More features and specifications for the Canon EOS R3 have emerged

[Michael Clark]

We all have our views and I respect that—but not when I’m referred to as an “armchair quarterback.” That’s an attack.

I think he referred to everyone here, including himself, as armchair QBs. Maybe stop being so narcissistic?

 

[Michael Clark]

A lot of speculation about the resolution of this camera .
It appears to be very much a specialised body for sports photographers so I think it will only be 20-24 mp for 3 reasons :
- smaller files speed up the camera as the processor can work faster
- smaller files mean a faster work flow
- most professional sports photographers have suitable Big White lenses and they don't need to crop much and usually are working in arenas which are well lit and human subjects are quite large and don't move very fast (less than 30mph). Motorsports move very fast but in a very predictable way that's easy to track and the Pros are in ideal positions to shoot from.

I really like this camera but for hobbiests like my self who shoot birds in flight especially small fast moving and unpredictable species like swallows, kingfishers and flycatchers a crop sensor version of this camera with 30-35mp would be an ideal camera.

I wonder how many full time professional sports shooters there are compared to amateur bird shooters ?
I suspect we out number them at least 10 to 1 , here in New Zealand I would think there are only a few dozen sports pros in the country but hundreds of amateur bird shooters (similar ratio in the rest of the world I suspect) so I think the market for a really good crop sensor camera is pretty large.

Personally I'd be prepared to pay a similar price to an R6 (in my dreams a bit lower still) for such a camera but whether Canon chooses to make one at such a price who knows ?

I don't think camera companies make much profit on these flagship bodies (which have very small production runs) but probably make good margins on lenses and making the best ones must help sales of more affordable cameras.

Here in the U.S., I'd think that amateur sports photographers outnumber amateur birders by at least 10:1, probably more like 20:1. There are handfuls of them on the sidelines at every high school football game, which is by far the biggest amateur sport in the U.S. (college sports are not "amateur", no matter what the NCAA claims). Baseball/softball and soccer have their share, too.

 

[Michael Clark]

I think 24 MP has 9.5% higher linear resolution.

24 MP is 20% more pixels in two dimension than 20 MP. The square root of 20 is 4.47...

But, yeah, the square root of 1.20 is 1.09544...

So you are correct.

 

[Michael Clark]

If both are 30 FPS then it is still fine.
Even better would be if WIFI is also 30 FPS.

30fps until the buffer is full. Then you're at ever how many frames clear the buffer per second. If the buffer is sending data to both the CFexpress bus and the SD card bus at the SD card speed, it will take significantly longer to clear the buffer of the same amount of data than when the CFexpress bus is operating at its higher speed.

 

[Michael Clark]

Not exactly the same as the R5. Canon stated that the digic X is a chip that is tweaked to suit each camera it is put in. It is not the same chip in each camera

DiG!C X is not a chip, it is an architecture.

 

[Michael Clark]

39 MP is all that is required for UHD 8K.
Since Canon is only claiming downsampled 4K and RAW I assume it will be significantly less than that.
I do not see the point in going 35 MP instead of 39.
So somewhere between 20 and 30 makes sense and I am guessing it will be closer to 30.

UHD 8K is 16:9. Extend that width to a 3:2 sensor and you have 44-45 MP.

 

[Michael Clark]

If the sony A1 costs $6500 and does 30fps and 50mp, it would be crazy to buy the R3 at $6000 if it has less than 36mp. If canon is going to charge almost as much as the A1 it needs to directly compete with it. Anything less is subpar. The LCD screen difference is an insignificant difference, the IBIS in the R5 is plenty.

If your highest priority is MP, then the R3 probably is not for you, just like the 1D X Mark III is not for you. Wait for the R1 or go with the Sony α1.

See how easy that is? Not every camera Canon releases needs to meet your specific needs.

 

[Michael Clark]

I get the joke, but actually Canon has a patent for a new kind of sensor I'm half-expecting to show up on one of the bodies above the R5, that in effect can give you one-shot HDR. It can basically take two exposures, and switch between them at microsecond speeds, so it can give one exposure 1/1000 the light of the other, and have relatively smooth motion blur and so on while also having a super-under-exposed version of the same scene also with smooth motion blur to recover highlights from.

