With this news about the r7ii’s delay…are we ready to spot ourselves on the Kubler-Ross curve?

JRetz said:

I have been waiting for the R7MKii to replace my 90D. I could not see going to the R7 as it was not much of an upgrade for me and I do have a R5 as well as a Nikon Z6. For my wildlife photography (the majority of my photography) I use my R5 with a RF100-500 and RF200-800 along with my 90D with my EF 800 f/5.6. I was hoping for the R7 MKII to upgrade this. Since the delays in the R7 MKII I have been looking at the OM System OM-1 MKII for more range and better performance than my 90D. Looks like I will be adding the OM-1MKII to my camera systems and keeping the 90D for a while. I could even go to the OM-5 MKII and have an upgrade over my 90D and better performance over the R7. Canons marketing strategies has lost them another customer and longtime Canon user. Also, since I use the Nikon for street and travel photography, I can get rid of that and just use the OM System to cover all my photo needs.

Click to expand...

You could also replace the Nikon Z6 with the Nikon Z6iii which is a fairly good wildlife option in and of itself. Yes the R6ii and R6iii even without a partially stacked sensor are marginally better, but its minuscule differences at best.

AlanF said:

However, Art Morris's website, birdsasart, was very influential and he was a staunch proponent of the 400 prime, and he initially ran down the zoom. But, eventually he changed his mind and went over to the original zoom.

Click to expand...

I think a lot of people do jump to zooms when the differences in cost and comforts converge appropriately. I think even the modern 100-300 2.8 pretty much well splashes writing on the wall for any similar prime, right? Like for the same cash, more or less, why buy a 100, 200, 300 2.8 prime when all can be had for prime like quality and zoom convenience? This ever has been Canon's long term direction, I think. For good reason.

But I also have you, in my mind, as a Formula 1 for BiF kinda guy with the cash and experience. Of course you're right on how much better some options are, but does that apply to the people driving Hondas? Only while they're in the stands cheering, not once they leave the parking lot.

AlanF said:

Mind you, he was one of the first to go to Nikon and then Sony. So, you are not right!

Click to expand...

Haha! For the love of life, Art — WHY?

But ya got me: Art jumped so all of those lens sales of the 400mm f/5.6 where bogus and I'm wrong. I mean, Canon just kept pumping them out from 1992 through 2022 because they were bored and stuff.

AlanF said:

The first version bettered it

Click to expand...

But so marginally in terms of the mark I, and who shoots animals or people in the lens corner? Kind of like maybe this truck tows more than that truck in the same class, but then one might also consider sway control. Even with the zooms available and evolving rapidly. And even when the II came out big names still talked-up the prime for beginners. Some examples:

The Digital Picture maintains this statement:

The Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM Lens is popular for bird photography and especially birds in flight as it offers lots of reach for a reasonable cost in a relatively light package. Good vignetting performance helps keep even blue skies as they should be - evenly blue. Other uses include general wildlife photography and well-lit field sports.

Click to expand...

Honestly, if you're just dipping your toe into animals (maybe birds, could also be deer or mountain climbers) then these lingering endorsements of yesteryear are more than enough to justify a minimal investment at the time (new) or now (used). If people like what they see, then they know spending the cash on the DO, or zoom, or a new RF lens would probably give them smiles.

AlanF said:

the magnificent EF 100-400mm II rendered it totally obsolete.

Click to expand...

Well, yes — but that didn't stop people from promoting the prime for beginners. Let's consider:

The 400 f/5.6L has been in the Canon lineup for 5 years longer than the original 100-400 L IS, yet it is a good performing lens with image quality essentially equivalent to the 100-400 L II and less distortion (compared at 400mm). The 400 f/5.6L is lighter, longer and considerably less expensive [...] I find the zoom to be a far more useful lens.

Click to expand...

Bold emphasis is mine.

This lens fits in even my smallest and lightest travel kit, and I have confidence when using it wide open that it’s going to give me excellent performance. Sure, I’d like it to be an f/4, but the extra weight and bulk wouldn’t be welcome. [...] I definitely miss Image Stabilization, and wish that Canon would re-issue this lens with IS, but since I will be using it tripod mounted 90% of the time it’s no real hardship.

Click to expand...

And just because I wanted to know, we tested the old, but excellent Canon 400mm f/5.6 L prime lens, for comparison. Few people shoot it anymore, but there’s a reason it’s remained in production for decades. It’s not quite as good as the 100-400 IS L, but still, an excellent performer considering how old the design is.

Click to expand...

AlanF said:

The 500/4.6 was OK for BIF when you are at 1/3200s and don't need IS. But for hand held shooting in other than good light, a tripod or support was essential, and if you have ever tried to focus a hand held 400mm lens without IS, it is very difficult as the image darts all over the view finder.

