More features and specifications for the Canon EOS R3 have emerged

Michael Clark

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The record limit being removed is not for scenes would be my guess. A lot of professionals do long format recording for interviews, shows, and corporate events. An unlimited record limit would prove invaluable for those professionals. That said, these professionals are probably doing external recording to a monitor like the Ninja V+ anyways.

Or they're using their older, cheaper, and less capable cameras for the stationary shots and using the higher end cameras with greater capabilities for the shots that actually need that capability.
 
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Michael Clark

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If they do come out with a global shutter in a R... body, I'm guessing that they will put a ND filter in it to protect the sensor when the lens is removed (as well as having the ND function).

It has a mechanical shutter. When closed, a mechanical shutter completely covers the sensor.
 
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Michael Clark

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Honestly a good bet, and would even make sense to help boost the value of the R1 if it does end up being in the $7500 range, which nowadays is significantly more expensive than the C200 or C70, both of which have ND filters. The ND filters on the cinema cameras serve the same function, and due to the different sensor tech needed for global shutter, I doubt a global shutter sensor would even function with a mechanical shutter.

Why would a global sensor not function with a mechanical shutter? When mechanical shutters are used, readout isn't started until after the mechanical shutter is closed.
 
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Michael Clark

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Since Canon hasn't dangled any R3 MP carrots, my guess is much lower MP's than what most people had anticipated for this camera. Looks like the envisioned higher MP body is a ways off, yet. This may very well validate some of the opinions out there that the R3 was actually intended to be the R1 but after Sony's A1 release, Canon decided to rethink its high end offerings and release dates. Still, the R3 looks to be a body that will be well received by sports and action photographers. Bird photographers may just have to wait awhile longer for some other Canon surprise high MP or APSC offering. Is there a soon to be R7 just around the corner?? After all, no one expected this R3 body when Canon made the sudden and surprising announcement. Maybe Private by Design is right and we shouldn't get so hung up on MP. However, since the pixel peepers may now be let down a bit, it may behoove Canon to put it all out there, play their cards and show us their R3 hand. No bluff, no tease, just show us what you've got. Lay their cards on the table for everyone to see. Then, being able to make an informed decision, we'll either buy it or not.

They'll certainly announce the full specs before you're able to buy it.
 
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Michael Clark

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I know the R3 isn't supposed to be a high MP camera, but I really do hope it has at least 24 MP. I'd feel let down at only 20.

There's no real practical difference between 20 and 24 MP. It's only a 3.4% difference in linear resolution.

EDIT: I must have been half asleep when I did the math. It's actually 9.5%, but that's still fairly inconsequential. Instead of a display size of, say, 36x24, you can enlarge to 39x26 and get the same number of pixels per inch.
 
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Michael Clark

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I don't know why the mechanical shutter is such a power hog in the R5 - as a consequence I'm not using it much in the field, but I do hope they optimize the power in the R3, in addition to the stacked voltage advantage

It's not just the shutter. It's also the energy needed to refocus the lens between each frame.
 
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Michael Clark

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Hi David, here is what I see at this canon europe link

JPEG: 2 compression options RAW: RAW, C-RAW 14 bit (14-bit with Mechanical shutter and Electronic 1st Curtain, 13-bit A/D conversion with H+ mode, 12-bit A/D conversion with Electronic shutter, Canon original RAW 3rd edition) HEIF: 10bit HEIF is available in HDR shooting with [HDR PQ] set to [Enable] Complies with Exif 2.31 and Design rule for Camera File system 2.0 Complies with Digital Print Order Format [DPOF] Version 1.1

parsed out,
H mode, MS or EFCS : 14bit depth
H+ mode, MS or EFCS : 13bit depth -- makes sense, to shoot faster need faster sensor readout, so drop 1 bit of resolution and tradeoff with a slightly lower SNR
ES : 12bit depth -- same as above, need to read faster
As an aside .. I see posters here asking for ES options for 10, 20, 30 fps .. but the readout still has to be done in the same amount of time to prevent rolling shutter effects, so ES will stay at 12bit ... I think.

I can't wrap my head around the power requirements between these modes though. if it was the electronics pathway from sensor to card that was power hungry, ES should have also degraded at lower than 50% batt levels, but it doesn't. I mean I get performance degradation at low batt levels, but 50% ;)

Again, the primary power issue is the energy needed to refocus the lens between each shot.
 
