Canon has sold its last film camera
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I'm so tired of the TechCrunch blog spam on this site. They've literally stolen another site's news story and HN mods never replace their links with the original source of the article.
Why is this site always given a pass for content theft?
The news was spotted by PetaPixel on the camera giant’s Japanese support forum.
They clearly attribute it to them (though I find it a tad lame they don't have a specific attribution area), and you could argue that being featured on a popular blog helps people discover them, and with google ranks as well. Curation does add some value and it's not like The Verge for instance doesn't create its own content.
I find sites that just repackage reddit stuff to be much much worse.
I ran a semi-serious gaming blog for years and we often had our stories repackaged and linked from Kotaku, at the time the biggest gaming blog in the world. The extra traffic and SEO boost was negligible at best.
Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. These were all big deals in the era when every frame was precious and mistakes were hidden until it's too late (after the film was developed).
In digital cameras their AF system is now on par, and auto exposure is just less important in general because of the ease of reviewing and post-processing for exposure. They started moving past Nikon about 15 years ago by creating sensors that were cheaper, larger, and had lower noise. Since then they have filled in gaps in their lens lines, and used their expertise in video, to maintain their lead.
The reason why Canon doesn't make a film SLR that includes the features that bring their cameras ahead of Nikon is because they don't think enough people will want to pay for them. And that's probably right.
Anyway (D)SLR use phase detect autofocus in which you don’t have to figure out much at all.
Mirrorless is another thing.
Last time I looked the digital back for a Hasselblad was ~$30k.
Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.
Heck, I'd say "in the grand scheme of things", if you look at some of the data available (https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/latest-camera-sales-chart-r...), stand-alone digital cameras "don't matter market-wise" compared to what has replaced them for a lot of people -- smartphones. Not that all stand alone digital cameras will disappear anytime soon (especially in segments like the DSLR market where the lenses can offer advantages for certain pictures), but the general purpose "compact digital camera" is probably doomed.
I paid more for the 'blad than either of my 4x5's.
(Not to mention the cost of 4x5 or (shudder!) 8x10 processing; B&W is eminently doable in the home, but IMHO where LF really, really shines is with dias film - developing that at home is not for the faint of heart.)
A digital back can improve workflow, but quality is still better with film at those sizes. These are studio cameras through and through; and I was able to connect a Hasselblad to some el cheapo Chinese lighting setup I bought on Amazon a year ago. That’s backwards compatibility.
At the end of the day Hasselblad is only 6x6 (i.e the negative size), but there are many bigger format (in medium format) cameras available like Mamiya 6, Mamiya 7, GW690III (which is 6x9, twice the negative size of Hasselblad H1's 6x4.5).
If you are looking for the ultimate medium format system camera, the obvious answer is Fuji GX680. It's waay bigger than the Hassy, and you can also put digital backs on it. The only downside is it's electronic camera, not mechanical.
I think that because they were the dominant brands in 35mm in the film era, they still have fans today among people who still like to shoot film.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bri...
No autofocus, no auto-exposure, and costs almost $4700 body only. Not something the typical film shooters will use, though :p
It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony was certainly far ahead of the game.
This reminds me when the first “affordable” DSLRs from canon and Nikon arrived - both 6 megapixel models (the Canon 300D/Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70). The D70 was the better camera in a great many ways, but many buyers still chose the 300D to get access to the incredibly good for the time low noise CMOS sensor. I can’t count the number of discussions I had with friends looking to get a first DSLR debating the relative merits of those two landmark cameras. A later firmware hack for the 300D that gave it almost all the features of the more expensive 10D made this debate very interesting as well.
The past 5 years are less impressive though, for sure, with the great sensor hardware from Sony etc.
That said, Canon has historically been the winner with their lens selection, and IMO UX. Sony is quickly catching up, or even surpassing them though with e-mount, especially now that more 3rd party lens manufacturers are killing it (Sigma). I also like EVFs more than OVFs since you get a better exposure preview and focus peeking for manual focus. I really, really, really wanted to buy a Sony a7, but I ended up buying a Canon 6d due to lens selection a few years ago (and the Canon beat them on price). I'm a huge fan of mirrorless tech and I'm actually surprised that SLRs are still around.
