Tag Archives: rumors

Canon EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens Service Notice

By Chris Garrett | Published May 25, 2006

I just found out my most recent lense purchase, Canon 70-300mm IS, might have a fault. Although I am obviously disappointed there might be something wrong  at manufacture with such an expensive piece of kit it is pretty good to know that I found out from Canon rather than discover it for myself.

Apparently when used in portrait orientation at the longest length you get some softness at the edges. Not earth shatteringly awful, not ideal either. I applaud Canon for being honest about this, heck from what I have seen in forums outside of L/primes most 300mm lenses have a problem of softness at the edges anyway!

Canon USA Consumer Products – Support – EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM – Service Notices

To Customers Who Use the EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens:

Thank you very much for your patronage of our products.

We have recently become aware of a phenomenon in which some images captured by the EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM lens appear in insufficient resolution. This phenomenon may be seen at the edge of the frame at the 300mm setting when the camera is held vertically. We have been studying the symptoms of this phenomenon in order to determine its precise cause and to develop an appropriate remedy. We will inform you on this Web site as soon as this remedy has been decided, which, at this point should be by the end of June 2006.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience this phenomenon represents for customers who use this lens and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve it.

Contact Information for inquiries

Call Center
1-800-828-4040 (toll free)
8AM to Midnight – Monday to Friday
10AM to 8PM – Saturdays
Email: carecenter@cits.canon.com

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Sony Alpha DSLR News: Alpha will have Image Stabilisation as standard?

By Chris Garrett | Published May 18, 2006

Sony has revealed a little more about their plans for Alpha, their new range of DSLR cameras based on the Konica-Minolta partnership. It seems from this interview they plan to include image stabilisation, or anti-vibration as they call it, as standard in the camera body.

Minolta was the only camera manufacturer to introduce an SLR camera with a CCD shift system that compensates for hand movements, and CCDs are one of the fields where Sony can leverage its commanding technological lead

This system can be used with all of the 16 million lenses already owned by customers. With other digital SLR cameras, you need to buy specially-made anti-vibration lenses.

Currently, our development plans are for all products in the line to be equipped with our anti-vibration technology.

So rather than it being a lense feature, the cameras CCD and intelligence does all the work. This is a major point of differentiation and could be a great selling point. The camera itself having image stabilisation makes lenses more cost effective, elevates humble existing lenses to being more useful in low light or long lengths without a tripod, and possibly meaning improvements are just a flash update away.

This range is starting to look interesting …

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Canon EOS 30D Announced

By Chris Garrett | Published February 21, 2006

After much rumours and speculation, Canon today announced the EOS 30D, DPReview is calling it a “mild evolution of the EOS 20D” and it certainly doesn’t appear to be a revolution. Best I can say is it looks to be an incremental improvement at a slightly lower (predicted) price point.

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