Canon’s global mirrorless market share sits at 41%, with Sony as their “biggest competitor”

[EOS 4 Life]

Professional video runs far lower quantities compared to stills cameras, that's all.
Aside of that EOS Cine cameras are reliable workhorses and widely used in
commercial production.

RED sold to Nikon dor a song.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Edit: To underline my point, this is what Jordan Drake (Who is way more experienced in this field than I am) has to say about the R1 sensor:

Jordan Drake is an idiot.
He does not know a thing about sensors.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Sony literally invented the consumer BSI sensor. They also entirely invented the BSI stacked sensor.

Sony licensed the patents from the same people Canon licenses them from.

 

[David - Sydney]

BSI is actually more about getting more light on the photodiode in general. It basically makes the sensor better in low light. I don't know of it having a substantial impact on dynamic range (which would depend on the well depth of each photosite).

The difference between fsi and bsi would logically mean bigger photodiodes but micro lenses have reduced the difference.
That said, Sony’s global sensor clearly uses a lot of fsi space which appears to limit the well depth

 

[CJaurelius]

Video Cameras? oh without a doubt Panasonic and Sony clean up in that space.

Canon i think all but gave up with Hollywood,etc after spending a ton of money there.

I think they are still up there in terms of broadcast lenses, etc.

That's my feeling as well.. Canon is doing very well in the ILC/MILC space and their global market share shows that. I would hazard a guess video cameras is a much smaller piece of the pie overall than ILCs anyways and not worth pursuing further if you aren't getting anywhere..

I get it that us old timers don't like change but if you don't think video is the future you're fooling yourself. Dedicated cameras are essentially dead. There are basically no mass marketed cameras that don't do video. So we have already gone from dedicated photography cameras to photography cameras that can also shoot video to now video cameras that can also shoot photography.

 

[Richard CN]

I get it that us old timers don't like change but if you don't think video is the future you're fooling yourself. Dedicated cameras are essentially dead. There are basically no mass marketed cameras that don't do video. So we have already gone from dedicated photography cameras to photography cameras that can also shoot video to now video cameras that can also shoot photography.

I get that most new and old timers know there's a dramatic difference in between professional cini tools and photography / video tools.

 

[Richard CN]

Jordan Drake is an idiot.
He does not know a thing about sensors.

yeah I have no idea what the heck he's going on about.

Jordan is also mostly a video guy too. so he probably loves the global shutter because he shoots primarily video.

 

[Richard CN]

The difference between fsi and bsi would logically mean bigger photodiodes but micro lenses have reduced the difference.

a more dramatic different with smaller sensors. when copper is used in FSI sensors, they can make the traces smaller, and that cut down into the loss of efficiency. Canon did a ton of work in the FSI space to optimize it's construction - far more than most sensor manufacturers.

But yes, BSI is supposed to increase the well capacity and thus DR. But the larger the sensor, the more diminished the benefit.

That said, Sony’s global sensor clearly uses a lot of fsi space which appears to limit the well depth

It's still BSI but I would assume that they have the memory cell on the photodiode substrate.

 

[Richard CN]

Sony licensed the patents from the same people Canon licenses them from.

I think that's true for some things - ie: Aptina's dual gain. but there is a lot of patent trading and sharing that happens through the industry. someone wants canon's dual pixel IP? what do you have to trade... and so on.

 

[Foamberg]

how mentally poor people must be to identify themself with „electronic garbage“!!! ;-)

 

[CJaurelius]

I get that most new and old timers know there's a dramatic difference in between professional cini tools and photography / video tools.

How is there a dramatic difference? Kids are buying cameras today to shoot YouTube videos that rival those were making movies not even a decade ago. The Sony FX3 (from Sony's cinema line) was used to shoot the movie "The Creator" which came out in 2023. You can buy the sony ZV-E1 for $1,900 and it has the same sensor.

And this is the reason why brands are abandoning the low end market as it's fading away. The days of buying a $500 camera are dying when you have an equivalent piece of equipment in your smartphone or some Chinese company can make it cheaper. All that will be left will be professional tools. The R5mii is clearly a professional tool adding the video features of the previous R5C. Canon openly stated this time you wouldn't have to choose between the R5 or the R5C.