The camera body is being commoditized. I'm a canon fan and hope they catch up with a full frame mirrorless, my buddy who follows the tech more said he's heard rumors that they are releasing one next year?
Picked up a NEX 5N, 18-55, 55-210, and 16mm for $200AU (~$160US).
Next stop: A6000.
I, too, surprised myself by recently purchasing a 6D (I, not II -- why increase weight and dark noise?) on both lens-selection/lock-in and quickness concerns. I was surprised to find that I loved being able to leave the camera switched on all day in the mountains and draw/shoot/stow in seconds, with 1000+ images on one battery. Barring substantial advancements in sensor/display power consumption, no mirrorless camera can match that property. Furthermore, it is an instrument I can handle/adjust quickly and reliably with gloves on in harsh conditions. For a week at temperatures between -20 and -30 C, the 6D (and iPhones kept warm) operated normally while friends with mirrorless cameras suffered shutdowns.
The three things, from my perspective, that Canon really lacks are 0.5-1 stops of dynamic range in the sensor (SNRs are competitive across all brands, an underappreciated fact), silent electronic shutter, and Sony's incredible array of on-plane focus sensors and focus algorithms (Canon's DPAF may actually compete, if turned loose/optimized further). Sony's eye-detection AF must be a game-changer for portrait photographers.
I'm reasonably convinced that DPAF will probably work out better than Sony's approach in the long run – every photosite essentially doubling as a PDAF sensor seems more future proof than scattering 100+ dedicated PDAF sensors over the chip.
The problem with the latter is that if Canon can develop the software to really exploit DPAF (there's no reason in principle that you couldn't, say, let users chain together an arbitrary number of pixels into selectable AF points placed wherever they want outside of the extreme edges of the sensor), there's no good response with dedicated PDAF, because the more dedicated sensors you place on the chip, the more pixel gaps you create, and the more demosaicing algorithms are forced to infer pixel colours with missing mosaic values. There comes a point where the visual quality will suffer.
I'm not at all unhappy with my choice to get the 6d. It's a great camera, and Canon's lenses have all been great. Even though I've always wanted a smaller full frame, any size improvement to the body is negated by the glass unless you get a fixed pancake lens. Good point about mirrorless battery life as well, I don't usually consider it that much since its easy to carry a spare, but I had an eos-m a while back and the battery life was frustrating. Unfortunately, it got trashed in reviews which I think set mirrorless back a bit for canon. Sure the autofocus was garbage, but the 22mm f/2 kit lens for it was amazing (one of the best I've used) and it was the smallest inexpensive camera with the best IQ/$ imo, and it had an aps-c sensor. The rest of the competition was doing m4/3. I remember you could pick up the kit for around $250 or so shortly after it came out.
This is clearly not due to the nature of mirrorless technology though, so I don't think it's fair to criticize the technology based on that.
Only starting in 2010-2011 did they stagnate in image quality for a time.
Market share. The estimates I've seen are that between Canon, Nikon, and Sony DSLRs, Canon currently has the largest single share of the market.
Prior to Canon's work with CMOS sensors in the early 2000s, Nikon had the SLR and DSLR market share lead over Canon. (And basically no Sony bodies at all back then.)
I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofocus (Ultrasonic line), which took Nikon more than a decade to catch up to. Same with exposure zones and metering accuracy combined with extremely fast drives - this basically meant that Canon took over sports photography in the mid 90s.
They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.
Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.
Variable Field Curvature.
this can't be digitally recreated.
its a really interesting lens and the reason why I may yet fall back into my Kodak habit of yore.
