RF Mount APS-C camera coming second half of 2021 [CR2]

jolyonralph

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I'm not sure I agree that Canon wouldn't re-launch lenses in APS-C RF mount - it really depends on their long-term plan

The long term plan is simple. APS-C will remain for entry-level cameras and the 7D market will be moved onto higher resolution FF cameras that can crop down to a decent resolution at APS-C (ie 50mpx+ sensor). Sure, there's a big price differential at the moment, but that price gap is going to shrink over time.

There won't be a need for APS-C lenses on the RF mount. The R7 is likely a one-off APS-C body for the RF mount, I doubt there will be an R7 Mark II. There won't be a need.

Even in 2 years time the R5 is going to be cheap enough that potential R7 buyers are going to have a hard think about whether the R5 is going to be better for their needs.

Yes, it won't be ideal for everyone. But the camera market is shrinking, and Canon have less flexibility to produce individual bodies (and entire ranges of lenses) for a single submarket.

I could be entirely wrong on this - but let's see what happens...
 
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unfocused

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If photography isn't already your living, it probably never will be. Full-time photographers in 2020 compared to 2000 are like harness makers were in 1920 compared to 1900.
Actually, I think harness making in 2020 is probably a pretty good gig. Fortunately for them, everyone in the world isn't walking around with a perfectly suitable harness in their pocket. :)
 
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jolyonralph

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I disagree. All they need to sell a ton of RF APS-C cameras is to bundle it with a 15-55mm zoom as a kit lens. Most photography beginners buy an APS-C camera with a kit lens, and then maybe buy a nifty fifty for low-light. RF mount already have the RF35mm f/1.8 IS for $449 & RF85mm f/2 Macro IS for $599, both with 1:2 macro capability that makes them very versatile. We already heard many rumors about cheaper lenses coming to the RF-line.

Have you not seen what they've been doing with the M series? They're selling very well already. In a difficult market why risk throwing away your profitable product line for something bigger, heavier and potentially less marketable to a large % of buyers.
 
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unfocused

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The long term plan is simple. APS-C will remain for entry-level cameras and the 7D market will be moved onto higher resolution FF cameras that can crop down to a decent resolution at APS-C (ie 50mpx+ sensor). Sure, there's a big price differential at the moment, but that price gap is going to shrink over time.

There won't be a need for APS-C lenses on the RF mount. The R7 is likely a one-off APS-C body for the RF mount, I doubt there will be an R7 Mark II. There won't be a need.

Even in 2 years time the R5 is going to be cheap enough that potential R7 buyers are going to have a hard think about whether the R5 is going to be better for their needs.

Yes, it won't be ideal for everyone. But the camera market is shrinking, and Canon have less flexibility to produce individual bodies (and entire ranges of lenses) for a single submarket.

I could be entirely wrong on this - but let's see what happens...
Actually, I think you might be correct. Just speaking for myself, I would probably have bought a 7DIII if they made it. Would have actually bought two, one for me and one for my wife.

But, even with the 5D IV I found that the resolution was sufficient for most of my bird photography and the 7DII was getting less and less use. I'm thinking that with the R5, once the price drops, I can replace both the 5DIV and 7DII and not give up much, plus, with the R, I would have a second body with truly silent shutter when I need that for events.

I'm not sure if I have sufficient GAS in the tank to buy both an R5 and an R7, especially since I am fast approaching the point where my paying photography work will end and only the hobby photography will remain. In this segment, a large part of the shrinking camera market is comprised of boomers who are aging out of the market. Canon can milk us for a few more years, but eventually, we will be too old and decrepit to carry around these cameras and the M series will become more attractive.
 
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The disconnect for me is why do such people (who I agree are in the majority) want an interchangeable lens system at all? They are well catered for by the various high end compacts and bridge cameras which do most things tolerably well and some things extremely well indeed. I wonder if the answer is that there's a bit of the gearhead in all of us...

Because the lower end M’s are cheaper than the G7 or the G5, atleast in my part of the world.
 
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Likely that Canon could rational their line up (APS & FF) into one ML Mount - meaning an user can buy an APS camera in RF mount - add both APS ML RF glass and FF ML glass followed by upgrade to a FF ML camera.

Remember Nikon (with their wrong turn ML compact line) - CX abandoning this - although they didn't invest in doing any more cameras in the lens two years before they can it.

Also Canon did abandon their previous Mount FD before going for Electronic AF E mount in 1987 - however they have good line up of M cameras but don't see them doing much investment lately of EOS M glass and that could be sign they could be DOA EOS M mount and going to one ML mount.

