Canon Digital Rebel Hacked Into A Pseudo-10D 585
Reverb9 writes "When Canon introduced the Digital Rebel, the world's first entry-level Digital SLR camera, many remarked on its similarities to the 10D , its $500 more expensive big brother. In fact, the two cameras share much of the same technology and so Canon implemented a number of software-based limitations to avoid destroying sales of the professional-oriented 10D. Now, a new hack that restores a previously hidden menu along with a few additional tricks has added nearly all of those 10D features to the Rebel, with an arguably superior user interface to boot. Canon has so far said little on the hack but certainly cannot be happy with its potential effect on sales. This is, however, a reality that more corporations are having to confront. In an era where programming labour is relatively cheap and computer connectivity more frequent can artificial, marketing-driven, barriers between technology products, last?"
Makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
Stickin' it to the man (Score:5, Insightful)
That arguement is rediculous. What part of Canon's market that will shell out for that camera will apply this hack? Probably almost none of it, if they can find it or understand it. So that leaves the likes of the slashdot crowd, and that really isn't a big enough group to put a dent into Canon's sales.
seriously... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
No worries! (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, what will happen to these pros when the next Canon firmware obliterates this hack? If the firmware provides needed fixes that they can't get without losing their "Rebel/10D", they're going to be mighty unhappy.
So I doubt Canon will be too worried about this: their target audience for the 10D isn't the hack-using geekerati, it's professionals. People who rely on their cameras aren't about to compromise reliability just to save a (relatively) few $$.
Programming Labour (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not necesarily that programming labour is cheap. I'm my opinion, the increase in connectivity has lead to an increase in efficiency, whereby the same code gets reapplied to many more applications than before the onset of the Internet.
IMO, the per hour cost of programming labour has not really changed. The cost of programming labour, per unit produced, has dropped.
Re:Ah... the first of a start. (Score:5, Insightful)
By what rationale? Neither "crippling" by the manufacturer, nor "uncrippling" by the end user should be a crime. Making either illegal is sheer idocy.
Overclocking? (Score:3, Insightful)
~Berj
Nice marketing technique (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Charge a more realistic price for a 'feature reduced' version;
3. Watch as it gets hacked;
4. Then watch sales climb high as people begin to believe (under false pretences) that they have got 'one over' on the company - people love a free ride or a good 'bargain'.
I like it!
Crying Crockadile Tears! (Score:3, Insightful)
It can only be a good thing for Cannon too?
From the Dilbert Princliple (1996) (Score:4, Insightful)
Scott,
Here's a mindboggling stupid idea from our Marketing Department that you might be able to use. We make [type of machine]. A new version of our product is both cheaper and faster. A great breakthough, right?
Well marketing wants Engineering to slow the unit down so they have a low cost unit to sell. Then sell them upgrades to full speed at an enormous price. These would be physically identical, just one would have the code messed up on purpose to run slow.
So does this mean [type of machine] = Digital Cameras ?
Re:No worries! (Score:3, Insightful)
But you're a fool if you buy any equipment and put implicit trust in it, even if it came pristine from the manufacturer.
When you buy something you have to depend on, you test it out. Many times. Under all possible conditions that you may need it for.
You only need your equipment to fail once in a clutch situation to learn this lesson.
Flip side: apply the hack, and test out your equipment. If it works, that's fabulous. If it doesn't, you're wiser than most other people, either way.
Re:No worries! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah... the first of a start. (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be nothing preventing me from altering the software on the camera I bought. It's like telling me I can't write notes in the book I bought because it's not licensed for it. I don't agree to license the software in the camera btw, I buy the camera.
Not a huge impact... (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't necessarily mean that any significant number of people are going to do it, either. Look at CPU overclocking for example... Both Intel and AMD allow it, so it obviously isn't hurting the sales of their high-end parts too much. Even considering retail seperate from OEM. If they felt like they could make significantly more money by locking the multipliers and FSB, they certainly would have done so many generations ago.