Flash, on the Maxxum/Dynax AF cameras, from the get go, was incredible. Focus distance is critical for flash exposure. Minolta pioneered AF. Thry also played sloppy with a Honeywell patent, when we feared trade deficit to Japan, remember 4GL, 5GL... Originally Japanese manufacturers claimed solidarity. Then Minolta was left standing alone, stood up, and stupidly didn't settle. This was widely attributed to Minoru Tashima, he of Machinery and Industrial OpticAL Tashima. Reality, bad legal gamble lost to international politics. The punitive $100MM fine, hurt MINOLTA horribly, hence erratic pro equipment development.
On the contrary to the above comments assertion, Minolta had mire fast glass than anyone.
Edit, I used professionally almost every single MINOLTA camera and certainly every serious lens, from the SRT102b, to the last pre Sony, all home grown Dynax 7D...
if you're curious, just find a good store with a Sony A99II on display. This is the model that'sgoing to demonstrate the ability of a camera to be a genuinely delightful experience, above even the A9. If you can afford it, my experience of the A9, I challenge anyone to take a technically bad photo with it. The A99II is a serious machine too, but it caters to a old school crowd and the new models, the reason why they have a all new lens mount, again, is the lenses are designed for use with in camera software correction of distortion and vignetting etc. I personally dislike that change, not that i can criticize the results, but, strikingly demarked by the A9, we have entered the software supremacy era. Its incredible.
EDIT to add about auto exposure: the EOS-1N, released in 1995, had a monochrome 16-segment evaluative meter. The Nikon F5, released in 1996, had a 1,005 segment color-sensitive evaluative meter, which also incorporated focus distance from the lens. Essentially it took a 1 kilopixel digital photo in order to set the film exposure.
I've had one for fifteen years plus. To this day, the only camera I've owned which is actually a physical experience to shoot; the AF and film drive motors are actually strong enough for you to feel the torque they develop as you shoot.
(The F5 could officially shoot 8fps; on a fresh set of batteries you would often get nine; this thing could focus, evaluate the exposure, advance the film, stop down the aperture and trigger the shutter _nine_ times a second.)
The metering system can only be described as exquisite; after a few dozen rolls on the F5 I actually got into the (bad!) habit of not bracketing most of my color positive shots - the metering was spot on just about all the time, regardless of tricky conditions.
I think I'll take it out for a shooting session tomorrow, it's been a few months since it last saw any use. Thanks for the reminder!
I don’t miss film.
Though there were a lot less pictures taken and shared before everyone had a camera on their phone. A different time in a lot of ways.
There is a sense of anticipation and discovery in having a limited number of photos on a roll of film and not knowing how they’ll turn out until you develop them yourself. Undoubtedly, the photos that you thought would be incredible turn out to be duds, but you’ll also find a gem or two in shots that you thought would be mediocre.
In an age of infinite options, limitless data, and constant connectivity, I’m drawn more and more to these examples of deliberate limitation / non-scalable craftsmanship.
That said, I never really got into multi-hour printing sessions to get a print just perfect. I always came more from the newspaper than the fine art mindset. So it's one of those things that leads me to reminisce about how that was fun without any real desire to ever do it again.
But, no, I don't really miss it. It was an enjoyable hobby but it was also a pain to the degree that it was a process you had to go through in order to arrive at the final photograph.
And color slides were just always a finicky and fairly expensive way to take and show photos.
When I was a kid in the 80s color slides sessions with a projector were awesome. Since we don't really use projectors anymore and our screen sizes are somewhat limited, I think we have lost something by moving to digital.
As a pretty casual photographer (I don't have a darkroom or access to one, and have never really been more than a roll a month shooter), that means I've both been surprised at how well shots have come out, and disappointed at others. It's an expensive feedback loop, to be sure.
I won't defend slide film for more serious work, but I love it for my own casual use.
It’s hard to compare spending 2 hours on a print vs 2 hours on a shot in Lightroom - they’re very different processes. That being said, the reason why I enjoy it so much is because I’m working with a physical process that - once fully understood - is reliable, coherent, and predictable (to your comment about it being hard getting the exposure and contrast right - split filter processing changed my life. It removes a lot of the guesswork and basically turns it into a binary search). Working with software is anything but - I can’t count the number of times where something didn’t work quite the way it used to because of a software update, or I had to restart Lightroom to get it to behave, or some fairly direct manipulation I wanted to do was hidden under unnecessary layers of UI.
