Here it is the 50D, what's next?

[wickerprints]

I wouldn't think it's exactly wise to not do what might be the best just because of a model number. I'm not the ones to insist that the 1D IV must be FF, but if it remains in 1.3x, I'd like to hear a better reason than matching the model number. In my humble opinion, the benefit of a FF sensor should at least be able to make up what we lose from the APS-H.
<div style="clear: both;"]</div>

Again, my point is not about what Canon will release next. My point is about what they will CALL it. Those are two entirely different things. Of course it would not be wise to allow a model number to dictate what features a camera should have, but that was not what I implied and I said as much. And it would be equally unwise to do what Nikon has done to its lineup and make a complete mess of its nomenclature. The D300 is "DX" format but the D700 is 35mm. What's going to happen when these bodies go through a few more revisions? Even worse, the D60 is entry level but the D90 is mid-range? Then they threw in the D5000 and now all hell breaks loose because nobody can figure out from the model numbers which model is supposed to be newer. At least with the Canon lineup everything makes sense. Their 3- and 4-digit series are the entry level bodies, the 2-digit series is the mid-range, and the 1-digit series are the high-end, which is further split out into the 1D(s) series which is the "pro" level. Furthermore the model number tells you what format the sensor is.


I reiterate my statement that if Canon will produce a 16MP 35mm sensor body, it should be given a new series name to distinguish it from the existing lineup. Perhaps we won't have a 1D-series any more, but it will be replaced by something else. I don't know. And it may seem like splitting hairs but I look at what Nikon has done and it's just confusing as hell, and I would really, really hate for Canon to do the same. (Nikon bodies and lenses are ugly too but that's my personal bias).


Nikon is successful because their bodies have better noise performance, superior AF, and better FPS. Canon is successful because their lens lineup ROCKS and they are often the innovators in the field. These are two different companies with two different visions of how to make cameras. It's not reasonable to say that one has to match or play catch-up to what the other is doing because they have inherently different methods as to how to go about making good cameras. And that's why I am puzzled by your insistence on this particular issue. If you are unhappy then switch systems.

[Benjamin]

wickerprints,


You seem to know a lot about Canon and Nikon.


Let me make my thoughts clearer into just one question here: why does the upcoming camera (whatever it's gonna be called) that replaces the current 1D III better to remain in APS-H?


I totally agree with you about the naming issue, I can see Nikon has somewhat messed up their lineup by giving names that does not come as a whole. I'm also not in any way insisting either on what a FF 16MP camera would be called or should a replacement of the 1D III be FF. However, there're questions that's not answered, or at least not satisfactorily convincing; such as is there any technical difficulty to make a fast FF digital camera? I can see the benefit of a FF replacement of the 1D III while I don't quite understand why an APS-H sensor is here to stay unless there're very solid reasons.


On the other hand, if naming has a lot to do with the format, please think back to the film ages when Canon still made 5 lines of SLRs. They all shoot film, from the top-of-the-line EOS 1V to EOS 3, followed by Elan, Rebel T and Rebel K in different production lines. They were all in the same format as 35mm film; but their feature, function, utility, reliability, etc divided them into 5 different categories. Today Canon makes 5 lines of digital SLRs, unfortunately they're in different formats mainly due to manufacture cost of their sensors. Canon once said to eventually generalize FF sensor on most of their products - I think that will eventually form a similar lineup as the film ages - cameras differ because of their utility, quality and price, not the format itself.


I will appreciate if you can share more thoughts on the replacement of the 1D III since that's really why I'm here to argue. As I said, I see FF being superior as a sensor along, and Canon should do it whenever possible. I'd like to see Canon makes most of their cameras in FF format at reasonable costs in the future.


Ben

[wickerprints]

Your central question is an absolutely legitimate one. There is no inherent technological reason that a digital body cannot be engineered to the specifications you mention. It is certainly possible. The previous limitation of processor speed/buffer size/data bandwidth at reasonable cost is no longer the brick wall it used to be. So we may well see the transition to 35mm sensors with fast frame rates.


As I imagine it from the manufacturer's perspective, the issue here is twofold: there is the answer to the question "what feasible technological improvements are desired in a body?" and then there is the question "in what way(s) can we differentiate our product lines and at what combination of features and price points?" Since I am not the manufacturer, I cannot speculate as to how Canon would answer these questions. But it certainly seems reasonable to me that the next logical evolution of the fast FPS body is to go to full 35mm. The pixel density will probably be lower than a 35mm sensor for "studio" work (i.e. anything except for fast action).


There is a bit of a twist to this story, which is the situation faced by present 1DmkIII owners with respect to issues with the accuracy of AF Servo mode. Perhaps there is a problem with Canon's QC and/or AF firmware. There have been reports of improvement after the latest firmware revision but this issue may be indicative of a more serious underlying problem. AF Servo and FPS are intimately related, as the former is very often used in conjunction with continuous shooting mode.