The camera sector is compressing / restricting for past 4 years and may be still contracting going forward - so camera companies need to rational their line up and make cameras that can sell and also make them money. Also the evolution of the Smart phone into all in one jack of trades device doesn't help and punter can pick up decent mobile like Moto G8 Plus for £250 - good mobile for apps, browsing internet, taking video and stills especially decent for sharing online

If people are happy with a smartphone they will stick with it. Everyone here probably uses one at certain times for certain things, and although I’m not suggesting you can’t take a good picture on any of them, simply some people want to explore photography or vlogging or video in a different way and buy a camera. That market will exist for quite a while. I’m not sure I would try and do sports or wildlife or landscape of the sort I like to take but yes, that market is significant in size.

The number of camera devices sold will shrink to maybe around the pre DSLR or early DSLR market size. But the smartphone market will also plateau and their impact on the camera market will even out. Ergonomics will see to that.

I agree camera makers need to continue to rationalise some lines and more so the models within those lines, still means we can have 4 lines in the Canon business so long as they sell enough in each line for each one to remain profitable or market share. As people stop buying enough, so models will not be refreshed. Canon doesn’t need to refresh the M that much because of the target market not requiring it. Just some niche people here, myself included. But If they can still make a profit from each model, surely they will continue.

Even in the DSLR and equivalent, I suspect as capabilities have reached a certain level, and exceed a lot of use cases, so people upgrading as frequently has diminished. Same in every mature market until a step change occurs.

The interview on Lensrentals stated that lenses take a few years from concept to market, and I would guess broadly bodies are similar. I’m not sure consolidating lines and having more working on it thus producing more RF glass would necessarily grow Canon’s profit margin as significantly as some believe as not everyone wants RF glass even if they have an R body. I wonder how many have traded from their EF to RF glass? I’ve filled in some gaps, but nothing further. Others may be happy to trade. And yes a single range would lower their costs, but they’d lose a significant market for them (the small M class), and I would guess the loss of the M outweighs the savings that a single line would bring them.

As Michael said, the number of people who would have multiple bodies across different segments are a smaller - the gear heads. M doesn’t impact on R and I’m not convinced smartphones impact enough for anyone who would buy an M.
 
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Actually, I think you might be correct. Just speaking for myself, I would probably have bought a 7DIII if they made it. Would have actually bought two, one for me and one for my wife.

But, even with the 5D IV I found that the resolution was sufficient for most of my bird photography and the 7DII was getting less and less use. I'm thinking that with the R5, once the price drops, I can replace both the 5DIV and 7DII and not give up much, plus, with the R, I would have a second body with truly silent shutter when I need that for events.

I'm not sure if I have sufficient GAS in the tank to buy both an R5 and an R7, especially since I am fast approaching the point where my paying photography work will end and only the hobby photography will remain. In this segment, a large part of the shrinking camera market is comprised of boomers who are aging out of the market. Canon can milk us for a few more years, but eventually, we will be too old and decrepit to carry around these cameras and the M series will become more attractive.

If the R7 sells in enough numbers there will be another model. Especially if they’re iterating the r5/r6 and the aps c sensor is still around. Will they sell as many as the R7? Doubtful as the R7 as many have said will convince a lot to upgrade, the jump will be significant. A mark ii less so.

I do agree, no need for a specific RF-S glass.

Still not convinced all the rebels will move to the M but it’s not the market I’m in so I can be swayed either way. Part of me feels an 90d in a mirrorless form, bigger than the m6, would convince people to migrate, as would a lower model. And mirrorless would help lower costs. Plus I just wonder how many would look to convert their lenses and their bodies, so would be more likely to use their EF with an adapter which I think they should bundle.
 
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It's certainly conceivable that they'd keep both, that's why I said maybe. Until this rumour I was pretty firmly in the camp that M wasn't going anywhere any time soon. With that said, I have no more of a crystal ball than anyone else in here.

How the hell it follows? My logic behind why M could disappear is based on a few things:
  1. The rumour here from a few days ago that said EF-M may disappear in 2021 (CR1 in all fairness)
  2. With a crop sensor camera in RF mount, Canon would be maintaining 3 different mounts for crop sensor cameras, and only one of those is an easy transition pathway to more expensive bodies (RF-S), though one could argue EF-S isn't a bad transition to RF due to the adapters available. I could certainly see Canon working to reduce the number of ecosystems they're supporting in a dramatically shrinking camera market, but whether EF-S or EF-M would become the sacrificial lamb remains to be seen.
  3. Past reports have implied that many manufacturers are intending to put more emphasis on higher-margin and higher-end bodies. I think that priority focus may lead to Canon trying to create more ways to get buyers into the RF mount, which makes sense for creating an RF APS-C camera which can direct first-time buyers toward the RF mount. If Canon wants to move people up market, and the top of the market will be RF full frame cameras, then making very affordable APS-C RF bodies will likely become a higher priority.
  4. EF-M fills a niche which a lot of people really like (myself included) - very small and portable and relatively price conscious. No question that there is a market for those products - the M50 still shows that today. However, if an APS-C RF mount camera can get to a comparable size as an EF-M body (likely in coordination with some size-conscious lenses), it may hold a very similar niche as EF-M but have greater value to Canon as a transition pathway.
Anyway, it's anyone's guess, but with 3 APS-C sensor cameras being maintained, I could certainly understand if Canon were to offload one or more based on past rumours. But again, I can't see the future any more than anyone else.