Not to mention that the final output of the darkroom process is a print - whereas the final output of software is a file. Since I care about making large prints, if I worked in software, I’d still have to deal with a printer and all the mess that comes with that to get an object.
The one thing that digital excels at is obviously back ups/instant duplication/being able to navigate through history/etc.
But they really are 2 utterly different approaches to making photographs, and I wish there were an embodied system (à la Dynamicland) that brought to the digital photography process the wonderful things from the darkroom process.
That says a lot about how few they have been selling.
Well, Canon has done zero marketing for this model and focused solely on digital cameras, so I would even wager nobody knew it was still being sold!
I have a cousin that works in Arrow Electronics’ obsolescence division, where they buy out final production lots in aging technologies (basically keep production lines going a few more months or years) with the intent to supply users of obsolete but operational systems with a fresh supply of parts and service. Lots of government and military equipment. lucrative business and there is an art to projecting future demand of obsolete tech. Not saying that this was Canon’s intent as well, but it was eye opening hearing him talk about his business.
Each cell is 5-or-6 small reconfigurable stations manned by a couple of people, who build a body or lens from start to finish, rapidly re-taskable to different lenses or bodies on the fly. Hundreds of cells on a manufacturing floor.
Developing B&W prints is as close to magic as I've experienced. For those who don't know, B&W paper isn't sensitive to red light, so once you've exposed the paper, you can put it in the developer and actually watch the image appear. Plus there's something about the smell of a darkroom. The hot lamps of the enlargers create a smell that mixes with the smell of the fixer and the stop bath that's unmistakable.
Would I want to do any of this if I were shooting weddings? Definitely not. If I'm taking my camera for a walk and want to see what I've captured, absolutely!
The other thing that's a damned shame is the way the manufacturing has changed. I've long been a Pentax man, and the old Super-Takumar and Super-Multi-Coated (as distinct from the later SMC) lenses are a pleasure to use[0].
Everything about the way they fall to hand is perfect, and the machining is immaculate. The focus ring is scalloped and knurled, and it's metal. They must have cost a fortune to make. The SMC, K, M, and I'd assume the A series lenses have a lot more plastic on the outside of the lenses, but the feel of the focusing helix is still beyond reproach. Modern lenses, by comparison, are made so that they can be driven by the autofocus mechanisms, and the feel of the ring in manual mode is terrible.
That isn't to say that the modern lenses are optically worse; I'm sure the situation is quite the opposite. Nonetheless, something has been lost. Again all of this is moot for most people looking for the most productivity out of their tools, or for the people shooting casually. The small group of people in the middle, they'll miss it.
Honestly, it's like CD (or any other digital medium) vs records. Records are quantitatively worse by any measure, but for the sheer pleasure of the experience, they can't be matched. If I want to sit down and actually listen to music, part of the enjoyment is the smell of the record and its sleeve, and the tangible process of putting the needle on the record.
[0] Super Takumar and SMC Takumars here: http://blog.prairierimimages.com/2011/08/old-glass-asahipent... The Super-Multi-Coated Takumars are essentially identical from the outside.
The fine print on so-called ‘film safe’ machines typically state they won’t visibly affect film slower than ISO800, inclusive.
(Plus, the damage is accumulated, so if you lug a lot of film through a lot of airports, you will get the occasional nasty surprise.)
That being said, I’ve never had any problems having my film -when I travel with it- inspected manually.
You can turn out photos in film about as fast as digital. I can get a roll developed, scanned, and online in about 20 minutes.
