Why is Canon removing 24p from its Low End Camera Lineup?
Last week Canon launched the latest iteration of its popular G7X series of compact cameras. The Mark III looks to be a really great camera for vloggers in particular, adding a microphone input and 4K recording to a camera already popular with the vlogging community. Except for reasons that escape me, Canon has inexplicably removed the ability of the G7X III to record in 24p. This isn't the first time either. Canon seems to be systematically removing 24p from it’s lower end lineup, and I really can’t understand why.
This is the third camera that Canon has released recently that doesn’t have 24p as an option. The Eos 250d also removed 24p as an option (compared to its predecessor, the Eos 200d) and the Eos RP also lacks 24p. At first I thought this was just some kind of mistake or stupid decision by someone not paying attention, but now after three cameras it is obviously a deliberate policy direction for new Canon cameras. It’s a decision that just seems ludicrous to me.
The obvious theory, and the one most people have been pushing, is that Canon is deliberately doing this to push people to buy more expensive cameras as 24p is seen as a “professional” feature. I don’t really buy this though. Canon is actively advertising these to the vlogging market, and 24p is a key feature that many vloggers want. On top of that, people who might otherwise buy a Eos 250d for example, aren’t going to buy a much more expensive camera just for 24p. So if that’s their reasoning it wasn’t very well reasoned.
Then there’s the G7X III. Again, Canon are actively pushing this as an ideal vlogging camera, and it nearly is. In this case, the idea that removing 24p is to push people to buy a more expensive camera really doesn’t make any sense, because there isn’t another camera from Canon in the same form factor other than its older predecessor. Others have said it’s so Canon can drive customers to their Cinema EOS line, but that is ridiculous. There’s nothing even remotely comparable in the Cinema EOS line, and aside from that, no one who is buying a €700 camera is going to buy a multi thousand euro camera just because the cheaper one hasn’t got 24p. The only thing that they’re likely to do is buy from a different brand. It just defies all sense of rationale for them to do this.
I can’t conceive of any technical reason either. It’s not like 24p requires any special processing or hardware that would add to the cost. It’s pretty much just a software thing. Leaving it on these cameras wouldn’t have cost anything - so there must have been a deliberate effort and a corporate decision to no longer include 24p.
It’s really popular online to bash Canon. Much of the time this Canon bashing is just for the sake of getting hits or being sensational, and I’ve often defended the company and their cameras. But I just can’t defend this. It’s such a needless own goal in terms of PR. At the end of the day, if you shoot in PAL and film in 25p it’s not a massive deal, but it’s still a needlessly stupid move on Canon’s part. Similarly if you aren‘t interested in video it’s not a big deal either, but as I said, Canon is actively marketing these cameras at the vlogging community, and then deliberately and unnecessarily crippling a key feature for no good reason.
It’s stuff like this that has given the company such a bad reputation in some corners (even though they are still the market share leader.) It’s really hard to defend or even understand the company when it makes inexcusable decisions like this. I love my G7X Mark II and I was really looking forward to this new version having a microphone socket, but I’m now thinking twice and waiting to see if Sony’s next RX100 has an audio input. If it does, I’m afraid it will be time for me to switch.
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