The Canon EOS R1 may not come until the 2nd half of 2023 [CR2]

koenkooi

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If the R1 *isn't* hi-res, what do you think it will offer to differentiate it from the R3?

I don't think it will have global shutter (Canon will let other brands play beta-testers on that front), but even if it did, would that really make people pay 25-50% more, when the R3 is already extremely capable and only lacking in terms of resolution?
I bet the R1 will have matching card slots.
 
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entoman

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QPAF and a few more MP. And a ‘1’ in the name.
Do you think that is enough to get people to choose it over the R3? I think it will take a lot more to convince people it would be a better choice than the R3, considering a likely 25% or more step up in price.

Also, considering the presence of the 46MP Nikon Z9, and the likely launch of a new Sony (A1 variant possibly with integrated grip and other improvements?), I just can't see the R1 having less than 40MP.

Sure, there will be a number of amateurs who will buy it just because it's called "R1", but how many pros will think it's worth paying extra over the R3?

My guess is that it will at the very least have 45MP, twin CFE-B slots, eye-select AF, some kind of "pre-capture", QPAF and ultra-fast readout that eliminates rolling shutter. It will also probably have to have 8K and an efficient cooling system. Even then, if we are waiting, as seems likely, until early 2024 for the launch, what on Earth will Sony and Nikon introduce in the meantime?
 
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I think the R1 will be around 50-60mp. I don't expect global shutter, but do expect Quad Pixel AF. The argument that the 1DX cameras were low res really doesn't hold water with the R3 in the mix. There is already a high-speed, spectacular focusing, low mp (for quick uploads by pros), camera available. No reason to have two. I also don't expect the R1 to command 25-50% over the R3. I expect it to clock in about 7K. When it does, I'll have the preorder in the moment it's available. My R3 needs a big brother :). My R5 is great, but I'm in love with the ergos and battery performance from my R3, not to mention the stacked sensor.
 
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entoman

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Do you regret the RF 100-500mm? Best telephoto for me ever, and it's nice having the RF 100-400mm for when I want something smaller and lighter with me.
I haven't really had sufficient time to test it Alan - I bought it now rather than later, to beat impending price increases. I got it primarily for birding and safari photography, but those are mostly winter activities for me, so I haven't had the chance to put it through its paces yet. First impressions are good though - it focuses faster than my old EF 100-400mm and is near-silent in operation. The stabilisation when used on my R5 is also noticeably better than with the EF 100-400mm, and the sharpness is impressive, even stopped down to F16, although I suspect I'll mainly be shooting at full aperture when the birding and safari season starts.

In the meantime I'm mainly photographing butterflies, grasshoppers, hemipterans etc, using my newly acquired RF 100mm macro. Of course, the RF 100-500mm is far from ideal for those subjects as it only focuses down to about 1:3 scale at 500mm and much lower reproduction ratios at the shorter end. I can see that it might be fine for your dragonfly-in-flight work, but for butterflies I find the RF 100mm much easier to manoeuvre, much lighter to carry and it focuses close enough for even the smallest insects. Most of the time, despite getting clumsier as I get older, I can get close enough with the 100mm without scaring the insects away. I'd still love to have a lightweight, stabilised 180 or 200mm RF macro though, should Canon ever decide to produce one!
 
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Hi

I believe that Canon is doing extremely well with their releases. Both Canon and Nikon let Sony have a pretty big head start in this phase of camera development, so it is impresses me that there is at least a good argument that Canon has caught up with Sony. In terms of backlog of supply, I am sure that Canon will make a lot of profit on each RF800 and RF1200 when they eventually make them, so I would expect them to fill these orders before doing anything else.

I'm not sure how much development it is worth putting into cheaper (sub £2k) cameras, as the AI development within better (and even average) smart phones is becoming so good? There will always be a niche; I am sure there are still a lot of people with darkrooms developing photos from very cheap very old analogue cameras (hooray), but the drive from Canon, Nikon, Sony et al, will need to be the opportunity to take photos you can't get with your phone.