But yes, they deserve a lot of respect for what they achieved :)
Actually, that touches on something that really saddens me: a ton of this knowledge is just lost when a company goes bankrupt. Part of The Impossible Project was to minimise that loss:
> Kaps revealed through a series of blog posts and interviews in 2016 that he had personally approached Fuji about acquiring their machinery in an attempt to to rescue their soon-to-be discontinued FP3000b and FP100b packfilm products. Kaps was unsuccessful in this pursuit, but motivated by his disappointment in Fuji's decision, he established the Analogue Product Institute (API) with the goal of "developing a NEW generation of analog instant packfilm [and] Establishing a rich network of new suppliers, manufacturers and financiers from all over the world".
It's not entirely unlike relying on closed source software, I guess.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Originals#Future_and_...
The people doing art professionally certainly count as pros, but (wild hand-waving), most of them probably aren't subject to the kind of turnaround requirements that drove the rest of the 35mm world to digital.
I suppose I'm also excluding the medium and large-format studio folks who, besides art, shoot primarily for ... advertising? I'm totally ignorant of that side of the business.
But the tactile experience is a long way from the old actually-all-metal cameras and lenses. I was sorely disappointed the first time I held a Fuji X series camera.
I'll agree with you though on the control interface for the lenses. I still often shoot my manual-focus Minolta lenses on the Fuji. The drive-by-wire focus rings just can't compare (seems Fuji thinks the mark of quality is stiffness when it's really about responsiveness) and the aperture ring situation is all over the map in the XF line. I sorely wish someone would revive those delightful knurled rubberized focus rings; but alas, I guess they've all decided "surely no-one really uses these?"
Lens-wise, there will always be a market for lenses that inspire. The emergence of short-flange-distance mirrorless cameras has driven huge interest in older glass. If you haven't tried it yet, try adapting your favorite lenses to a modern image sensor. Electromagnetic waves care not how old the optics are.
I'm sad, too, to see the EOS-1 series end. The design of the EOS-1 RS inspired me, as a teenager, to build my first optical system, something for which I'll be forever grateful.
I wouldn't trade my modern camera for the finest 35-mm film camera, though. The rate at which I can learn with a digital camera is so much greater. Yesterday evening, I probably shot a hundred frames (each while watching for the camera/tripod vibration to settle at 10x-magnified live view), sorted them, processed the best, and printed one, all in a few hours. The only costs were 0.1% of the camera's shutter life, hard-disk space, electricity, and two pieces of paper.
> For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed.
I feel like that too, but I'd like to understand more clearly exactly what was lost. Are we just being nostalgic? Is obsessing over the tactile part of the experience missing what's important about creating imagery or music? Are we ignoring the fact that the new generation has their own tactile experience that is different but not worse than ours was? We associate these tactile experiences with our joy of discovery and creation, but perhaps they're incidental and not very important to actually being creative.
> Plus there's something about the smell of a darkroom. The hot lamps of the enlargers create a smell that mixes with the smell of the fixer and the stop bath that's unmistakable.
I never got over the feeling that I was giving myself cancer or something else breathing and touching the chemicals. The vinegary smell of fixer isn't something I miss personally.
> something has been lost.
FWIW, doing my own image processing by writing my own code has taken the place of doing my own darkroom work, and white it's obviously less tactile, it still gives me a similar feeling of touching the images.
I only recently got into the hobby, and digital is a godsend because I get to experiment on the cheap — I don't feel like I'm wasting film if I take the same photo ten times from different angles, with different apertures, at different focal distances... I also get to go to my computer, take all the photos out, see what worked and what didn't, and get a lot more usable feedback much sooner.
He's spent a fortune over the years on film and cameras and switched to full digital a while ago. Recently he traded all his glass & bodies for new Sony gear, which he reckons outperforms both Canon and Nikon by a considerable margin. So if you're letting go of film and are in the market for digital don't count out Sony.
Not sure the metric, but SLRs still own the focusing crown for most action-based photography (though the mirrorless cameras are getting closer to being good at it).
And exposure/metering is pretty much even, resolution is pretty even, ISO/noise gives an edge to Sony/Nikon over Canon, body/UX/comfort/grip gives an edge to Nikon/Canon over Sony (unless you have very small hands, maybe...), battery life gives a huge lead to Nikon/Canon over Sony.
