FY2011

• Gross profit ratio 48.8%, up from 48.1% in 2010
• Operating profit ration 10.6%, up from 10.5% in 2010

The results show that net sales for 2011 were 4% down on 2010, but this is including the effects from the Japanese earthquake and the floods in Thailand. Canon shows estimates for the results if these events hadn’t happened and it shows yet again more growth and profit. Somehow Canon has weathered the natural disasters well and the implementation of production reforms and technologies has improved the gross profit ratio particularly. Looking forward to 2012 Canon sees continued economic growth of the emerging markets (China & India), but the recovery of developed countries will take time. Canon plans to accelerate the launch of new products and services whilst enhancing it’s sales power with the goal of sales and profit growth that would overcome the appreciation of the Japanese Yen.

Digital SLR remains vital for consumer business

Canon’s business can be split in two three business areas; office, consumer and industrial. Cameras & ink-jet printers form the major element of the consumer business and in 2011 DSLR products account for 71% of the consumer business value with a projection that this will rise to 74% of the consumer business in 2012. The demand for DSLR cameras continued to show healthy growth across global markets, though demand for compact cameras was sluggish in the main developed markets. Whilst the quake and floods affected supplies Canon increased sales of key models like the EOS 600D, EOS 60D and EOS 5D Mark II. Continued growth in DSLR is forecast for 2012, though compact digital camera business looks to be flat in the developed countries.

Studying the depth of the reports I found that despite the tough conditions of 2011 the expenditure on R&D increased slightly to 8.7% of net sales, though this is possibly a factor more of the net sales dropping in value. For 2012 R&D expenditure remains at the 8.5% level, so let’s hope they spend the money on some great new camera developements in this 25th year of EOS .

More on Canon’s Investor Relations site.

The video of the session was also uploaded to youtube! Enjoy the video, it lasts 59 minutes and 37 seconds, plus I’m trying to be deliberate in my delivery knowing that for most of the people in the room, and online, English is not their first language…

Videos were shot with a combination of EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D to give two angles whilst interviewing, making the video more interesting than a straight to camera peice shot with only one camera. To travel light we opted to simply put the cameras on monopods and try not to sway too much!

How do you easily see the profile of each image?

Document profile

Photoshop has a neat configurable option for the image windows you have open. Just below the image in the bottom border is a space that probably tells you the image size in megabytes, however click the little triangle to the right and you can select from a number of other options. I mostly leave Photoshop set to Document Profile so that I can instantly tell if an image has the correct colour profile attached or if I need to convert it to a more appropriate colour space for my intended output.

I’ve found that the Mac screen grab utility captures an image and assigns it the colour profile associated with the screen it was captured from, not a standard sRGB profile, seeing this in the panel below the image reminds me to convert screencaptured images to sRGB for use on the blog for example.

Projectors are designed to show presentations

The problems come down to the intended use of most projectors, making presentations legible – business presentations at that. To do this they take the approach that black text, white slide backgrounds are best having as much contrast as possible to make the text more readable. Then the garish colours beloved of powerpoint users are intensified to make pie charts have distinct sections in different colours – without much care for the accuracy of the colours. So what you have is a machine designed to mess with images it shows, and photos with smooth gradations and subtle contrast are candidates for banding in the the smooth gradually changing colours, contrast enhancement in subtle details and other such nasties, but there is a way to avoid this on some projectors.

Setting XEED SX-80 Mk II to sRGB mode

I’m using a Canon XEED SX80 Mk II projector in my training sessions since it provides great brightness, excellent colour and most importantly it has an sRGB mode of operation. The sRGB mode tells the projector not to mess with the contrast, colours or anything in my pictures. I’ve found that with a good profile in a consistent environment my projected images are better than the ones on some profiled laptop displays. Sometimes I’ve loaned the projector to a fellow photographer or photoshop trainer and it makes their training easier as the phrase “well you can’t see it on the projector but on my screen it’s…” doesn’t become part of their training, the projector shows what they intend.