The other thing to consider with Canon is the costs involved... To modify the cheaper model enough to make this impossible would probably cost them more than they will lose with this hack out in the open.
Re:Ah... the first of a start. (Score:3, Insightful)
Distasteful, sure. But I won't buy a plow that locks up at night if I want to plow at night. Or maybe I will and I'll hack the clock on it. Nobody should be able to stop you from selling such a plow, and nobody should be able to stop me from doing whatever I please to the plow once it becomes my property. Seems simple to me. So long as you let buyers know the limitations of the plow, everything turns out fine.
Is it the right thing to do? (Score:2, Insightful)
R&D and all things that it took to develop the 10D, Canon definitely deserves the extra they charge for it. As much as I or anyone else wants something for nothing, these cameras are not outrageously priced and I believe it a fair price they ask for it.
I can't get to the article so I have no idea what the hack is, but if it's a matter of firmware, I think they should have pulled a Handspring and used ROMs rather than PROMs in the Rebel.
Re:Stickin' it to the man (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it could also be argued that this is driving people to the 300D because they can get professional features at an amateur price just means that canon gets more sales anyway, right?
Re:Can artificial, marketing-driven, barriers last (Score:4, Insightful)
I also remember how thousands of hackers won out in the end, and have libdvdcss and libdvdread installed on their systems. And remember how DVD-Jon was aquitted? Twice? That was sweet.
It's too bad that the DMCA brought us all down in the end. Every day i lament the fact that I can't download pirated movies off the internet before they're released in the theatre, and that I also can't watch dvd's on my computer.
It really sucks.
Re:Stickin' it to the man (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's crap like this that... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Communist countries are that-a-way --->
Seriously.
There is no such thing as a "fair price"; consult the relevant economics theory to learn why, which won't fit in a Slashdot post. If people are buying it, with a fair choice on a open market (and if anybody replies to this message as if I didn't include that clause I will mercilessly mock you), then the price is fair. No other definition makes sense.
The idea of the market value of an item being the cost of labor to produce it went out with the 17th century, and unless you want to return to a 17th century economy, I suggest that we leave that idea safely in the dust bin of history, where it belongs.
Oh please, this does not make a Rebel into a 10d (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the "propriety" of crippling functionality, get a clue. The fact that a company can give something away at no cost doesn't mean that it is evil if it doesn't.
Look at it this way: The price for the low function and high function products is probably lower (over time, ceteris parabus, etc. etc.) because the development cost is amortized over a larger market which includes the low and high function products instead of just the high function products.
Of course the company could distribute the benefits of the larger manufacturing run to different market segments depending on compeitition... but somewhere, if the market is competitive, the consumer is a winner, if the company can sell more of those chips by crippling some of them.
Think about it.
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Many cars that are imported from other markets, or must serve a single market (domestically) that may require different standards in different areas (emissions from state to state, with California being the most notorious), lead automakers to "play it safe" many times, and go with what will work in the most markets possible. So this would mean selling cars that adhere to California's emissions standards in states that would allow for less restrictive intake/exhaust/fuel management systems because in some cases it's cheaper and easier than having a "Flordia car" and a "California car" (not to mention of the difficulties that would arise moving the car from one state to another, post-sale).
A simple solution is to reprogram the ECU, which can even be done at some dealerships. Sure, it may cost money, but that's generally for the use of the equipment. That Digital Rebel didn't hack itself. Someone bought a computer, and used that. So it wasn't "free" either.
Re:Is it the right thing to do? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow take some marketing courses... or read (Score:5, Insightful)
1.Since this camera was announced we knew it would be hacked it was just a matter of time.
2.Canon knew it would be hacked.
3.If you only knew how many times products are crippled/disabled and priced lower so that high end stuff still sells? anyone remember 3.5 single sided floppies? Companies do what is in there own best interest.. err in the stockholders best interest. Do some of you really think Canon is doing this to pull one over on you? No they are doing what will make the most money for their shareholders.
