In a slightly unorthodox move, Canon has announced that it is now developing a new professional mirrorless camera, the Canon EOS R3. The latter is still quite some time away from its launch, so features may be tweaked or added to the camera before its commercial launch. But, what’s interesting to note is how Canon has thrown in a whole bunch of its new technologies to the upcoming EOS R3. The latter will get a new stacked CMOS sensor, a new standard of continuous shooting, a new autofocus module and improved durability, among other things, hence reinforcing its position in the cut-throat competition that Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and Canon itself has established in the professional mirrorless cameras space.
For starters, Canon will use a new, stacked CMOS full-frame 35mm sensor in the Canon EOS R3. This isn’t a surprise, and neither is it new – the stacked CMOS architecture will use a large memory chip in its stack to beef up its buffer size. As Sony has already shown with such a stacked CMOS model, sensors are capable of producing super impressive results in terms of rendering a large number of frames together. Taking advantage of this, Canon claims a 30fps continuous shooting speed, with AF-AE lock turned on – calling this impressive would be under-selling it.
The Canon EOS R3 will also feature the Digic X image processor that’s not particularly new, but is still from the latest generation. Other key features include improvements to the Canon Dual Pixel on-sensor AF technology, to which Canon has added its own deep learning algorithms. The company claims that its new algorithms have enabled head and eye detection for subjects, as well as a new torso detection. Canon claims that this will reflect in high movement areas such as sports photography as well, which should (at least on paper) make the autofocus performance far, far better than what Canon’s cameras can already achieve. The company states that development is underway to add even more types of subject detection to the Canon EOS R3, eventually.
What’s the bigger deal here is this neat new technology called Eye Control AF, which lets you set your camera’s focus on a subject by moving your eye inside the electronic viewfinder. Canon says that it will “make possible smoother shooting with quick focus when transitioning between subjects,” and if the Canon EOS R3 can do what it claims, it certainly will not just be marketing hyperbole.
Further improvements include improved dust and water resistance, and an integrated vertical hand grip into the camera body. Canon also claims that the camera will support “high-speed workflows”, which makes us suspect that it may come with Thunderbolt 4 ports for high-speed external media readout in recording of uncompressed, high bitrate 4K or 8K RAW video files. Canon has also announced three new RF-mount lenses, all of which offer f/2.8 aperture, image stabilisation and the company’s USM ultrasonic silent motor operation – to be available in 100mm, 400mm and 600mm focal lengths.
Prices and a launch date for the venerable sounding Canon EOS R3 have not been announced as yet, and it will be interesting to see how the camera would shore up against the likes of the Sony a7s III, a7R IV and even the Nikon Z7 II, when it is eventually launched.
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