Let’s talk Canon EOS R1, the flagship of flagships?

[GoldWing]

We have tons of CF B cards in 1TB to 650GB - Please don't make us replace them. Yes we want two of the same media slots for too many reasons to post.

45MP is just under Nikon. Many were hoping the R1 would be just as useful in the studio for portraits and fashion as it is for sports. Don't know why Canon would preclude others and if "you want" to shoot smaller, just turn it down yourself.... We all know.... You can't turn it up.... If there is no up! (ROFL)

At $10,000 it will price out many. They can do much smaller production runs and still meet demands. Those moving from the 1DXMKIII's and II's will also be slower to adopt new glass at the $10K mark. Market dictates NIkon Z9 and GFX 100s/50II prices as representing the "Scope" of what the R1 will be getting into the sandbox with on the left and right of the spectrum. Canon can take from these markets or create competition for themselves. Best they capture market share from both and get their legacy 1DX, II, III users to all adopt too.

 

[AlanF]

I have wondered about resolution vs auto-focus for DPAF. I think higher resolution may help eye-detection find eyes when they are a smaller fraction of the frame. I haven't had an R3 to play with to see if this is true or not.

You can see that the number of pixels on target is important for eye AF when you are using different focal lengths on the R5. For example, you can be looking at a small bird with a telephoto lens and it won't find the eye but it might if you add an extender.

 

[docsmith]

Why? Isn't that unprecedented?

I think Leica and Hasselblad are including built-in storage in their recent models.

Exactly. The Leica M11 only has 64 GB, which is nice. But the Hasselblad x2d has 1 TB. Which is really starting to be something.

I would assume internal storage could be optimized for the camera, dedicated heat sink and the potential for faster write speeds. This may be a bit of dreaming that Canon would put top notch SSD into the body, but I generally see internal SSDs with faster write speeds than external.

 

[snapshot]

You can see that the number of pixels on target is important for eye AF when you are using different focal lengths on the R5. For example, you can be looking at a small bird with a telephoto lens and it won't find the eye but it might if you add an extender.

about this i am not sure, certainly larger eyes are easier to detect for a particular camera. but, i dont know if R3 will detect small eyes better or worse then R5. I worry R3 would be worse because it has fewer pixels on target, but I dont know if R3/R5 auto-focus is using every pixel for eye recognition / edge detection.

 

[unfocused]

We have tons of CF B cards in 1TB to 650GB - Please don't make us replace them. Yes we want two of the same media slots for too many reasons to post.

45MP is just under Nikon. Many were hoping the R1 would be just as useful in the studio for portraits and fashion as it is for sports. Don't know why Canon would preclude others and if "you want" to shoot smaller, just turn it down yourself.... We all know.... You can't turn it up.... If there is no up! (ROFL)

At $10,000 it will price out many. They can do much smaller production runs and still meet demands. Those moving from the 1DXMKIII's and II's will also be slower to adopt new glass at the $10K mark. Market dictates NIkon Z9 and GFX 100s/50II prices as representing the "Scope" of what the R1 will be getting into the sandbox with on the left and right of the spectrum. Canon can take from these markets or create competition for themselves. Best they capture market share from both and get their legacy 1DX, II, III users to all adopt too.

I don't see Canon changing from CFExpress B cards. And I expect it will be the same card in both slots, just like the 1Dx III.

Makes sense for Canon to mirror Nikon in resolution. They've always been conservative with the 1 series, so I wouldn't be surprised by 45 MP, which is virtually the same as Nikon. One thing I learned from the 1DxIII though was that the 20 mp of the III withstood cropping much better than the 20 mp of the II. I don't know why, but that's what I found. So, don't judge the 45 mp by what you are used to in the 1Dx series.

It won't be $10,000. Nikon has been aggressively pricing its bodies, and Canon may not match Nikon, but they aren't stupid. Could charge $6,000-$6,500 initially and cut the price of the R3.

 

[mimbu]

A 45 MP with a global shutter would be quite an accomplishment!

The main advantage of global shutters is the lack of any sort of rolling shutter issues.

However global shutters come with some pretty big downsides: reduced dynamic range, higher noise levels, lower native sensitivity, lower frame rates, more expensive to manufacture.

If Canon has managed to overcome all the downsides then a global shutter would eliminate rolling shutter, a nice perk for the new flagship. If any of the downsides remain (apart from cost), I don't think it would be a good trade-off.

 

[shadowsports]

@unfocused,
I agree with your thinking. While up to $7k for the R1 is possible, Canon would need to introduce something phenomenal and groundbreaking to command that price. I think that Sony and Nikon's offerings will reel this in and keep the R1 at $6499 when introduced. The R3 will probably drop and hover around $5299.

Just guessing at this point.

 

[sanj]

I like the 50 mpx idea. With a 50% crop I will still get 25mpx image. We must realize that lots of factors come into play at 50% crop: Lens sharpness, atmospheric haze, critical focus etc.

 

[Tony5787]

I’m also hoping that the rumor of a larger body than the R3 is false, the R3 has the best ergonomics of any body I’ve ever used. The thing that has driven me nuts the most with the R series lineup is how Canon has no common design language between models. Every single camera has a different layout/controls, it’s insane. It’s like every camera has a different team and they’re all working in silo’s reinventing the wheel over and over. The R7 was a great example of this, instead of just using the R5 or R6 body and putting an APSC sensor in it they gave us this Frankenstein rebel body with a thumb wheel/joystick combo that’s never been seen on any other camera.