This isn't about brand loyalty its about progress. Take Sony's low end 1" sensor camera the ZV-1. DJI came along, started with drones, then action cameras and now has the Osmo Pocket 3 which is essentially a 1" sensor camera with a built in gimbal. The DJI camera is an overall better camera. And DJI get's their sensors from Sony. So DJI took a Sony manufactured sensor and then created a camera that was better than Sony's. Let that sink in. Is Sony going to respond with their own gimbal version? Of course not.

Instead Sony's newest release is the ZV-E10 II (I know they have terrible names) which is essentially their best apsc sensor in a body for content creators that it sells for $1000. The previous versions realeased $700. The trend seems to be pretty clear. The low end hobbyist market is being abandoned to smartphones and action cameras makers.

If you're a hobbyist 20 years from now, you'll either be using and old camera or some entry level "prosumer" $5,000 camera.

 

[frankchn]

You DO realize that Sony's Video camera business is huge, right?

So no, they don't report it because they lump it in with a hugely profitable video camera segment, and mask it. They used to have it separate, now they play musical chairs.

There's a reason for that.

Well do you have any statistics on how big Sony's market is? I can't imagine they are selling tons of Venice 2s at $70k a pop.

For instance, ARRI's 2021 annual revenue was about 522M USD or about 130M a quarter. Sony's still and video camera revenue in the 1st 3 months of this year is $849M, so if Sony's share is as big as ARRI's share, that would only be about 15-20% of their quarterly camera revenues. Unless you think Sony is twice or more ARRI's size.

Canon also has a good business in broadcast lenses, which is rolled up into their "Other Cameras" segment as well, and I don't think Sony does broadcast lenses at all.

 

[dougsv]

This doesn't reflect how sensor are made. Factories that can build these image sensors are extremely expensive. Most companies can't do it competitively and innovate at the same time. Take Nvidia at the moment. Their stock price is throug the roof as the ones making the chips for AI but they don't actually manufacture them, they're made in Taiwan where they leverage these factories to make chips for a lot more companies. Sony is similar. They make a ton of sensors that go into not only cameras, but phones, cars, industrial uses etc. Canon doesn't have that ability and therefore doesn't have the same budgets, research and development, and leverage among other industires. But neither does Nvidia and they're worth dozens of Canons.

Semiconductors engineer here.... don't compare the fabs required for top of the line FinFET technology used in top of the line CPUs, GPUs and NAND flash memory to image sensors, they are completely different industries.

FinFETs require MUCH higher fabrication precision than what are needed in image sensors, we are talking about 10-fold change here. I am not totally familiar with the exact node sizes used in modern CMOS sensors, but we are for sure talking about more than 50-100 nm, that is a "piece of cake" to produce. Plenty of companies in NA, Europe and Asia are able to make them, while only a couple in the world are able to produce the most expensive chips that companies like Apple and NVIDIA need (TSMC, Intel, Samsung) for their CPUs and GPUs.

The only company able to produce the machines used to produce modern top of the line FinFET chips is ASML, while, again, we have plenty of companies making lithography machines capable of producing image sensors. In fact, Canon is one of the biggest of them. In my company (in Europe), where we produce power MOSFETs (which would require similar node sizes to image sensors), most of our lithography machines are made by Canon. In fact, I would bet Sony uses them as well, as they are the biggest Japanese manufacturers of these machines (with Nikon coming behind) and Japanese companies tend to favor each other.

 

[Richard CN]

How is there a dramatic difference?

I mean you can look at the typical cini camera and the typical hybrid mirrorless and I'm pretty sure under most cases you can tell them apart.
I/O options, core fundamental features, etc is entirely different, and even the OS's are entirely different.

it's not that hard. and also - video cameras really can't take decent stills. Whether you like it or not, stills photography is still a thing.

 

[Richard CN]

Well do you have any statistics on how big Sony's market is? I can't imagine they are selling tons of Venice 2s at $70k a pop.

For instance, ARRI's 2021 annual revenue was about 522M USD or about 130M a quarter. Sony's still and video camera revenue in the 1st 3 months of this year is $849M, so if Sony's share is as big as ARRI's share, that would only be about 15-20% of their quarterly camera revenues. Unless you think Sony is twice or more ARRI's size.