4.I think the anaology to overclocking is not valid. Chips are clocked at set speeds becuase they are stable at that speed, If AMD/Intel sold the 2.4 rated chip as a 3.0 which it is in some cases IDENTICAL, people would complain since the 2.4 rated chips can't really handle those speeds and crash. AMD and Intel love overclockers cuz they buy more chips then anyone else, since they fry things all the time.
5.All in all this will not really affect 10d sales, for all the reasons listed above, stability, ability to interface with higher end equipment, better case, higher quality parts, and certain features that the 300d can't so at all.
6.300d sales will go up since this just became the geek camera of the year.
Also on a side note no one has mentioned that people have been hacking the Canon lenses to get more f-stops and zoom out of them for awhile. Canon restricts some lenses since the quality becomes adversly affected at min and max. So some people have removed the stops and taken the quality hit for more versitility.
What are you talking about? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this something new? A professional model camera that is expensive but worth every penny to a professional photographer.
"Sorry cannon, $1500 to take a picture?"
What about "sorry mercedes, $75,000 to drive to Taco Bell"?
You're argument is baseless because you're implying canon only makes expensive $1500 cameras when this is clearly wrong. Companies like canon have been in photography for years and their higher price comes with years of quality and service.
Or you were joking, I can't tell. It's too late for sarcasm.
Re:Nikon D70? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a modern car where something similar cannot be done? My Jeep could have 50+ more hp if I wanted it too, but it would take the whole tank of gas to get to the end of my driveway. All manufacturers tune their engine to find a good balance between fuel economy, handling, and power. Just because that balance can be adjusted does not mean that the manufacturer has been ripping us off.
It's not that simple (Score:3, Insightful)
That and the price difference between 10D and 300D add up to quite a lot.
Nothing new. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not exactly "high tech", you can get the same effect by adding a bleed valve in the pressure line to the wastegate diaphragm for a dollar's worth of parts from the hardware store.
You can also disconnect the wastegate actuator and maybe get an extra 100HP for a few moments.
The problem with this kind of mod is that folks see how easily the turbo controls can be modified and think "a little is good so more is better", leading to melted pistons, blown head gaskets (if you're lucky), etc. Sometimes these things are programmed conservatively so that next year's model can boast ten more horsepower, sometimes it's because there's an inherent weakness in the engine or transaxle and they don't want to have to do a lot of warranty work.
Often these power increases come at the expense of reduced engine life, like turning up the voltage going to a light bulb to get brighter light where 10% more light can equal 50% less life expectancy.
One thing though, the 1.8 makes 250HP stock? That doesn't seem right (just going by your figure of 25HP being a 10% increase).
Re:Who Should Be Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the camera not do something it was advertised as being able to do? Didn't think so. The product can be modified to have functionality it was never advertised or claimed as having. That is what you call false advertising?
As far as your claims about single-sided floppy disks. Yes, you could usually notch the other side. What you were paying for with a DS disk was the fact that the other side had gone through testing and was covered under the warranty.
If one side of media failed QA, do you think it was scrapped? Hell no. It was put in the 'sell only as single-sided' bin.
If some or most of the disks in that box had passed QA on both sides...So what? This was back in the days when disks cost enough that you would take advantage of the warranty if one was defective. Only covering one side under warranty makes the product cost less to sell.
In the early 90's we went through the same thing with HD 1.44 disks...Yeah, cutting a hole in it would usually make it work for high density use. One to two years later, I noticed that of the disks that failed...Most were 'converts'.
Do you think a manufacturer is going to cover a disk under warranty after you have cut a hole in it? Hello no, nor should they. Do you think risking losing a disks worth of data is worth saving a couple of bucks for a business? Hello no. Was it worth it to you or I for copying our games and stuff? Hell yes.
I don't have a problem with this.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, they've already got production on the higher end model. It's a professional unit and is in line with competition prices.
