More from the rumor mill

Premium Member Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 5758

I've been reading about Canon's supposed new pro camera to be released later this year -- 1D3, with 23 megapixels. Not that that's within any of our budgets or needs, but just interesting to think about -- especially about what it will do to the price of the 1Ds Mark II and 5D, which are cameras most of us would gobble up in a heartbeat if the price were right.

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:44 pm

It's going to take a Cray super computer just to adjust the saturation.

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:45 pm

23Mp....thats insane....And expensive as hell....

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:52 pm

Why would Canon want to build a 35mm DSLR with 23 megapixels? This thing is going to be lens limited, isn't it?! Or people are going to have to pay a really big premium for very select lenses!!

23mp on a medium format body I can understand, for example the hassie or the mamiya. Bigger optics.

But my understanding is that 1ds already exceeds the capabilities of several canon lenses.

Well let's see! Maybe Carl Zeiss is going to make Canon-mount lenses in addition to their Nikon ones!

:) keithwms

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:06 pm

you've got a good point there keithwms
They can make a bigger Sensor more MP but the question is?
What lens can handle such a huge MP and Sensors

There will be a light falloff and causes the edge of the image to be dimmer. The larger the sensor is, the worse the angle the light hits the edges.

Unless they will have a new Redesign lens so that it "collimates" the light, or makes the rays come out of the lens in a straighter path hitting the sensor dead on.

Premium Member Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 5758

keithwms wrote:

Why would Canon want to build a 35mm DSLR with 23 megapixels? This thing is going to be lens limited, isn't it?! Or people are going to have to pay a really big premium for very select lenses!!

Well, people said the same thing about the Canon 1Ds Mark II, which is 16.7 megapixels, and they say that the sensor resolution exceeds even the quality of the L-series lenses. That said, few would argue that there is no small format DSLR that can produce a better large image than the 1Ds Mark II with an L-prime.

The thing is, Keith, Canon isn't going to put out some crap product and charge $10,000. If this camera makes it as far as the market, it will certainly be with sufficient testing to prove that the image quality isn't importantly limited by glass or by noise.

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:43 pm

drpablo74 wrote:

The thing is, Keith, Canon isn't going to put out some crap product and charge $10,000. If this camera makes it as far as the market, it will certainly be with sufficient testing to prove that the image quality isn't importantly limited by glass or by noise.

Yeah sure, I know Canon doesn't make crap, but look, the 1ds is apparently already on the edge for some widely-used lenses. That may be because the sensor isn't big enough, or the glass isn't good enough, or some combination. Granted, the evidence of lens limitation is anecdotal at 16mp, but 23mp is a big step up from 16 mp.

If that new sensor is 23 mp and it is a full frame 35mm sensor, then it will not have a chance against the mamiya or the hassie MF digitals, which have big sensors (36x48mm and 26.7x49mm respectively, about 2x the size of 35mm). And even with those dimensions, the ZD and h2d sensors are rather limited in ISO range (400 and under).

Look, MF was invented for a reason! You can't buy perfect lenses, and increasing the sensor size is the way to go if you want to work around the lp/mm limitations of a lens. Or you can spend $5k for prime glass from leica or Zeiss or whatever.

If Canon can put medium format quality in a 35mm body, hey, great! I and no reasonable, thinking human being is going to be opposed to that!!! But I suspect that standard 35mm lenses just aren't going to cut it, certainly not any of the zooms. Maybe some primes at f/8 are that good.

Anyway, not much point in analyzing that which exists only in the rumour mill!

:) keithwms

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:48 pm

Well, I might be in the market for a new cam soon since Minolta is sinking! Maybe I should tell my husband about this one! :D He just might have a heart attack!

Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1814

Seems to me you have made this argument before but the mp keep growing.

Gerhard

keithwms wrote:

Yeah sure, I know Canon doesn't make crap, but look, the 1ds is apparently already on the edge for some widely-used lenses. That may be because the sensor isn't big enough, or the glass isn't good enough, or some combination. Granted, the evidence of lens limitation is anecdotal at 16mp, but 23mp is a big step up from 16 mp.

If that new sensor is 23 mp and it is a full frame 35mm sensor, then it will not have a chance against the mamiya or the hassie MF digitals, which have big sensors (36x48mm and 26.7x49mm respectively, about 2x the size of 35mm). And even with those dimensions, the ZD and h2d sensors are rather limited in ISO range (400 and under).

Look, MF was invented for a reason! You can't buy perfect lenses, and increasing the sensor size is the way to go if you want to work around the lp/mm limitations of a lens. Or you can spend $5k for prime glass from leica or Zeiss or whatever.

If Canon can put medium format quality in a 35mm body, hey, great! I and no reasonable, thinking human being is going to be opposed to that!!! But I suspect that standard 35mm lenses just aren't going to cut it, certainly not any of the zooms. Maybe some primes at f/8 are that good.

