This started as a continuation of the best and worst and I decided to change this into more of an opinion piece about what I wanted to see from Canon in 2024. These are my views only, that's why it's an opinion piece. 2023 was a great year for Canon. Craig and I had a difficult time narrowing down what we thought the top 3 products were coming out from Canon in 2023, and I hope that we have an even more difficult time in doing so at the end of 2024.
Canon EOS R5s 100MP+ Camera
Canon announced a 120MP DSLR in development way back on September 8, 2015 (wow, has it been that long?), so eight years and counting and it's still not here. It's one of the few times Canon has completely muffed a development announcement (although technically, it could still be in development). For a few trade shows, Canon showed technology demonstrators and then everything went completely silent on this front.
Of course, soon after this announcement, Canon dropped everything and started working on the RF mount – somewhere in 2016 so with the increased need for DPAF sensors in mirrorless, this project was logically shelved.
Canon has resolved many issues over time with high MP sensors over the years, so it should stand to reason that this is not a challenge for Canon to do these days. Right now, the 32.5MP APS-C sensor scales up quite close – at a full frame equivalent of 83MP, so we have a good idea that they could do this if they put their mind to it, in terms of pixel size and density.
Canon in the past would have struggled with the processing power required to process the massive amount of image data, but it's been eight years and Canon's latest version of DIGIC is more than up to the task. Combine that with Canon's newer fabrication capabilities, this shouldn't be as difficult as Canon was thinking back in 2015. Canon's R5 processes approximately 700 million pixels per second. If we correlate that up to an R5s at 100MP, that would be a very respectable 7 frames per second.
Canon Legacy Mirrorless
The age of mirrorless allows us to do some things that were impractical during the EF era, and one of them is to pay homage to the rangefinders and even the FD mount from the past.
Canon made during the early days a range finder camera called the Canonet. It was widely toted as one of the most advanced cameras you could purchase at the time. When Canon first released the Canonet in 1961, the entire 2 weeks stock of the camera was sold out in 2 hours. It went on to sell over a million cameras in 2.5 years. It had a 45mm F1.9 and sold for an amazing price at the time of 18,800 yen or around $570 in today's dollars. There was quite a bit of different versions with different lenses and maximum apertures. The 40mm F2.8 version is shown below.
Another possibility is to do something similar to Nikon and simply create an RF version of an older FD camera style. For example, the hugely popular AE-1 started shipping in 1976. The AE-1 was the first camera with a microprocessor. The AE-1 went on to sell 5.7 million units and was one of Canon's most successful cameras – ever.
With a clever adapter, Canon could even provide an FD autofocus adapter with the camera.
Of all the things that Canon has accomplished, one of the glaring “misses” is that they haven't gone into the past and highlighted some of Canon's rich history. This is certainly something I have always wanted Canon to do – partially because I started with the FD mount system “back in the day” when you had to walk uphill to school and then turn around and walk uphill back home again through the snow (naturally).
Global Shutter
Sony released the Alpha 9III and even though the latest reviews have suggested what I suspected all along, that image quality took a hit, it's still a worthwhile achievement for Canon to accomplish.
I lost count of how many global shutter patent applications I wrote about over the years – it's certainly an area of a high degree of Canon research and development.
Canon has also had in production a pretty simple Global Shutter Sensor and has even had it as an option on their C700 video camera for a while.
I think that once global shutter sensors become more commonplace, you'll start to see a lot more AI and also far more in-camera computational photography to take advantage of a perfect capture with no rolling shutter distortion. Faster rolling shutter sensors can get us “close” but not all the way.
Canon jumped – or leaped into the modern sensor development coming out with a stacked back-side illuminated sensor from front-side sensors in one jump. I have no doubt Canon can do something similar with global shutter technology. But to be real to get around the problems and limitations in noise and dynamic range, it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be cheap, but progress and innovation rarely are.
Canon camera images: wikimedia commons
Header Photo by Matt Bero
I had something else in this article but I thought it may be a little more controversial so decided to wait on that. I'll write THAT up in a longer article near the end of the month.
My wishlist for this lens ranked by importance (to me ;)), from high to lower:
- Same (or better) optical quality as the EF 180 mm
- 1:1 magnification
- Fast AF
- Compatible with RF extenders (for increased working distance with dragonflies, butterflies and other insects)
- Sufficient number of aperture blades for a round opening with good bokeh
- Image stabilization
- Internal focusing (like the EF 180mm)
- Focus limiter for close up focus range i.e. from closest focus to +/- 1 meter
- F 2.8
- Removable tripod collar
- Weight: equivalent to, or lighter than, the EF 180mm
And please NO:I also wish for an EVF-less (or humpless like the sony a6xxxx) RF body that is small and capable, like the original M or M6II.
Get well soon Richard
there certainly some lenses I would love to see. My interest is probably on a smaller APS-C camera like the M6 Mark II was, and a good 32mm 1.4, 55mm and a 15-55 F2.8.
I was debating on writing up something like that, but thought it was too use case specific and way too specific to me.
I would literally sell a kidney for AE-1 RF mount camera body, but then again, I'm old...
in a perfect world a global shutter 100MP AE-1 styled RF camera.
If there is an R5 ll I wish they would but a dimple on either the zoom or info button. I shoot in cold weather and use gloves.
The thing I had hoped for already with the 5D MkIV is global shutter.
I have flashes that will allow fill flash across 40-50 meters distance at up to 16 fps
in bright sunlight with global shutter, and I can't wait to put them to good use in that.
Since we're doing wish lists, I still want a 24MP R7-2 with a global shutter. Cue the laughter.