To add further arguments why EF-M will disappear:

5. The RF communication protocol is much more powerful and modern. The EF-M is just the EF protocol, which dates from 1987.
Just think on a computer there were serial ports in the 80s, now there is USB-C. Canon can do much more with the RF protocol in the future, also for cheap consumer lenses, than what is possible with EF. And the consumers are the ones that buy the latest automatic gadgets more than the pros. Just think of an automatic zoom lens with face detection & AF. It doesn't need to be an expensive parafocal lens if focus is adjusted as it zooms. E.G. Mom films a panorama and then zooms in on the kid's face with the press of a button, no more manual zoom.
 
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I prefer the idea of keeping the R-line FF and the M-line APSC, to make full use of the smaller sensor size to build smaller lenses with a smaller bayonet to accompany it.

I also don't like the idea of APSC sensors in the R line, because it would quite likely lead to Canon developing RF-S lenses for APSC-R cameras, and this would keep RF-S lens owners in the APSC-ecosystem like it was a system of its own. (like it was hard to upgrade form the APSC EF-S system to the full-frame EF system). Then you can as well keep the EOS-M system.

That having said, as long as Canon doesn't spend effort on developing RF-S lenses, different sensor sizes like APS-C, APS-H, sqare sensors... for the R system won't hurt.

Does it matter? If each line makes a profit, I’m still not convinced that these other teams have such an impact on how many lenses or bodies Canon makes and necessarily how much more profits they would generate.

Outside the enthusiasts and Pros here, are the APS C users likely to buy FF lenses costing twice as much as their DSLR? I’m ignoring the 90d segment.

Will a 90d user splash out double for a R7? Is a 90d user likely to have many (any) ef lenses - thus will a jump to the R require both body and a lens?

I think pricing, size and what segment you’re in atm dictate what you are likely to change to / upgrade to, and I think Canon will still require different lines to support those different requirements. I think a single R FF line would significantly impact their market share and profitability even if they could produce triple the number of rF lenses next year. A full frame for a grand is a massive achievement, still won’t attract a DSLR user with a body costing half of that, or someone who wants smaller and lighter.
 
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To add further arguments why EF-M will disappear:

5. The RF communication protocol is much more powerful and modern. The EF-M is just the EF protocol, which dates from 1987.
Just think on a computer there were serial ports in the 80s, now there is USB-C. Canon can do much more with the RF protocol in the future, also for cheap consumer lenses, than what is possible with EF. And the consumers are the ones that buy the latest automatic gadgets more than the pros. Just think of an automatic zoom lens with face detection & AF. It doesn't need to be an expensive parafocal lens if focus is adjusted as it zooms. E.G. Mom films a panorama and then zooms in on the kid's face with the press of a button, no more manual zoom.

Except most of that work is done between the sensor and digic and has less to do with the lens. As Canonnews said, change the lens focus, few bytes of data. I think rf gives them more, I just don’t think we’ve seen that leveraged that much.

Happy for someone to share what you can do with the rF protocol and those extra lines / faster speeds. I think the lens mount has made more of a difference than rf protocol but it would be remiss not to update that as well for future possibilities.

The m6 ii has tracking capabilities as good as the R before the firmware jump. Still pretty good. And digic x have the r5/r6 the jump in af, compared to the r, not the rf protocol and hence why ef lenses do pretty good on the r5. As quick as the rF? I’ve not seen a comparison on a similar lens, ,at e the rf 100-500 will show how much the gap is compared to the 100-400. I just doubt the entry level people would notice. The af itself is the wow, and it will be interesting when this appears on a lower end R model in the future.
 
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It's certainly conceivable that they'd keep both, that's why I said maybe. Until this rumour I was pretty firmly in the camp that M wasn't going anywhere any time soon. With that said, I have no more of a crystal ball than anyone else in here.

How the hell it follows? My logic behind why M could disappear is based on a few things:
  1. The rumour here from a few days ago that said EF-M may disappear in 2021 (CR1 in all fairness)
  2. With a crop sensor camera in RF mount, Canon would be maintaining 3 different mounts for crop sensor cameras, and only one of those is an easy transition pathway to more expensive bodies (RF-S), though one could argue EF-S isn't a bad transition to RF due to the adapters available. I could certainly see Canon working to reduce the number of ecosystems they're supporting in a dramatically shrinking camera market, but whether EF-S or EF-M would become the sacrificial lamb remains to be seen.