Anyway, not much point in analyzing that which exists only in the rumour mill!

:) keithwms

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:57 pm

keithwms wrote:

but 23mp is a big step up from 16 mp.

Well, not that big a step really... it's only about 700 extra pixels in each linear dimension (approximating the sensor as a square, on a ~4000 x 4000 pixel sensor) - 17% increase in size maybe?

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:15 pm

Gerhard wrote:

Seems to me you have made this argument before but the mp keep growing.

Gerhard

As I recall, my argument was that if there ever were a ~20mp sensor in a 35mm equiv sensor size, the noise would be horrible. I stand by that. I also recall arguing that there would be a plateau in perfomance per dollar, meaning that the resolution gain would be small compared to the big leap in cost.

If the mamiya ZD and hassie h2d sensors are 2x the size of the 35mm frame and they still are limited to ISO 400, then what ISO do we suppose a 35mm frame 23 mp camera can do? LOL Great, a camera that can only shoot at ISO 200.

I stand by my assertion that a 23mp 35mm-frame camera will not be practical. Hey, I'd love to be proven wrong! But methinks that if Canon is really going to do this, it's going to be with a larger-than-35mm frame sensor.

:) keithwms

Premium Member Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 5758

It's still a rumor -- and who is to say that the sensor, if 20+ megapixels, will actually be 35mm size? Canon's current lens lineup works with 3 different sensor sizes as it is -- making them compatible with a larger sensor is just a matter of how close to the sensor the lens is mounted.

Now I'm not making a blanket statement about L-series lenses, but at least as far as the L-primes go some of them have held up perfectly well against Canon-adapted Zeiss lenses. The only Zeiss lenses that people routinely put on Canon digitals are the 21mm and the 50mm f/1.7, and that's because Canon doesn't make an L-prime in either focal length. You'd think that people with the budget who will pay whatever price for the best product would gobble up Canon-adapted Zeiss lenses if it made that much of a difference to image quality. The fact is that despite everyone's elegiac longing for Zeiss and Leica, lenses like the 135 f/2L, the 85 f/1.2L, the 200 f/2.8L, and some would throw in some of the L-zooms like the 24-70 and 16-35, are pretty darn competitive with the best glass out there. You may scoff, but I'd like to see evidence that has significance in the practical world that the L-primes aren't good enough.

Furthermore, despite the fact that we don't have supercooled cameras yet, Canon has gotten very good at noise reduction. ISO 3200 on the 5D is a heck of a lot better than ISO 800 on my 300D despite 2x as many pixels on a sensor that's only 33% larger.

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:37 pm

gracie328 wrote:

Well, I might be in the market for a new cam soon since Minolta is sinking! Maybe I should tell my husband about this one! :D He just might have a heart attack!

If I were you I will start conditioning his mind now and start saving LOL

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:08 pm

drpablo74 wrote:

It's still a rumor -- and who is to say that the sensor, if 20+ megapixels, will actually be 35mm size? Canon's current lens lineup works with 3 different sensor sizes as it is -- making them compatible with a larger sensor is just a matter of how close to the sensor the lens is mounted.

Now I'm not making a blanket statement about L-series lenses, but at least as far as the L-primes go some of them have held up perfectly well against Canon-adapted Zeiss lenses. The only Zeiss lenses that people routinely put on Canon digitals are the 21mm and the 50mm f/1.7, and that's because Canon doesn't make an L-prime in either focal length. You'd think that people with the budget who will pay whatever price for the best product would gobble up Canon-adapted Zeiss lenses if it made that much of a difference to image quality. The fact is that despite everyone's elegiac longing for Zeiss and Leica, lenses like the 135 f/2L, the 85 f/1.2L, the 200 f/2.8L, and some would throw in some of the L-zooms like the 24-70 and 16-35, are pretty darn competitive with the best glass out there. You may scoff, but I'd like to see evidence that has significance in the practical world that the L-primes aren't good enough.

Furthermore, despite the fact that we don't have supercooled cameras yet, Canon has gotten very good at noise reduction. ISO 3200 on the 5D is a heck of a lot better than ISO 800 on my 300D despite 2x as many pixels on a sensor that's only 33% larger.

I do agree that Canon has distinguished itself in noise reduction by virtue of the digic. Also you're right that we don't know what the sensor size is, so it is premature to assume that it will be 35mm full frame.

Another thing worth mentioning, I suppose, is that if this rumour is true, maybe it's not even a traditional Bayer sensor. If it's more akin to the Fuji S/R sensor in the S3, that could mean a 1ds with boosted dynamic range, which of course would be wonderful. I would love to hear about Nikon or Canon finally getting away from Bayer architecture and all its intrinsic limitations, even if it's only in a "concept car" that most of us won't be affording.

:) keithwms

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:17 pm

So...23mp. What are we going to do...make billboards that are visible from space?