High Megapixel Camera Coming in 2015 [CR3]

[dash2k8]

Considering their current pricing: I estimate 4500-6000$.

The rumor puts it as under $4000, so we'll see.

 

[BozillaNZ]

Considering their current pricing: I estimate 4500-6000$.

$6000 = D810 + 2 Nikkors, and that will be what most user choose.

 

[ahsanford]

Considering their current pricing: I estimate 4500-6000$.

Ah, price. So much fun to speculate about. The price will of-course heavily depend on where/how they brand it and what tech they put in it. Assuming it's non-gripped as the story says...

The high res 6D2 sort of path
If the 50 MP camera is a stripped down FF body, i.e. functional (but not best in class) AF system with limited number of AF points, 3-4 fps burst, lots of design features and tech wholesale ported over from other bodies, etc. Call it a '6D with a huge sensor' (or a 6D2), and it would be around $2,500-3,000 or so.
My guess is: no chance they will do this -- not with their first high MP rig. Too many pros have screamed for high MP for too long, so to put it in a relatively simple FF body would be a let down I think.

The 5D4-ish path
If this 50 MP rig is branded the 5D4 and has that 'level' of feature set, options, robustness, etc. plus 1-2 recently newish things they always sneak in -- perhaps anti-flicker mode, intervalometer, automated focus-stacking, etc., then I think it will be in the $3,500-4000 neighborhood as originally posted on this site.
My guess: Whether it's branded 5D4 or not, a camera on this level this seems the logical first entry into the high MP game.

The all-battlefield workhorse path -- a 5D4 crossed with a 1D5, minus the grip
There's been some talk of a 50 MP rig with X fps with a built in crop mode that gets you 2-3X fps. Think of it like an 'APS-H' switch that you can turn on/off. As the crop + higher burst screams action and sports, such a rig would need to have a really high-end AF system, weathersealing and build quality. They certainly would get north of $4k for such a rig -- how much would seemingly depend on the burst rate.
My guess: There's 'too much new' going on at once here, so I don't see this happening. Also, if Canon ever did this, surely it would be a 1D body, right?

The No-shadows-can-hide-from-this-sensor path
If this 50 MP rig has fundamentally better sensor tech and is that great game changing sensor that many have asked for, you brand it as something better/higher than 5D (4D or 2D, take your pick) and you charge fundamentally more for it. This is the rig that would flip competitive business, so this could be a $4-5k non-gripped camera.
My guess: I have limited confidence that Canon has this in them given their sensors of late, so I'll call this one doubtful.

I give ranges on all the prices as it very well will depend on if Sony's 46 MP sensor is out there by the time Canon launches.

- A

 

[tcmatthews]

Considering their current pricing: I estimate 4500-6000$.

$6000 = D810 + 2 Nikkors, and that will be what most user choose.

If it is that expensive I am likely to by the rumored Sony A9 or future A7r II. I doubt the A9 will cost much more than a A7r. Assuming they put IBS and include a Electronic First Curtain on the shutter.

I fully expect Canon to price it around 3000-3500. The current 5D III will likely have a permanent price drop to $2799.00. The new camera can take its price point. Unless Canon hits it out of the park I am likely to by an A9 anyway. It can replace my Nex6 as a travel cam.

 

[Don Haines]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

 

[Lee Jay]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

You're off the rails. Just making the sensor bigger - with the same sized pixels - will improve high ISO performance by 1 1/3 stops.

Oh, and in-general, smaller pixels perform better at all ISOs than larger ones. The only exception is very extreme high-ISOs.

 

[canonvoir]

Considering their current pricing: I estimate 4500-6000$.

$6000 = D810 + 2 Nikkors, and that will be what most user choose.

If it is that expensive I am likely to by the rumored Sony A9 or future A7r II. I doubt the A9 will cost much more than a A7r. Assuming they put IBS and include a Electronic First Curtain on the shutter.

I fully expect Canon to price it around 3000-3500. The current 5D III will likely have a permanent price drop to $2799.00. The new camera can take its price point. Unless Canon hits it out of the park I am likely to by an A9 anyway. It can replace my Nex6 as a travel cam.

I am right there with you. The a9/a7rii whatever next high MP camera from Sony will be my path because I think Canon will have to lower the 5diii price point to compete and the new camera won't be any cheaper. At this point it almost doesn't matter what Canon does but I have some (albeit little) hope they will get this right. I have a 1DX and a 5Diii that serve me well now but I want to add a high MP camera and I am going to add one in 2015.

 

[Don Haines]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

You're off the rails. Just making the sensor bigger - with the same sized pixels - will improve high ISO performance by 1 1/3 stops.

Oh, and in-general, smaller pixels perform better at all ISOs than larger ones. The only exception is very extreme high-ISOs.

I wonder how the sarcasm impaired will act?

 

[Lee Jay]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

You're off the rails. Just making the sensor bigger - with the same sized pixels - will improve high ISO performance by 1 1/3 stops.