So, they swap out some metal with plastic, remove some features in software, and sell the camera for a lower priced segment.
It's likely that they wouldn't have been able to do that at all if they had to design a whole new unit from the ground up for the lower market segment. It would have been too expensive for all the R&D and the new production line. In the end, the new lower cost model would have cost too much.
So what would you rather have? An inexpensive camera mostly based from a high end model or a low end camera built from the ground up and costs more with less quality parts?
I think it's an acceptable practice and it works out for the consumer in the end. Better product and less money.
Re:Is it the right thing to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Should be considered fraud. (Score:1, Insightful)
If it doesnt' cost more to make the high-end one (and it obviously doesn't if they the same damn camera), why not sell it full featured for cheap, while customers flock to it for it's awsomeness among rave reviews and compeditors struggle to keep up with the feature/price level? Raise that bar and stand out that much as a company, even if your lower end model has to have a slightly higher price then you planned.
It's like selling a Mack truck with a torque limiter for cheap. Why not just whoop everyone's ass with your superior product for less than all the other guys?
Plus, there will always be hacks like this, no matter what. People where willing to chip their beloved video game consoles since the first PlayStation (before?), no one holds a digital camera in as high a regard as their video game console. Or their DVD player, or their Stereo, or maybe even their cel phone (which can back up all the important stuff onto the computer anyway). I mean, no one wants to loose a device but we're talking risk here.
It cheapens the image of a company, that's for sure. Now, if they keep their mouths closed about this hack, and just say "If you're enough of a geek to do this, go for it, we'll still get rich off the suckers", that's acceptible. However, I dont' think they have the right to sell someone a product which can do everything, "secretly* lock it off and someone finds a way to enable it. If you dont' want someone to have it, you can't sell it to them. Not locked off by software, not even locked off by hardware. You can't build the capability in at all.
Imagine the uproar if it was found out that Windows XP Home was the same as XP Pro with hidden options and a throttle control?
I dunno, just my humble opinions.
Re:Stickin' it to the man (Score:1, Insightful)
When I submitted this story, this is one of the main arguments I expected. My response is this: yes, the hack will never reach the awarenes of those consumers who walk into Best Buy and grab the Digital Rebel because its the neatest new camera. They will never know of the hack and the vast majority will not miss the reduced functionality either.
However, for the target market of the 10D, which is serious amateurs, semi-pros and professionals, I think the hack has the potential to have an effect. This type of photography is a small enough community that is increasingly computer and Internet-savy. When researching their alternatives quite likely will find out about the hack through some of the boards where professionals frequent like fredmiranda.com, dpreview.com, robgalbraith.com etc.
When pros are considering a second body to compliment their higher-end dSLR or amateurs are thinking about experimenting with digital than the Digital Rebel has become a very serious alternative to the 10D. $500 is a serious price differential for a larger memory buffer and metal body.
A different market (Score:3, Insightful)
Professionals aren't likely to want to trust their bread and butter to a hack. They might buy a Rebel as a second body (which they might have anyways), and try the hack on that (as a second body). On the other hand, the few lost sales are likely to be offset by the increased sales that this article on Slashdot is likely to generate.
Case in point: Back when the APEX AD-600A Region hack was referenced on Slashdot, I (and about a half-dozen of my workmates) was one of the many people who went out to buy one specifically for this reason. To give you an idea as to just how likely I was to buy one otherwise: When I got home, I realized that I'd have to get my TV working again (it had died about 2 years previously, and I hadn't been bothered to fix it).
Re:Ah... the first of a start. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not in this case, I fear. Microsoft's satanic EULAs derive their dark power from the fact that, if I wish to use their software, I must first copy it - from their CD to my hard disk, and from my hard disk to my RAM. This violates Microsoft's copyright, and so (it is argued) I need to obtain a licence from them in order to do this.
