Canon and Nikon: Joining Forces or Making Good Business Moves?
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Canon just announced a new industrial camera, called the M15P-CL, and it’s one of the Japan Company’s first attempts at targeting the manufacturing market. What makes this news noteworthy, however, isn’t even that. It’s the Nikon F lens mount Canon has built on the camera itself.
To make things clear, this isn’t really a consumer camera at all. And the Nikon F mount on it was really not mentioned by Canon at all either. So it’s obvious that there isn’t much commercial potential that either Canon or Nikon kept in mind when contributing to the M15P.
Most of us may jump to immediately thinking that this is a sign of more to come from both companies in terms of joint ventures, but I’d like to raise a counter. This is, in the end, a camera manufactured for manufacturers. Neither Canon nor Nikon cared about letting people know that they both gave a hand in one product. Nikon did it because they’ll make bank off of it, and Canon did it because the Nikon F is the most popular line in the industrial market and no extra lenses would have to be made. Easy money.
Another exact example of what Canon and Nikon are doing can be shown by how the iPhone’s been manufactured. The A7 chip we have in our iPhones are manufactured by their biggest competitor: Samsung. The camera on the iPhone is by Sony. Does this count as two companies “joining forces”? Not exactly. It’s companies making good business moves.
And by putting business moves into the picture (Ha, more camera puns) we’d have to ask: Would Canon and Nikon really benefit from a joint commercial product right now? Wouldn’t that be dangerously close to forming a monopoly? Drop by and let us know what you think in the comments below!
[Via Canon Rumors]
Maaz Khan
Maaz Khan started off teaching himself photography with a disposable Kodak camera he got for his 7th birthday. His main weapons of choice are now the 5D Mark II, and an LG G2 when mobility calls.
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5 responses to “Canon and Nikon: Joining Forces or Making Good Business Moves?”
Isn’t this a week early? April starts next Tuesday.
Very down-to-earth observation and assessment of what’s really going on: It’s just business. Thank you for not jumping on the speculation bandwagon and thanks for the very candid (and most likely most accurate) conclusion.
What I’d like to know though is what does it do?
That’s very clearly an EF mount?
In the industrial camera market, there are too few choices of cameras with high pixel counts and large sensors. (For other needs, such as high sensitivity, high s/n, high and ultra high frame rates, IR, UV, and high dynamic range, the industrial market is crowded.) Nikon and Canon have many sensors that would be of interest to the market, and it’s great to see one of them join the fray. In that market, CameraLink is the most popular interface on higher end cameras. For cameras with small sensors, C-Mount is popular, but for larger sensors, the Nikon F is the standard mount. Using a Nikon mount on a Canon camera doesn’t imply any sort of alliance between the two rivals; there are dozens (hundreds?) of industrial cameras with F mounts. Canon has created an entrant that will have immediate credibility, because its interface (data, optics) is suited to that market.