So if you connect your computer to a projector to show your images make sure to find out how the projector will treat your files and look for the sRGB mode on the projector which is designed to make them look as you expect. My XEED projector has Photo mode, but this also enhances the image based on Canon engineers ideas of how it should look, it’s often fine, but the consistency is what I want.

My projector is profiled, surely it won’t mess with my pictures now?

If you think that colour profiling your projector will fix the problems of the projector messing with images you are wrong. In the regular modes the projector is changing how it performs for each image depending on it’s content. If you want to work in a colour managed environment then it’s essential that the projector doesn’t interpret each image individually since any created profile is only valid for the profiling images, not your photos.

If you have never seen your images projected large on good quality high resolution projector then you owe it to yourself to find a way to trial one of the Canon XEED projectors, several large photo institutions have all but standardised on them for competitions and exhibitions.

From the brief hands-on I can say that it feels great in the hand, better than previous G-series cameras and if anything it’s made me want it even more. Canon staff confirmed that it will work with the wireless Canon flash system as I had expected (hoped) so all we do now is wait, since it’s not allowed to see the images yet from the pre-production cameras.

One other highlight of the show for me was seeing Bjorn Thomassen on the Flash Centre booth. Bjorn made a presentation about the possibilities of lighting control with just one modifier. The ideas presented were not new, but one point about using the ‘other edge’ of the light struck me as something I’d not really considered before. I’m working on some shoots in the coming weeks and will shoot images to illustrate the point for a future post on here.

Working with David Newton [@photopositive] we shot some video of the day at the show, you will see that on the EOS Network blog shortly.

PowerShot G1 X

Canon’s latest G series camera has a huge new 14.3MP CMOS sensor that is almost as large as that found in EOS cameras using APS-C size sensors. Is this Canon’s answer to the flock of mirrorless models that have been introduced from other brands? One of the key characteristics of mirrorless cameras that appeals to consumers is the small size and the new PowerShot G1 X is only marginally bigger than the PowerShot G12 model that will stay in the line-up.

Canon’s DIGIC 5 processor first used in the PowerShot S100 and a 4x optical zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 are the other key elements. Looking at the lens, and you see the focal length reported as 15.1 – 60.4 mm, but due to the smaller than full frame CMOS sensor this equates to a more useful 28-112mm effective focal length. Focal length aside the lens should give good much greater  depth of field separation than the PowerShot G12 since depth of field depends on actual focal length. Im pleased to see the optical viewfinder being retained and the variangle LCD screen. Following in the style of the G-series cameras there’s a regular flash hotshoe and I’ll exepct it to offer the same functionality as the other recent G-series models, full wireless flash support for one and since this camera must surely not be using a focal plane shutter then flash sync at almost any speed up to the 1/4000 will make for some interesting flash photography options.

You would expect video, and Full HD is present with onboard stereo mics, no external mic input, and you will be able to zoom the lens while recording movies. If you have stocks of the batteries for your older PowerShot G12 then you will need more new batteries for this camera, the new NB-10L provides up to 250 shots (CIPA test method).

Could this be a great divers camera?

Considering the available information on the new camera I am thinking it might make a very good camera to use underwater. Since it can be quite dark under the waves then the improved light gathering of the big pixels on the PowerShot G1 X CMOS sensor and the relatively fast f/2.8 aperture at the wide-angle setting of the zoom makes this an interesting camera for underwater use. Add in that Canon has also got a dedicated waterpoof case WP-DC44 and it’s designed for use up to 40 metres under the surface. Normally underwater cases for an SLR cost as much if not more than the camera, the underwater case for the PowerShot G11 and G12 cameras is currently retailing for £175 in the UK and I’d expect the case for the PowerShot G1 X to be similar.

I hope to get to see the new PowerShot G1 X this weekend at the SWPP convention in London where Canon is exhibiting.

PowerShot G1 X CMOS sensor

Additional PowerShot G1 X images

What do you think, should Canon have produced a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses or is this a better way to produce a flexible camera with lots of features for photographers and not sacrifice image quality?

Last year while working on a technical article about WiFi, I took the opportunity to make some iPhone screen shots of an EOS-1D Mark IV with the WFT-E2 II transmitter running in HTTP (web server) mode. The screen captures below are from my iPhone and show the outline of the steps and features.

