pKai Offline Upload & Sell: Off
|
Recently I spent a week with 2 well-placed Canon reps which shall remain nameless..... They tell me there is high likelihood that Canon will release a 40-ish megapixel FF body in 2014.
Undecided is the exact pixel count and body form factor (1D type or 5D type)... Both form factors exist as prototypes as do 2 different sensors.
According to them, Canon is taking their time with this for 2 reasons.... 1) a lot of effort had been placed on the Cine side of things. Perfecting 4K video and Cine lenses is more of a priority (read: money making potential) for Canon than a high pixel count still camera. 2) Its taking more time than expected for Canon to reach the quality level they are looking for in the areas of shadow noise, high ISO, and frame rate. According to them, Canon's conscious plan is to come out with something that will blow the D800 into the dirt and they are willing to take their time doing it. Their "guess" is that it will be a 5D form factor following Canon's pattern of releasing new tech on 2nd tier bodies first.
Outside of this (high MP body) discussion -- their (and presumably Canon's) vision for the future is this: High-enough resolution video where still photography is made essentially obsolete. IOW, point your 4K (or 32k someday) video camera in "that direction", shoot "for a while" and in post you can crop whatever composition and frame suits you and still retain enough pixels for a huge print. Imagine a fashion shoot done this way. Video everything and in post pull the exact frames you want. Its like having a 60 frame per second motor drive running for 2 hours straight. No way you will miss "the shot"...... Scary? Yes!
This is already being commonly done in the video world. A too-wide shot is deliberately shot in 4K so then the director can creatively crop in post to 1080. They demonstrated this technique with a C500 and I got chills up my spine. Several different-enough clips can quickly and easily be made from the same footage. Sure, you're not going to crop a huge print out of a 4K video frame today but 5 years from now?? 4K video is almost 10mp per frame.... (4096x2304)...
I'm scared for the future of still photography.
Edited on Jul 03, 2013 at 10:21 AM · View previous versions
|