So then perhaps the real question is this: is Canon capable of making a camera with superior AF Servo performance at &gt; 10fps, and with, say, 45-zone AF? We know Nikon can do it. But I believe that we have yet to really see Canon deliver in the 1DmkIII, despite reports of the issue of AF accuracy being fixed.


You can see then, that it is not simply enough to ask "what is possible?" Canon also has to consider how such a product fits within their existing lineup, whether it would serve as a replacement for the 1DIII, or whether a lower-density sensor actually belongs *above* the 1DsIII, or...who knows? And how much would it sell for? As such, speculation about what will come next is really quite futile because photographers are, to a fault, obsessively preoccupied with "what can we get," not "what business considerations are attached to the development of camera technology." After all, why should we care about the business end? That's for the manufacturers to wrestle with. But my point is that it nevertheless influences and informs the design decisions, and to that end, we ought to care if the goal is to try to predict what will come down the pipeline. Not doing so is willfully disregarding critical facts and drawing hypotheses on partial data.


We see this sort of thing with lenses as well. People have been talking at length about a hypothetical 24-70/2.8L IS, a successor to the 24-70/2.8L. And as popular as such a lens might be (based on how many people I've heard wish for IS), I just don't think it's going to happen any time soon. Why? Because at about 2 pounds the 24-70/2.8L is already huge and heavy. Adding an IS group would probably put on another half pound of weight, make it longer, more expensive, and worst of all, compromise on quality. It is NOT a trivial task to design a f/2.8 zoom at any focal length. Are people really thinking that a 24-70/2.8L IS could be a suitable walk-around lens to replace the 24-105/4L IS? Sure, I suppose there are many photographers out there who would be willing to lug a heavy chunk of glass around town. But you also have the fact that as the focal length gets shorter, the benefit of IS also diminishes. Furthermore, in this down economy, Canon probably isn't going to spend a lot of time/resources to redesign lenses that are already excellent. In summary, when you hear these kinds of rumors, it's really more confabulation than fact.


To address your statement about the sensor format and comparisons to
film, the reason why film bodies were all in 35mm format was because
the medium itself was a single fixed size. And to support multiple
slight variations in size would have been madness as doing so would
cost more than any price differential due to the per-unit cost of
film. A single standardized film format was what was economically efficient.
This is not the case in digital, where the very inherent nature of the
imaging medium is such that the per-unit cost of manufacture is tied to
the defect rate which in turn is directly proportional to the area of
the sensor. Unless manufacturing processes fundamentally change in
such a way that makes these defects scale more reasonably to sensor
area than at present, we will not see significant cost structure
differences. An APS-C sensor is about 38% the area of a 35mm sensor.
That translates into considerable cost savings, as a single silicon
wafer can be cut into nearly 3x as many sensors, and a larger
percentage of these sensors will be defect-free. Eventually, perhaps the cost curve will flatten out to the point that maintaining different processes will not be justified. But I believe that is unlikely to happen before the next revolutionary change in imaging technology takes place. In short, the sensor area is most certainly the dominant factor in determining the ultimate cost of manufacture in a camera, as it affects the design of the two most expensive components of the body: the sensor itself, and the processor(s) that must accept and interpret its data. A 16MP sensor recording images at 10fps is going to have to push over 190MB of RAW data every second to a card. That is not trivial processing power and it does not come cheap.


And so we come full circle. What will Canon give us next? I really don't know. I don't really think it's all that important, to be honest. To me, I'd much rather think about things that I can control that have a direct relationship to what I am doing, which is taking photos. I use a 5DmkII and my latest toy I'm having fun with is the 70-200/2.8L IS. It's a nice piece of glass. If I worried about the rumors that Canon was going to redesign it, I'd never have the photos that I took since I got it. And that's what matters most to me. Photography is only peripherally about the tools--the real purpose is to capture your vision, your interpretation of what you see in those fleeting moments happening around you all the time, moments that will never come again.

[Mark Elberson]

Photography is only peripherally about the tools--the real purpose is to capture your vision, your interpretation of what you see in those fleeting moments happening around you all the time, moments that will never come again.
<div style="CLEAR: both"]</div>

Very well said!

[HiFiGuy1]

Absolutely! Very insightful. It is fun to obssess about the hardware, since it is tangible, but the real importance lies in what we create.

[peety3]

I totally agree with you about the naming issue, I can see Nikon has somewhat messed up their lineup by giving names that does not come as a whole. I'm also not in any way insisting either on what a FF 16MP camera would be called or should a replacement of the 1D III be FF. However, there're questions that's not answered, or at least not satisfactorily convincing; such as is there any technical difficulty to make a fast FF digital camera? I can see the benefit of a FF replacement of the 1D III while I don't quite understand why an APS-H sensor is here to stay unless there're very solid reasons.

