Canon Quality Control SUCKS, Part II – Judgement Day
After receiving a lot of feedback from my previous post on Canon Quality Control sucking bigtime, I thought it would be good to write an update. Before you read on, please read my previous post including the comments to make sure you know where I’m coming from.
A day after my previous post, I noticed that I got banned from the forums at DPReview. And my thread on that forum where I discussed my blog post got deleted as well. Apparently the moderator(s) there, whoever they are (Phil Askey?), don’t like the fact that I seemed to have enough courage to question the many issues Canon seems to have with their DSLR products. Even though I mentioned that the basis of my post was not only because I had experienced issues first hand, but also that I had noticed a trend on the forums where you had posts discussing focus issues every day. And to this day, this trend continues, as I have shown in the comments section of my previous post. Click here to check for yourself. As you will also notice from the feedback I got in the comments section of my previous post, there are many who have issues and agree with me, and you will find many more posts with similar issues by just searching on Google. Today I even noticed a thread on DPReview, where the poster said:
Seems every other thread you read here is about a camera and/or lens not focussing properly or some other issue that results in lousy photos. I’ve had lots of good examples of bad photos
I’m glad I am not the only one who noticed.
I also got feedback from a few professional photographers operating some of the popular digital imaging sites online today, and they also wrote to me in agreement. I noticed however that very few of them talk about these issues openly. And indeed it seems many are afraid to speak up, perhaps afraid to hurt their relationship with Canon or others. Who knows? I was surprised to find photographer Lloyd Chambers courageous enough to post a comment on my previous post where he just honestly admitted to the many issues with Canon lenses, even mentioning:
I would estimate based on my own experience that somewhere between 30-50% of brand new pro-grade lenses have at least mild optical issues, and some, like the 70-200/4 have moderate to severe ones-.
The 30-50% estimate is roughly what I thought myself based on what I have seen online. And I don’t know about you, but that’s A LOT. If this is true, it proves Canon’s quality control is bad. When I browsed around Lloyd’s website, one thing made me understand how he could speak his mind so freely:
Diglloyd.com accepts no manufacturer advertising. Much content is free [free articles, blog] , but paid reviews help finance the site. Equipment used for paid reviews is purchased through normal retail channels; manufacturer discounts are not accepted.
It’s easy to be honest when you don’t accept ads or other gifts from manufacturers. You don’t have to worry about losing income, losing deals or hurting your relationship with them. I wish more people could be like this. It’s easier to trust Lloyd’s reviews on his website because of this.
But on DPReview? I mentioned issues and got banned. Perhaps there are things we can conclude from this. But I’ll leave that to your own imagination.
But again, what is very clear is that Canon has a major quality control issue on their hands, and every day users write to complain about it, as I have shown here. And again I have to remind you, this is just on one site, searching on Google reveals lots more.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 9:05 am by Karel Donk
and is filed under 
April 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
It’s not as easy to be honest as you think! With the 7 Zeiss ZF Lenses in my review, not accepting the rather substantial “VIP discount” hurts, but it’s a slippery slope once one goes down that path. Who wouldn’t want such discounts?! I pay the lowest publicly available price (usually B&H photo) and/or I buy elsewhere and/or buy used after I return any evaluation units.
You won’t find objective information in the manufacturer marketing brochures (oops, I mean photo magazines might have “O” and “P” in their names). Follow the money. Yet some people think that paying $20 for stale and rehashed printed content is a better deal than real objective analysis. You do get what you pay for.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:52 am
[...] The price of about $3000 for Nikon’s D700 will further bring down the inflated prices for Canon camera bodies. Canon won’t be selling the 1D Mark III anymore if they don’t drop the price to below $3000. Not that it matters, because since the release of the D3 and D300, Nikon has been the better choice for camera bodies. If you have to buy a new camera now, you should just invest in a Nikon body. It won’t surprise me at all to see pros switching to Nikon, as already seems to be the case everywhere. And with all the quality control issues at Canon (part 2), they make it very easy for you to decide. [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
[...] If you’re from Canon, I understand if you initially almost get a heart attack to see another post on my blog about Canon, especially since my last few posts about Canon were not very positive. Yes, there’s a lot that Canon needs to work on, and I’m quite sure that after the 1D Mark III autofocus fiasco the shit hit the fan at Canon in Japan. If you thought that was an isolated incident, think again. It appears to be part of a structural quality control problem at Canon and I’ve written about it here a few times. And after the release of the Nikon D3/300 and recently D700, I have it on good authority that the entire DSLR division at Canon was taken to their equivalent of DEFCON 1. Various Canon managers and engineers were hand delivered messages by actual ninja’s, threatening with “serious consequences” if things don’t get better in the near future. So I have to say, I’m very interested to see what Canon releases later this year. [...]