Basically, any architecture/real estate photographer needs this feature to expose a room and also capture the view out the window, so it's not actually that esoteric.

1/1000 as much light is only 3.333 stops, though. Eight stops is 25,600X as much light.

 

[usern4cr]

1/1000 as much light is only 3.333 stops, though. Eight stops is 25,600X as much light.

??? A single stop of light is 1/2 as much light (or 2x in the other direction).
So 1/1000 as much light is 10 stops (2^10).
25,600X as much light is LogBase2(25,600) = 14.6 stops.

 

[Michael Clark]

24 MP is 20% more pixels in two dimension than 20 MP. The square root of 20 is 4.47...

But, yeah, the square root of 1.20 is 1.09544...

So you are correct.

But I stand by my opinion that 9.5% more linear resolution has very little practical difference.

The difference between, say, 20 MP and 30 MP is 22.5% linearly. That's significant.

 

[Michael Clark]

??? A single stop of light is 1/2 as much light (or 2x in the other direction).
So 1/1000 as much light is 10 stops (2^10).
25,600X as much light is LogBase2(25,600) = 14.6 stops.

Yeah, so I used 1/100 as my base instead of 1. Sorry.

 

[Michael Clark]

I wonder why Canon can't just give us two or three sensor options? Maybe 20, 30 and 60 megapixels. Then everybody would be pleased. Would threy really have to change a lot of the internals ofd a camera, if the megapixel count changes? If the camera can process 60 megapixel images, it should also be able to handle 20 megapixel images. At the moment I am working on hundredsof old photos I took with an 8.2 megapixel APS-H camera and I love how crisp they look on a pixel level. With a high megapixel count diffraction sets in much sooner. Of course you can always downsample those photos, but then you would still have to handle those large RAW files.

The biggest reason those 8.2 MP images look so good at the pixel level is that when you view them at 100% on your monitor you're enlarging them a LOT less than when you view 30 MP or 45MP images on the same monitor.

If you're using a monitor with, say, a pixel pitch of 96 ppi then 100% magnification of 8.2 MP (3504x2336) is the equivalent of a piece of a 36x24 inch enlargement. If you view a 45 MP (8192x5464) image at 100% magnification on the same monitor, it's the equivalent of 85x57 display size!

 

[usern4cr]

Yeah, so I used 1/100 as my base instead of 1. Sorry.

No problem.

I don't mean to get into the MP arguments above, but will say that I've come to love the 45MP of the R5. I'd be really happy if my next camera had the same value. I don't need more MP but would probably be OK with more, but I would have a much harder time accepting appreciably less (for my particular purposes). Now that the Olympics seem to be "ON" (for better or worse), we'll probably soon see what the R3 MP will be.

 

[Michael Clark]

then why don't you just downsample your high-MP images for better noise performance, more headroom w.r.t. DLA and better looks on pixel-level if that's what you're after?

Because he doesn't understand that 100% magnification is not the same enlargement ratio for a high MP image as it is for a low MP image. When you enlarge a smaller image pixel to the size of a screen pixel, you're magnifying more than when you enlarge a larger image pixel to the same sized screen pixel.

Some folks apparently can't wrap their mind around the fact that they're looking at a 36x24 inch enlargement when viewing 8.2MP images on a 24" FHD monitor with a pixel pitch of 96 ppi, and they're looking at an 85x57 enlargement when they're viewing a 45MP image at 100% on the same monitor.

 

[Michael Clark]

Canon has never been the one to "target" specific users. Sony does that. I HATE that. Canon makes cameras that appeal to all users. For example, the 1Dx cameras appealed to wedding photographers AND sports photographers, etc. I've always loved that about canon. With cameras like the R5 available, there is no way a sub-36ish mp camera will appeal to wedding photographers, unless it has some insane low light abilities or something. If they do target this specific genre of photographer, they will be breaking from what they've always done. It will be extremely disappointing and they will have lost a permeant canon mirrorless convert.

