New Rumors Rundown: Lenses and the EOS R7 Mark II

I've been trying to avoid talking much about the rumors because they seem to be tossing whatever at the wall in hopes of seeing what sticks.

The EOS R7 being replaced this year was always pretty much a given since Canon effectively did the full-frame lineup last year, and it's still a bit too soon for the R8 (and I also suspect the R6 Mark II) to get new updates. Like all other manufacturers, Canon makes money by selling goods, not services, so to maximize that, new items have to be continually churned out, which leaves the APS-C lineup to work on.

What will the R7 look like? 

If someone had asked me before what the R7 would look like, I would have said immediately a "baby R5".  Instead, we got some odd experiment.  This isn't the first time Canon experimented with the EOS R system (original EOS R, I'm looking at you).

While Canon drifted all over with its ergonomics for a while with the EOS RF system, it seems to have settled on what it wanted to do. For example, the R6 Mark II and R8 cameras are very similar, and it's natural that the APS-C brother, the R10, matches up well to that as well.

Since no other camera has opted to use the R7's control layout, we can probably guess that it's a one-off and that Canon will revert to similar ergonomics in the seven series and five series.

R7 Features

I think the R1 and the R5 Mark II deliver some clues to what the R7 would have.  Updated video specifications including sensor that runs cooler.  While Canon claims that the R7 sensor is "new'ish", it's really the same as what we saw with the 90D and the M6 Mark II.  It's due to a generational increase in at least a stacked sensor design.

That said, the latest rumors have it increasing in MP to 40MP. I think that and a stacked sensor is a bit of a stretch. Going with a stacked sensor design to improve the sensor read speed lowers the overall dynamic range of the sensor. If we've seen Canon tweak its designs lately, they seem to have done one or the other but not both. They haven't increased the speed while simultaneously increasing the pixel density.

Now, if Canon wanted to put 8K on this camera, then moving it up to 40 or 41 MP would make a lot of sense, but if they were keeping the video recording at 4K, then it seems like someone is just rumoring a "me too" specification at this time.

That being said, I would expect this new sensor to be much faster than the current R7. However, as we've seen with the R1 and R5 Mark II, that will come at a price in terms of dynamic range and image quality, but not enough for you to notice or care about it.

Lenses

This year, three lenses were released: the Canon RF 16-28mm F2.8 IS STM, the Canon RF-S 14-30mm IS STM PZ, and the Canon RF 20mm F1.4L VCM. There is basically something for everyone.  We also know that Canon tends to release anywhere from 6 unique lenses per year, so we should still get around 3 or so new lenses.  Canon seems to have finally decided on an internal Power Zoom arrangement, so if I were a betting man, I'd suggest that more power zoom lenses are coming out for the new "V" series camera bodies.

There's a new rumor of F1.2 lenses coming out, but with the Canon 24, 50, 35, and this year the 20mm F1.4's—is there enough market to turn around and come out with the F1.2 versions in those focal lengths that are still not done? There's always been rumors of the Canon RF 35mm F1.2, but what other? Canon could go totally off the wall and use the quarter-wavelength optical designs to push boundaries far faster than F1.2 as well.  This is a patent which we talked about here, with a large number of extremely unique embodiments.

I would not expect any of these lenses soon, but August onwards, so we are a while away from firming up anything outside of guesswork.

Tariffs

This may come to a grinding halt depending on what kind of trade wars happen globally over the next 3 or 4 months.  While the USA has paused many oddly calculated "reciprocal tariffs," the fallout worldwide and how supply chains are impacted still have yet to be fully known.  Canon and others may decide to accelerate their launch plans for this year or hold off on releasing to the USA, similar to Nintendo Switch 2.  Corporations, especially global ones like Canon, are adverse to unknowns, and the United States has just tossed a huge unknown into what is happening past this summer, or even into the future, when it comes to global trade.