But when I use the software installed on a chip in a camera, what copy am I making? None. So I do not need any licence from Canon to use their software - I physically own this one instance of it, and since I am not copying it then I am not infringing Canon's copyright.
Re:Time to buy. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll be wanting a Nikon F4 then
But seriously, when you hire a photographer, you aren't paying for someone to point the camera and press the shutter button. You're paying for someone to take the responsibility for delivering pictures. For a one-time event like a wedding, a photographer simply can't risk equipment failure. A photographer working away from civilization, such as a nature photographer or a photojournalist, simply can't risk equipment failure. That's why these people are willing to pay $5000 or more for the EOS-1D and the like.
The people buying the 10D are the ones who can't justify the cost of a 1D, but need more reliability than a consumer model can give them. Maybe they like to travel a lot for example. The people buying the 300D won't have reliability near the top of the priorities. That's not to say that the 300D is necessarily flimsy, but it's just not built to take abuse. Canon made no secret that the sensor in the 300D is exactly the same as the one in the 10D, and unlike Nikon, all EF lenses work perfectly with all EOS bodies, so image quality isn't a reason to choose between them.
Re:Can artificial, marketing-driven, barriers last (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lot of shafts going around ATM
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no. Clearly Cannon can still make a per-unit profit on selling the less expensive camera, but they still have to recover their engineering costs. For cutting edge technology, those are probably non-trivial.
Cannon no doubt developed a strategy for repaying them based on selling X number of full-featured units at a high price, and Y crippled units at a low price.
The whole reason for releasing products with intentionally crippled functionality (which in the electronics world goes back at least to Intel's 486SX, and probably much further) is to minimize engineering overhead by not having to design a new product. While it seems ridiculous to us to sell a product with important features disabled, its a very natural side effect of the economies of scale that the electronics industry has created. That is, it's cheaper to make a million of the same chip, and break half of them, then to make half a million of two separate designs.
Put yet another way: You can bitch all you want, but if Cannon hadn't been able to release the crippled camera, they might not have made the thing in the first place.
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't deny that. BUT, it's not about whether it's cheaper to produce them, is it? I see it as a question of how the manufacturer believes they can best maximize their revenue.
To do this, they produce a high end version which they sell at a premium price to a limited customer base. To protect that price point, they also sell a dumbed down/crippled version of the same product, or something very close but with some minimal, minor differences that aren't really worth the difference in suggested retail price for most consumers. Where this gets irritating is when the high-end mode's extra features aren't enough to justify the premium markup, or when the low-end model's crippling is so cheaply avoidable or makes the model pretty much unacceptable for anyone who wants to own more than a toy.
Now, it could be that the low-end product that's aimed at the mass market is a loss leader, and the company really only makes its money off of the high end product. But that's highly unlikely, because what would be the incentive of producing the cheaper version at all if that were the case?
Clearly, the low-end model *is* profitable, then. It's just that the high-end model is *more* profitable. BUT, if the manufacturer would eliminate the low-end model from the product line entirely, and move the high-end model down to the price point of the vanquished crippled version, or maybe just slightly higher, they could provide better quality to a much broader market. But they don't, and as a result only the wealthy can afford the "luxury" of high-quality, and the masses have to accept whatever they can afford.
What's *wrong* about this is that it wouldn't take much to align the economy in such a way that the high quality features were available to all equally and at a more reasonable price than the premiums charged for the limited market products due to the benefits of the economies of scale that you mention.
Situations such as (my favorite example) $500 MS Office for the corporate world/$99 MS Works for the home market should simply not exist. Instead, we should see a $150 MS Office for EVERYONE, and no interoperability problems created by two incompatible solutions to the same problem. You shouldn't have a $700 Photoshop for graphic artist professionals and a $99 Photoshop Lite, which is the same product but for certain features being disabled when the binaries are compiled, for home users. Instead should have a $200 Photoshop for everyone.
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Instead should have a $200 Photoshop for everyone.
Excellent post. You really made me question some of my thinking on the subject.