Canon has ALWAYS offered specific products for specific use cases.

With regard to high resolution for some use cases and faster handling and file sizes easier to transmit quickly over long distances for other use cases, Canon has differentiated their product line since the MP race really started to heat up in the late 2000s.

In the first decade or so of serious digital imaging on the consumer scale (which includes the "pro" models like the 1D and 1Ds) the 1Ds Series offered higher resolution and a FF sensor while the 1D series offered faster handling and lower resolution with an APS-H size sensor. When the 5-series began to mature, in 2012 Canon introduced both the 18 MP 1D X for high speed handling and the 24MP 5D Mark III for higher resolution. They extended this even further in 2016 when the 1D X Mark II was released at 20 MP and the 5D Mark IV had 30 MP. Then in 2020 the R5 came in at 45MP and the 1D X Mark III came in at 20 MP.

What rock have you been living under since 2008?

 

[rick1]

Canon has ALWAYS offered specific products for specific use cases.

With regard to high resolution for some use cases and faster handling and file sizes easier to transmit quickly over long distances for other use cases, Canon has differentiated their product line since the MP race really started to heat up in the late 2000s.

In the first decade or so of serious digital imaging on the consumer scale (which includes the "pro" models like the 1D and 1Ds) the 1Ds Series offered higher resolution and a FF sensor while the 1D series offered faster handling and lower resolution with an APS-H size sensor. When the 5-series began to mature, in 2012 Canon introduced both the 18 MP 1D X for high speed handling and the 24MP 5D Mark III for higher resolution. They extended this even further in 2016 when the 1D X Mark II was released at 20 MP and the 5D Mark IV had 30 MP. Then in 2020 the R5 came in at 45MP and the 1D X Mark III came in at 20 MP.

What rock have you been living under since 2008?

The canon 1 series have always been at least 68% of the megapixels of the 5 series line appealing to both sports photographers AND 5 series users. THIS is what I meant. If you bring a camera to market with mp so far below the 5 series line, it is breaking with what they have always done. What rock have you been under is the question?

 

[Michael Clark]

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.

The 5D Mark IV has 50% more pixels than the 1D X Mark II.

The 5Ds and 5Ds R had 2.5X as many pixels as the 1D X Mark II.

I don't know how many pixels a 1Dx has, because I've never seen one anywhere.

 

[Michael Clark]

The canon 1 series have always been at least 68% of the megapixels of the 5 series line appealing to both sports photographers AND 5 series users. THIS is what I meant. If you bring a camera to market with mp so far below the 5 series line, it is breaking with what they have always done. What rock have you been under is the question?

In 2020 Canon released the 45 MP R5 which they specifically market as the replacement for the 5D Mark IV. It's a 5-Series camera.
In 2020 Canon released the 20 MP 1D X Mark III, which is a 1-Series camera.

The 1D X Mark III has 44% as many pixels as the R5.

For that matter, the 2016 20 MP 1D X Mark II only has 40% as many pixels as the 2015 50 MP 5Ds and 5Ds R...

 

[rick1]

In 2020 Canon released the 45 MP R5 which they specifically market as the replacement for the 5D Mark IV. It's a 5-Series camera.
In 2020 Canon released the 20 MP 1D X Mark III, which is a 1-Series camera.

The 1D X Mark III has 44% as many pixels as the R5.

For that matter, the 2016 20 MP 1D X Mark II only has 40% as many pixels as the 2015 50 MP 5Ds and 5Ds R...

Compare apples with apples, compare the 1dxiii with the 5div, or the 1dxii with the 5diii. Compare a similar generation of cameras

 

[rick1]

The 5D Mark IV has 50% more pixels than the 1D X Mark II.

The 5Ds and 5Ds R had 2.5X as many pixels as the 1D X Mark II.

I don't know how many pixels a 1Dx has, because I've never seen one anywhere.

the 5div is 30mp, and the 1dxmkii is 20mp. So it is 66% of the megapixels of the 5d, exactly what I was saying. Not sure what you are talking about.