Canon Confuses Us All With The Announcement Of The M15P-CL

Canon Confuses Us All With The Announcement Of The M15P-CL

Canon Japan left us all scratching our heads with the announcement of the M15P-CL - A 15MP monochromatic industrial camera. Designed for the high accuracy of the manufacturing industry, the M15P-CL is not a camera shape or size you're familiar with, as it's designed for the Camera Link system. Whats weird about this? Perhaps the fact that it sports a Nikon F Mount.

While the press release doesn't say Nikon F Mount directly, the photo supplied with the press release shows that it is infact an F mount. Press Release Translated by DicaHub (and tried to be fixed by me)--

Key Features

This new product is a test for a camera's suitable quality and high accuracy required in the manufacturing industry, the quality inspection of optical components such as solar panels and a liquid crystal panel, the digital single-lens reflex camera. The inspection process which has prior to now, been done by the human eye, shifted to test using the cameras are detected in the high resolution, the market is increased more and more in the future growth is expected. Canon entered the industrial camera market as a new business to capture these market trends, by applying the technical skills gained in the existing business.

It is equipped with a CMOS sensor for low noise and high pixel

It is equipped with a newly developed CMOS sensor with high sensitivity that has been cultivated in the interchangeable lens camera EOS series, the black-and-white CMOS sensor of 15 million pixels. This helps to achieve a low noise over a wide dynamic range, and enables the inspection in high contrast. You can then, even test environment at low contrast under reflections the high-definition tone white / black, and to accurately detect defects such as foreign matter and fine scratches that can not be easily confirmed by the human eye.

Setting function contributing to the wide range of inspection power improvement

Brightness gain of the captured image when capturing the (sensitivity), and the like may be analog gain of the low noise (1 to 16 times) digital gain (1 to 16 times), 256 times the maximum to improve low noise It is equipped with a variety of configuration features that I made use of performance.

It is widely used in the industrial camera market, with the highest-speed transfer as possible and the output of the image is compatible with standard interface standard Camera Link.

The total world market for image input camera inspection of equipment, we have estimated to be about 18 billion yen in 2013. The market for industrial cameras of the number of pixels in excess of 10 million pixels, in response to the increased demand, such as television and high-definition smartphone, significant growth is expected in the future, among others. Canon plans to capture the market trends, by launching products with high added value, low-noise, multi-pixel, and then entered the industrial camera market. (Canon research)

 

Whether that made much sense to you is unknown, but that's the best translations could do. The untranslated press release is available here.

While Canon provided cameras with Nikon mounts in the early days for their industrial cameras, this is the first we've seen with it for a while. So is this a mark of Canon and Nikon coming together to provide the absolute best for the industry, or just a strange anomaly that we'll never see again?

[via CanonWatch]

Zach Sutton's picture

Zach Sutton is an award-winning and internationally published commercial and headshot photographer based out of Los Angeles, CA. His work highlights environmental portraiture, blending landscapes and scenes with portrait photography. Zach writes for various publications on the topic of photography and retouching.

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13 Comments

what exactly do you mean when you say it's for the manufacturing industry? What is the camera's intended use?

From the Press Release -- "quality inspection of optical components such as solar panels and a liquid crystal panel"

Basically, it sounds like it'll be used to detect scratches and other problems on highly sensitive components.

Quality control.

aah ok! thanks!

As i mentioned on the facebook page - the rather obvious reason for using f-mount (and the reason many industrial cameras use nikon f-mount is for the aperture selector ring on many nikon f-mount lenses. Canon afaik have not had an aperture selection ring since the FD mount lenses which are no longer in production, whereas nikon still has current production lenses with this feature.

They could have put a breech-lock mount on it... :-)

Always thought wouldn't it be cool if camera manufactures made their camera bodies to suit other lens mounts. You can keep all those lenses you invested over the years and try out different brand bodies easily for fun

It's actually quite standard for industrial/scientific to use f-mount lenses on larger sensor cameras (aps-c/full frame). Companies like Vision Research/Phantom and PCO usually offer the f-mount as standard and other mounts as options (including sometimes EF).

But It's mainly due to tradition, most industrial and lab cameras aren't Nikon or Canon so they used the F-mount because EF didn't have the aperture ring. So labs are now stocked with f-mount gear. This might change in the future now that Nikon has less and less lenses with the aperture rings. I don't know if aperture control for Nikon or Canon is harder to duplicate by third party manufacturers (that might have something to do with it as well).

So, yes it's a bit surprising to see a Canon camera with an F-mount but it'd be sitting on shelves otherwise.

is there actual any point in this? arn`t Phase one IQ backs, and the Medium format cameras used for INDUSTRIAL cameras? the 35mm equivalent sensors arn`t that great compared to the larger sensors, or as good as film really

Did you read the article? It's not for fashion, magazine, editorial or product photography industries but rather manufacturing, quality control and research. They need cameras with all kinds of weird specs and are typically only operated via computer.

yeah i read, and i know its not for that sort of photography, but there are digital backs specialised for this style or work no?

Welcome to the Dark Side, Canon!
Why make an EF mount camera with an F-mount adapter once you are sure that the industry knows the truth about Canon lenses and dont want them?