45MP sounds great though, if they can manage to get close to the high ISO performance of the R3 but at 45MP that will be borderline perfect.

 

[Jack Douglas]

For me it needs to be a big improvement on AF compared to the R5. I liked the size of my 1D4. I'm consistently annoyed by the R5 AF struggling in various situations where my 1DX2 did not but animal recognition has been a godsend so I'm not really complaining.

Jack

 

[koenkooi]

For me it needs to be a big improvement on AF compared to the R5. I liked the size of my 1D4. I'm consistently annoyed by the R5 AF struggling in various situations where my 1DX2 did not but animal recognition has been a godsend so I'm not really complaining.

Have you tried an R6II/R8 yet? For my use cases, AF has been vastly improved compared to the R5. But having tracking in all modes did mean I had to sit down, read the manual and watch some youtube guides (e.g. Jan Wegener, Scott from Wild Alaska) to understand some of the nuances better.

The rumoured R5II would need to have a lot more than that for me to consider moving hobby funds away from an RF180L, MP-R or a macro flash (e.g. MT28-EX).

 

[Maximilian]

@dolina,
I think a $10k price tag might be a little steep. About $7k is a little more realistic

$7k is too close to the R3 an almost no rise compared to the MRSP of the 1D bodies.

Maybe not 10k but surely above 8k, maybe $8,999 it‘ll become, IMO.

 

[john1970]

With regards to pricing I would think that Canon would have to be competitive with Nikon and Song flagships. My speculation on MSRP would be $7499, which is $2000 more than the price on the current R3 pricing. I do not see the R3 pricing returning to $5999.

 

[AlanF]

Have you tried an R6II/R8 yet? For my use cases, AF has been vastly improved compared to the R5. But having tracking in all modes did mean I had to sit down, read the manual and watch some youtube guides (e.g. Jan Wegener, Scott from Wild Alaska) to understand some of the nuances better.

The rumoured R5II would need to have a lot more than that for me to consider moving hobby funds away from an RF180L, MP-R or a macro flash (e.g. MT28-EX).

Maybe yours and @Jack Douglas 's use is much more sophisticated than mine or I am missing something and you are getting better AF than I do. I just use two settings for AF on the R5; eyeAF and full screen tracking on one BBF, and point focus on another BBF without tracking, just the centre point. If the tracking mode fails, I go to the other button. For BIF and DIF, tracking invariably locks on, and for static cases the point focus will lock if the background is too complicated. My R7 has the additional modes of tracking. I suppose I should look at the Wegener videos to see what I am missing for that, but as it works anyway, I'd be reluctant to spend the time on them. However, for BIF, the fast erratic ones need every mm of the sensor for tracking, and the slow ones are just too easy anyway.

 

[koenkooi]

Maybe yours and @Jack Douglas 's use is much more sophisticated than mine or I am missing something and you are getting better AF than I do. [...]

The big improvements for me are much better eye detection and tracking and keeping the lens properly focused. When taking pictures of my kids the R8 is much better at keeping the lens correctly focussed, the M6II and R5 tend to drift when shooting a burst. The situation where I see this the most is when I take pictures sitting across the stable with the aperture wide open (e.g. f/1.8 or f/2 for RF, f/1.4 for EF-M). On the M6II about half the pictures won't have the iris in focus, while the focus square claims otherwise. The R5 is much better, but the R8 manages to improve on that.

Having said that, I'm starting to suspect that this hits STM lenses a lot worse than nano-USM lenses, especially with fairly static scenes. When renting the RF50L I don't recall having this issue, but I wasn't using 20fps ES back then

As for dragonflies, I've only managed bring cameras to dragonflies once this year, but I didn't try mounting the 100-500 to the R8 to compare it with the R5. With the RF100L it did seem to detect the eyes as, well, eyes a bit more than the R5, but not much noticeable difference in AF.

 

[SnowMiku]

Way out of my range and specs for what I do, but if I was a professional shooting once in a lifetime events I would stick to the DSLR like the 1D X III which doesn't appear to have freezing issues requiring battery pulls like some RF bodies I hear about from people on here. If I were to use the R3 or R1 I would be testing it a lot before the event. Just my opinion though.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

However global shutters come with some pretty big downsides: reduced dynamic range, higher noise levels, lower native sensitivity, lower frame rates, more expensive to manufacture.

People keep repeating this but there is no reason for any of it to be true.
Global Shutter ≠ CCD
The RED Komodo is fairly inexpensive, especially for a RED, and has none of these problems.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

The R3 will probably drop and hover around $5299.

The R3 will undoubtedly drop in price but Canon is also probably planning an R3 Mark II at the $6 K USD price point.
I would expect the R1 to be around $7 K USD regardless what the competition does.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

$7k is too close to the R3

$1K is a substantial price difference.

 

[Maximilian]

$1K is a substantial price difference.

In absolute numbers? For sure.
In comparison of spec lists? Maybe.
In Canon marketing brains? I don’t think so.

And see the evidence of what happened to the prices of (almost) all R system components compared to their EOS D / EF counterparts…