There are only a few aspects where Sony's current flagships have a substantial difference, like high FPS shooting (20 vs ~10 for DSLRs), or 'seeing what you're shooting' in the digital viewfinder.
Also, both Canon and Nikon are reportedly working on some full frame mirrorless bodies to compete with Sony's flagships (they have both had various cameras in the market in the past, e.g. Nikon 1 series, but none were as well-rounded as what Sony's offering today).
I'm not sure this has been true since the Sony α9. Its autofocusing abilities are amazing, and that's coming from me - a Nikon fan and D500 owner. If I shot people rather than wildlife, I'd probably switch for the eye-AF alone.
The Nikon D5 still has the crown when you add in that test and percentage wise will beat Canon/Sony. In absolute numbers, because the Sony shoots so fast it can bring home more 'keepers' in terms of numbers of photos though.
And the focus point coverage is WAY bigger on the a9, so overall I would call it a tie depending on what you are shooting.
The 1600 was a great high ASA film.
It’s still my favourite “modern” emulsion as it has a beautiful tone curve and amazing dynamic range if developed properly.
The ‘because we can’ high-end F6 and the entry-level, manual just about everything FM10. (Though I think the current FM10 may be made by others under licence.)
I think Voigtländer may still make a 35mm rangefinder, too.
As far as I know, the F6 is the last one still in production.
Incidentally, Cosina also made the rangefinder I’d dub the Leica M7.5 - the Zeiss Ikon-branded ZM. Wonderful camera.
As far as rangefinders go, the ZM IMHO is the one to beat, in close competition with the Contax G2. (Autofocus! In a rangefinder!)
https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2018/05/leica-m7-film-ca...
All that remains are the purely mechanical Leica MP and M-A film cameras, plus many digital cameras of course.
If the ISO dial on the back were metal and not plastic, it may well be perfect. I’ve heard of people switching out the dial from older M4/5/6s.
Source: I have one.
- F6 used are about $800, generally in very good condition because anyone using the camera for work would have used an F5.
- F100 which is 90% the same as the F6 in both appearance and function is $200 used.
- F5, Nikon's last "professional" film SLR is $200 used
- F80, a piece of plastic molded to look like an F100 (but nearly identical functionally) can be had for <$50. I got mine in a ¥1 start auction. Final price: ¥1
from here things start to less predictable thanks to people who want a sweet manual camera and collectors. Manual cameras run anything from $100~$500+ depending on their condition. The best deals right now are Nikon FE and FM (not FE2,FM2) and Nikkormats.
Yes you can:
Not long ago, Fuji discontinued the pack films that worked in a lot of older Polaroid cameras.
As a film shooter for 20+ years, I decided to break out my old Nikon FA and shoot a roll of film today to mark the occasion. (I still keep some in the fridge, Velvia 50 Daylight.) I wonder if the last place that would still develop slide film around here last time I needed film developed still does it. If they still take film, they probably ship it some place to get it developed rather than do it in-house like they used to.
People pay for this sort of thing as much as they pay for a clever gimmick.
I totally get trying out B&W processing and printing for the sake of the experience even if I have no personal interest in trying it again. But color doesn't have any appeal whatsoever.
I’m confident that one day it probably will be; maybe ML will be up to the task where filters and transforms just can’t do the right job?
Besides that, the process of taking photographs is surprisingly different. You don’t spray and pray - a shutter costs you more than a dollar so you spend more time looking, and learn to hunt with your eyes more. It’s impossible to check your photos on the LCD, so you just get on with photography, and have an element of suspense to find out what you captured. Also, no batteries to go flat. There’s also a forced creativity when working with basic controls like aperture and shutter speed, instead of hundreds of different settings and knobs to get caught up in.
Of course, if I were a profession photographer these would in no way make up for the downsides, so hand me that 5d/d600/M-P, but they’re reasons you may still shoot film and translate to digital to share/store.
