Something between 40D and 50D

[piyush]

Was just curious to get opinion if Canon would go for something between 40D and 50D in term of sensor. Does anybody think that it makes sense for canon to release camera with 12mp (XSi) sensor in 40D/50D body? Why I am asking is, at least for me, it makes more sense to have better IQ in term of noise, DR and Sharpness then more MP's. Also more MP's makes small apearture worst.

By the way, I am happy with 400D and 10MP and dont want to go beyond that in near future but it looks like that 10MP will become one of the archive item soon with this mega pixel race.

Thanks,
Piyush

[Bob Atkins]

I see no reason for such a camera. The current 15 MP models pretty much equal the earlier lower pixel count cameras in terms of usable Dynamic Range and Noise performance. I suspect that all future Canon DSLRs will likely be 15MP (or maybe even more!).

[piyush]

Ok. Thanks for the thoughts.

I saw some rumors on 12MP, APS-H sensor for new xxD camera. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Piyush

[KeithB]

Hmm, I wonder if APS-H would be out of the image "Sweet Spot" for EF-S lenses...

[Bob Atkins]

I do not expect Canon to make another APS-H (1.3x) format camera. In fact I expect them to drop the 1D series APS-H cameras if and when they can get a fast frame rate on a full frame sensor. It was really a "stop gap" measure to speed up the camera.

There's really no justification for three different formats.

And yes, EF-S lenses do not fully cover the APS-H sensor.

Expect the EOS 60D to be much like the EOS 50D APS-C), but with video added.

[piyush]

Yep, Definitely makes sense.

Even I dont buy the rumors of the APS-H, mainly because of the EF-S lense line up. Even if it there, none of the xxD and XXXD series users will love to migrate to 1.3X sensor.

In fact, thanks for bringing the perspective of speed on 1D. I never thought of the reason for using 1.3 on 1D series.

Thanks for the clarification.

[klindup]

I am confused.  I knew about the full frame cameras and the smaller sensors used in the amateur cameras like the 40D that I have but what is APS-H?

Ken Lindup

[Bob Atkins]

APS-H is a sensor with a 1.3 x factor, midway in size between APS-C and full frame. It's used on the EOS 1D series cameras (the 1Ds series are full frame). I think the digital back for Leica DSLRs was also APS-H and maybe even the Leica M8 is.

The advantage over APS-C is it's larger than APS-C and the advantage over full frame is that it's cheaper and typically has fewer pixels, so the data can be read out faster.

As I said, I think it was a "stopgap" measure introduced in the days when size, cost and data read speed were issues.

You can achive much the same thing by using a full frame sensor and using only part of that sensor when you want to read data as fast as possible.