My experience of this development is from my excellent Nikon D750 to my current R5. I have photos taken recently under torch light 10K ISO in South Africa. My view is that with DxO noise reduction processing in all cases, the R5 photos offer more detail than 1200 ISO on the D750.

If I had to bet; in 5 years infra red night vision will be dead; large sensors will be so sensitive owls in flight at midnight in colour will be possible!

Just keep enjoying taking pictures.

Very best wishes

Ron
 
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AlanF

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Hi

I believe that Canon is doing extremely well with their releases. Both Canon and Nikon let Sony have a pretty big head start in this phase of camera development, so it is impresses me that there is at least a good argument that Canon has caught up with Sony. In terms of backlog of supply, I am sure that Canon will make a lot of profit on each RF800 and RF1200 when they eventually make them, so I would expect them to fill these orders before doing anything else.

I'm not sure how much development it is worth putting into cheaper (sub £2k) cameras, as the AI development within better (and even average) smart phones is becoming so good? There will always be a niche; I am sure there are still a lot of people with darkrooms developing photos from very cheap very old analogue cameras (hooray), but the drive from Canon, Nikon, Sony et al, will need to be the opportunity to take photos you can't get with your phone.

My experience of this development is from my excellent Nikon D750 to my current R5. I have photos taken recently under torch light 10K ISO in South Africa. My view is that with DxO noise reduction processing in all cases, the R5 photos offer more detail than 1200 ISO on the D750.

If I had to bet; in 5 years infra red night vision will be dead; large sensors will be so sensitive owls in flight at midnight in colour will be possible!

Just keep enjoying taking pictures.

Very best wishes

Ron
I'm a founder member of the DxO noise reduction fan club and the R5 is my favourite camera. But, it's no better at high iso than, for example, the Nikon D850 with DxO. The noise at high iso is due to the noise in the light flux itself and modern sensors are so quantum efficient that there is very little room for further improvement.
 
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Sorry, catching up to 5-6 pages of comments in one fell swoop.

The hit rate is so high already, I'm not sure what 'better' would look like in this case in order to make a noticeable improvement. I suppose the R3 is faster at tracking and acquisition on account of the stacked sensor. QPAF looms, at least in the rumor-verse, which could improve acquisition in some scenarios.
So far I am not impresssed by the R3's hit rate for things at speed. Something's afoot, and I haven't had time to figure out the problem: I took the R3 + the EF 200-400mm to the MotoGP race in the Netherlands the other weekend and had abyssmal hit rates 7% in focus when the bikes were going through a chicane (it had time to pick up focus and detect the motorcycles). I haven't had time to go through the ~2.500 images from the first day. Topic for seperate post, though.

Better would be quad pixel. There are some situations where current Canon MILCs simply cannot lock focus because they are insensitive to horizontally oriented contrast features.
My guess is that we'll at least QPAF and Global Shutter for an R1. Identical memory slots hopefully too. I have no ideas on whether it would be a 'high' or 'low' resolution sensor (and frankly I have no bone in that contest).

No longer true. R3 preorders went live at 6a ET, people (like me) who ordered before ~9a got their cameras from the first batch, around Thanksgiving. Those ordering later than ~9a on launch day had to wait a few months.
That's US only. I preordered on the day of the development announcement (the first day I could pre-order here in Denmark) and waited 425 days to get the camera.

Agreed. I love my R5 but the EVF lag definitely causes me to miss shots that I would have achieved with my 5DMkiv.
I found with the R3 that I have to keep the EVF close to my cheek so it "detects" my eye and keeps the EVF turned on, otherwise it takes too long to turn on the EVF. It's mostly a matter of habit (I look over the VF/lens to decide on the subject and then "dive in" with my eye to take the shot.
 
