Update: Canon EOS R5

It's easy to get caught up with the excitement and at times, it's hard to find a good balance.  After talking to Craig at CanonRumors, I have to admit, it's hard not to get excited about what we are hearing about the EOS R5 - really Canon's first ultra serious Canon mirrorless full frame camera, and one that will, if true, will entirely shake up the industry.

Canon has been apparently thinking that it's time to get rid of the "we can't innovate" badge that they have been wearing around social media lately.  If you have been following this site since we launched, we've shown patent after patent that Canon is busy researching many things that deal with photography.  They do take pride in their innovation.

It could very well be that Canon went to their engineers and said - the gloves are off. Do your best, and really let them come up with a body for the ages.

Now, we were down on the specifications originally because I don't like to personally get carried away with specifications this early in the leaks.  They usually get more accurate as time goes on.

But let's look at it now from the other side - could they actually be right?  Craig thinks they are.  His trusted sources say they are very close.

As CanonRumors noted, there could be some caveats, such as timelapse for the 8K and a heavy crop for 4k120p,etc.

If the camera is doing oversampling for 4K then it really doesn't need to be time-lapsed 8K.   Consider that it's going to process 8K of information anyways and then downsample to 4K, then why not just output the 8K video and call it a day?  It is simply writing out to most likely CFExpress the RAW uncompressed video data.  There is possibly more heavy lifting for RAW as it has to write out 12 bit data, instead of around 10 bit data atypically used for video.  But other than that, there's no real magic to this.  The stills performance is 20 fps with the electronic shutter, which is not far off the target of 30 fps needed for video and that may be at 14 bit data rates.

Also like we mentioned in our updates, the 1DX Mark III currently processes RAW video at nearly 8K30p rates already - with 5.5K at 60p being very close to 8K30p in terms of data throughput.

I would not expect in my wildest fantasies to see DPAF supported with 8K30p on the EOS R5 though.  So I still expect to see complaints that Canon is crippling something in this camera.

The heavy crop for 4K120p, etc - I can certainly see.  It would be difficult to get a full-width sensor that is running at 45MP to produce 120fps, however if you crop that, then 120fps certainly does become more feasible.

Battery life.  We have discussed that a lot in the last article, and I still think it's an issue with this camera.  There are obviously things you can do once you get the camera into your hands, such as eco modes and such, and also CIPA guidelines for shots per battery are a little archaic.  They could do things such as AF / AE locked at 20 fps which would reduce some of the battery requirements, making only 10 (or 12 fps) that does a full AF/AE and exposure processing.  Not needing to process everything at 20 fps speeds would potentially reduce the battery requirements.  Or they could reduce the bit depth from 14 bits down to 12 at high speeds as well which reduces the ADC power requirements. I would expect a lot of caveats around 4K120p, just like we usually see in other Canon cameras around their high speed 1080p,etc.

Sony now gets around 600 shots with its new battery, could be that Canon ripped apart a few Sony cameras and figured out what makes them tick in the battery department and has some tricks up its sleeve? Consider that with the 1DX Mark III it really didn't need to conserve battery life in liveview mode since most people would be using it with the optical viewfinder.  Further firmware optimization could reduce the battery usage down to make the new camera acceptable.

For those that are thinking this is the high resolution camera - I don't think so.  I think like we've been stating all along that there will be two "5"'s like the EF lineup.   45MP to me confirms that we'll have a high MP version as well.

So there's some food for thought, that all this could be possible - and that Canon is simply tired of the narrative that they cannot innovate and the Sony is the innovative company.  Canon has a long history with cameras and a TON of corporate pride.  The M6 Mark II showed that they can decide to win on specifications if they choose to do so, and now, we're going to see what they can do on their main mount going forward for the next 20 or so years - the RF mount.

This is going to be an evolving story between now and June, while I wouldn't start betting on Canon producing this exact camera, what we are hearing is that Canon is producing something pretty similar.

The gloves are off if this is the case - time will tell.  We knew that this would be an interesting year - that has just now turned into an understatement.