympus and Panasonic. In-body stabilization has never been a standard feature on DSLRs (notwithstanding the sterling efforts of Minolta/Sony and Pentax) and it’s hugely useful for both stills and video capture.

Comments on Facebook, Twitter and on our site ran the gamut from serious and reasonable to not at all serious and wholly unreasonable. Here are a couple of our favorites.

Easy ?
1. UHDp50/60, 4:2:2 10bit internal video recording
2. Uses new “SDUC Express” and/or CFast2.0
3. 5.5 stops of IS/VR in-camera
4. 15-stops DR for stills, 14-stops DR for video
5. 14bit RAW files (losslessly compressed & uncompressed)
6. 18-90mm f/1.8 AF lens at launch

— Eric (@1HDBIZ) July 25, 2018

We won’t be left hanging for too long – Nikon will be livestreaming its ‘special event’ on August 23rd. Until then, the speculation continues and you can view the full results of our poll below.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)