Quad-Pixel AF and a global shutter coming in 2021?

If its a sports camera I doubt it will have 8k (45mpixel). I bet its more like 30mpixel and 6k or something. Though I might be wrong. Since they managed to get 45mpixel with 20fps out of the R5, it may be very well possible for the R1...

Coming from the R5 I mostly hope for:
- a full size HDMI port
- 4k50 and 4k100 without overheat and with audio
- 1080p480
- more physical buttons (especialy a mode dial, dedicated ISO button and WB button)
You can buy a micro HDMI to HDMI cable for cheap.

I think overheating can be avoided when Canon uses 5nm process on their DIGIC chips.
 
Upvote 0
I'd be surprised if the camera had 8K. The 1D body has always prioritized FPS, and 8K resolution would limit that.
If it has a global shutter then the read speed would be instantaneous (or close enough). The R5 can move 45mp @ 20fps in eshutter mode so the downstream tech is there and 20fps is the current speed of the 1DXiii in eshutter mode (16fps mechanical).

If the R1 has 2 Digix processors (as previous ones had) then 45mp could be down sampled to ~20mp easily @ 20fps.

Best of both worlds - high res and high speed!
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
Dec 25, 2017
569
557
You can buy a micro HDMI to HDMI cable for cheap.

I think overheating can be avoided when Canon uses 5nm process on their DIGIC chips.
Jeah, we use these, but the port is still SUPER SUPER fragile. No cable or adapter sits tight in such a tiny port. I even use the Smallrig Cage with the clamps for the ports - but its still a very ugly solution. There has to be full-size hdmi. Micro HDMI breaks super easily (as it happend on my GH4). Its by far the worst port out there. Even Mini HDMI is a bad port, but still much better... there would be easily enough space for a bigger port.

Jeah, I also think that overheating can be SUPER EASILY fixed in a larger body. Just a small heatsink in the grip would do.
This guy custom modded the R5 with a internal heatsink (the watercooling in the titel ist just a first try in the video) and it worked out noteable better. With a big grip like the 1D got, its no problem at all.
Great Channel btw :-D
 
Upvote 0
I need to sell several big things... or do I just start saving now for the R1 MkII and give the 1DX3 the four-year hard-working life it deserves?!!
More seriously, this product line tends not to be at the cutting edge of video resolution, so 8K would likely present too many technological hurdles or unnecessary compromises over the more typical feature list on a press camera. (Not that video has ever interested me, although I am pleased to be using my 1DX2 as my Zoom and Teams webcam!)
The 1D series always had leading video specs. 1DXiii with 4k60 and no overheating is still class leading. The R5 is the single instance of video res being higher than a 1 series
 
Upvote 0
Jeah, we use these, but the port is still SUPER SUPER fragile. No cable or adapter sits tight in such a tiny port. I even use the Smallrig Cage with the clamps for the ports - but its still a very ugly solution. There has to be full-size hdmi. Micro HDMI breaks super easily (as it happend on my GH4). Its by far the worst port out there. Even Mini HDMI is a bad port, but still much better... there would be easily enough space for a bigger port.

Jeah, I also think that overheating can be SUPER EASILY fixed in a larger body. Just a small heatsink in the grip would do.
This guy custom modded the R5 with a internal heatsink (the watercooling in the titel ist just a first try in the video) and it worked out noteable better. With a big grip like the 1D got, its no problem at all.
Great Channel btw :-D
Good point about the micro HDMI being fragile but how do you fit a full sized HDMI onto it though? A main draw of MILC is supposed to make it smaller than SLR. I'm thankful Canon did not do an Apple and force people to use USB-C as the sole port of their devices.

Also watched that video. Doesn't Canon have a 8K body that does not overheat?
 
Upvote 0
This all sounds great but none of it matters unless they can give us a true live feed off the sensor to the EVF at the top FPS in ES. The 20FPS slideshow on the R5/R6 is great in that it is blackout free (as is the 12FPS MS slideshow) but it is still a slideshow and if you take your finger off the shutter mid-way in a burst you are brought back to the live EVF view and realize what you've been looking at for the past second or so wasn't reality. This can be a bit jolting and interfere with getting a second burst off as the subject (in my case BIF) gets closer.

