Are 400mp stills coming to the Canon EOS R5?

[David - Sydney]

More than 1% of photography using ILCs is astro, and practically every one of those photos are taken tripod mounted.

I was just thinking about the applications for astro (wide/landscape and deep). Could be very useful when tracked accurately.
The only handheld "astro" shots I can think of are of the moon with a fast shutter speed.

A good number of landscape photographers use tripods most of the time.

The issue with landscape is moving branches/leaf. It will be interesting to see
For waterfalls and seascapes, you are taking longer exposures to blur the water but the wind blows the stuff you don't want moving.

 

[Michael Clark]

I hope so.

I just don't see Canon giving increased resolution to lower resolution sensors via pixel shift technology.

I think Canon's answer would be along the lines that if you need or desire higher resolution than 20MP, the R5 and (soon) R1 are available with increased resolution. Canon has always been good at selling more cameras by making customers buy more than one model for multiple varied use cases.

 

[David - Sydney]

I’m pretty sure this feature will not offer flash sync just like focus stacking in the R5.

The only other option is continuous lighting. LEDs are getting more powerful but strobes are still the most powerful. Good to have options though.

 

[Michael Clark]

A few semi-random thoughts.

• I doubt if I will have much use for this, but I appreciate Canon adding a major feature through firmware on a three-year-old model (If they do so.)
• I expect that they will add it to the R3 as well.
• I don't see any reason why they would add it to the Cinema R5. Cinema is about motion. The blur that results from shooting at 24 or 30 frames per second at 1/60 second or similar shutter speeds helps blend the frame together so that the eye seems a smoother image. I'd be interested if someone who shoots video has a reason why they would find this feature desirable.
• I see this as a sign that the R5II is at least a year away.
• As for applications, I recall Canon giving Martin Parr a 5Ds a few years back to take life-size portraits of people and, of course, there is always the example of Andreas Gursky and his use of digitized high resolution images shot in large formats. We also have the longstanding example of GigaPixel images that stitch separate images together into a single super high resolution photo. So, I imagine creative people will find new ways to use this. It may be like Canon's dual fisheye lens. I think sometimes Canon brings products and features to the market to challenge creators and see how they will be used.

Disclaimer - Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

Canon introduced the 7D in 2009, released firmware Ver.2.0 in mid-2012, and introduced the 7D Mark II in late 2014.

I think this could indicate that the R5 Mark II may not ship until 2025, with an official announcement no earlier than the fall of 2024.

 

[David - Sydney]

8K was added to the R5 in the short term as a marketing tool (bragging rights for users), but also as a testing ground before putting it in a pro camera (R1). Canon clearly realises that in a few years time we'll all be viewing on 8K monitors and TVs, but right now, the number of people viewing in 8K is tiny.

8K was the leading feature in the R5 and for Canon and was wrongly criticised for its record times.
There are a couple of use cases though... 30fps @33mp stills as well as video.
I am thinking more about 8k/30 raw for short underwater clips where I can change the white balance better in post given it is 12bit. 8 or 10bit is quite compromised for white balance correction in post. Output resolution will be much lower of course.

You are right that there are only a few 8k capable screens today and at bleeding edge prices and almost no content. 4K has really only become mainstream now and most content still isn't full 4k.

What has changed things is upscaling algorithms to these native resolutions - somewhat negating the original resolution. This is both for video and for stills and the quality is improving with AI fixing everything

 

[David - Sydney]

The addition of 400MP pixel-shift might appeal to perhaps one buyer in every million?

Infinitely more important, IMO, to update the camera as follows:

User selectable variable fps with ES.
User selectable number of shots limit with fast fps.
Exposure bracketing with ES.
Reduced EVF lag from standby.
Pre-buffer.
Stickier AF tracking with less tendency to hop onto backgrounds.
Better and faster subject recognition of wild animals.
Eye-AF that works from a greater distance and isn't confused by other objects.
Better sensor performance (reduced noise) with RAW in low light/high ISO.
Better stabilisation algorithms to improve alignment with hand-held HDR and focus-stacking.
Star-tracking for the astro boys.
Lens-breathing correction.

All of the above should be doable with a firmware update, and any one of them would be more useful to most folk than 400MP, IMO.

Let's not forget about remapping the Rate button to something useful

 

[Michael Clark]

Come on, people often complain that even 50MP is "too much" and that there is "no need for more than 20MP". There are a huge amount of people still using 5 or even 10 year old computers. The issue, as you note, is that when people spend a lot of money on cameras and lenses - and often yet more money on travel so they can access their chosen subjects, they have little left over to upgrade their computer system to cope with monster files.

For every time I've heard "20 MP is enough" and "30/40/50MP is too much" I've heard "I'd like 60/80/100 MP" dozens of times.

