Meatcurry said:
Am I right to think that the 50mp sensor is a scaled up 20mp APSC? If so are my maths correct if the 24mp is scaled up it will be 62mp?
I'm just speculating on the sensor the 1DXR will have. Also wondering what FPS it could achieve?
No, its not a upscaled sensor. You do not merely add more pixels and keep the design the same otherwise. Obviously, engineers do reuse as much as possible, but its very difficult to design a sensor, more readout channels are needed for large sensors and the onboard NR amplifiers are customized, it becomes something almost entirely new before it finally works. Having 50 MP worth of photosites, versus getting a sensor that actually produces a 50 mp image is a huge step. That's why we see sensors being recycled from model to model, development is extremely costly. The cost of the actual production can be fairly low, but you must recover years worth of R&D, testing, and tooling, so you want high production rates, or a high priced camera.
I could see a 1D model using the existing 50mp sensor with a few tweaks to overcome some of its current limitations, but any major changes and its going to be expensive. Canon has said that their dual pixel sensor is expensive to manufacture, which is why we haven't yet seen it in low cost cameras. Once the production costs drop as they learn how to churn them out in larger quantities, they will be in all the cameras.