Currently I spend my shooting days doing about 50% with R5 and 50% with A9II. The one big difference I notice in tracking the faster, erratic BIF is the slideshow of the R5 compared to the A9II's live feed. But the R5's EVF shooting experience at top FPS is still well ahead of anything else out there that I've tried (A7RIV, Z7, Z50) other than the A9/A9II.

My final verdict on the R5's AF and EVF shooting experience will come this spring when I finally get my swallows back to shoot with the R5.


----

"....This all sounds great but none of it matters unless they can give us a true live feed off the sensor to the EVF at the top FPS in ES. ...."

If you want to go all crazy in terms of FPS for a live-view display, I have a few 10,000 fps CMOS micro-LED RGB emitters in our inventory (we make them in-house!). Would THAT work for ya? Right now they are 4096 by 2160 pixels with a two-frame latency (1/5,000ths of a second delay) from photon capture, DSP and 64-bit RGBA pixel conversion/export to final micro-LED display/emission so that is actually VERY VERY VERY GOOD compared to an all-optical viewfinder !!!

While they are a tad expensive right now at $15,000 CDN per chip we should be able to drop them at around $750 per chip within two years and $300 CDN in four years!

V
 
Upvote 0
Dec 25, 2017
569
557
Good point about the micro HDMI being fragile but how do you fit a full sized HDMI onto it though? A main draw of MILC is supposed to make it smaller than SLR. I'm thankful Canon did not do an Apple and force people to use USB-C as the sole port of their devices.

Also watched that video. Doesn't Canon have a 8K body that does not overheat?
The Panasonic GH5 (along many other Panas) got a fullsize HDMI Port and its a noteable smaller Camera. Same for the Sony A7s III. The Body is big enough, juding from some teardownvideos - I would say just minimal adjustments inside would have allowed for a fullsize HDMI port. Which would have been a BIG improvment in my opinion. HDMI out is super important on this camera - especialy since 4k60 internal overheats after 20-40 minutes while external works perfectly.
I totaly agree on the USB-C of courese =) Thats absolutely no replacment for HDMI at the moment. Though maybe in the future. USB-C is at least better than MICRO hdmi ^^

At the moment, i dont think so. If I am not mistaken, the R5 is the only 8k camera from canon, isnt it? Even flagships like the C700 FF offer "only" 5,9k.
Not that its an important feature at the moment. I would have absolutely prefered 4k RAW about 8k raw. 4k RAW is sadly not available on the R5. And 8k overheats in 10-15 minutes and is very difficult to edit (proxies is the way to go). It also offers no visible advantage over 4k HQ, if you watch it on a 4k screen (its identical). Unless you need to crop.
 
Upvote 0
Note... this is how you have a discussion.

2020 turned out better than projected by Canon. A few months back it was reported they have inched into 45.4% of the a shrinking camera market. To me that means that their volume of shipping products was least impacted among all the brands. A good thing if you want Canon to be solvent so your system stays relevant and a bad thing if you want Canon to innovate due to competition.

When the EOS R came out in 2018 it signaled to me that there would be no more further development of the EF mount and whatever bodies made available by Sep 2018 will be continued to be produced until demand is too expensive to cater for.

This makes the 1D X Mark III somewhat of a paradox. I was expecting the R1 in 2020 but often with mission critical hardware you tend to err on being conservative. Last thing Reuters, Getty, EPA, etc want is new tech that may not function as expected.

This is a fundamental reason why I see the R1 to more likely appear by Q1 2024.

Will the release of the R1 significantly offset the loss on the 1D X Mark III? This will cause the Osborne Effect.

It is very difficult and very expensive to move from 1 system to another if you have a large and built up ecosystem in place. My guess is that Sony gave a very generous discount to AP to switch their whole operations to their hardware last year. I would not be surprised that Sony gave up any margin to get them as a client to legitimize their system among photo news agencies.

RF mount lens will perform better than EF mount lens due to more modern engineering and better materials science. Canon needs to transition at least 80% of the L lenses before the R1 would be taken seriously.