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Michael Clark

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The EOS-1R is still two years away so I feel like I'll have to buy the R3 even though I have two R5's.

It'll be the EOS R1. They dropped the dash between EOS and the number when they went from film to digital models. They reversed the numbers/letter in the model names between the EF and RF mount, just like they reversed the letter/number order between the FD and EF mount.
 
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Sorry, that doesn’t make any sense to me. Every company has a target user in mind when they develop a product. Otherwise they would just make 1 product in total right? Segmentation within a product lineup is of course something that Canon employs. But please correct me if I have mis understood what you are getting at?
For example, sony released an updated A9ii with new features that ONLY targeted sports photographers. Canon has never done that. Whenever they release a new mainstream camera they add features that a wide variety of people will benefit from. Their 1Dx cameras were only 30% less megapixels than their 5DmIV which made them beneficial to other photographers besides sports photographers. With the current technology, and with the R5 being 45mp, to keep the same pace, the R3 would need to be 32mp at least.
 
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Michael Clark

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You don’t have to be a fool to neccesarly want to recover 8 stops of light. Cameras still today don’t have the same dynamic scene/range of what your eye sees when you are viewing something beautiful with a high dynamic range but wish to capture it as close as possible to the experience.

With film it was expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, because film was more forgiving of overexposed highlights than for underexposed shadows. But even film couldn't recover details from highlights that were eight stops overexposed.

With digital it is expose for the highlights and develop for the shadows. This is because there's a hard line at a fully saturated sensel. There's no technology that can recover how many photons above full well capacity fell on a sensel.

Anyone who shoots eight stops too bright with a digital camera, or even a film camera, has no idea what they are doing unless a thermonuclear warhead detonates nearby after exposure has been set but just before the image is exposed. In which case there are other considerations far more important to worry about than a photo which will never be seen by anyone.
 
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Michael Clark

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That to but missing a shot is worse than having to wait with the shot in hand.

In the world of news and sports journalism, the end result is exactly the same. Someone else gets their shot on the wires first and five minutes later no one else in the world cares how much better of a shot you had.
 
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Michael Clark

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Agreed. I like the dual-CF in my 1D X, which I have set to write RAW to both cards for redundancy. With an SD slot on the R3, I fully expect that will affect long bursts (if not acquisition, then clearing the buffer). So I'll write RAW to the CFexpress and jpg to the SD as an emergency backup.

But even that scenario (Raw to the fast card, JPEG to the slow card) can dramatically reduce the number of frames one can shoot before the buffer fills, if the performance hit for doing it that way with the 7D Mark II, 5D Mark III, and 5D Mark IV are any indication. When both slots are used simultaneously, the bus speeds of the faster slot is reduced to the slower slot's maximum data rate. Of course, Canon may have figured out how to move data from the buffer to each card slot at different bus speeds, but that seems to be fairly farfetched.
 
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Michael Clark

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Thats a good thing,. I ike on my R5 when you shut off the camera the shutter covers the sensor makes for easier lens swapping and less dust on the sensor.. Still don't understand why Canon has held back on releasing the mega pixel count on the R3, It seems clear that there are some pre productions units already out in the field... Tokyo Olympics are in 50 days..

To the best of my knowledge, Canon has never officially confirmed a digital camera's resolution prior to the official introduction announcement. Why would they start now?
 
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Michael Clark

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Apr 5, 2016
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Thats a good thing,. I ike on my R5 when you shut off the camera the shutter covers the sensor makes for easier lens swapping and less dust on the sensor.. Still don't understand why Canon has held back on releasing the mega pixel count on the R3, It seems clear that there are some pre productions units already out in the field... Tokyo Olympics are in 50 days..

The Tokyo Olympics are toast. Not going to happen in any recognizable way. No foreign non-competitors allowed into the country.
 
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Michael Clark

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But the 1DX III has a DIGIC X and 20mp at 20fps, the R3 also has DIGIC X, how do you expect that one processor to process more than twice the resolution 150% faster?

DiG!C X is not a specific processor chip like previous DiG!C chips were. It's a design architecture. That leaves room for increased processing capacity in the same way that newer Intel Core i7 chips or AMD Ryzen chips can be faster than previous i7 or Ryzen chips are.

Expecting a newer version to be able to process twice as much data in 2/3 the same time is probably a bit optimistic, though.
 
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