Oh, and in-general, smaller pixels perform better at all ISOs than larger ones. The only exception is very extreme high-ISOs.

I wonder how the sarcasm impaired will act?

Huh?

 

[tcmatthews]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

I bough the 6D to be a low light camera. I do not care if it has the ISO performance of the 7D II. I want a very weak to non-existent AA filter High MP camera for landscape. I would like an articulating screen because I to most Landscape on a tripod in live view. It is very helpful be able to adjust the. screen to a better viewing angle.

Yes tiny pixels = miserable ISO performance.

I really do not see them replacing the 5D III for 2 more years. As an event camera what is wrong with the 5D III? I really do not see anything.

 

[Don Haines]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

I bough the 6D to be a low light camera. I do not care if it has the ISO performance of the 7D II. I want a very weak to non-existent AA filter High MP camera for landscape. I would like an articulating screen because I to most Landscape on a tripod in live view. It is very helpful be able to adjust the. screen to a better viewing angle.

Yes tiny pixels = miserable ISO performance.

I really do not see them replacing the 5D III for 2 more years. As an event camera what is wrong with the 5D III? I really do not see anything.

The 5D3 has to be about the best general purpose FF camera out there.... I can't see Canon messing around with it.... I really doubt that a new high megapixel camera would be a 5D4

 

[jrista]

remember folks..... we are talking about a FF camera with the same pixel size as the 7D2. It will have very similar IQ to the 7D2. It will have very similar ISO performance to the 7D2.

You can't have the megapixel count of tiny pixels and the performance of large pixels. You can have one or the other... or a compromise. You can't have both. The 6D, 5D3, and 1DX will be superior in low light.

That's why I think it will be a new series, not an update of an existing series.

I disagree. The D800/D810 both demonstrate that similar-to-better IQ can be had with smaller pixels. Hell, the constant increase in megapixels in APS-C sensors for the last decade have been proving that for some time...every successive generation of APS-C sensors, each with smaller pixels, has produced better IQ than the preceeding generations, that includes Canon sensors, Nikon sensors, Sony sensors. Same goes for FF. We have observed a progressive reduction in pixel size while concurrently observing significant increases in overall image quality. So, yeah, I disagree. We CAN have both. We HAVE had both before...just not from Canon.


A 50mp FF from Canon will have much better IQ than the 7D II. Pixel size is immaterial, sensor size and sensitivity (Q.E.) is what matters. On a normalized basis, such a camera should crush the 7D II in terms of IQ, because your averaging together all those tiny pixels to produce the same output resolution. That's the same as having bigger pixels. Larger image downsampled means a reduction in noise, therefor an increase in SNR. No different really than stacking a bunch of frames together to reduce noise and increase SNR. Or simply running one of dozens of varieties of noise reduction algorithms on a single unscaled frame. It all increases SNR.


Total light gathering capacity. I don't know how many times I've said that on these forums, or how many more times I'll have to say it...but that's all that ultimately matters for IQ (terrestrial photography...astro is a little different). I'd also go so far as to say that this sensor, if it has the higher Q.E., would also be superior in low light to the others at best, and no worse at worst. A loss in fill factor should be overcome by the increase in Q.E., or at worst, would simply balance things out (so high ISO performance shouldn't necessarily be worse.) A BSI design would eliminate the fill factor issue (and Canon does have some patents for BSI), and I'd say a 50mp BSI FF sensor should have BETTER high ISO IQ (since you lose significantly less light with BSI than any FSI design, regardless of pixel size.)

Assuming this 50mp behemoth has the same Q.E. (59%) as the 7D II, then it will have the same PER-PIXEL IQ (unnormalized IQ), but higher overall IMAGE IQ on a normalized basis. Same subject, same framing, same output magnification == FF 50mp kicks 7D II ass. At least for sensor IQ. For action, we'd still need a high frame rate and fantabulous AF system to achieve the same kind of subject freezing power as the 7D II. That's probably unlikely.

 

[Lee Jay]

Yes tiny pixels = miserable ISO performance.

Small sensors do, small pixels are helpful, not hurtful.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Some one earlier wrote:

No AA filter = not positive for anything but the company making the camera (AA filters are very expensive optical devices). Removing it does not help image quality, and it does hurt image quality of still images.
[/quote]

Do you use cameras with and without the AA filters? I shoot the D800, 5DIII, D800E, D810 and the D7100. In ALL cases, for my most detailed landscape work at low ISO, the cameras without the AA filter produce superior IQ Images to ones that have the AA filter and I have the large prints (3 feet by 2 feet average size) to prove it.
[/quote]

I've seen aliasing and moire pop up in some natural world scenes taken with the D800E to a greater degree than I've seen with AA'd cameras (even then sometimes you can see a bit).

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

have you seen this ? false, fake, true, possible, idon't know, i just share...

http://filmmaker.com.br/2014/11/24/canon-5d-mark-iv-com-36mp-sera-apresentada-a-17-de-marco-de-2015-confira-as-caracteristicas-e-preco/

8)

That's just a copy of Ken Rockwell's 5D4 rumor guess.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Some say that 36MP is enough and that they don't need 50MP, if so that makes it a bit trickier for Canon.

