This is not the first though, e.g.:
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Subscription for heated seats is dead, but I think BMW will only come out even stronger with more twisted plans for something. I first thought it was a joke or bmw meme. But nope, it was a real deal.
That’s the only reason that DSLRs had to go:
no way of displaying ads on that mirror
Luckily, they didn’t go anywhere. You can still buy them new. The service centres have parts in years to come and until camera companies make some real breakthrough in the image sensor, there’s little to no use upgrading to mirrorless if you have good DSLR already - unless you crave or need that tack-sharp super smart AF. Autofocus is the only real major upgrade in the current mirrorless line.
But as far as I’m concerned - I don’t need ads or subscriptions to keep me out of ML waters - the current battery life is a joke at best. How people deal with it with their straight faces is beyond me. Canon R8 is said to have around 220 shots per battery. People try to squeeze out 400 shots by disabling various services.
Meanwhile, my Canon 90D used for astrophotography had 2857 shots taken with a single battery that still has 46% juice left. The camera shows red bar for the battery (bad performance), I can only wonder how far would it go with 3 green bars.
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Well put. Pentax is sticking with DSLRs too, not to mention their new film camera project.
Ha. I came into that from the other side… I grew up using digi compacts, then went into mirrorless with the Oly Pen E-P1. So I missed out on the so-called “golden era” of DSLRs, until in 2021 (I think) I got a Nikon D7100.
I was used to batteries not lasting more than a couple of hundred shots, so I was blown away by the 2000+ shot life on the original battery in the already 8 year old D7100. Real bonus.
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Well put. Pentax is sticking with DSLRs too, not to mention their new film camera project.
Yeah, I’m glad Pentax is still able to do what they do best - produce beautiful rugged cameras that just work and don’t care to fit the trends.
I was used to batteries not lasting more than a couple of hundred shots, so I was blown away by the 2000+ shot life on the original battery in the already 8 year old D7100. Real bonus.
The irony is that Canon 90D is their most advanced DSLR to date (should still be in production too). It has 32mpx, wifi, bluetooth, super fast LiveView focusing with intelligent faces and eye-detection and MF focus-peaking assist, swivel touch screen, RAW compression etc.
It’s not some old-tech taking images, it’s a modern camera! But it can still take thousands of images per battery. It just blows ML cameras out with its performance.
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I have just bought a mirrorless camera, Canon R7. The reason wasn’t because mirrorless had to be better than D-SLR. But what surprised me is that I have a 4K video camera or a still camera at the flick of a switch. BTW, despite over 700 focus points I reckon a Canon D-SLR would have slightly better focusing
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As if paid features were not bad enough they only give you 4 slots on top of that, absolutely ridiculous as vector graphics for the lines must not even be 1kb in size per graph and I’m sure the camera has a enough internal storage for a lot more.
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I so wished magic lantern was all brands compatible !
Unlocking functionality as a subscription is really making me sick … 
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Mirrorless are also faster when it comes to shots per second, specially with no blackout, useful for action/wildlife. They are also more compact and lighter, even if pentax makes very small DSLR’s, they’ll still be bigger than the smaller mirrorless cameras.
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Test on the capabilities of image stabilisation (sensor + lens) on the new lumix line applied to video mode (slight crop trade-off for added shot stability) is having attractive results as well, but yeah, I’m inclined to join the rant made by already mentioned here youtuber “James Popsy” when he says that new technologies and improvements added to new cameras are not as impressive and useful when it comes to stills as what have been added/achieved in previous generations.
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Imagine a world in which cameras allowed you to add your own LUTs and arbitrary frame line PNGs, and maybe even had a little Lua extension API for custom exposure series and suchlike… wouldn’t that be neat?
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An interesting point is that most, if not all (? I’d have to compare), of those features are also in my lower-tier T8i (850D), albeit in a smaller, less rugged and slightly different composite (not magnesium?) body. But I’d still opt for the 90D instead, given a choice. If it had a FF sensor, absolutely.
