Sports R: Why not now?

Without having my hands on the new 1DXiii, it sure appears that if you were shooting live view with mechanical shutter at 20fps, there would be no lag or blackout issues. If that is the case, then is the only thing preventing Canon from making an R equivalent the new housing and battery to accommodate the RF lenses?

I can see if they want to milk the 1DXiii for a year or so first, as to not canibalize sales, but you have the sensor, mechanical shutter, and everything else you need to make a Sports R, that would probably be in the $4k-$5k range. Just need to make the weather sealed body, preferably with built in vertical grip and controls. Possibly they want to try new control layouts for the Rs and Rmkii before they go all in on a RDX.

I love shooting with the 28-70mm F/2, and really hope they will just plug the sensor and mirrorless part of the 1DXiii into a slightly more compact R body.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I feel a RF version should have been announced with the 1DX Mark III. Especially with the announcement of no new EF glass. I am guessing the reasoning here is that there isn't any RF glass for a 1d body yet. I would expect it to come with the RF 300 and RF 500.

I strongly believe that it is to not take away from the 1DXiii. If they came out with an RF version of the 1DXiii at the same time, there is no question I would have bought it. The long EF glass easily adapts to the RF mount, and then I'd get to use my nice 28-70mm on a fast camera. I honestly believe it would have cut sales on the 1DXiii by half.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0

YuengLinger

Print the ones you love.
CR Pro
Dec 20, 2012
3,751
2,269
USA
Canon might be working through a longer development period than we know to produce (or utilize) a truly smooth and snappy EVF, one that can handle bursts AND not have the abrupt brightness changes that seem to be independent of actual exposure. They might also have had a timetable to allow them to fully analyze how the R has been working and occasionally failing with native and EF lenses.

In other words, they might simply be trying to get things 100% right and, for once, kick butt in the spec battles.

It might also be a placeholder or stopgap measure just to signal continued product development and nominally keep up with competition.

Furthermore, such a huge company doesn't have one team doing everything, and the EF entrenched camp within Canon might have been so deeply invested in producing one more dSLR flagship that, politically, it had to be done to maintain corporate harmony.

Likewise, there could be an entrenched base of customers who just don't want to be the first to jump to mirrorless for such an important investment. So it would make sense to prove to them first with a 5D level of mirrorless that the tech is ready and reliable.

Conjectures, but that's what we share much of the time here at CR.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
Upvote 0

Aussie shooter

https://brettguyphotography.picfair.com/
Dec 6, 2016
1,183
1,817
brettguyphotography.picfair.com
Maybe it is to make sure they recoup the costs of the 1dx3 development. Even if they just ensure a break even point is reached before releasing a mirrorless version. As you said. They clearly have the tech now which is better than displayed in the a92. But it doesn't benefit anyone for canon to lose money so if it is to protect the 1dx3 sales then that is understandable. It could also be to give the 1dx3 a chance to use and test the mirrorless capabilities before releasing a mirrolress version
 
Upvote 0

davidhfe

CR Pro
Sep 9, 2015
346
518
I can think of several reasons:
- Canon thinks their AF still isn't 100% ready in live view and needs to see how the 1DX3 handles in the real world before going all in
- They also seem to still be evolving their designs: Touch Bar thing looks scrapped now, a mirrorless "X" will require an entirely new body design
- Big whites aren't on the RF mount yet, so there's less demand
- Straight up engineering constraints: Canon only has so many engineers, and the 1DX3 for 2020 would have been the priority
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
Mar 25, 2011
16,848
1,835
The R is not a sports body because the frame freezes after a shot, and you can lose a moving target. I believe thats a difficult issue to solve because of the way mirrorless technology works. It can be reduced with a faster processor and memory, but it needs a pretty much total upgrade design from sensor and processor thru memory card, and the market may not yet support it. Canon is not yet all out committed to mirrorless, they seem to be very careful about investing heavily in a major new design.
 
Upvote 0

Joules

doom
CR Pro
Jul 16, 2017
1,801
2,247
Hamburg, Germany
It can be reduced with a faster processor and memory, but it needs a pretty much total upgrade design from sensor and processor thru memory card, and the market may not yet support it.
That is exactly what we got now though. The sensor read out constraints seem to be largely gone, as shown by the M6 II with its 14 FPS 32.5 MP and 30 FPS 18 MP shooting modes that best all other Canon cameras. The new DIGIC X design seems like a core advancement that we'll see a lot more of in upcoming cameras. And we got CFexpress on the memory side in the 1DX and rumored in the R II. Clearly Canon has made major efforts to get their camera internals to the next generation, as it is all running sooo much more efficiently now - see the big jump in shots per battery from 80D to 90D and the straight up doubling from 1DX II to 1DX III.
 
Upvote 0

Michael Clark

Now we see through a glass, darkly...
Apr 5, 2016
4,722
2,655
I suspect that a few years from now we might see, in hindsight, that the main purpose for many of the design decisions Canon made regarding the 1D X Mark III were not motivated by the desire to produce the ultimate sports/action DSLR as a last hurrah, but rather by the strategy to use the 1D X Mark III as a test bed for the systems Canon planned to use in upcoming pro-grade mirrorless bodies.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0