Click to expand...

I 100% agree with you about the hassle and comforts. And cash being no issue your argument wins every time.

But if you put the two lenses on the table in front of my kid, or someone still in university, or someone buget limited and they read all of those reviews I bet they'll buy the cheaper lens each time. Or, at least 95% of the time. Sure, eventually they'll buy a 600mm f/4 if they get the bug for shooting tiny skittish things, but probably not up-front.

And I think this gets back to the point of what a 500mm 5.6 represents: an affordable way to get quality images of "distant" things that need to be magnified to fill enough of the frame in a daylight situation. Most people will be happy with that. Some will realize f/4 or f/2.8 matters and spend the extra cash — but only after being really sure about that. Sigma showed this option is not just viable, but pragmatic. A silver ring edition from Canon will probably make a relative killing over decades.

And let's not forget: yes, the lack of IS (or useful IS) and need for daylight can be a hassle, but that never stops a determined person.

Maximilian said:

TBH, I don't see any "fault" here at all.
@Canon Rumors, @Craig:
You get bits of information, you interpret this, and then you share your conclusion with us.
Rumors are rumours , it would be quite boring if they all became fact the moment you spread them.

OTOH...

Those two are quite boring to me. And I already shared my thought, that I don't like the R8(m2) being hijacked for a retro style cam.
Make this retro cam a solitaire, make it unique, especially in its name (RE-1 was a no-brainer to me, just great!) , then even I would like it - but still won't buy it.
But please don't take away the product line of a small modern (!) FF entry camera, with modern egos and so on.


This was the one cam I was interested in.

Looking around, seems that 2026 is becoming more and more disappointing, in any facet I can think of... meh.

Click to expand...

There are still 8 more months to come, and, why not, a 14 TSE, a 20-70 L, new big whites...

Damn … this hit hard!
I was about to sell my r7 … but I have shot with it yesterday.. AF was better then remembered … soo expected the damn slow and loud shutter, annoying handling (1 wheel is missing)… it’s a really ok camera…

I would love to have a nice low light apsc with 24-26MP and stacked sensor…

MkSprintz said:

The R7ii has far better odds even if it's likely late 2027.

Click to expand...

The R7 was released years ago already and still no direct competitor from Nikon.

Michael Clark said:

In other words, it's a focus-by-wire lens.

Click to expand...

Mmmmkay. Every RF lens is focus-by-wire, so I'm not sure there's a point being made. But...thanks??

Maximilian said:

Looking around, seems that 2026 is becoming more and more disappointing, in any facet I can think of... meh.

Click to expand...

I found the RF 14/1.4L VCM to be exciting, and I'm hoping for more good lens announcements this year.

Michael Clark said:

There are more than a few Canon users who have been around long enough to remember what happened to their focus-by-wire EF 200mm f/1.8 L USM lenses when Canon started running out of repair parts for the USM motor shortly after discontinuing the lens. They became impossible to focus and nothing more than paperweights if the AF motor ever broke. The EF 300mm f/2.8 L, EF 50mm f/1.0, and EF 85mm f/1.2 also used focus-by-wire manual focus, but there wasn't the same kind of parts shortage until years after they were discontinued.

Click to expand...

Sure, I'm one of those people. The 50/1L, 85/1.2L (and the second version of that lens), 200/1.8L, 300/2.8L, 400/2.8L, 500/4.5L, and 600/4L all used focus by wire. And they all had the same problems when they went out of service and eventually the AF motor supply dried up some years later. There were a few third party services that converted them to MF or rebuilt the AF motors, I'm not sure if anyone is still doing it now.

But, fun fact: Every native mirrorless AF lens has become focus by wire, including all Canon RF lenses. Yes even the RF 100-300/2.8L. It is likely that all the upcoming big white RF super teles will be too, just like the Sony 400/2.8 & 600/4 and all the Nikon super teles. And the Sigma 300-600/4, 500/5.6, and all their other mirrorless native lenses. Tamron too, and Viltrox. Everyone.

So yes, some years from now we are going to face the same problem as what came up with the original Canon focus-by-wire lenses. Modern magnetic drive systems should be more resilient than Canon's first-gen USM motors were, but they will eventually fail. Personally I am more concerned about lenses with STM AF as that is a much more mechanical system driven by gears, and IMO more likely to fail than a system driven by magnets.

Rumors are rumors

mimbu said:

I think that depends a lot on how the PZ functionality is implemented. I'm not familiar with Canon's RF PZ systems to date, but I would hope a Canon L lens with PZ would work similarly to Sony's 16-35/4G PZ.