As for the technique, I agree that it was more exacting back in the film days. I also had much less money then. The net result was that I didn't take a lot of photos I now wished that I had. Although these days that's what we use our phones for so I guess it's not really an issue.
There is a lot of very nice gear available quite cheaply though. Maybe this will be a trend an it's time to buy Kodak stock?
Amazing that companies used to build such sturdy products that they could be cheaply fixed 15+ years after they were sold...
Also sort of amazing is that Canon even had a physical presence that as a consumer I could visit a physical offices and drop of a product in person to be fixed!
The award for most durable SLR has to go to the Pentax Spotmatic. The first ones were released in 1964, and they are seemingly indestructible.
Even the exposure meter is a future-proof design; it was designed for mercury (1.35V) batteries but the circuit was designed in a way that modern LR44 (1.5V) cells "just work"!
Nikon lenses from the same era generally need a CLA because the grease used on their focusing helicoids gums up over the years and makes focusing feel dry, bumpy, and just plain nasty. I have come across some Super Takumar (Pentax) examples that are moldy enough that they would probably grow mushrooms if you left them outside soon the shady side of a tree, but the focusing feel is always smooth and perfect.
The only lens I have that feels better is a Voigtlander and it cost $500 vs $10 for an ugly but usable Super Takumar lens.
I'd argue that the Nikon FM2 is just about as indestructible, though - but I won't argue about the lenses; I have enough old Nikkor optics to know better!
Agreed 100% on the indestructibility - whoever used mine before I got it dented and brassed up good. The camera doesn't care.
The focusing screen is a joy and better than any DSLR. It's telling that the big and bright finder is a selling point of the D850. If you still use your FM2 I would suggest getting a K3 screen. Nikon still sell them new!
I have to admit I actually swapped the K3 for an -hm- B3, I believe - the all-matte one with a circle to show the coverage of the center-weighted meter - I found the split prism was more of a distraction than an aid _for my eyes_; I realize I am the odd man out on this one.
Matter of fact, I shot a couple of rolls of Tri-X in the FM2 just the other day; will process it one of these days when the kids fall asleep early enough for me to still feel like actually doing something after their bedtime!
Google already got into the pro photo market by buying Nik and decided it was not worth the effort.
https://petapixel.com/2017/05/30/google-abandons-nik-collect...
Their DSLR's are market leaders still. Again, only in recent years have Mirrorless cameras have started to catch up with the DSLRs Nikon and Canon have been releasing. Based on current rumors, both Canon and Nikon are supposedly working on their first serious Mirrorless cameras to compete with the likes of Sony's A7 series...
EDIT: Personally, I would avoid any camera that had Google integration built in. Part of the reason I still carry around a DSLR today is because I like knowing that the photos on my camera, and then stored on a local HDD at my house. I don't think I'm alone in this thought either. Computational Photography is cool and all, but I don't need to provide all my photos into a server farm to be analyzed.
SD cards are interchangeable, and slot into your computer for a reason.
Previous generations were not so easy to use -- my 6D does work but lacks the auto-connect via BT feature. Presumably the 6D2 has that though.
Lots of stuff when you start thinking about it. Automation, as an example. Say I want my own custom metering algorithm - I can't currently upload that to my camera and try it out.
Take a look at what you can do when you can program your phone:
https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/experimental-nighttime-pho...
A phone's sensor is much worse than in Nikon/Canon. Yet if I want to reproduce the results in that post it's a fair amount of manual work to do so on a DSLR.
Say I want to shoot a photo of a tourist spot, but with no people in the photo. A standard way is to take several shots seconds apart, and then on the PC merge them using the median. All the people disappear. Why can't I program my DSLR to take 20 photos every 5 seconds and do that computation, and discard the 20 images and just keep the processed one?
Once you start thinking this way, you suddenly realize you're holding a product whose interface resembles something from 1980's DOS.
Canon has all the same challenges and also about $47 Billion USD in equity. They're a huge multinational.