If Canon positioned the R1 as more expensive than the $6,499 1D X Mark III then I see it as very probable to come out this year but that would make the Sony a9 II half it's price. :oops:

Will there be a 2022 Olympics? :) If I was the OIC I'd push everyone back by 4 years. Tokyo 2024, Paris 2028, etc.
I think that the anchor point to your position is the cost of amortising the R&D for the 1Dxiii over time. We don't have an accurate view of the 1DX sales but it is small. The summer olympics would have been a relative bump in sales though which hasn't happened yet.
Although every camera body has unique R&D costs, the 1DXiii body is recycled from previous models with the exception of the AF smart controller which is a standalone feature. A lot of the SW is based on the same Digic processing as the R5/R6. The downstream tech (processing, memory, bus and cards) is also used in the R5/R6. The 1DXiii sensor has volume based on R6 sales.
Unique R&D costs were the new mechanical shutter and the viewfinder AF system.
Canon needed to release a new 1DX to compete (and beat) Nikon as a halo model. Manufacturers don't always make much money with halo models but they are needed to showcase what is possible as a company as tech slowly flows to lower models.
I fully expect the R1 to have features far in excess of the 1DXiii and charge an appropriately higher cost to segment their top models.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0
The 1D series always had leading video specs. 1DXiii with 4k60 and no overheating is still class leading. The R5 is the single instance of video res being higher than a 1 series

---

If you do the math on the 8K at 30 fps of the Canon R5, a 20 megapixel R1 SHOULD be able to do a little over 42 fps Burst Rate at Full Resolution 3:2 aspect ratio Stills which WOULD make it truly class-leading in pro-sports/action/wildlife photography!

If they change the sensor over to global shutter AND change over to high-sensitivity BicMOS (Bi-Polar Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor)

see link for:
Avalanche photodiode image sensor in standard BiCMOS technology:
(by Alice Bibera, Peter Seitz, Heinz Jäckel)


This would BLOW AWAY the Sony A7s3 in terms of low-noise at ISO-819200 levels of sensitivity!

We're working on those types ourselves and have a few prototypes in-house but they not ready for prime time yet but will be within four years! These put the Sony Starvis-series of image sensors to shame in terms of full-colour RGB night vision!

V
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
Repeating my previous guess for R1 specs. Combination of R5/1DXiii current capabilities and global shutter/quad pixel AF.
.....
My guess for R1 is minimum specs as R5 but in 1D body ( AF-On smart controller buttons, dual CFe slots) with:
- Global shutter (no mechanical shutter). Rolling shutter artifacts significantly better than current electronic shutter
- 45mp sensor with IBIS (IBIS can be turned off)
- 30fps electronic shutter burst with full tracking - perhaps with buffer ie not unlimited
- ~20mp on-the fly over sampled (no lossy compression/cRAW/S-RAW) at full 30fps unlimited buffer. Best of both worlds.
- Dual Digic X to spread the heat generation and generate less heat per CPU
- Unlimited 8k cinema raw lite internal recording to CFe card capacity
- 6K/60. 4k/120 unlimited no crop internal recording.
- No line skipping/pixel binning 4k/6k modes ie oversampled of full sensor width
- 29:59 recording limit
- Clog2/3
- minimum 16fps using anti-flicker depending on frequency of the flicker lighting
- AF in very low light (quad pixel makes sense but would be equivalent to a 180mp sensor!)
- pixel shift high res stills
- 9+ megadot EFV with no blackout and fast refresh rates (at least 120fps). >0.5" in size
- full sized HDMI 2.1 port (48G) or thunderbolt 3 USB-C or both
- Mini XLR audio option
- Ethernet port
- Flippy screen included. This one I am not sure on but still needed I think. Weather sealing will need to be excellent though

USD10k

Won't directly compete with cinema line due to form factor but there will be a similar specced cinema form factor with unlimited 8k raw option, heaps of buttons and vented/fan cooled. Cxxx option will be more expensive.
 
Upvote 0

jam05

R5, C70
Mar 12, 2019
916
584
@dolina Your overly confident predictions don't held up well if this rumor is right. About the R1 not launching before 2024.


I repeat my previous post.



