The Canon EOS R3 will be 24mp, confirmed by EXIF data

[John Wilde]

Canon is selling about as many ILCs as Sony and Nikon combined, and Fuji is barely a blip in the global market (but they sell tons of Instax cameras). You don’t seem to grasp who’s lunch is being eaten by whom.

Today, Canon forecast that they will sell 3.00 million interchangeable-lens cameras this year, and their Imaging division will have a 71.0 billion yen Operating Profit this year.

 

[AlanF]

No it costs £4300. We don’t use us$. You can’t just convert our prices to $ either. Ours includes sales tax at 20%, theirs don’t. That’s £3583 without tax. At today’s rate that’s $4970.

That is an inane comment. Of course we can convert £ to any currency to compare prices and we routinely in news programmes and papers quote USD for prices. There are some US states that do not charge sales tax, and many US buyers say on CR they avoid taxes, and B&H will absorb sales tax if you use their card.

 

[miketcool]

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Can you tell what resolution those images are based on how the noise looks? I can't. It is only if you compare images at different viewing sizes (e.g. 100 %) that higher resolutions appear more noisy - but that is comparing apples to elefants. Noise in modern sensors is almost entirely due to natural photon shot noise in the light itself, so if you want to compare how well a given sensor does relative to another one, the image sections being compared must have the same amount of light, or in other words, the same area.

I agree with you about our ability to tell the differences when it comes to noise. The pixel peepers are an obnoxious bunch that don’t understand what photography is or how to take a good photograph to begin with. Sharpness and noise really have to be extreme to effect a properly set up compostition or image.

The point I’m making is that AF isn’t based on a single still frame. The ability of a camera to recognize certain patterns the instant data from the sensor is processed depends on a lot of factors. We’ve seen how fast moving subjects can fool AF, that low lighting can fool AF, and out of focus objects in the background and foreground can fool AF. In that microsecond where the camera hunts to lock AF and the shutter button is pressed, we get a completely out of focus image. In sports, particularly motorsports, this is pushed to an extreme.

We shoot on very long lenses, often higher aperture zooms, subjects that are moving almost 200mph, with objects crossing the frame, cars coming in and out of shadows, dirt and debris kicking up, etc. The more noise and resolution a sensor has, the more data points the AF system has to compute. I don’t know the specifics of how Canon is handling this on a hardware or software level, but I do know the raw image
matters.

The screenshot I took best illustrates this. I compared Sony and Canon’s flagship lower resolution cameras to their higher resolution cameras. This is one of about ten major differences in photojournalist/sports/action bodies that matter. I didn’t have control over the lenses, but at 100% zoom, the lower megapixel cameras meant for action show significantly less noise, and less data points a machine learning or AI AF system has to compute.

I doubt the AF is looking at full readout to begin with. I do know that lower megapixel sensors perform better in lowlight when it comes to noise because of the pixel size. Canon has a 2mp speciality sensor for extreme lowlight situations. The larger pixels collect more photons leading to less noise. I hope this helps clarify my position.

 

[koenkooi]

Surely the camera would be smart enough to only analyse the <20mp in the cropped area and throw away the rest. Twice as much processing would thus be available, which should give a better result.

Based on the rolling shutter performance, Canon cameras always read out the width of the sensors, in crop mode it restricts itself to reading the lines on the center. So you get a 1.6x boost in readout times, not the 1.6*1.6=2.56 times a 'proper' crop would make you expect.

The R3 having a stacked sensor might change that, but I don't know enough about sensors to make a claim about that

 

[Ian K]

Surely the camera would be smart enough to only analyse the <20mp in the cropped area and throw away the rest. Twice as much processing would thus be available, which should give a better result.

Perhaps, but the information available, pixel size etc remain constant.

Interesting, thinking about it some more, If it is the amount of processing per pixel that's possible making the different the tracking should get worse when you use burst mode compared to simply tracking a subject and then taking a single shot. Since it will have less time per shot to 'think' about the focus between shots. It also means that the R3 with newer silicon would be much better at tracking. They have claimed improved tracking.

Hmm... if less pixels make for better tracking then the R6 should be much better than the R5, they both say they use the Digic X.

 

[David_D]

Based on the rolling shutter performance, Canon cameras always read out the width of the sensors, in crop mode it restricts itself to reading the lines on the center. So you get a 1.6x boost in readout times, not the 1.6*1.6=2.56 times a 'proper' crop would make you expect.

I was not referring to readout speed, although that is also important. I would expect the AF to only scan the cropped area to try to detect the subject (typically the eye). I would expect it to use an iterative algorithm, looking for finer and finer detail and stopping when it has a good match or when the next frame comes in. In the latter case it will use the best match it had. If it can do more iterations, it should get better results.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

Couldn't the R3 simply have 50% more processing power than the R5?

 

[Ian K]

That is an inane comment. Of course we can convert £ to any currency to compare prices and we routinely in news programmes and papers quote USD for prices. There are some US states that do not charge sales tax, and many US buyers say on CR they avoid taxes, and B&H will absorb sales tax if you use their card.

No, not if you are comparing price including tax to one that doesn’t.

If you want to do that then go for the grey market price from Chinese imports from eBay. I've just seen one for £3,245.00 brand new.

 

[sanj]

I agree with you about our ability to tell the differences when it comes to noise. The pixel peepers are an obnoxious bunch that don’t understand what photography is or how to take a good photograph to begin with. Sharpness and noise really have to be extreme to effect a properly set up compostition or image.