 

[David - Sydney]

The Canon website stated is was jpeg, so I don’t know why there is still discussion on it.

Can you point to the url? The OP just showed a screenshot from cache.

 

[Michael Clark]

I am very sceptical about taking 9x9 photos, although the Bayer filter only has a 4x4 grid. That means that the pixels of the final image have to be smaller than the actual pixels of the sensor. So sharpening algorithms will have to compensate for that. That might work though, as those sharpening algorithms can use much more information than usual, as nine times as many pixels are recorded. There are still limits to this though. Otherwise you could make the resolution as high as you want by making 100x100 shots for example, if your IBIS is capable of doing small enough steps. The result would be a 450 gigapixel image.

Nine is what you get with one centered image, one click up, two clicks up, one click down, two clicks down, one click left, two clicks left, one click right, and two clicks right.

 

[Michael Clark]

Flash photography with ES is not possible with the R5.

They could add it in a firmware update, couldn't they? I'm sure it would cost them nothing!

 

[EOS 4 Life]

It must be doing this in camera otherwise this is nothing new, and can already be done simply by taking a burst of images and stacking them in post. Astro photographers do it all the time. I do agree that the buffer is large enough though 400mp is only 9 images

How would you have gotten 9 images in a sequence that is just a pixel off to stack without pixel shift?

 

[usern4cr]

Surely HEIF output would give a substantially better output than jpeg. Why do all that work and be limited to the jpeg colour space.

I totally agree that they should offer an option for HEIF output (in addition to jpg) for their final huge image. It is a format for much better quality image at the same storage level. The only problem is that many other venues don't support it (yet). But that's not a problem if they offer the choice of either one to be used.

 

[vjlex]

Can you point to the url? The OP just showed a screenshot from cache.

I posted the original quote from the page here. On the page it said:

IBIS High resolution shot JPEG: 24576 x 16384

I still have the page open at home and screenshots, so if this isn't enough I can post those after work.

 

[David - Sydney]

I posted the original quote from the page here. On the page it said:

I still have the page open at home and screenshots, so if this isn't enough I can post those after work.

Maybe I am blind but I can't find it.I am pretty sure that Canon EU updated their page after the leak.

I hope that jpeg isn't correct... or at least is HEIF.
The ability to post process in jpg is pitiful compared to raw and the use cases would be very limited.

 

[David - Sydney]

so does this mean that the "up to 8 stops of stabilisation" wouldn't apply for these shots?

 

[vjlex]

Maybe I am blind but I can't find it.I am pretty sure that Canon EU updated their page after the leak.

I hope that jpeg isn't correct... or at least is HEIF.
The ability to post process in jpg is pitiful compared to raw and the use cases would be very limited.

Yeah, they updated the page soon after to remove the leaked info. But I still have it open from Thursday before it was removed.

 

[Michael Clark]

The issue with landscape is moving branches/leaf. It will be interesting to see
For waterfalls and seascapes, you are taking longer exposures to blur the water but the wind blows the stuff you don't want moving.

It all depends upon the composition of the landscape photo and how close to the camera the things likely to move are. If foreground objects are fairly static the leaves on trees several hundreds of meters away aren't going to show much movement in relatively calm conditions.

At 30 fps nine frames would take less than 1/3 second. Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez, NM" was exposed at f/64 for 1 second on very high resolution 8X10 sheet film. Most folks seem to think it is a pretty decent landscape photo, even when printed at 30x40 inches.

 

[Michael Clark]

I was just thinking about the applications for astro (wide/landscape and deep). Could be very useful when tracked accurately.
The only handheld "astro" shots I can think of are of the moon with a fast shutter speed.

Even at 1/500, I find my tripod mounted moon shots are much sharper than my handheld ones. So while you can get an acceptable image of the moon handheld, you can get an even better one with the same camera and lens mounted on a tripod using mirror lockup and a wired remote release cable.

 

[SnowMiku]

Who said it will be a raw file? I'd bet it's a jpg file.
I doubt I'll be able to just drop the huge file into PhotoLab for raw processing. But we'll see.

That's a good point about it being jpg.

 

[David - Sydney]

It all depends upon the composition of the landscape photo and how close to the camera the things likely to move are. If foreground objects are fairly static the leaves on trees several hundreds of meters away aren't going to show much movement in relatively calm conditions.

At 30 fps nine frames would take less than 1/3 second. Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez, NM" was exposed at f/64 for 1 second on very high resolution 8X10 sheet film. Most folks seem to think it is a pretty decent landscape photo, even when printed at 30x40 inches.

I have never compared my landscapes with Ansel or even examined his work very much. It doesn't change that moving items in landscape shots are an issue when you don't want them to be.
My landscapes tend to be very wide angle rather than telephoto. My point was related to moving water when you want to show movement but other subjects where you don't.