Out of curiousity are you a stock trader?
I had been told him that he was wrong. Canon has most always released it's 1DX prior to every Summer Olympics and even went as far delivering cameras to the venues.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
I think that the anchor point to your position is the cost of amortising the R&D for the 1Dxiii over time. We don't have an accurate view of the 1DX sales but it is small. The summer olympics would have been a relative bump in sales though which hasn't happened yet.
Although every camera body has unique R&D costs, the 1DXiii body is recycled from previous models with the exception of the AF smart controller which is a standalone feature. A lot of the SW is based on the same Digic processing as the R5/R6. The downstream tech (processing, memory, bus and cards) is also used in the R5/R6. The 1DXiii sensor has volume based on R6 sales.
Unique R&D costs were the new mechanical shutter and the viewfinder AF system.
Canon needed to release a new 1DX to compete (and beat) Nikon as a halo model. Manufacturers don't always make much money with halo models but they are needed to showcase what is possible as a company as tech slowly flows to lower models.
I fully expect the R1 to have features far in excess of the 1DXiii and charge an appropriately higher cost to segment their top models.
Another point is the lack of RF L lenses that is normally paired with a 1-Series body.

Canon disclosed years ago that 1-Series bodies make up 1% of all EOS bodies sold.

R1 body at more than $6,499 would be almost double the price of a Sony a9 II.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
At the moment, i dont think so. If I am not mistaken, the R5 is the only 8k camera from canon, isnt it? Even flagships like the C700 FF offer "only" 5,9k.
Not that its an important feature at the moment. I would have absolutely prefered 4k RAW about 8k raw. 4k RAW is sadly not available on the R5. And 8k overheats in 10-15 minutes and is very difficult to edit (proxies is the way to go). It also offers no visible advantage over 4k HQ, if you watch it on a 4k screen (its identical). Unless you need to crop.
If I was getting married today I'd want it to be recorded in 8K. I'd even buy extra R5 bodies for the production team so they can easily swap out bodies when it needs to cool down.

Why the need for 8K? By your 10th anniversary 8K displays would cost as much as a 65" 4K OLED TVs are today. By your silver anniversary 8K displays would sell for $300.
 
Upvote 0
D

Deleted member 381342

Guest
Repeating my previous guess for R1 specs. Combination of R5/1DXiii current capabilities and global shutter/quad pixel AF.
.....
My guess for R1 is minimum specs as R5 but in 1D body ( AF-On smart controller buttons, dual CFe slots) with:
- Global shutter (no mechanical shutter). Rolling shutter artifacts significantly better than current electronic shutter
- 45mp sensor with IBIS (IBIS can be turned off)
- 30fps electronic shutter burst with full tracking - perhaps with buffer ie not unlimited
- ~20mp on-the fly over sampled (no lossy compression/cRAW/S-RAW) at full 30fps unlimited buffer. Best of both worlds.
- Dual Digic X to spread the heat generation and generate less heat per CPU
- Unlimited 8k cinema raw lite internal recording to CFe card capacity
- 6K/60. 4k/120 unlimited no crop internal recording.
- No line skipping/pixel binning 4k/6k modes ie oversampled of full sensor width
- 29:59 recording limit
- Clog2/3
- minimum 16fps using anti-flicker depending on frequency of the flicker lighting
- AF in very low light (quad pixel makes sense but would be equivalent to a 180mp sensor!)
- pixel shift high res stills
- 9+ megadot EFV with no blackout and fast refresh rates (at least 120fps). >0.5" in size
- full sized HDMI 2.1 port (48G) or thunderbolt 3 USB-C or both
- Mini XLR audio option
- Ethernet port
- Flippy screen included. This one I am not sure on but still needed I think. Weather sealing will need to be excellent though

USD10k

Won't directly compete with cinema line due to form factor but there will be a similar specced cinema form factor with unlimited 8k raw option, heaps of buttons and vented/fan cooled. Cxxx option will be more expensive.

Thinking of it from pro sports and pro wildlife shooters, some things here don't add up. Now wildlife shooters want 45 MP, sports shooters don't and we have the 1DIV to 1DxIII and even the D3 to D6 all coming in very similar MP with supposed backlash if they go higher. Oversampled might be a thing, but that sounds like extra on camera processing that wouldn't be trusted.

