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Comment by nuclx | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure these devices won't last more than a few years before some electronic component fails. Same as for 'modern' cars.

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uh, canon DSLRs have been around for 20 years. I was rocking my entry level 400D until earlier this year. I got it as a high school graduation present in 2007. It's been to 10+ different countries, been dropped off a camel, stolen by a monkey, rained on, covered in mud, doused with beer, and so much more. And this was the cheapest DSLR they made, and it has no weather sealing and has a plastic body, while most of the higher end stuff is (was?) magnesium and sealed everywhere.

Canon makes REALLY fucking good cameras.

Edit: only reason I replaced it; I got a smaller, lighter camera (also a Canon). the 400D still works fine.

Well, I didn't mean that Canon products are particularly bad in quality.

I own a perfectly functioning 40D from 2007 myself, which I replaced by a Sony A7III just recently, as I hate the fact, that Canon tries to force their customers to buy their own expensive RF lenses.

Of course cameras are impressive pieces of technology. Still I understand the sentiment of the above commenter. My last comment was an overstatement, still there is a substantial chance of a hardware failure.

And Sony forces you to buy their own expensive E-Mount lenses?

To be honest, Canon EF mount lenses are probably the best buy if you are looking for compatibility: there's adapters for Sony E-Mount, Canon RF-mount, etc.

The reason RF, Z, and E mount exist is because you can make the camera body much slimmer in MILC.

It's much easier building adapters for lenses going from DSLR -> MILC. It might not be possible to go the other way around.

Sony has opened up the mount specification to third party lens manufacturers, Canon didn't.

As a result, there is a wide range of third party lenses evailable for Sony FE, none for Canon RF.

Nitpick: there are third party lenses for the RF mount but they are all manual focus. As you stated Canon has not opened up the spec and so third parties have been unable or unwilling to violate the patents that would allow them to make use of the RF electronics required for auto-focus.

I real shame as I would love to use some of Sigma glass on there without use of the EF adapter.

In fact, Canon is going after third party lens manufacturers that are blatantly violating its patent [0].

One of the problems Canon has faced recently is a flooding of the market with super cheap lenses (we're talking 50-200 dollars for total junk). The people that are buying them are justifiably upset when the photos are crap because they incorrectly think its a camera problem. Hey, a lens is a lens, right?

Anyhow, there's wide speculation that Canon will license to the quality quality third-party makers at some point [1][2].

[0] https://petapixel.com/2022/09/06/canon-confirms-its-going-af... [1] https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/sigma-to-make-a-ma... [2] https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/the-state-of-third...

Do you have a link to the patents in question? Articles I've seen about this are not clear about what is patented and I'm suspicious about whether it would pass a novelty/obviousness test.

Bad products is not a reason close specs. Unless you are heavily vested into Canon’s lense ecosystem, or have no issues with money, it makes no sense to go with them; if we’re considering full frames. Glass prices are overly marked up by the body creators and quality is subjective when there’s Sigma.

A third-party, Viltrox did release autofocus lenses for RF mount. Canon threatened legal action. A quick web search did not find exactly what is patented.

https://fstoppers.com/gear/canon-breaks-silence-viltrox-lens...

My 20D from 2004 is still fully-functional, as is my Elan IIe from 1995.

FWIW, glass holds it's value well in the used market.

Just buying some old Canon FD mount stuff off of eBay lately. You aren't kidding! That vintage glass really has some beautiful character, it's worth shooting all manual to me.

Agree! My favorite lens, not that it is used as an everyday walk around lens, is 300 f 4.5 manual focus Nikkor. Marvelous mechanical precision, incredible picture quality and works perfectly fine as a 900 mm equivalent with a 2x TC on a DX body.

Vintage glass is great, if you get it good condition.

Yeah, my Canon micro four thirds camera went through 8 years of canyoneering, caving, rock climbing, kayaking, falling out of my car, etc. By the end the screen was so scratched you could barely see it and the body so dented you had to pry the battery out but it was still trucking along - only replaced when I upgraded to something newer.

My previous DSLR was a Pentax K30. It started to malfunction (about 5 years into ownership).

Guess where? The physical aperture actuator. They're supposed to work for hundreds of thousands of uses, but this one got maybe 20,000 before it began to stick.

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/the-dreaded-k30-apert...

I don't worry about the mirrorless camera electronics so much, and even most digital SLRs are quite reliable (even the replacement Pentax K3-II has been flawless). This was a pretty remarkable failure because it stands in contrast to the typical reliability of digital SLRs.

My anecdata (owned 8-9 dSLRs) suggests they're pretty robust. I haven't had a dSLR fail on me yet. The oldest camera I have is 21 years old (no longer used, but still works). The oldest cameras I still occasionally use are 12-13 years old. My current main cameras are about 2-3 years old. And they are not being babied. I've dropped cameras several times, I regularly use them in pissing rain, and in the winter they are occasionally subject to arctic temperatures (record is a bit below -30C).

My main one, a D700 on "extended loan" from my dad, was used in Iceland in winter (multiple times), in pouring rain, near the Atlantic shore during storms, in the Sahara during dust storms and 45 degrees C, used professionally for event documentation... And that's just from top of my head. Still shoots 10ish fps with the battery grip, has no sensor issues, is still weather sealed and just works.

Same for the old F4 sitting in a shelf, or the D750 that replaced the D700 for my dad. I have no reason to doubt Canon is any different (during a lot of those trips other people used Canon, and those held up just fine as well), nor do i have doubt the new mirrorless cameras will be any different. Unless you dump them for prolonged periods in salt water after having them run over by a truck and store them in a warm and humid environment without drying.

This. These things tend to be incredibly well built. Not indestructible (Unless you get say, a 7D), but people rely on them for their livelihood and they're built as such.

I've had the mount on a Nikkor 24-70mm break off while attached to a Nikon D4 due to an accident. The camera body was completely fine.

Then again, the D4 has a skeleton underneath the plastic and rubber surface that looks like the skull of a killer robot: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012_Nikon_D4_magnes...

I've recently bought a nikon from 2005 to convert it to infrared and everything worked flawlessly

Anyways, we can't really live with fully mechanical cameras in this day and age, unless you want to shoot film in which case Leica has still three cameras that will work without electronics

There are repair shops that will replace your faulty capacitor/diode/chip/whatever. Sometimes components and chips fail, yes.

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