Much has been made of the overheating time limits of the Canon EOS R5 and R6 and the fact that the overheating timer can be bypassed with seemingly no ill effects. But Canon has now gone on the record to confirm that they did not intentionally hamstring their latest mirrorless cameras to protect other camera lines from self-cannibalization.
Johnnie Behiri of CineD, formerly known as cinema5D, spoke with Katsuyuki Nagai-san, Product Management Director of Image Communication Business at Canon Europe, and directly asked about the murmurings of artificial recording restrictions.
“To some people, it seemed as if Canon was trying to protect their professional EOS camera line by restricting recording times,” Behiri asks. “That might have caused some trust issues between potential customers and the company. Is there anything you would like to highlight in order to reassure people that whatever was done, was not intentional but to technically protect the camera?”
On behalf of Canon, Katsuyuki flatly rejects the idea and labels it a “conspiracy theory.”
“This is an accusation we’ve seen before which belongs on the conspiracy theory pile,” Katsuyuki responds. “It is simply not a sensible business idea as users are more likely to switch to competitor systems than buy a much more expensive camera to get a certain feature.
“There are factors that govern what a camera can and cannot do, the primary of which is the components used based on the cost of the camera. Making a camera that can do everything would require higher resolution viewfinders, bigger buffers, faster processors to handle the data, faster card buses to write to cards etc, all components which typically cost more.”
Katsuyuki says Canon never intentionally “cripples” its cameras, but it does weigh tradeoffs in order to offer the best specs and feature set for each camera’s target audience.
“It is important that we evaluate the primary customer for each product and decide what features would be required by that typical user,” Katsuyuki continues. “We do not ‘cripple’ our cameras, our aim is always to focus the product better to the typical user.”
You can read the full interview over at CineD.