The point I’m making is that AF isn’t based on a single still frame. The ability of a camera to recognize certain patterns the instant data from the sensor is processed depends on a lot of factors. We’ve seen how fast moving subjects can fool AF, that low lighting can fool AF, and out of focus objects in the background and foreground can fool AF. In that microsecond where the camera hunts to lock AF and the shutter button is pressed, we get a completely out of focus image. In sports, particularly motorsports, this is pushed to an extreme.

We shoot on very long lenses, often higher aperture zooms, subjects that are moving almost 200mph, with objects crossing the frame, cars coming in and out of shadows, dirt and debris kicking up, etc. The more noise and resolution a sensor has, the more data points the AF system has to compute. I don’t know the specifics of how Canon is handling this on a hardware or software level, but I do know the raw image
matters.

The screenshot I took best illustrates this. I compared Sony and Canon’s flagship lower resolution cameras to their higher resolution cameras. This is one of about ten major differences in photojournalist/sports/action bodies that matter. I didn’t have control over the lenses, but at 100% zoom, the lower megapixel cameras meant for action show significantly less noise, and less data points a machine learning or AI AF system has to compute.

I doubt the AF is looking at full readout to begin with. I do know that lower megapixel sensors perform better in lowlight when it comes to noise because of the pixel size. Canon has a 2mp speciality sensor for extreme lowlight situations. The larger pixels collect more photons leading to less noise. I hope this helps clarify my position.

"The pixel peepers are an obnoxious bunch that don’t understand what photography is or how to take a good photograph to begin with." = Obnoxious, bullshit, self-righteous comment.

 

[scyrene]

At least another 50 years.

Aim high! But don't expect any electronics you buy today to last that long.

 

[David_D]

We shoot on very long lenses, often higher aperture zooms, subjects that are moving almost 200mph, with objects crossing the frame, cars coming in and out of shadows, dirt and debris kicking up, etc. The more noise and resolution a sensor has, the more data points the AF system has to compute. I don’t know the specifics of how Canon is handling this on a hardware or software level, but I do know the raw image
matters.

I think you are suggesting that a lower resolution camera will have batter AF performance. My understanding is that the R5 is faster and better behaved than the R6. The processing is supposed to be the same, but the R5 has the higher res sensor.

 

[AlanF]

No, not if you are comparing price including tax to one that doesn’t.

If you want to do that then go for the grey market price from Chinese imports from eBay. I've just seen one for £3,245.00 brand new.

If you do not understand that I was explaining to a transatlantic member who was saying that $6000 for an R3 is a record price, that we in the UK are already paying $5900 at the current conversion rate for an R5, then I give up. You can buy on eBay from China with all the risks if you want, but don't tell me to. It's a pretty daft comparison with buying from Adorama or B&H in the US.

 

[HenryL]

The 24mp is only the in-camera JPG, this is not the size of the RAW file....

using exif from another R3 Olympic photo, the Focal Plane X & Y Resolution info works out to a 24mp sensor. For those not familiar (I just learned this myself), these tags indicate the sensor resolution per unit, and Unit 2 as seen below is inches. Convert 36mm x 24mm to inches (divide by 25.4) and multiply by the Exif for focal plane resolution, and you've got the final answer on resolution.

 

[InchMetric]

No, not if you are comparing price including tax to one that doesn’t.

If you want to do that then go for the grey market price from Chinese imports from eBay. I've just seen one for £3,245.00 brand new.

You may have missed that state sales tax in the US is readily avoidable for just about anyone who cares. Very uinlike what IU understand in your system. And for those who don't care to avoid, it's typically only about 8%. The only people who pay sales tax on a camera are those who don't care about the sales tax.

 

[InchMetric]

"The pixel peepers are an obnoxious bunch that don’t understand what photography is or how to take a good photograph to begin with." = Obnoxious, bullshit, self-righteous comment.

Unlike yours?

(I do think the comment could have included the word "necessarily" to be more accurate.)

 

[AAP]

So new guy question here - couldn't there be a chance that this info is just from a different setting - is it possible that Canon asked these photographers to shoot to both memory cards and only upload something like a medium JPG?

 

[Fbimages]

Great to see you have now started bird posting there!

Thank you! Only took me a year and a half to find out there was a forum...

 

[Atlasman]

If the R3 has a 24MP sensor, I’ll buy—if it can deliver 4K video downsampled from 6K, with 10-bit 422 color at 60fps.

Otherwise, I’ll wait—maybe Sony will deliver the above in their next iteration of the A9.

 

[Ian K]

If you do not understand that I was explaining to a transatlantic member who was saying that $6000 for an R3 is a record price, that we in the UK are already paying $5900 at the current conversion rate for an R5, then I give up. You can buy on eBay from China with all the risks if you want, but don't tell me to. It's a pretty daft comparison with buying from Adorama or B&H in the US.

Then why not quote £6999 for the 1DX Mark III. That's even higher

 

[Ian K]

If you do not understand that I was explaining to a transatlantic member who was saying that $6000 for an R3 is a record price, that we in the UK are already paying $5900 at the current conversion rate for an R5, then I give up. You can buy on eBay from China with all the risks if you want, but don't tell me to. It's a pretty daft comparison with buying from Adorama or B&H in the US.

I wasn't suggesting you did. But if you are comparing the price -tax and illegal tax avoidance schemes then eBay is a more compatible price.