A FF 16MP camera should be called 1Ds Mark II. Oh wait, it already got called that.

I'd like to see Canon makes most of their cameras in FF format at reasonable costs in the future.

Good, fast, cheap; pick any two.

[Daniel Browning]

why does the upcoming camera that replaces the current 1D III better to remain in APS-H?

We had a very similar discussion a few weeks ago:

APS-H vs FF, which makes more sense to be on the 1D Mark IV?

The 1D Mark IV, to me, doesn't make sense as a 16mp FF camera...The 60D, to me, doesn't make sense at APS-H.

Agreed on both counts. I would be very surprised if Canon released a low-end 1.3X body or stopped releasing 10FPS 1.3X bodies. Things that would be nice, though: a high-end, high-speed 1.6X body and a 10FPS 1.0X body. I think the idea of using sensor size to differentiate market segments is too ingrained into the Canon marketing M.O., and even Nikon's switch will not be enough to get them to change.

The 1D Mark IV, to me, doesn't make sense as a 16mp FF camera. Although the pixel density matches its predecessor, leading to great noise performance and diffraction threshold

For the benefit of the reader, I would like to point out that peety3 and I are in a state of disagreement on this matter. I think the idea that larger pixels have superior noise performance and suffer less negative effects from diffraction is a common misconception caused by erroneous image analysis. I detailed the position in the following thread with experimental evidence:

Myth busted: smaller pixels have more noise, less dynamic range, worse diffraction, etc.

However, I don't think I ever actually discussed diffraction in that thread. (I meant to, as indicated in the title, but I must have forgot.) So here's a quick description: There are many things that can affect the resolution of an image, including diffraction, aberrations, motion blur (from camera shake or subject movement), and mechanical issues such as collimation, back focus, tilt, and manufacturing tolerances.

In the face of these issues, some will claim that small pixels are actually worse than large pixels. This is easily proven false. The reality is that all of these factors may cause diminishing returns, but returns never diminish below 0%.

The most frequently misunderstood factor in diminishing returns is diffraction. As pixel size decreases there are two points: one at which diffraction is just barely beginning to noticably diminish returns (from 100% of the expected improvement, to, say, 90%); and another where the resolution improvement is so small that it's immeasurable (0-1%). One common mistake is to think both are the same point, but in reality they are often very far apart.

Another diffraction-related mistake is to think that diffraction will ever cause a small pixel sensor to have lower performance. In fact, the worst that can ever happen is for smaller pixels to have a 0% improvement. That is, for performance to be the same.

For example, anyone shooting 5 micron pixels at f/32 because they really need DOF (e.g. macro) is not going to get any benefit from smaller pixels: the returns will be close to 0%. At f/11, the returns will be diminished slightly, but an improvement can still be had from smaller pixels.

Lens aberrations can be an issue too. Usually even the cheapest lenses will have pretty good performance in the center, stopped down. But their corners wide open will sometimes not benefit very much from smaller pixels, so the returns in those mushy corners may be 0-5% due to aberrations.

And there's the mechanical issues. If the collimation is not perfect, but it's good enough for large pixels, then it will have to be better to get the full return of even smaller pixels. This relates to manufacturing tolerances of everything in the image chain: the higher the resolution, the more difficult it is to get full return from that additional resolution. Even things like tripods have to be more steady to prevent diminishing returns.

So essentially the diminishing returns depend on the circumstances, but the higher the resolution, the more often the returns will be diminished.

[Jon Ruyle]

Funny how small pixels get such a bad rap. No one ever says "the optical perfection of such and such lens is actually a disadvantage, because you need higher shutter speed/smaller pixels/larger aperture/better focus/etc to to take advantage of it." But people make the exact same argument about small pixels all the time.

For example, anyone shooting 5 micron pixels at f/32 because they really need DOF (e.g. macro) is not going to get any benefit from smaller pixels: the returns will be close to 0%.

In theory, one could use high pixel density to do better post-processing. For example, if one is willing to deconvolve diffraction, I believe more resolution is always better.

[Daniel Browning]

In theory, one could use high pixel density to do better post-processing. For example, if one is willing to deconvolve diffraction, I believe more resolution is always better.
<div style="clear: both;"]</div>

Agreed. If sensors were advanced enough to record the actual phase of the light, then diffraction could be deconvolved perfectly (in theory). But as you point out, even without phase it's possible to get really nice results. High noise power at Nyquist can reduce the effectiveness, so it's more beneficial for low ISO shots.

[Benjamin]

Great insight, I can see the logic there. I learned.[]