1. Enter the URL of the camera in the Safari browser
2. Access requires a username and password to be configured in the camera. If none is configured accesss is not possible
3. The main screen where you select the function you want to use
4. The files screen lets you browse taken images from the cards in the camera, and download them
5. Complete functions almost the same as EOS Utility would provide
6. Live View with the option to manually nudge or move the focus on the lens
7. Basic control only allows a preview and remote shutter release

Click on any of these thumbnails above for a gallery of the screen captures

The features above are available when using the following combinations of cameras and wireless file transmitters:

• EOS-1D Mark IV with WFT-E2 II
• EOS 5D Mark II with WFT-E4 II
• EOS 7D with WFT-E5

My post before Christmas about a Speedlite 580EX II having a range of 90km was based on a light hearted discussion whilst waiting for a sunset over Table Mountain in South Africa to look awesome. Despite the stunning location the sunset was pretty poor and so was the calculation of flash range, a touch of sun to the head i’ll say.

So to show the working and correct the figures.

• At ISO 100 the flash has a guide number of 53m with the flash head set to the 85mm zoom position. source: Canon Speedlite 580EX II manual
• If you increase the ISO to 200, then you would be able to close the aperture one f-stop from say f/2 to f/2.8 and the flash result would look the same as it had at ISO 100. This is due to the fact that f-stops change by the square root of two each stop then 1.4x (or the square root of two) is the factor change in the guide number, not the ISO multiplier of 2x as in the original post.
• The inverse square law is out there just waiting to catch out the hasty photographer and blogger alike!
• EOS-1Dx ISO in full stops goes ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, 25600, 51200, 102400 and finally ISO 204800 for a total of 11-stops of increase from 100 to 204800
• So in effect the flash “in a perfect environment” will have a guide number of 53m at ISO 100, 75m at ISO 200, 106m at ISO 400 and so on up to 2399m at ISO 204,800
• Now taking the EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens and dividing the guide number 2399m at ISO 204,800 by f/1.2 gives me a theoretical maximum distance of 1999m (still that’s almost 2km or 1.2miles)

Many thanks to a few folks for pointing this one out to me, it’s really great to have people reading the site wherever they come from. Though I am somewhat surprised that the original post was called in to question on a forum at Dyxum.com, the home of the Minolta / Alpha-mount dSLR photographer. Thank you gentlemen for pointing out the error.

ISO 419,430,400

With ISO performance increasing with new cameras it will only take three more stops increase until we see ISO 1,638,400, and I can’t help but think how long it will be until the cameras come with ISO 419,430,400 and then the 90km flash range may be back on. I would offer it as a “stretch objective” for the R&D folk at Canon. One thing, they will need to change the LCD displays to get 9 digits for the ISO scale!

More fun to come in 2012 for sure, as EOS celebrates it’s 25th Birthday

I’ve had a great year, enjoyed myself, made some great photos, told some stories, trained, written presentations and a chunk of a book. I had planned to write my own performance review for 2011 as this post, but in preparing for the post I found the performance review approach was quite lengthy and also was better for me to have as a guide to greater success in 2012. Readers will see the effects of the review in the coming year though.

In this year I have advanced in many ways, but the one area of the small business that needs constant attention is the contact with likeminded colleagues. Far from being a self-help group the network pushes each of it’s members to greater things. I’m fortunate to have found my “photo network” amongst folks I’m more than happy to take tea or curry with. It’s all too easy to sit at a computer surfing the web, playing with pictures but not doing things. You only get food, knowledge, business, gear etc by doing, the network of friends and colleagues pushes the buttons for me to do more, and I thank each and every one of them them for it.

Photography wise it started quietly, but with several shoots in the spring both outdoors and in a studio I fell that I’ve developed a style for people pictures that I want to pursue some more. Styles change and if it doesn’t then i’m not learning anything or pushing myself enough.

I’ll keep the post short and share one more image from my last studio shoot of 2011.

model: Bethany F

Happy New Year