Sony put six of their fastest XD Linear motors into the 16-35G. Four for focusing (2 motors x 2 groups), and 2 for zooming. The result is that the zoom ring has the same feeling and performance as the focus-by-wire system. You can twist the zoom ring really quickly and get really fast zooming, or you can twist it slowly and get slow zooming. The ring is also not a rocker, you turn it the same as you would a mechanically coupled zoom ring, though there are no hard stops AFAIK. Basically, the zoom ring works like the focus by wire MF ring does.

You can also use the zoom rocker on the lens or camera to get smooth constant zooming for video. You can actually set up the lens' zoom responsiveness from within your camera's menu, too. Zooming and AF are both silent, as usual from an XD Linear system.

Another benefit is that the zoom and AF work in concert to maintain perfect focus when zooming, with no delay. It makes the lens appear to be completely parfocal.

As far as zoom lag goes, it's also about the same as what you would experience with a very high end focus by wire system. I suppose if you want to rack the zoom SUPER fast it woujld probably be faster to crank a a mechanically coupled zoom really hard, but the PZ is not slow or laggy.

If Canon implements something similar to this, I think most photographers who are likely to buy an f4L lens would find it very useable. Certainly anyone who wants it for hybrid use will appreciate it.

Click to expand...

There are more than a few Canon users who have been around long enough to remember what happened to their focus-by-wire EF 200mm f/1.8 L USM lenses when Canon started running out of repair parts for the USM motor shortly after discontinuing the lens. They became impossible to focus and nothing more than paperweights if the AF motor ever broke. The EF 300mm f/2.8 L, EF 50mm f/1.0, and EF 85mm f/1.2 also used focus-by-wire manual focus, but there wasn't the same kind of parts shortage until years after they were discontinued.

Michael Clark said:

I hate to break the news to you, but none of the boomers are middle aged any longer. Those born in 1964 are turning 62 years old this year. All of the boomers will officially be "seniors" by the end of this year. In most places, they've been considered "seniors" since they turned 60 in 2024.

Click to expand...

I nearly said something similar but they may well mean it colloquially (as in "old and out of touch").

neuroanatomist said:

Have a look at the only other PZ lens, the RF-S 14-30mm F4-6.3 IS STM PZ. PZ means the zoom motor is inside the lens, not in a separate accessory. The zoom ring has no manual function. Turning it one way or the other just activates the built-in zoom motor (in a force-sensitive way so the zoom can be driven at different speeds). Personally, I would not want a zoom lens with only a motorized zoom function for photography. YMMV.

Click to expand...

In other words, it's a focus-by-wire lens.

riker said:

The third time I'm happy for basically the same post.
Having IBIS might be a sign of Canon making this one more photo-focused and less vlogger crap. This will make many middle aged oldschool boomers like me happy.
And it will make it a reasonable secondary/backup camera for those who haven't seriously considered purchasing one. Until now.

Click to expand...

I hate to break the news to you, but none of the boomers are middle aged any longer. Those born in 1964 are turning 62 years old this year. All of the boomers will officially be "seniors" by the end of this year. In most places, they've been considered "seniors" since they turned 60 in 2024.

Canon Rumors said:

There are probably some situations that it could be useful with tethered control.

Click to expand...

Especially remotely controlled tethering.

This is looking like 2017 all over again. Canon's product development division created a camera, field tested it, and then the business department decided it wasn't a good economic move to release it. With the instability regards tariffs into the U.S., and the soaring price globally of memory chips of all kinds due to the international "data center arms race", only higher end products make sense right now, where the margins are higher to be able to absorb the more expensive components that they all need.

Even spinning hard disc drives, almost on the endangered species list a couple of years ago, are now selling for 2X per TB what they were selling for a couple of years ago. And don't even think of building a new computer right now with the price of RAM! 32GB of DDR5 6000 was a little over $100 in the U.S. in 2024. Now you're lucky to find it for less than $400.

Juan El Buzo said:

From reading this: “I can now say with 99% confidence that the EOS R7 Mark II will be announced in Q2 of this year” a few days ago, to these rumors today.
Credibility is built on consistency—and nothing erodes trust faster than confidently contradicting yourself days apart. Even rumor platforms carry a responsibility to distinguish speculation from reliability, because once confidence is lost, reputation follows quickly behind. In an age of instant information, accountability isn’t optional—it’s the currency of trust.

Click to expand...

First of, as a reader of rumor site you should never assume that all predictions actually come to fruition. Furthermore, the nature of rumors has they are contradictive at some times. Secondly, throughout a decade or two CR has been incredibly accurate, so if CR guys needs to spend some "currency of trust", he can easily do so because he has earned lots and lots of currency to pay for "mistakes". If you don't "trust" this site anymore, farewell and goodbye. Get your "trustworthy" information somewhere else.