No reason for an RF-S mount. The lens could signal its power of coverage to the camera, which would handle the rest, same as Nikon does with DX lenses on FX cameras for F mount.
 
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Doesn't some of that better manufacturing technique get tempered when you insist on making circuitry smaller and smaller on the surface of that wafer, though? It's one thing to say a 20MP FF sensor is cheaper to make today than it was in, say, 2005. But it's quite another thing to say an 80MP FF sensor is almost as cheap to make in 2020 as a 32MP APS-C sensor is. As the size goes down, the reject rate always goes up, and you're right back to the comparative costs of a 20MP FF sensor vs. an 8 MP APS-C sensor back in 2005. In your analogy, you're flicking the same amount of dye at it, but it's dispersing in greater numbers of smaller droplets spread more evenly.

Yes, every fab generation shrink requires optimisation to drive up the yield especially if they change significantly. But I think those optimisation cycles are quicker than a decade ago. Canon produces machines which can do some chip fabrication, and thus presumably used for some of their stuff, especially sensors.

Not sure whether they fab digic in-house or not.
 
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This could be a higher margin but also higher costed chip. We might be getting close to Canon releasing a global shutter sensors ala the Red Sensors. There could be a dual use for this sensor - in a R7 for high speed silent shooting in the wild, and in cinema cameras as a video camera with cooling.

This rumor really only makes sense if the resolution on this sensor is close to the 45 meg range itself. It will need to be a higher resolution to offer 8k when used in cinema. That way you truly are putting more pixels on target.

Smaller sensor = smaller heat as well.

I think the autofocusing for animal eye focus, people eye focus, etc is going to just be a standard thing across the board. Sony's experia phones are the first to do this, but this is a case of building something that others can license themselves. Apple is purported to be including this in the phones on 2021. Camera manufacturers are going to have to offer the R5/R6 focusing system across the board. The R5 system is not all that more advanced than the one on the newest m6II or the 90d when used in liveview. It's just faster. I think this will be the differentiation between models. All of them :in the same generation: will focus just as well and on the same things, it'll just be how many frames per second it can do it.
 
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mpeeps

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Don't limit yourself to only either one. Use both for what each is most useful.
Crop sensors are good for reach. That said, when I crop full frame photos for "more reach" the resolution is always better, at least on a screen. Full frame sensors allow 2X the light of cropped sensors, have better DR and ISO performance. The 7D is/was a great camera, but it is no 5Dxxx in any manner other than perhaps a few more frames/second.
 
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Ozarker

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This whole APSC M / RF mount topic is fascinating.

I initially thought APSC cameras were smaller in body size, due to the slightly smaller sensor but then I thought back to the 7D MKII I had which was & is a beast of a body and certainly not a light weight, it's so confusing?

Having moved up from the 7D MKII to the R and now to the R5, I have no intention of moving back or having an APSC as a back up but cant see the long term logic in having 2 APSC bodies with different lens mounts as from a development and maintenance perspective it increases costs which in this day and age seems a weird thing for a company to do, unless there is a solid case for increasing sales by doing so.

I can understanding developing an APSC RF mounted camera as this would allow development to be solely on the RF mount and probably drive innovation of both cheaper end and high end RF lenses.

I am certainly not a marketing or engineering expert but there has to be some logic to these rumours, but I'm blowed if I know what it is lol.
I would not expect a single high end aspc camera to be the driver behind cheaper lenses, and certainly not an RF-s Mount. Less expensive (non- L) lenses are coming, but they will all have FF RF mounts. Those lenses are coming whether there is an aspc RF mount camera or not. This camera will not be an inexpensive camera. Not entry level by any means.
 
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PureClassA

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Or R90. Time will tell.
True, but the 90D is the closest thing to a 7D3 Canon has given us. I think Canon wants to bring back that 7 line asap. So many people badly wanted a 7D2 successor. It looks like it will be in RF. I really would be surprised, given the rumor of speed and performance in the first RF-C body, if it's not the R7
 
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True, but the 90D is the closest thing to a 7D3 Canon has given us. I think Canon wants to bring back that 7 line asap. So many people badly wanted a 7D2 successor. It looks like it will be in RF. I really would be surprised, given the rumor of speed and performance in the first RF-C body, if it's not the R7
a year isn’t exactly ASAP, but if Canon has only recently (last year ) awoken to the consumer desire for this camera, then a year is very fast to get it out the door. Probably overly ambitious.
 
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