7D mkII. What do you think the specs and price will be?

joedlh wrote in post #16942603
I have no idea about the price or the specs. I have heard that Canon has been active in researching new sensor technology, contrary to what lots of folks seem to think. My hunch is that we will see a sensor with unexpected new capabilities.

But I'm not good at picking lottery numbers either.

If you believe in rumors, their new sensor might be Foveonbased. That's the next best thing besides separate sensors.

hollis_f wrote in post #16795009
In which case - switch. If enough people switch because Canon's sensors aren't good enough then they'll do something about it. But please don't bleat about it.

ptcanon3ti wrote in post #16795013
Anything else to ad?

I posted many times I wanted to upgrade to a better camera. I had money to spend but Canon weren't putting out anything that appealed to me. So, I decided to dump Canon and go Fuji, almost got an A7r but for now, the lens lineup wasn't doing it for me.

You, along with others have been very vocal about upgrading for a while. Your lens line up is nothing special. By that I mean you haven't anything that other manufacturers aren't offering, so jump ship. I decided my 7D will do for birding along with my 100-400 and the Fuji for landscape/family shots etc. I'll sell off my Canon lens, sure I'll take a hit but if you're not happy life's too short.

There's too many people whinging about Canon but not doing anything about it. Loss of customers will force Canon to reconsider their policies, internet moaning won't ( that's not aimed at anyone in particular ).

For what it's worth, there are many people taking the Fuji route, it's small, light and has superb IQ

ceriltheblade wrote in post #16942320
An interesting concept. I wonder what prevents dslr makers to use similar sensor strategy as the various hd consumer video cameras. They have three separate sensors with overlap allowing for an impressive output. I wonder if dslr cameras will ever veer away from single plate sensor as its film predecessor

That's already been done, eleven years ago.

The Minolta RD-175 was one of the first DSLR's considered to be portable. This 1995 model grafted a Minolta 35mm film body onto a beam splitter assembly to feed three CCDs.

Then in 2000 Minolta released another beam splitter DSLR, the RD-3000. By that time, single imaging chip cameras such as the Nikon D1 had been releasedto great success.

In short, the beam splitter approach for DSLR's was tried and dropped because it offered no advantages.

WOW this started in 2012 !!!! Shows you how over due it is. Canon better step up it's game fast.

Since this thread has been resurrected from the dead, as it were...


This:

pwm2 wrote in post #16794867
Canon do spend about 3 billion USD on R&D every year - year after year after year.

contradicts this:

Either Canon R&D is continuously improving their stuff, which means their sensors should be continuously improving year after year even if the lead time is such that development of the technology that appears in a given product was started a couple of years prior and, therefore, we should most certainly have seen significantly improved sensors by now (5 years after the 7D's introduction which itself was subject to the same lead time), or Canon "started too late" to compete with Sony (meaning they'd stopped R&D for a while).

Which is it?

hahaha...uh oh!

[QUOTE=kcbrown;1700561​2]Since this thread has been resurrected from the dead, as it were.../QUOTE]

I looked up your post history the other week as I realised you had not posted for many months. Always enjoyed your un biased very knowledgable opinions Welcome back, hope you've been keeping well..........

h14nha wrote in post #17005998

kcbrown wrote in post #17005612
Since this thread has been resurrected from the dead, as it were...

I looked up your post history the other week as I realised you had not posted for many months. Always enjoyed your un biased very knowledgable opinions Welcome back, hope you've been keeping well..........

I have indeed, thank you! I've just been busy doing many other things.

I've never entirely stopped taking photographs in that time, though I have changed the subject of them somewhat:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/nKRU​jm

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/hePs​6H

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/hePv​WQ

kcbrown wrote in post #17005612
...This:...contradicts this:


Either Canon R&D is continuously improving their stuff, which means their sensors should be continuously improving year after year even if the lead time is such that development of the technology that appears in a given product was started a couple of years prior and, therefore, we should most certainly have seen significantly improved sensors by now (5 years after the 7D's introduction which itself was subject to the same lead time), or Canon "started too late" to compete with Sony (meaning they'd stopped R&D for a while).

Which is it?

Actually, they are not necessarily contradictory. Canon clearly did NOT stop innovating in sensor tech. Canon has been "continuously improving their stuff", including their sensors. And, we have seen significantly improved sensors, just not in the same direction as Sony. If you read this board a lot, you would think the entire photographic industry revolves around DR. Canon was clearly pursuing improvements in video performance in their sensor tech. Was that a good approach for their business? Time will tell.

Not every R&D group gets the same ideas, so someone will have a better idea. This says nothing about spending nor about the effort to improve the product. Clearly, Canon could not engineer their way around the Sony patents. Neither could Nikon. Nikon chose to join rather than fight. Canon's innovations have not achieved the improvements in DR that Sony's innovations achieved (Nikon R&D gets no credit this, but the company does for having the business sense to license the sensors). The improvement in DR led to the higher density senors, it seems to me.

RTPVid wrote in post #17007234
Actually, they are not necessarily contradictory. Canon clearly did NOT stop innovating in sensor tech. Canon has been "continuously improving their stuff", including their sensors. And, we have seen significantly improved sensors, just not in the same direction as Sony.

