rumors.cam
January 30, 2024
The Z6 III is coming in early 2024
The APS-C crop burst speed of 120fps is very interesting. The Z9 has full frame 120fps in JPG only at 11 megapixels. Nikon seems to be doing a lower quality downsampling to get to 11mp. It's an interesting option, but quite lacking.
The Z6 Mark III in DX crop mode would also be about 11 megapixels. I wonder if it will be JPG only or raw as well. Compared to the Sony A9III, that also shoots bursts at 120fps, the cropped Z6 Mark III should actually perform similarly when it comes to noise because the global shutter in the A9III is around 1 stop less sensitive.
Of course the A9III is doing 120fps at 24mp instead of 11mp, but I would actually be very interested to see how the buffer in the Z6 Mark III compares to the A9III when both are set to their 120fps modes. The A9III no doubt has more memory being a $6000 professional camera, but 11mp is less than half the resolution of 24mp and Nikon has a raw compression that goes to 3:1 vs Sony's compressed raw that only goes as far as 2:1. This all means that you might have a much cheaper camera capable of shooting 120fps burst with a deeper image buffer, similar noise performance, but 11mp instead of 24mp. Very interesting!
Finally let's look at readout speed. The A9III has an instant readout of the entire frame while the Z6 mark III isn't rumored to even have a stacked sensor. Still, the readout will have to be at least 1/120 in the 120fps DX burst setting. The A9 was the first full frame stacked sensor camera and it's readout was 1/150, so the Z6 III in DX crop 11mp at 120fps might be a poor man's high speed sports style camera.
Macrumors is reporting that the next iPhone Pro Max will have a major main camera upgrade featuring a 1/1.14 inch sensor.
Second half of 2024
There are only early rumors about this camera. There's talk of a 60MP sensor, 4K 240p, better cooling, better autofocus, and 40fps burst shooting. There's also the chance that there is no R5c. If the cooling is effective then this might make sense.
At 60MP Canon could deliver over sampled full frame 8K and APS-C 6K. Raw 8K was a headline feature of the R5, but a 60MP sensor would be capable of delivering raw 9.5K. Would Canon let users shoot raw 9.5K or will it be capped at 8K? If it is capped at 8K, will Canon crop to get to 8K raw or do some sort of downsampled raw? The 45MP of the R5 is perfect for pixel for pixel 8K in full frame and oversampled 4K in APS-C crop mode. The rumored 60MP sensor definitely complicates this for Canon and requires more processing power and heat management to deliver 8K from a 9.5K sensor.
March 21
This should be a great camera for stills photography with very high image quality. The video specs indicate that this is not a camera aimed at video first shooters.
The Canon R1 will likely release before the Summer Olympic Games in late July of 2024.
30mp will be plenty of resolution for many photographers and a dissapointment for others. 30mp is interesting because it pushes the APS-C crop mode resolution to about 12mp which many photographers will actually use.
High FPS can be a very useful feature for many photographers, but nobody wants to be stuck waiting on a slow buffer. Truly unlimited continuous raw shooting at 60fps would be a major breakthrough for Canon! That's a lot of data though. Will the memory cards overheat? If so, at what point? 3:1 raw compression is likely to deliver high image quality.
40fps with slightly better IQ at 2:1 raw compression over 3:1 is a great option.
I imagine that the R1 works the same in 120fps as it does in the lower fps burst modes with the exception that you'll run into the buffer at some point.
At 240fps I wouldn't be surprised if the R1 used the same method as the Canon R3's 192fps mode. This is a more cumbersome workflow that's not as useful as regular burst shooting.
The Sony A9 was the first full-frame camera with a stacked sensor. With a readout speed of about 1/160 of a second it was the first time photographers could confidently use electronic shutter and not worry about rolling shutter artefacts in most situations. The Canon R1 is rumored to have a 1/1250 of a second readout speed! This is faster than even a physical shutter and certainly fast enough for most situations. Of course Sony has announced the A9III with its global shutter which is exciting, but if the R1 has better noise and dynamic range then I'd imagine many photographers will prefer it over the A9III with zero rolling shutter. 1/1250 could be a typo and the real readout speed might be 1/250 of a second. If it actually ends up being 1/1250, then I think we're at the point that for most photographers rolling shutter is simply not going to be a concern. If it's 1/250 then it's still good enough for most photographers.
This can be a useful feature to get the shot while saving memory card space. Is Canon's implementation as good as other Camera manufactuer's?
The Canon R1 will be a capable camera for capturing very high quality video. It would be even better if they include an open-gate option for recording video from the entire area of the sensor in a 3:2 aspec ratio. Considering the camera will be able to record unlimited raw stills at 60fps, they should be able to do the same with video.
Again, this is where the rumored 30mp sensor comes in handy. It's just enough resolution to provide 4K in the 1.6x crop mode.
For videographers that choose to film compressed video instead of compressed raw there will be plenty of options up to 120p from the full width of the sensor.
January 30
Rumors of a 2024 release for the GH7 considering the GH6 was less successful because of the subpar autofocus system used. The G9II was the first Lumix MFT camera to use a phase detect autofocus system and now Panasonic is ready to use phase detect in the next GH camera.
February 20, 2024