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Hector1970

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@entoman @Hector1970 Do you regret the RF 100-500mm? Best telephoto for me ever, and it's nice having the RF 100-400mm for when I want something smaller and lighter with me.
No regrets. I am enjoying the 100-500mm. Still getting used to the R5. Eye focus is very useful, I have Eye and Spot back button set up. Still trying to get the best settings for me. I am only using the viewfinder and I have a lag from eye reaching the viewfinder to it operating. Maybe a second or so but frustrating. If I hold down a back button while raising it up it’s not such an issue. I need to adjust some settings perhaps. Nice to be able to significantly crop versus a 1DXIII. I haven’t really tested the R5 yet. BIF I’m not getting right, some practice required. Happy so far with the R5. I haven’t updated the firmware. I look forward to really putting it through its paces. I haven’t adapted RF lens to it yet.
 
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No regrets. I am enjoying the 100-500mm. Still getting used to the R5. Eye focus is very useful, I have Eye and Spot back button set up. Still trying to get the best settings for me. I am only using the viewfinder and I have a lag from eye reaching the viewfinder to it operating. Maybe a second or so but frustrating.
Id' say sub-second, but still frustrating. As stated in my post above, my workaround is to keep the EVF next to my cheek so it thinks I am looking through it.
 
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entoman

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I found with the R3 that I have to keep the EVF close to my cheek so it "detects" my eye and keeps the EVF turned on, otherwise it takes too long to turn on the EVF. It's mostly a matter of habit (I look over the VF/lens to decide on the subject and then "dive in" with my eye to take the shot.
Yes that can be a workaround with the R5 too, but when I've got a heavy lens attached my arms need a rest. I just want to be able to quickly raise the camera to my eye, and not have to wait for the EVF to light up. The best workaround I've found is to hit the d.o.f. button (or any other button that *doesn't* activate AF) as I raise the camera. Then the EVF and metering are active by the time the camera is at my eye.
 
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If the R1 *isn't* hi-res, what do you think it will offer to differentiate it from the R3?

I don't think it will have global shutter (Canon will let other brands play beta-testers on that front), but even if it did, would that really make people pay 25-50% more, when the R3 is already extremely capable and only lacking in terms of resolution?

The others' comments on some things are likely to be the draws. Quad pixel; matching slots; maybe even a tilty-flippy (whooshing sound as we all clutch our pearls and then think of manly things to think); faster processor, which translates into better noise and sharpness file cooking for plain-speaking people; more bits at faster frame rates; the removal of pupil tracking; the re-addition of the tracking nipple from the 1d3; not a global shutter, but a speedy-enough sensor speed so rolling shutter is not noticeable, thus avoiding various global shutter sensor disadvantages; probably 36 megapixels for the sole purpose of getting 8k video capabilities, but don't be surprised if it's 24 mp.

Between now and then there will be a 5 series addition and/or an R5 Mark II. That'll be your high-res horse. When it comes around, jump on it.

-Tig (who's speculation is relentlessly proven wrong)
 
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entoman

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The others' comments on some things are likely to be the draws. Quad pixel; matching slots; maybe even a tilty-flippy (whooshing sound as we all clutch our pearls and then think of manly things to think); faster processor, which translates into better noise and sharpness file cooking for plain-speaking people; more bits at faster frame rates; the removal of pupil tracking; the re-addition of the tracking nipple from the 1d3; not a global shutter, but a speedy-enough sensor speed so rolling shutter is not noticeable, thus avoiding various global shutter sensor disadvantages; probably 36 megapixels for the sole purpose of getting 8k video capabilities, but don't be surprised if it's 24 mp.

Between now and then there will be a 5 series addition and/or an R5 Mark II. That'll be your high-res horse. When it comes around, jump on it.

