How to kick down an open door

It’s the beginning of a new year, so many websites are speculating about things to come in 2015. Of course, they want to give you the impression they know something you don’t, so they do that by kicking down an open door. Let’s take the predictions about a Canon high megapixel camera for example. Some important Canon guy made some remarks about it in an interview, so now everybody ‘knows’ what that camera will look like: it will be based on a EOS-5D type of camera body and it will have 52 Mpixel. So how do they conclude that? The type of body has to be a non EOS-1D type, because if it is based on the EOS-1D it will simply be too expensive compared to the Sony A7R or the Nikon D810. That seems to make sense, so that could be considered the first open door.

And where does the 52 Mpixel come from? You take Canon’s latest APS-C sensor (EOS-7D Mk II, 20 Mpixel) and calculate number of pixels you would get if Canon upscaled that sensor to a full frame. For those of you who make the classic mistake: you have to multiply it by 2.56 (because the Canon cropfactor is 1.6, so the sensor is 1.6x bigger in two dimensions). Door number 2.

Except that door may be not so open after all. Canon’s present full frame sensors are not based on any present APS-C sensor. Sony’s 36 Mpixel sensor (that is also used in the Nikon D810) seems not based on any present APS sensor either (that would be a 16 Mpixel sensor). So why would this be any different for the coming Canon high resolution sensor? It’s just speculation, nothing more.

It’s easier to speculate about Canon’s next compact system camera. It’s seems completely logical that this camera will have the Dual-Pixel sensor of the EOS-70D, or a newer version of that sensor. After all, one of the biggest drawbacks of Canon’s present EOS-M system is its very slow autofocus, and this sensor would improve that dramatically. Again, an open door. But it’s still just speculation, nothing more.