37 Megapixel 1Ds Mark IV? [CR1]

[EYEONE]

Square sensors are a seriously bad idea, and a waste of sensor space, litterally, everything I shoot for, magazines, billboards, ads, portraits and even websites are rectangles. The only possible use for a square is CD packaging, but incase you hadn't noticed, record shops have gone, so album art has been reduced to digital postage stamps of iTunes. We need square sensors like we need the plague!

Square pictures is not the point of a square sensor. The aspect ratio would stay the same. But you could get portrait and landscape switching at the touch of a button. This might require a very fancy viewfinder to also show the effect but I believe Nikon's already do something similar when you put a DX lens on a FX camera. So it could be done.

I'm sure if Canon is doing a Square sensor they have many more practical uses for it.

 

[macfly]

Why? All you're doing is adding a huge amount of complexity and pixel real estate just to save you turning the camera sideways. I'd say a better formed body that works as well held either way with a high def FF chip would be far more practical, simple, reliable and pro friendly rig.

 

[motorhead]

While I like the idea of a proper medium format body, I don't think that a 37/40mp square sensor will be anywhere close to MF. I guess you have all been seeing the real MF players and know what's already in play so you don't need me to spell it out.

No, 37 or 40mp will have to be a bog standard 36 x 24 mm "frame" to have any chance of lasting more than 18 months as the "top dog". Even at that level it needs to have other headlining benefits, for entirely selfish reasons I'm hoping a world beating DR forms one such. I'm also selfishly less bothered by noise as I don't use high ISO settings.

It has been previously reported that Canon is investigating the possibilty of linking up with an existing MF manufacturer. Unless they are prepared to start from scratch and develop a medium format expertise and reputation slowly, I see this as their most likely way into MF, especially now that the company will have other major drains on corporate finance for the forseeable future.

 

[EYEONE]

Why? All you're doing is adding a huge amount of complexity and pixel real estate just to save you turning the camera sideways. I'd say a better formed body that works as well held either way with a high def FF chip would be far more practical, simple, reliable and pro friendly rig.

I don't know what Canon is going to do with the 1Ds. All I was pointing out was that square sensor doesn't mean square pictures.

However, I do think that being able to take portrait and landscape pictures without moving the camera would be more useful than you might think. Think of tripod work, so much easier. But would that alone be worth all the engineering redesign? Probably not. Which is why I also said: "I'm sure if Canon is doing a Square sensor they have many more practical uses for it."

I don't know what all the pros and cons of a square sensor would be. But I know it has been mentioned as a possibility and I do think it is physically possible.

 

[cmac]

Well, there is what I said - from a Square sensor of 36 MP You can crop a nice 24 MP 3:2 image in both ways which is more than enough for almost anything (I assume that 30" x 20" fine art print is more than enough for almost anything, but if You're afraid of pixel peepers You can always print 15" x 10" which is also a fine format and at this size can stand a microscope inspection ).
If You are such a steady hand and eye that You never do crop or align Your frame in post, than You're probably more than happy with the 3:2 ratio. Still there are even magazines that are not in 3:2 and so shooting for them in 3:2 is waste of sensor? Yet a square sensor is not only for CD covers. Some people still shoot for art and there the square is something that is always actually useful.
The tripod factor is also valid - You don't have sometimes enough time to rotate and re-framing.
Yet there is a waste of space - but what they are really so close that I don't think it's achievable, but as You pointed there are too many aspects to consider - one of them being the camera design.
I also thing that Canon is ready to go medium size, but they are better to go by getting an already established company (design) and go with it. If they come up with custom camera - it really should be something extraordinary, to catch the pros - and while I'm sure they can easily come up with a killing camera, they will need much more time to add a bunch of lenses to it.

 

[macfly]

Honestly I don't see why Canon would bother going MF, there simply isn't enough of a market to be worth going up against the PhaseOne-Mamiya 645 and the H2/3/4 systems when they already showcased a 120MP chip in a FF-ish sized sensor.

I'll put my money on their battle strategy will be to keep improving the FF range they have to the point where it makes the MF cameras irrelevant, or then again maybe they'll drop the ball again as they did with the G12, and give it all away to Nikon.