Now that Canon has hit the end of the MP road for the XXD line, what's next?

I saw a review of the 50D on the TV about a week ago (a pretty useless review by the way...the commentator loved the images produced but whined about how complicated and heavy the camera was...what did he want? a P&S?) and the canon rep that they talked to barely mentioned the increased MP. Instead he seemed much more interested into pointing out the improved LCD.

Anyway...to the OP question. I can't see the MP war ending soon, although for the 60D I get the feeling MP might stay the same, but they will work out other ways to try and further improve the IQ, High ISO, etc.

I think video is pretty likely to be a major focus of their next camera. And since that may requier a few different controls/buttons/etc, we might therefore see a little change in the body/layout. But only minor ones.

cheers Mike

Not because it was technically better than Beta or V2000....

G.
--
'Tuning a mellotron doesn't.' ( R. Fripp )
'Variables won't; constants aren't.' ( Osborn's Law )

n/t

New advancements are coming all the time. Good for us.

With new technology being developed all the time it would be foolish to think that 15 megapixels is the limit and that there is nowhere else for Canon to go. There seems to be a collective wisdom among the "cognosenti" that more megaspixels equals bad IQ and that even with new technology, wasting that on increasing megapixel density only increases file size without a corresponding advantage in image quality.

This is wrong on two counts.

First, new technology will produce higher megapixel count (higher resolution) sensors with correspondingly less noise and DR across the image. This has been occurring for years and there is no evidence that development will hit a brick wall any time in the near future.

Second, there is always a resolution advantage to be had with higher resolution sensors regardless of the lens used. Certainly the better the lens the greater the improvement to be had and with improvements to lenses being made all the time, it provides a measure of future proofing for the camera too. As well as this, the higher the resolution of the sensor, the less visible digital artefacts such as jaggies and haloes become and the better the image can take sharpening before artefacts become obvious. Also, the higher the resolution of the sensor, the weaker the AA filter needs to be, further aiding resolution of fine detail and "texture" in the image.

I think they will increase the sensor size. Maybe 1.3x, probably full frame 35mm eventually.

As for the argument that canon wont do it because of the EF-S lens line?
1. Canon will benefit from EF lens sales when people upgrade their lenses.

2. They abandoned the entire FD lens line, so they could easily do so with a few EF-S lenses.
3. The xxxd / xxxxd will probably remain APS-C for longer.

Further technological improvements may allow more megapixels on an APS-C sensor, but you cant change the laws of physics. Smaller pixels = less light.

Dan P1 said:

First off, I don't want this to be a wish list for the next XXD
camera. The 50D has been out a month, and I'm not interested in
starting threads about a new camera.

This is more along the lines that Canon has played their trump card.
It simply seems impossible to cramp more MP in the XXD line. So,
what can they possible come up with to attract more buyers? I just
don't see an XXD camera with less MP and better noise
performance--Canon has based their marketing on more MP, not less.
Do they increase the sensor size while trying to keep the EF-S folks
happy (I don't want to give up my 17-55 or 10-20!)? Are they
looking toward a new type of sensor? They need to give people a
good reason to buy/upgrade their gear, and I don't see where they can
go.

Click to expand...

I suspect that FF is the way of the future but until then the APSC format has a bit of life in it yet.

As for the EFS lens line I think that Canon can make FF cameras to use the lenses without hitting the mirror. The way to do this is not to have a mirror that is hinged at the top and swings upward when the shutter is released (this will hit the rearmost element of EFS lenses) but to make a two piece mirror split horizontally. One half-mirror is hinged at the top and swings up and away from the rearmost lens element, clearing it due to its small size, while the lower half-mirror is hinged at the bottom and swings downwards. At the end of the shutter release sequence, both mirrors flip back to make up a continuous 45 degree mirror again, reducing vibration due to the mirrors moving in opposite directions as a bonus. The shutter sequence can also be made a little quicker since each half-mirror will be lighter and can move faster.

Obviously the EFS lens' image circle will only cover a part of the sensor but this can of course be accommodated by the software to make a rectangular image. Thie resulting image would be in no way different to an APSC image with the same lens, provided the sensor is around 30 megapixels or so.