I have a hard time counting on-chip autofocus as an actual improvement in the sensor itself.

But yes, Canon has indeed made minor improvements to their sensors, mainly with respect to eliminating the artifacts, such as pattern noise, that shouldn't have been there in the first place (though it shouldn't have been there in the first place, it's sometimes better to release what you've got than to perfect it first, and that is likely the case here. Getting out all the bugs is a time-consuming endeavor).

Even so, the pace of development of the sensor itself is clearly substantially reduced compared with other firms. Also, I was under the impression that other companies were managing to produce greater dynamic range without making use of Sony's patents in the process, but I could be mistaken about that (and, thus far, the only thing I've found that even comes close is Leica's M-240).

I know that Canon has been concentrating on video, but aside from the on-chip phase-detection autofocus, it's not clear to me what else they've been doing with their sensors to improve them for video purposes that wouldn't have a direct and beneficial impact on still photography.

There was quite a bit of speculation some time ago that Canon was being held up by their fab and by unwillingness to invest in a newer one. I suspect that still rings true.

RTPVid wrote in post #17007234
Actually, they are not necessarily contradictory. Canon clearly did NOT stop innovating in sensor tech. Canon has been "continuously improving their stuff", including their sensors. And, we have seen significantly improved sensors, just not in the same direction as Sony. If you read this board a lot, you would think the entire photographic industry revolves around DR. Canon was clearly pursuing improvements in video performance in their sensor tech. Was that a good approach for their business? Time will tell.

I was one of those defending Canon when they first went video. I really though at the time that the two melded so well that to not have video was a mistake. Both features for still images and features for video could be developed together. However, Canon seems to be putting all their eggs into the video basket and progress on features geared to still shooters has been almost non-existent. Canon's IQ has pretty much stalled for quite a while. I keep hearing that there is some new sensor in the 7DII, hopefully this is what is going to put Canon back on top. I just hope it's not all geared towards video.

I honestly see this camera being put just under the 5dmkIII price point.

kcbrown wrote in post #17005612
Since this thread has been resurrected from the dead, as it were...

This:


contradicts this:

Either Canon R&D is continuously improving their stuff, which means their sensors should be continuously improving year after year even if the lead time is such that development of the technology that appears in a given product was started a couple of years prior and, therefore, we should most certainly have seen significantly improved sensors by now (5 years after the 7D's introduction which itself was subject to the same lead time), or Canon "started too late" to compete with Sony (meaning they'd stopped R&D for a while).

Which is it?

The big problem is that the R&D money is seldom spread evenly. So sometimes, lots of the cake goes to one area while another time it goes somewhere else.

It's hard for management to figure out which area is most advantageous to burn the money on. I would think Canon thought they had their sensors quite well cared for for a number of years, so their sensor development instead pushed seriously high resolution, dual-pixel sensors for phase-detection directly on the sensor etc.

With R&D split into different sprints, the end result is likely to be a bit bumpy. So even burning lots of R&D money year after year, it's possible to get behind in specific areas. I'm eagerly waiting for a new sensor myself.

pwm2 wrote in post #17013189
The big problem is that the R&D money is seldom spread evenly. So sometimes, lots of the cake goes to one area while another time it goes somewhere else.

It's hard for management to figure out which area is most advantageous to burn the money on. I would think Canon thought they had their sensors quite well cared for for a number of years, so their sensor development instead pushed seriously high resolution, dual-pixel sensors for phase-detection directly on the sensor etc.

With R&D split into different sprints, the end result is likely to be a bit bumpy. So even burning lots of R&D money year after year, it's possible to get behind in specific areas. I'm eagerly waiting for a new sensor myself.

I can understand being behind for perhaps a year or two as a result of allocating R&D money unevenly like that, but inasmuch as we're talking about the development of the sensor and it apparently has seen no real progress to speak of for five years, why should we conclude anything other than that Canon has essentially abandoned the still photography market for at least a five year period of time?

The "lead time" argument quite obviously is invalid in and of itself to explain the available observations, precisely because lead time and rate of progress are quite different (lead time is the networking equivalent of lag, while rate of progress is the networking equivalent of throughput, and neither affects the other except when you're talking about reliable transport with overly limited buffering resources).

If Canon has/had indeed stopped funding sensor development for a period of years as the evidence suggests (and as you are clearly arguing here), then it follows that they have fallen behind in sensor technology and will remain there until they can somehow accelerate their rate of sensor development well beyond the rate of development of their competitors.

Now, how likely do you think it is that Canon will accelerate their sensor development rate in that manner? I, frankly, don't think it's likely at all.


As such, the end conclusion winds up being the same in spite of the arguments you've been putting forth (and, indeed, because of the reasoning you've described above): Canon is now behind in sensor tech, and is likely to remain behind unless their competitors have gotten lazy and slowed/stopped their development efforts in such a way that Canon can catch up.


Fortunately for us, you don't need anything like the latest in sensor technology in order to produce stunning imagery.

^
Well said!