R7 discussion is the white hot speartip of 'gimme gimme gimme' that dominates proceedings here. It's fine, it's good, but offering a crop RF body is a much bigger call than just pleasing the 7D camp. It cracks open a very important door for Canon. Possibilities ensue:
1) Canon goes all-in on RF mount for
all users (crop and FF) someday, and offer RF-S crop image circle lenses. EF-M is slowly put to pasture.
- This eliminates any 'gotta buy new lenses' pain point for the crop mirrorless user to move up to a FF body.
- Canon only needs to have one mount in production. Economies of scale ensue.
- You can make an RF body nearly as small as an EOS M (1) if you wanted to. Small and light: check.
- Sony and Nikon are already doing this with their mounts. If Canon doesn't, they'd be at a bit of a disadvantage (multiple mounts to support, pain point in moving up to an FF only RF system from EF-M).
2) Canon only offers crop RF (i.e. 'R7') just to placate the 7D crowd, but no RF-S lenses ever happen. EF-M keeps on truckin.
- Effectively, this would be a super high fps crop rig. Birders may miss their OVFs, but 20 fps + a more modern sensor might bring them around.
- It could happen. But Canon would need to be super deliberate at this approach not ever moving downmarket, as it will threaten EF-M, folks will bellyache for crop image circle RF lenses, etc.
3) Canon forces the R7 camp to simply buy a sort of expensive FF RF rig and shoot in crop mode. That requires either a very expensive FF camera buy (think 5D4 money to crop down to something useful resolution wise) or getting a cheaper FF body and acutally losing res from the 7D2 when it is cropped. EF-M lives on.
- Not sure either option is great for 7D users.
4) Canon just puts out a 7D3 to shut that camp up for 4-5 more years and defer the problem. Viva EF-M.
5) Canon just makes a big/beefy EF-M rig built for rugged outdoor use and hands 7D users an adaptor. Viva EF-M.
There's a lot of ways to skin this cat, but when you consider the units in Rebels and lower cost products, I think assessing #1 above is more important than placating the 7D users. Envision the future for all crop sensored bodies and make a smart decision about what mount those cameras will get before EF-S is retired.
- A