Probably not what you had in mind, but here it is:
I did not check everything in full detail, but the functionality is there.
And from the minimal contact I had with ARRI:
you call them, they will deliver if it is possible in any way.
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My inner nerd would love that rabbit hole… but I am afraid that I would be spending my time writing Lua extensions instead of photography. I get much more enjoyment from grabbing an M42 lens from the local flea market and playing with it than extra firmware features.
I require relatively little of my camera firmware: A/S/M modes, reasonable AF for stills, dials for exposure compensation, and zebra stripes.
The extras I like are a histogram, bracketing, burst mode, selftimer, and lots of physical buttons I can assign to customization. I shoot raw so I do everything else in post-processing.
I don’t want my camera to become a computer, because I already spend my workday staring at a screen.
As for features like this, I basically would not care. I expect the manufacturer to fix bugs, but not to add features for free.
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The two cameras actually differ quite a bit.
Canon 850D has 24mpx, 1/4000, 95% viewfinder coverage, while 90D has 32.5mpx, 1/8000, 100% VF coverage, higher battery life, better flash, top lcd screen, faster continuous AF, weather-sealed body etc.
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IIRC, Magic Lantern provided the Lua scripting for older Canons. Custom LUTs are apparently a thing in some new Panasonic cameras, and custom frame lines are a payed feature in that one Sony. My examples are therefore clearly feasible.
Well, a man can dream.
Unfortunately Pentax has had a paid for firmware feature for some time. There’s a, Japanese market only, graduated density firmware you have to pay for. It gives a ui for some kind of bracketing function.
They have also had “custom image” looks that were tied to specific new lenses. The custom image looks are similar to Fuji’s film simulations but with more knobs to tune.
The latter is pretty minor, probably just a way of generating content for marketing etc but unfortunately shows that they are thinking along these lines.
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You’re right – I’m thinking of the 80D being closer. When I bought mine I was initially planning on the 80D but for what I shoot couldn’t justify the extra cost.
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Interesting. I knew about the second (weird!) but not the first.
Kind of irrelevant to me - much like @Tamas_Papp mentioned above, I don’t use many features.
Exactly. I don’t even care about the bracketing, zebra stripes or (most of the time) histogram.
I do like buttons (customizable if need be) for AF-on, AE-lock, AF/MF and ISO, while AF tracking is useful for my motorsport photography.
But I’m not really hard to please in regard to in camera features. 
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I am not arguing that they aren’t. Lots of things are feasible, but they only provide benefits to a small fraction of users.
I am not sure about that. First, currently most manufacturers don’t mind if you use Magic Lantern or a similar firmware hack, it is your choice and not their problem.
Second, adding tons of customizability in the form of an open firmware complicates the service process: in order to determine if you have a hardware or a firmware issue, they have to reinstall the standard firmware first because God only knows what super-customized firmware the client could be running. And this is not even considering that firmware bugs can, in theory, damage your camera.
Frankly, I am quite content that 99% of the time I can treat my camera and lens as “just hardware”: I may do the occasional firmware update but I don’t want to deal with the rest. I am maintaining enough devices already, including about 8 Linux machines, 4 mobile phones, 5 routers (all this includes stuff for relatives who cannot or don’t want to do this themselves), not a week passes without upgrades.
One reason I love my Kindle is because it Just Works 
, it has firmware and all that stuff but I get to ignore that most of the time.
BTW, I struggle to understand why custom gridlines would be worth $150 for anyone. Just add some margins to the composition and crop in post processing.
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In today’s world this is becoming increasingly a thing to persue. A modern example is music hardware, nowadays you can do everything with plugins and vsts, but people still buy hardware boxes, even if they are the same algorithm as the plugin, but in a tactile enclosure people can use and fiddle. Give me knobs/buttons over a screen/menu any day of the week 
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