New Rumor: Canon to do shock and awe with the EOS RF - Updates

CanonRumors has received some interesting specifications of a new Canon RF camera.  For those that missed it the core specifications of this RF camera are;

• Resolution of 45MP and includes IBIS (7 to 8 stops correction)
• Supports in-camera 8K 30 fps RAW movie recording and 4K 120 fps, 4K 60 fps (no crop or crop)
• 14 fps mechanical and 20 fps electronic
• new battery with larger capacity but looks the same as LPE6

It's quite the camera.  It immediately obsoletes the 1DX Mark III in everything but the build and durability.   It can put more pixels on the target, at nearly the same mechanical shutter speed as the 1DX Mark III and shoot better raw video.  It's everything to everyone that has wanted a camera.  It's certainly "the last camera I'll ever have to buy" for quite a few people.

I'm however still thinking this isn't based upon a camera that is currently coming out this year.  Consider that it can take up to 4 years for Canon to fully develop a new camera, at any given time, there are multiple cameras in the development queue, just at different stages of completion.  Some cameras will probably get developed to a specific point, and then the market changes and the project gets canceled or morphed into a new different project.

I think thinking in these terms is important for this rumor.  While I think it's altogether possible that there's a camera in Canon's pipeline with these specifications, I doubt very much it's a camera coming in the first half of the year.

Consider that the 1DX Mark III shoots at around 400 million pixels per second, this camera has to shoot at a rate of 900 megapixels per second.  The stills performance vastly outmatches the 1DX Mark III. Now, you could say that the 1DX Mark III is tuned for agencies, and sports, where they want to keep the file sizes small.  Well, there's sRAW and also there's smaller JPEG's - I can't really see that being an issue these days if a higher resolution camera comes out.

This purported camera will have an incredible data pipeline. 2.25x the RAW video output, 2.25x the 4K oversampling data rate, and for stills, 2.25x the overall processing rate.  At the same time, the battery to support all this is purported to be the same size as the LP-E6N.  Unless Canon has developed a nuclear battery, I can't see this having anything but a severe power problem as compared to the 1DX line with their LP-E19 batteries.  Also consider that Canon developed a new DIGIC just for the 1DX Mark III, called DIGIC X, and does it even have the processing capacity to turn it up to double the processing rates while keeping energy and heat constraints down to a minimum?

Consider the hefty batteries that are powering the Sony mirrorless cameras, they are 7.2V and 2280mAh (16.16Watt Hours). The current LP-E6N's are 7.2V and 1865mAh (13.4 watt hours).  Even if Canon's new batteries match Sony's newest, we're only seeing approximately a 22% gain in power capacity - not enough to catch up to the LP-E19 which is 2750mAh at 10.8V which comes to 29.7 watt hours, or nearly 83% capacity than the high capacity Sony batteries.  So with batteries that are possibly 83% less capacity, Canon is making a camera that performs at least twice as fast.

This is where I personally see the rumor fall a little flat.  While I could see these specifications on a 1 series RF camera coming out in 2021, I can't personally see everything aligning to come out with this camera now.  However, Canon has surprised us in the past - I just hope they didn't nerf the 1DX Mark III unnecessarily to pave the way to this Canon RF camera.

We'll see - it's an interesting rumor to say the least!

Update: January 28th

Okay, all that may be wrong.

It seems that the rumor is for the EOS R5 due out in July 2020, and it's been confirmed as "mostly corrected" by other more trusted sources.  Again, while this may be prototype specifications, it certainly looks like Canon is attempting to move the narrative fast for the RF mount.  This may just be your EOS RF 5D camera, and it's a jaw-dropping doozy of a camera.  I'm again, not sure how they pulled the rabbit out of the hat in terms of battery life and heat dissipation, however, I'll readily admit that Canon knows how to do this better than I do ;) While rumors on specifications this far away usually are a bit off from the announced specifications, there's usually a kernel of truth.  With this camera, I would expect a battery grip to be available.  I'd also expect this camera to have dual card slots as well.

I'm also not sure why you'd do 8K as timelapse and have the specifications as 8k RAW 30 fps.  That doesn't sound like timelapse to me.  Again, the 8K RAW is actually one thing that sounds like it's possible. I know it sounds like a lot, but if you are going to oversample 4K anyways, you're already doing all the heavy lifting at processing for 8K.

However, this camera has to work much harder to produce 4K oversampled than for instance, the 1DX Mark III.

On the flip side, another site is reporting that their "sources" are saying it's nearly completely wrong.

We made a mistake on the 8K RAW as the 1DX Mark III shoots 5.5K raw at 60fps and the R5 will shoot RAW at 8K at 30fps only.  The processing rates for RAW video is nearly the same between the two cameras, so 8K is not as nearly outlandish as you first may think.

It is still a technological marvel if Canon pulls this off.