It almost needs to be both semi-high fps (at the very least in cropped modes (sRAW or mRAW speed won't do it since those kill all the reach for sports and wildlife)) and high DR otherwise if it is very slow then it's not longer quite as great for sports and wildlife too in which case for those who could live with 36MP instead of 50MP the Sony stuff might look better since the price much be much lower and they take Canon lenses and yeah the Sony stink for that stuff but if the Canon has very slow fps then the 5D3 type advantages over the Sony stuff are much less anyway (of course the better AF still would help some, but maybe not as critically for as many as if the fps were also able to hit 6fps, at the least in an aps-c cropped mode).

Then again a cropped mode should be trivial to implement and driving a 20MP cropped mode at 6fps would be trivial since even the much older 5D3 already drives more data than that and already has a mirror box that fast. It just seems tricky because Canon tends to not agree that something they didn't do in the past (cropped modes vs sRAW/mRAW) could ever make sense in the future.

If it has Exmor DR, 50MP and hits at least 6-7fps in at least cropped modes and has 10bit 4k it could be an utter beast though. 4fps 50MP, 5fps aps-h, 7 fps aps-c would be quite reasonable at this point in the time to pull off even with single DIGIC (they could really make a mark if they went dual digic).

 

[Lawliet]

A 50mp FF from Canon will have much better IQ than the 7D II. Pixel size is immaterial, sensor size and sensitivity (Q.E.) is what matters. On a normalized basis, such a camera should crush the 7D II in terms of IQ, because your averaging together all those tiny pixels to produce the same output resolution. That's the same as having bigger pixels.

That would be for a b/w image; in color the downsampling gives you higher chroma information density and a reduction of sampling artefacts for free. I.E. the higher resolution camera gets an additional headstart.

 

[H. Jones]

Just throwing out some of my thoughts here, but wouldn't it be absolutely incredible if Canon made this high-mp studio-focused sort of camera have a built in radio transmitter for the 600EX-RT?

Maybe they'd feel like it'd make them lose ST-E3RT sales, but I personally think it would really push a lot more people to pick up the camera, even if the camera had a bit of a premium over other similar bodies. A 50mp studio camera that can control tens of flashes from the body itself sounds like an incredible camera just from face-value.

Though maybe this is just silly, since the ST-E3RT doesn't cost much and isn't too big. It's not really a big deal to me, but it would be really, really nice to never have to worry about triggers.

That said, if a camera had a built in radio transmitter, I see no reason why it couldn't also mount a pocket wizard or an optical trigger/ST-E2 for autofocus assist/triggering in other methods. That would be awesome for linking together separate flash systems at the same time.

Sorry for a bit of a tangent on something a bit off-topic, but I'd love to see this camera have an RT system in it.

 

[jrista]

A 50mp FF from Canon will have much better IQ than the 7D II. Pixel size is immaterial, sensor size and sensitivity (Q.E.) is what matters. On a normalized basis, such a camera should crush the 7D II in terms of IQ, because your averaging together all those tiny pixels to produce the same output resolution. That's the same as having bigger pixels.

That would be for a b/w image; in color the downsampling gives you higher chroma information density and a reduction of sampling artefacts for free. I.E. the higher resolution camera gets an additional headstart.

I'm not talking about binning, which is a hardware thing and would be limited to mono sensors.


I'm talking about averaging. I agree, it gives you all the improvements you listed, but it ALSO reduces noise. If you downsample by a factor of 2, you sample together 4 pixels into each output pixel. The noise is reduced by the SQRT(SampleCount), or a factor of 2. Downsampling a 50mp FF to the 20mp of the 7D II is roughly going to sample 2.58 pixels to produce each output pixel:


((26*34)/(22.4*15)) = 864/336 = 2.57 -> ~2.6x (sensor area difference)


That should reduce noise by a factor of about 1.6x. It WILL also sharpen the image and reduce artifacts. Win on every count. When IQ matters, I'll take a 50mp FF over the 7D II all day long (although until Canon fixes their low ISO read noise, I'll still take a D810. ). When AF performance and getting the right moment matters, I'll take the 7D II.

 

[ewg963]

The 5DIII will be 3 years old in March next year. A move to 50MP will pretty much follow Moor´s law. That same law should indicate just over a doubling of its computing power and given the speed of new memory cards, we should a least expect a camera that could chew 50MP at a slightly higher speed than the 5DIII and thus see at least 6, probably 8 fps.

As for AF system, there is no reason not to expect something beyond what the 7DII have. And I don´t see why we should´t expect more intelligence and speed in the processing part of it. More AF points, better tracking, better coverage of the image area etc.

The big questions for me though are what we will see in terms of DR, noise and ISO performance. A 5DIII just ramped up to 50MP and the rest same same ... Not tempting enough.

+1