Video features and tilt/flip screens, that isn't something I see mattering to someone with it attached to a 400mm f/2.8 on a tripod at the edge of a football match.

I expect more we'll see big improvements like 2.5 Gbps ethernet, which would benefit these shooters on top of the global shutter and Dual Digic X 2 processors. Quad pixel AF makes sense as mirrorless struggle focusing on vertical lines. 20-30 FPS is a done deal. Removing the mechanical shutter, that is iffy but if they have a true global shutter then a mechanical shutter is superfluous.

USB 4 (which has TB3) would be my guess on connector, but unsure why we need HDMI 2.1. If they do put in TB3 then that can spit out the video to a TB3 to HDMI cable.

Overall, I think the specs you guess are possible, just not logical for the target market. Maybe if there was a stadium and field version of the R1?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote 0

unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
Jul 20, 2010
7,184
5,483
70
Springfield, IL
www.thecuriouseye.com
A few thoughts on this. Not criticizing, just thinking while typing...

I think that the anchor point to your position is the cost of amortising the R&D for the 1Dxiii over time. We don't have an accurate view of the 1DX sales but it is small. The summer olympics would have been a relative bump in sales though which hasn't happened yet.

I think we overestimate the impact of Olympics. Photographers at the Olympics represent a tiny fraction of a fraction of the professional sports photographer universe, which in itself is very small. Most sports photographers today are more likely to be like me -- employed by an institution, such as a college or university -- or trying to eke out a living through freelance contracts or hanging on as one of the few remaining local newspaper photographers out there or selling pictures to particpants and their families at local sporting events. There remain a few top level sports photographers, people like Scott Kelby and Peter Read Miller for example, but even these guys are contract workers. Point being that even if Canon sold two bodies to every single photographer covering the Olympics, it wouldn't be enough to sustain the line.

Sales these day are at least as likley, and probably more so, to be coming from amateurs who have sufficient disposible income and the desire to own the top of the line camera. As I said in a previous post, the olympics is important not because it puts cameras in the hands of pros but because it represents a marketing opportunity to sell cameras to enthusiasts who have the money to afford the top of the line.

Not disagreeing with your point, just adding that I doubt Olympics-related sales even enters into Canon's calculations one way or another. I've said before that I can't see any real Olympic photographers taking the risk of shooting events with a new and untried body, especially given that COVID-19 means they will have had limited events to become familiar with the camera before the Olympics.

On the other hand, the promotional aspect of the Olympics does enter into the equation and I can see Canon finagling press access for a bunch of photographers to take pictures using an R1 so they can promote it in their marketing campaign.

Although every camera body has unique R&D costs, the 1DXiii body is recycled from previous models with the exception of the AF smart controller which is a standalone feature.

Stand alone for now. Rumors of the death of the DSLR might be greatly exagerated. If Canon continues offering DSLRs in any form, the smart controller is likely to become a standard feature. (It is, by the way, a great feature and negates one of the big advantages of mirrorless in my personal opinion.)

A lot of the SW is based on the same Digic processing as the R5/R6. The downstream tech (processing, memory, bus and cards) is also used in the R5/R6. The 1DXiii sensor has volume based on R6 sales.

Plus, we don't know how much new development costs were actually invested in the sensor, which was an incremental improvement over the existing 1Dx II sensor. And, we don't know, but can assume, that development costs for sensors transfer across the varying resolutions.

Canon needed to release a new 1DX to compete (and beat) Nikon as a halo model. Manufacturers don't always make much money with halo models but they are needed to showcase what is possible as a company as tech slowly flows to lower models.

Exactly.
 
Upvote 0

unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
Jul 20, 2010
7,184
5,483
70
Springfield, IL
www.thecuriouseye.com
If I was getting married today I'd want it to be recorded in 8K. I'd even buy extra R5 bodies for the production team so they can easily swap out bodies when it needs to cool down.

Why the need for 8K? By your 10th anniversary 8K displays would cost as much as a 65" 4K OLED TVs are today. By your silver anniversary 8K displays would sell for $300.