Have you considered, however, that adding back all of that crippled functionality can actually be a *negative* to many consumers? I have a friend who wanted to get a Photoshop-ish paint program to do basic image editing that got no more complicated than cropping and un-red-eyeing digital photos and a little messing around with scanning. He was determined to buy something on the level of Photoshop Lite, but I installed Gimp for him since it's more or less the full Photoshop. I was showing him the zillions of features that were available when he said "What the hell is all *that* for? All I want to do is send pictures to my mother!" Ignoring the whole commercial vs. open source aspect of it, I think there's a very large group of consumers out there who really *don't* want the full versions of products. If you get out of the hacker mindset then there really *is* such a thing as too much power / too many options. By just selling one version of Photoshop / Office with every function enabled, how many sales will actually be *lost?*
Also consider the fact that enabling those few added functions are what suddenly makes a product / software package go from being a "thing to use a little around the house" to "a professional tool to use to earn a living." How much of the value of a camera or imaging software comes from what that product represents in future income to the consumer? Does that make the product worth more money? Should the added value of those few menu options be ignored since they're essentially just a switch flipped in the compiler? I think your questions about luxury and high-quality are good, but one man's "high quality" is another man's "too damned complicated!"
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:2, Insightful)
I tend to think that this is more of a problem for user interface design. But I can also appreciate that for some people, all they really need to do what they want might be included in, say, WordPad.exe, and such a user might consider MSOffice to be grossly bloated and unnecessary.
I also tend to think that "professionals" might also tend to fear what would happen to their industries if the tools they use to get their work done suddenly became cheaply available to the masses. I woule expect see a lot more people taking a DIY approach rather than pay for an expert to do the work. But this is really a win because it enables more people to do things they otherwise might not be able to afford, and would serve to reduce the cost of services and/or improve productivity, and this is after all what tools are supposed to do for us. For the forseeable future, for truly good results when it counts, I don't think you can beat an experienced professional sitting in the driver's seat. The good ones will still find their services in demand.
For your example, an "acceptable" solution might be a script or plug-in designed to work with a fully-featured Photoshop or GIMP which would automate his specific task and make the process simple and easy. This would be preferrable to stripping the components away (assuming that the system he's running is not strapped for hardware requirements and could actually benefit from a leaner app). It would also be better than the self-modifying "basic/advanced" user interface that tends to annoy and get in the way of actually using the software
There's certainly much to be said against a one-size fits all solution -- it depends not just on what the user's actual problem is, but what their system limitations are, as well. A camera phone might not be the best place to run Photoshop, but would still benefit from some very basic and lightweight tool that could perform rudimentary image adjustments.
Re:Nikon D70? (Score:1, Insightful)
For non-photographers: when mirror lock-up is enabled, the reflex mirror (reflects light from the lens to the viewfinder) is raised out of the way a few seconds prior to the actual exposure being taken, allowing the vibrations caused by the mirror action to dampen out which would otherwise cause unsharpness in the photograph. This is very important when taking pictures through a telescope or microscope.
You confuse the 10D and the 1D (Score:3, Insightful)
The 1D has a crop factor of 1.4, and is also far more expensive. I think that's what you're thinking of, but it's far more than either the 300D or 10D ($4500 at bhphoto.com). That's why it's really in a different category from either the 10D or 300D.
From DPreview.com:
10D sensor:
22.7 x 15.1 mm CMOS sensor
300D sensor:
22.7 x 15.1 mm CMOS sensor
1D/MkII sensor:
28.7 x 19.1 mm CMOS
Re:Shush, shush, all of you! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Can artificial, marketing-driven, barriers last (Score:3, Insightful)
You wish. But as it happens, DMCA is about MORE than copyright. (If it's only purpose was to protect copyright, then it wouldn't have had to be a new law). The DMCA outlaws things permitted by copyright.
There's no substantial difference between those two scenarios. You can obviously see that the authorities will come after you in the first case, so why not in the second?