Canon APS-H 1.3x mirrorless
Various reports have come in about a mirrorless camera from Canon that will use an APS-H (1.3x crop) sensor.
The plan within Canon is to keep the APS-H sensor size alive, as it won't be appearing in the next 1D.
Why APS-H?
1) They think that APS-C in general and their 1.6x (versus others' 1.5x) in particular is becoming increasingly difficult to improve on, update after update.
2) Sensor production costs have fallen and there isn't much difference betw 1.6x and 1.3x for Canon.
3) Canon develop a new 1.3x sensor for the 1D series every few years and no other camera shared the R&D cost with the 1D before, but this time round the 16MP sensor of 1D4 will have a new use.
4) Weight and size can be taken care of by design. So a larger sensor does not necessarily mean a heavier and bulkier package than the competition.
CR's Take
This all seems a little bit crazy to me. I'll reserve real judgement for the time being. I'll be paying close attention to the comments section to see what the tech folks think about this.
NL posted about this today as well.
cr
129 Comments
If a Canon DSLR owner switches to EVIL, said owner can switch to EVIL by any company whatsoever.
Considering Canon has problems keeping up with two lines of lenses, it might make sense switching to an EVIL camera by a company that doesn’t have such a problem.
Canon tend to care about having a very comprehensive lineup (the most comprehensive among all camera makers), from the simplest Elph or A-series to the 1D pro level, and just about anything inbeween.
Initially Canon abandoned bridge cameras (like G6 & Pro1, circa 2004) so that enthusiasts who are looking for a Canon would buy the newly introduced Rebels then, but few years later (2006) they re-introduced the G-series in the form of the G7.
The new class of EVIL/mirrorless has become just too important to be ignored by a company who cares about diversifying their products this much.
There is no contradiction, since that “ancient” white paper gives us the *proportional* number of sensors for the 3 sensor sizes that can be made for a given wafer size, which is 8 inches, and, more recently, 12 inches in diameter. My conclusion is simple, an MILC using an APS-H sensor would still be significantly higher-priced compared to the MILCs from competitor brands now, and that’s why I said it would be very unlikely to be made.
You said it by yourself “more recently, 12 inches”, so things have changed. And even for the 8″ wafer that was the way they used to divide it back in 2005, now they could do it differently, it is not an insurmountable limitation due to sensor areas, FYI APS-C= ~330mm2, APS-H= ~550mm2 & FF=864mm2. Another very important point suppose APS-H costs many times more than APS-C, but the price of both constitutes a very low % of the total camera cost, in that case sensor cost becomes a mute point.
see the reply in the bottom.