-Tig (who's speculation is relentlessly proven wrong)
Interesting that you think pupil tracking will be dropped. A failed experiment? I still think they'll include it (it can always be turned off). I do think it makes a lot of sense to include the AF nipple from the 1Dxiii. Tilty-flippy is I fear just a dream. I think many will regard it as outdated on release, if it doesn't have 8K.
 
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Interesting that you think pupil tracking will be dropped. A failed experiment? I still think they'll include it (it can always be turned off). I do think it makes a lot of sense to include the AF nipple from the 1Dxiii. Tilty-flippy is I fear just a dream. I think many will regard it as outdated on release, if it doesn't have 8K.
Eye-controlled AF on the R3 works very well for me, at least in reasonable use cases. I suspect Tig is recalling that the feature made it's debut in the EOS A2E and was offered in several other EOS models including the EOS 3, but notably not in the EOS 1-series film cameras. In some ways, the job was easier in film camera days, because the camera just had to determine the closest pre-defined AF point to where your eye was pointed and make that AF point active. Now, there effectively aren't fixed AF points anymore, you can focus anywhere in the scene. In my experience, the system works best if you're using it to guide other selection algorithms the camera has available. So if I'm trying to use eye-controlled AF to select one flower in a field as my subject, it doesn't do a great job – the smart controller is much more effective and faster. But if my three kids are running around outside, eye-controlled AF very effectively allows me to shift the focus among them for face detection to take over, and fire off bursts where each kid is in focus. Same is true on an athletic field. I think if Canon excludes eye-controlled AF from the R1, it will be due to their conservative mindset. After using the feature, I think it functions well enough for use in the 1-series. I expect that feedback Canon has received on the R3 from professional users will be factored into the decision for the R1 (a decision that needs/needed to be made relatively early, since there are significant hardware implications).

I really like the Smart Controller from the 1D X III. It's on the R3, I see no reason it wouldn't be used on the R1. When not using eye-control, if there's a faster way to move the AF point around, I can't imagine what it would be. Perhaps the R1 will add customizations, e.g. tracking speed like for a computer mouse/trackpad, and if the selection stop at the frame edge or wraps to the other side (as could be selected for the multi-controller on the 1-series DSLRs).

My guess is we will see an articulating LCD on the R1. Again, feedback from R3 users will be a factor.

IMO, the R1 won't be high-res. As Tig suggests, there will be an R5 version with a high MP count to meet that desire/need. What 'low res' means is TBD. Perhaps 8K will play a role in that, Canon certainly knows use cases better than me (for me, the R1 will be for shooting stills, not video, and even then I wouldn't shoot 8K if I could).
 
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probably 36 megapixels for the sole purpose of getting 8k video capabilities, but don't be surprised if it's 24 mp.
8K will require least 39.3Mpixels or more likely 44.7Mpixels - hence the 45MP for the R5. (7680 x 5120 for 4x FHD, if 8192 on the long side it'd be 8192x5462 so 44.7Mpixels)

Eye-controlled AF on the R3 works very well for me, at least in reasonable use cases. [...]

But if my three kids are running around outside, eye-controlled AF very effectively allows me to shift the focus among them for face detection to take over, and fire off bursts where each kid is in focus. Same is true on an athletic field. I think if Canon excludes eye-controlled AF from the R1, it will be due to their conservative mindset. After using the feature, I think it functions well enough for use in the 1-series.
So far my experience with eye-control is less good, when using it with multiple subjects (vehicles) in combination with the automatic vehicle subject detection.
Despite training the tracking algorithm several times, the camera thinks that I'm looking above and to the right of where my focus is. Eventually I turned it off and used the center+4 helper points as starting point for the tracking algorithm. I need to get out and test several lenses to rule out the particular lens (200-400mm) as a contributing factor.
 
