New rumors swirl over a possible high end camera being tested

Canon Ambassador Andy Rouse has been apparently testing a new camera. He mentions in this image that he's using a new kit and then later on also mentions more about what he was shooting with in terms of lenses, and also that he had to take the motor drive down from 30 fps to 5 fps because he was getting too many sharp shots.  CanonRumor's forums were rife with speculation about this camera.

It's curious, it appears to be potential new camera from what would be a likely source, Canon.  Andy has shot with Canon prototypes before such as with the 1DX Mark II, and it would be strange for him to be shooting with another manufacturer's camera being a Canon Ambassador.  Andy was naturally silent about what he was shooting at.  If he was shooting with another kit what other cameras could it be? There's a few such as the X-T3, but there's no 300mm F4.5 or faster lens in the Fujifilm arsenal.  The Sony A9 can shoot up to 20 fps, so that's not it either.  The Olympus OM-D E-M1X can shoot up to 60 fps and does have a 300mm F4.0 lens.  Did Andy pick up another camera and decide to see what it's all about?

Let's assume for a second it's a Canon camera.. 

A full frame camera with a reduced high-speed crop mode with electronic shutter would make the most sense for a 30 fps camera.  Doing some napkin math; we know that a DIGIC 8 can handle around 240Mpixels per second for transfers - which would work out to an 8MP crop image size.  If we were to assume that was a 1.6x APS-C crop, then that could be a 20MP full frame sensor. There was a prior rumor that a lower MP camera for the RF system was coming out in 2020.  If this is the case, then prototypes could certainly be in the hands of a select few.  We have to consider the possible timelines.  It takes anywhere from 2 years to 4 years to develop a camera body, and that a camera that is in field testing now, may still not be released until the end of the year or next year.  This camera could very well be sporting prototype hardware that won't be released to the general public anytime soon.  

If this is a larger 1 series sized camera body RF mount that can handle the additional heat and battery consumption of dual DIGIC's then the door is open for certainly larger files at 30 fps.  Even though Canon may not call it a 1 series camera because of build quality and weather sealing, they may make it as good as they possibly can to get ahead of the mirrorless pack.

A low-resolution high-performance EOS R would certainly tick off a significant amount of boxes for some users.

Another possibility is that this isn't an ILC but a bridge camera with a super zoom lens that Andy is testing.  We still then have the problem with how do you get DIGIC 8 to shoot at 30 fps and still have enough resolution (we'd be limited to around 8MP).  Looking at the tiger picture, and it's relatively small image size, and the apparent depth of field, this doesn't look like your atypical small sensor bridge camera super zoom.

Andy certainly left us with a puzzle (which I surmise was exactly his intent). Time will tell what happens with this but there's certainly the potential that Canon is testing out a very high performing mirrorless camera body right now.  Possibly just as likely Andy is deciding to move from Canon over to another brand, Olympus would be a very good guess.