CR Guy stated over and over again that these are rumors and one shouldn't count on it anymore. He has also stated that predictions have become increasingly difficult, therefore he eliminated the CR 0/1/2 rating. Look at the world, everything is unpredictable.

Lastly, companies nowadays place rumors on purpose to get attention or to disrupt predictions on purpose. Having the R7ii surely being next month would massively hurt current R7 sales. What to do? Kill the rumor, stop the hype, sell more R7 and announce it later. Maybe in August 2026, maybe in November or in March 2027. They don't tell anybody when they're announcing it. They are just protecting current sales.

Manchester United even employs/ employed a "director of transfer news", a guy who purposely talks about players and potential new club. They're aiming at misdirecting the market to make potential transfers for them cheaper and more expensive for the competition. Corporate business engage in such behavior as well at the moment.

I could easily see Canon creating rumors about the R7 (or letting them slip), then get some market research done and finally decided to delay it, announce it accordingly to their schedule or pulling the trigger asap. Last month I visited my wife grandparents in middle Germany. I went to two cameras stores (Foto Erhard/ Calumet) along the trip: in both stores I was told they don't expect/ don't believe the R7ii is coming because the R7 is "still selling like hot buns". Sure, only small stores in grand scale, but still a hint of whats going on.

dwkdnvr said:

My guess is that we’ll either see BOTH the uber-R7II and the Z90 or we’ll see neither.

Click to expand...

The R7ii has far better odds even if it's likely late 2027.

AlanF said:

The sunny 16 rule is that at iso 100 you need 1/100s at f/16. So, at f/11 you need 1/200s. f/8 1/400s etc etc to 1/3200s at f/2.8. (Not 1/6400s).

Click to expand...

To quote Roger Cicala, "I was, er, might have been wrong, ahem... less correct than I originally wrote."

I was underexposing by a stop to protect the highlights with plans to boost the mids and shadows in post while holding back the highlights.

Yeah, that's it! That's the ticket. I was protecting the highlights!

justaCanonuser said:

The 7D I and II needed a lot of light, then their AF perfomances improved, in particular the Mk II started to perform substantially more accurately. So their AF sensors were quite noisy.

Click to expand...

The baseline for an APS-C DSLR camera is narrower due to the narrower semi-silvered portion of the narrower reflex mirror.

justaCanonuser said:

The 7D I and II needed a lot of light, then their AF perfomances improved, in particular the Mk II started to perform substantially more accurately. So their AF sensors were quite noisy.

Click to expand...

Even in dimmer light (night/indoor sports) I found the 7D Mark II was much more consistent from shot to shot than the 7D. A 10 shot AI Servo burst with the 7D Mark II would be dead on for around 8-9 of them and just a tad off for 1-2 frames, usually when an athlete changed direction. The 7D would be on for 2-3 frames (in any random positions within the 10 shot burst), slightly off for 2-3 frames, more than slightly off for 3-4 frames, and the rest would be really out of focus flyers.

justaCanonuser said:

In fact, with DSLRs it was basically the same procedure, despite they had a separate AF sensor (for shooting with OVF). The camera needs a reliable info about the AF drive's exact position to able to focus fast and accurate. The difference is that ML cameras, using their image sensor, can reside to simple contrast AF if other information is lacking, but that requires AF pumping and slows down the whole focusing process so much that you can forget about shooting action.

With our Nikon Z system it turned out that the camera received a wrong information about the real AF drive position, so the lens was mechanically not adjusted to the camera. I don't know how Canon's AF system works exactly (surely details are protected), but seemingly it delivers more information about the AF drive's exact position so the camera can adjust its AF system to a particular lens. This explains also why some older EF lenses don't work very well with the new R cameras. I recently sold my old EF 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM, which still was in good condition, because it pumped too much on my R7 and R52, it wasn't really useable anymore with AF switched on. So, this old lens is obviously not able to send enough data to the camera for any AF adjustments.

Click to expand...

Yes, DSLRs did this by necessity so that the mirror could begin swinging up while the lens was still moving and reporting its position to the camera. But some folks seem to think that with MILCs they constantly refocus until the shutter is activated (either mechanically or electronically).

As for why your EF 300mm f/4 L IS with a 1991 design isn't as good with newer MILCs, please see Roger Cicala's old blog entry Autofocus Reality: Part 3B from back in 2012. He explains that Canon upped the game around 2010 as to how accurately the lens reports the focus position to the camera.

R5MkII and 200-800 @ 800

Two chicks (in focus) at the same time

AlanF said:

Where did you get those figures from? I would like to understand them.

Click to expand...

Just a guess, but I'd think from comparing blur circle size at specific MFTs with the sensor's sensel pitch?