Pre-Photokina: Canon leaks

Well even though the rumours say there is going to be a major announcement by Canon today (Monday) or tomorrow (and then followed by a major announcement by Nikon the day after), the leak machines and rumour mills have been churning up some juicy information, though unfortunately very little of the Canon 5D’s successor type.

Canon’s 40D successor, the intuitively named Canon 50D, can be seen Photoshopped at Engadget. There aren’t a lot of cosmetic changes with this reported body shot, but that wasn’t to be expected. What was to be expected though doesn’t seem all that interesting. 15 MP with a higher ISO range, 3" VGA LCD to match Nikon’s offering, larger buffer, tweaked auto-focus, etc., etc. I just don’t see how it will compete if it doesn’t match or exceed all the offerings of the Nikon D300, the camera it’s being built to defeat. Even if they don’t include weather-sealing, there’s only so high you can sell the camera for before people decide otherwise. And then if they price it too low, then they’re really not coming up with a true competitor for the D300.

The remainder of Canon’s digicams, the SX1100 IS (Canon’s budget superzoom upgrade), A1000 IS, A2000 IS, and E1, all look like the diseased, pastel-coloured unicorn vomited all over them. When Canon introduced the SX100 IS, it looked like a trimmer version of the S5 IS, its beefier, stronger brother. It looks like they only flattened out the battery compartment to make it look more flush with the body, though at the expense of the handgrip.

Now whoever designed the A1000 IS, A2000 IS, and E1… what were they thinking. The A1000 IS and A2000 IS don’t look that bad I suppose (with the A2000 IS winning between the two in this writer’s opinion), but they still look too round with their styling. And then there’s the E1, which will obviously be marketed towards children, but if I were a child, I’d be insulted that they thought that ugly child was marketed towards me. Then again, I’m not a child and my first digital camera was my Digital Rebel.

What’s interesting if these rumours are true is that all the digicams rumoured above use the DiG!C III image processing chip, while the 50D uses the DiG!C IV image processing chip. What Canon has done in the past, unless I’m mistaken, is introduce its new DiG!C processors in their compact line-up and then once the technology is proven, they migrate it to their top-of-the-line DSLRs. This seems to be a reversal of the trend. Some speculation is that the DiG!C IV processor will allow the 50D to reach the stratosphere-blowing ISO 12,800 (or higher) levels, while the compacts are perfectly happy with the DiG!C III chips. That’s just pure uneducated speculation though. And that’s the last about that since it’s even worse typing DiG!C than a novel in sticky caps.

And that’s it for the rumours so far. The only rumours I’ve read about the Canon 5D’s replacement were as a footnote on CanonRumors.com, but hopefully it will show up (with EF-s lens support… yeah right). It’s been far too long and the market needs Canon to step in to drop the price for full-format yet again. Nikon’s D700 is currently sitting comfortably at $2,999. Yikes.