Rumor: High resolution R gets a mention

A new rumor surfaced on the high-resolution R around 70MP as being a fourth quarter 2019 camera that Canon will release.

When we wrote up our 2019 thoughts, this is something we suggested as a 60-70MP Dual Pixel AF sensor is something that Canon can currently scale up from their 24MP APS-C Sensors (a 24MP Canon APS-C sensor is approximately 61MP when increased in size to full frame).

Some I know will be wanting a more 5D Mark IV "PRO" Camera, with higher fps, better 4K video, etc - but personally, I feel Canon isn't there quite yet for such a camera.  Canon even hinted at this themselves, stating that such a camera requires a new sensor that that takes time;

We know there's a lot of customers and there's strong demand for a pro body. We're aware of that. But at the same time, the expectations in terms of performance are really high as well, so we need time to make sure that we get everything right in the body.

Well I think the pro body will demand advances at the sensor level for very fast AF maybe. Sensors take a long time to design and bring to market.

I wouldn't expect to see such a professional camera before 2020.  However, the performance problems with a "5D Mark IV mirrorless" professional camera aren't necessarily a problem for a high-resolution camera. However, there are a few issues that a high megapixel sensor will encounter that Canon needs to solve, so this isn't exactly a slam dunk. 

One such issue is focus speed and the amount of data that needs to be read from the sensor.  Canon's Dual Pixel autofocus is pretty amazing but the full sensor has to be scanned for autofocus.  Doing that over literally 140 million pixels (each displayable pixel is actually made up of two distinct pixels in a pair arrangement), requires a ton of processing.  Even a relatively slow high megapixel DPAF camera will most likely need dual DIGIC processors to churn through that massive amount of data. 

Another issue is video.  While a 70MP camera is mostly for stills and landscape, there will be the voracious few that expect it to have the cream of the crop video - for no reason really except it's the thing now.  Just taking the center region without any line skipped would result in a massive 2.7x crop factor for 4k video.  Obviously, this isn't a good idea.  The Internet would shut down over such a travesty, I'm sure.  Canon needs to work at increasing the size of the region that they can use for 4K video in such a camera, to keep the crop factor relatively sane.

As we get into summer we should get more clarity on Canon's plans for this high-resolution model.