July 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am
[...] If you’re new to this, take the time to read my previous posts on Canon quality control here, here and here. It’s worth it especially if you are considering to buy Canon DSLR hardware. [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:53 am
[...] Bad quality control resulting in many defective products. (Part 1, Part 2) [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[...] the recent 1D Mark III autofocus fiasco. You would think that Canon would have learned from all the quality control issues they have had the last few years with camera bodies and lenses. But that sure didn’t [...]
December 30th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
[...] ago from the DPReview forums because of discussing Canon quality control issues. I wrote about that here. The Digital Picture launched their forums today and as a frequent visitor, I registered and posted [...]
February 16th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
[...] I have to tell you, sometimes I do wonder myself if I am working for a camera manufacturing company or the mafia. Seeing as how Canon likes to approach things sometimes, I can get confused. Last year one of my superiors in Japan actually wanted to send a ninja to DPReview’s Phil Askey “for handle him,” after DPReview posted a negative review of the EOS 50D. So it is no surprise that the good people at Canon Rumours are afraid to say anything about the shut down notice. They’ve had their own issues with Canon last year. A thread on the DPReview forums, discussing Canon’s shut down notice also seems to have vanished. From my website statistics logs, I can see that the thread existed at the following URL: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=31008091. I visited that thread yesterday and today, and know for a fact that it existed. This morning the thread was already up to 4 pages before it got taken down. Another thread discussing the issue still appears to be up: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=31018366. One can only speculate about what exactly happened to the missing thread. This is the first time I’ve experienced censorship on DPreview myself, but I have heard about it in the past. [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 1:41 am
One of the screw on the bottom of my 20D just fell off recently. You can imagine the rest.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
My Canon experience has been a living hell. My Rebel XTi went into “service” 5 times within 3 months for the same issue (that was present from day 1 but since I had no idea QC was in shambles, I never looked for issues until it became glaringly apparent.) The third, fourth and fifth times my L 70-200 F4 non-IS accompanied the XTi body to “service” (my 18-50 lens is a Sigma.) This combo produced consistently back-focused images. That was summer/fall 2007. It was a wearisome process, I had no idea I signed up to be Canon’s field-service engineer!!! While reviewing some images in January ‘09 I was confronted with the fact that things had not changed at all. I contacted Canon, and they *finally* agreed to do something *different*, swap my body (for a refurb of course.) The first weekend in May I got a good opportunity to test the setup again and it was STILL back-focusing. This time they swapped the lens (for a refurb again) and this copy may be front-focusing, the jury is still out. My main gripes: Canon’s own “system” (what system?) should have escalated my issue to customer service on the third pass through “service.” I had to dig and dredge the ‘net for a number that would get me to someone who could do something *other* than tell me “send it in to service.” And even then that was the first thing I was told, after 4 passes to “service”, I received no such thing. My other gripe: if this was some other electronics product bought from a brick and mortar store, they would have swapped it, for a NEW one, long ago. I worked electronics retail for almost 4 years, and if I would have put someone through what Canon put me through I would be minus a few teeth – no customer in their right mind would put up with this, yet Canon’s “system” doesn’t know how to do anything else, just send you through ONE MORE TIME. Wash, rinse REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT.
I can’t imagine relying on this gear for a living, and it’s a darn expensive hobby, too expensive to just flush it all and go with Nikon.
Thanks for making the truth known to the masses. RANT OFF.
May 25th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Canon fanboys use certain tactics when the integrity of their equipment or their deity (Canon) is put into question. I have compiled a list of the most common apologetics and accusations:
- you don’t know how to use your equipment.
- error 99’s are a normal feature.
- Nikon have errors as well, so it’s normal for Canon to have them.
- there is nothing wrong with the auto focusing system, it’s your fault.
- quality control costs money (as mentioned previously).
- it’s normal to recalibrate your lenses, even from a “L” range lens.
- lens hood are additional accessory and should be sold separately.
as we can see, circular reasoning and lying is a trait of the Canon fanboys and of Canon executive.
what I find most insulting is that a once great leader in photography will sell faulty DSLR cameras in exchange for your hard earned cash. Canon are seriously taking you for a bunch of fools, wake up people, there are alternatives.