But, you would still be watching that video on a smart phone display, where no one can tell it was shot in 8K. Plus, in 25 years you will be divorced and the last thing your new wife would want to look at would be your wedding video with wife #1.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 2 users
Upvote 0
Thinking of it from pro sports and pro wildlife shooters, some things here don't add up. Now wildlife shooters want 45 MP, sports shooters don't and we have the 1DIV to 1DxIII and even the D3 to D6 all coming in very similar MP with supposed backlash if they go higher. Oversampled might be a thing, but that sounds like extra on camera processing that wouldn't be trusted.

Video features and tilt/flip screens, that isn't something I see mattering to someone with it attached to a 400mm f/2.8 on a tripod at the edge of a football match.

I expect more we'll see big improvements like 2.5 Gbps ethernet, which would benefit these shooters on top of the global shutter and Dual Expeed X 2 processors. Quad pixel AF makes sense as mirrorless struggle focusing on vertical lines. 20-30 FPS is a done deal. Removing the mechanical shutter, that is iffy but if they have a true global shutter then a mechanical shutter is superfluous.

USB 4 (which has TB3) would be my guess on connector, but unsure why we need HDMI 2.1. If they do put in TB3 then that can spit out the video to a TB3 to HDMI cable.

Overall, I think the specs you guess are possible, just not logical for the target market. Maybe if there was a stadium and field version of the R1?
Not sure about "trusted". Dual processors is standard for 1DX models in the past. My understanding is that (and correct me if I am wrong) most pro sports are sending jpg and not raw so the oversampling could be compared to the jpg engine.
I agree that a flippy screen wouldn't balance a 400mm/2.8 but the 1DX have always had leading video and a flippy screen is important for video. You can always fold it in if you don't use it as I do with the R5 for indoor events. Video will become more and more important over time.
Wildlife shooting is not always standing up so using a flippy screen for more comfortable waiting positions would be an advantage. The weather sealing for the 1DX combined with great video specs would be great for wildlife videography without using a dedicated video format.
Expeed is for Nikon vs Digic for Canon?
Connectivity is an issue for the R5. HDMI 2.0 is included but can't handle 8k/30, 4k/120 bandwidths. HDMI 2.1 is newer and hard to get certified cables for instance but does handle the bandwidth. New firmware promised by Canon for the R5 will have reduced (compressed) cinema raw which would hopefully allow external recording with greater record times without the CFe card heat. Whether HDMI2.1 or USD4 or UBS-C or 10G ethernet will be the question but connectivity will need to be greater than current connectors.
I don't see a split of models as the volume isn't there. It will have features that some won't use but they are all in the spare parts bin at the moment to be assembled :)
 
Upvote 0
On the other hand, the promotional aspect of the Olympics does enter into the equation and I can see Canon finagling press access for a bunch of photographers to take pictures using an R1 so they can promote it in their marketing campaign.

Stand alone for now. Rumors of the death of the DSLR might be greatly exagerated. If Canon continues offering DSLRs in any form, the smart controller is likely to become a standard feature. (It is, by the way, a great feature and negates one of the big advantages of mirrorless in my personal opinion.)
With the demise of camera shows/exhibitions, something like the olympics would be best marketing opportunity for Canon. Pros would need time to get used to a new model but the 1DXiii is incremental so ergonomics would have been simple to adapt to.
The R1 is likely to be in the same form factor as the 1DX. Battery life, portrait duplication, weather sealing, size to distribute heat all make sense and smaller doesn't help balance bg lenses.
My use of "standalone" was more in the sense that it is a feature that was added without significant changes to the body.
The R5 has the joystick and the rear screen to move the AF point. In portrait orientation, the screen is hard to use and not ideal for people wearing gloves. The dual AF smart controllers make perfect sense for mirrorless as well as DLSR for this.
 
Upvote 0
Jan 29, 2011
10,675
6,121
I don’t believe it is the sales Canon and Nikon chased at the Olympics, it was the prestige and headlines. Heck Canon were a major sponsor for many games and brought out special models specifically commemorating the Games As well as developing highly capable specialized models with very specific shots in mind. For generations the impetus of that four year cycle pushed the R&D teams, it gave them a focal point they could aim for and try to beat the other with higher fps, etc etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
Upvote 0