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The buffer on the R5 is so good, I seldom hit a card's limits, but sometimes I really want more. Last week I was in a kayak in the Penobscot bay taking pictures of porpoises that were coming very close. They don't like to get near people/boats. They're very hard to photograph because they pop up randomly, and when you're at 840 effective focal length in a rocking boat, and you don't know here your target will pop up for 0.2 seconds, you want to be able to do a little spray-and-pray. No dishonor in that in this case. I was hitting buffer more than half the time, using the initial surfacing to (sometimes) establish autofocus and hope there was a second surfacing 20 feet ahead of the animal in a couple seconds.

It's times like those - admittedly rare - that you really want CFexpress, rather than SD. But - as a guy who tests a lot of CFexpress cards for review purposes - I have to say that the difference between the top 20 percent of CFexpress cards and the bottom 20 percent of CFexpress cards isn't that big. (about 20 percent more images for the better cards in 30 seconds of shooting). The bigger deal is to be shooting CFexpress rather than SD in these rare cases.

-Tig
PS: Yeah, I know that's not a picture of a porpoise below. None of them came out adequately well. The harbor seals were friendlier to the R5....
I love my R5 but I don't think the buffer is that good. The reason why the R5 seems to have a big buffer is because the CFExpress cards are so fast. But switch to the 20fps mode and you will easily hit the buffer very quickly. Now, because the cards write so fast, it's not a major nuisance like the Sony A7R3 (which I also owned). On the A7R3, once you hit the limit, the camera is practically useless. And it takes well over a minute to go from a full buffer to an empty buffer on the A7R3 where the R5 can clear the buffer in a few seconds because of the blazing fast CFExpress cards.

And I don't know if people notice this behavior with the buffer (I use Sony Tough cards with my R5; not saying that it matters, just giving some context). When I hit the buffer limit, it will seem to pause for a bit where it's not doing anything. And then the buffer clears quickly. But that pause is very strange.
 
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stevelee

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Merging in post is what I would do anyway. I like using Zerene and that gives me the ability to retouch them then.
In general I prefer to do merging, stitching, etc., on the computer rather than to take something prebaked from the camera. I have been known to shoot HDRs and panoramas with my iPhone if I don't have a real camera along, but that is a make-do situation.
 
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More lenses would be appreciated, especially on the telephoto end. A modern 500/4, 300/2.8 or maybe a 150-400/4 TC. Nikon seems to be the only one committed to telephotos at the moment, Canon too busy gluing teleconverters and mount adapters on EF lenses
If I had bought a R3 instead of a Z9 on my switch to mirrorless, I would have been gutted by the lacklustre big whites that made it to RF, especially after such a fantastic RF 100-500. Canon's big glass will always have a special place in my heart, but they can do way better than upcycling the EF 400 and EF 600 into RF models then glued teleconverter models.

I very much hope to see some impressive showings from Canon, after all, they are the market leader and there is a bloody good chance I'll want to come back for the R1 Mk3/4 era and the refresh of the super tele's.
 
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entoman

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I love my R5 but I don't think the buffer is that good. The reason why the R5 seems to have a big buffer is because the CFExpress cards are so fast. But switch to the 20fps mode and you will easily hit the buffer very quickly. Now, because the cards write so fast, it's not a major nuisance like the Sony A7R3 (which I also owned). On the A7R3, once you hit the limit, the camera is practically useless. And it takes well over a minute to go from a full buffer to an empty buffer on the A7R3 where the R5 can clear the buffer in a few seconds because of the blazing fast CFExpress cards.

And I don't know if people notice this behavior with the buffer (I use Sony Tough cards with my R5; not saying that it matters, just giving some context). When I hit the buffer limit, it will seem to pause for a bit where it's not doing anything. And then the buffer clears quickly. But that pause is very strange.
I also sometimes get buffering problems when shooting a series of short 1 second 20fps bursts on the R5. Not sure what you mean when you say "that pause is very strange" - my R5 just completely locks up, and the only way to get it going again is to drop the battery and reboot. Fortunately it doesn't happen very often. The problem isn't restricted to the R5 either - I've got a friend who has exactly the same issue with his Z9.
 
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