Canon photographers’ roundtable

Thursday, 6 September 2007

Representatives from Canon Inc. in Tokyo and Canon Europe came to listen to a group of leading shooters from various photographic specialities yesterday in Perpignan. Their goal was to get first-hand feedback on present products, particularly the EOS-1D Mark III, and to find out what photographers would like to have from Canon in order to do their work better in the future. Canon’s goal was very likely achieved as a result of the open and lively discussions that took place with people like fashion shooter Patrice Stable, National Geographic staffer Nick Nichols, Gary Knight of VII, Ziv Koren, Andy Mettler, Magnum’s Jonas Bendiksen, sports shooters Alex Livesey of Getty and Elizabeth Kreutz and others. There was a lot of interesting back and forth about what an ideal camera should be and detailed discussion of which technologies are used the most in different specialties. Suffice it to say that what might be ideal for a documentary photography, who prefers to work with a smaller camera like the 5D, might not be what works best for a sports, nature or fashion photographer, more accustomed to a 1D Mark III or a 1Ds Mark II. In any case, it was clear that Canon is listening and the discussions held in Perpignan will have an effect on what photographers will see in the future.