Canon also has a good business in broadcast lenses, which is rolled up into their "Other Cameras" segment as well, and I don't think Sony does broadcast lenses at all.

"other cameras" which isn't included in their main camera breakdowns. what's your point?

Canon actually breaks out their camera line in the details. Sony does not. I'm not even sure why this is even a discussion.

After Canikon joined full frame mirrorless Sony started to play the shell game with its camera business.

Before then they even told you how many units they shipped, $ shipped value, and operating profit. They have since then moved it out and in to two different divisions and no reporting on units, etc have happened since.

So it's not that hard to determine who's actually trying to hide stuff.

 

[Richard CN]

how mentally poor people must be to identify themself with „electronic garbage“!!! ;-)

Yes, but Sony users are people too.

 

[CJaurelius]

You DO realize that Sony's Video camera business is huge, right?

So no, they don't report it because they lump it in with a hugely profitable video camera segment, and mask it. They used to have it separate, now they play musical chairs.

There's a reason for that.

exactly.

which is why Sony sits with 32% and Canon overall is over 50%.

So on the one hand you don't like that Sony uses video CAMERAS to bolster their position but you are ok with the fact that Canon uses the low end point and shoot, DSLR, etc to bolster theirs???

It's clear that video is more important to cameras moving forward than cheap cameras and DSLRs.

 

[Richard CN]

Semiconductors engineer here.... don't compare the fabs required for top of the line FinFET technology used in top of the line CPUs, GPUs and NAND flash memory to image sensors, they are completely different industries.

FinFETs require MUCH higher fabrication precision than what are needed in image sensors, we are talking about 10-fold change here. I am not totally familiar with the exact node sizes used in modern CMOS sensors, but we are for sure talking about more than 50-100 nm, that is a "piece of cake" to produce. Plenty of companies in NA, Europe and Asia are able to make them, while only a couple in the world are able to produce the most expensive chips that companies like Apple and NVIDIA need (TSMC, Intel, Samsung) for their CPUs and GPUs.

The only company able to produce the machines used to produce modern top of the line FinFET chips is ASML, while, again, we have plenty of companies making lithography machines capable of producing image sensors. In fact, Canon is one of the biggest of them. In my company (in Europe), where we produce power MOSFETs (which would require similar node sizes to image sensors), most of our lithography machines are made by Canon. In fact, I would bet Sony uses them as well, as they are the biggest Japanese manufacturers of these machines (with Nikon coming behind) and Japanese companies tend to favor each other.

Yes - the photodiode layer is atypically around 90 to 120nm
the logic layers I think are atypically around 60nm but I think Sony also goes down further to around 45nm

I have seen for Canon 90nm / 60nm described in detail in their patent applications, so i suspect that is what they are actually working with.

For most that would be Canon's own equipment, and as well, Canon if they needed smaller - could also implement their own nanoimprinting which I believe right now gets down to around 10nm - but it's completely unnecessary.

Especially as I think you can appreciate - the dies don't get any smaller - so the wiring has to be as large as it is anyways, because of the increased resistance if you made the wiring much smaller would start to generate more heat, and heat is bad.

modern sensors are using copper in the sensor for the wiring. I think that's different then the standard aluminum?

Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't keep up that much in your neck of the woods.

 

[Richard CN]

So on the one hand you don't like that Sony uses video CAMERAS to bolster their position but you are ok with the fact that Canon uses the low end point and shoot, DSLR, etc to bolster theirs???

It's clear that video is more important to cameras moving forward than cheap cameras and DSLRs.

All the companies have lower end models - including your Sony. They all make kits to target volume grey market retailers, etc.

Outside of the ZV-E10 which is Sony's attempt to catch Canon's magic with the M50/R50 - they are basically all doing the same thing.

and you misread what I wrote and why i wrote it, you may want to try again.

 

[Froschphoto]

Generally love my Canon gear (2xR3 and one R5). Shoot most pro sports, but if I were not nearing retirement, I would look closely at the other two for new purchases, I work next to many people who use both of the other big two and the new offering from those outshine Canon for pro sports.