Canon announces new flagship camera, the R1 (finally)

After a long (very long) period of will they won’t they, Canon has released the first details about its newest mirrorless camera body, the R1. Naturally, Canon isn’t giving away everything on the first date but teasing us with a few salacious details about the new flagship camera model.

So, what do we know officially? Well, not much actually! From the press release, we know that the R1 is a mirrorless camera body that follows the EOS R system lineup. It’s “geared toward professionals” and “brings together Canon’s cutting-edge technology and combines top-class performance.”

So far, so good. But what makes it different from, say, all the other Canon mirrorless camera bodies and what makes this one a flagship model?

Sports, news and video

Canon says in the press release that the R1 will “dramatically improve the performance of both still images and video (in comparison to the EOS R3) and meet the high requirements of professionals on the frontlines of a wide range of fields including sports, news reporting, and video production.”

This makes sense, considering that 2024 has a fairly well-known international sporting event coming up in July. It’s likely that sports photographers will be equipped with the R1 to try out at the Paris Olympics.

New sensor, processor and AF

The camera will also incorporate “the newly developed image processor Digic Accelerator in addition to the pre-existing processor Digic X.” Supposedly, this new processing system will be used with a new CMOS sensor, which will allow a much larger volume and speed of data processing, plus huge advancements in the autofocus system.

It appears that the autofocus tracking has been massively improved, which is impressive, given how good it is on the R5 and R3 already. Fast and accurate subject tracking during sports events will be virtually instant and flawless. Apparently, there will be an Action Priority setting, which will act like a clairvoyant and predict where the autofocus needs to go, for example, tracking a football during a match. The camera will also use in-built noise reduction, allowing greater flexibility at higher ISO and low light.

If all that works, that is pretty incredible and shows the amount that Canon has been investing in incorporating AI processes into its camera functions. I’m guessing that it’s AI anyway, rather than just run-of-the-mill magic.

What else could be incorporated into the R1?

That’s all we know for now. Apart from the fact that Canon is expecting a 2024 rollout, we don’t know any exact dates. We also don’t know anything more about video specs, megapixels, or price. All we can do is speculate.

On that note, I predict that the R1 will have some sort of global shutter technology to rival Sony’s A9 III. Additionally, I think that the R1 will have at least 50mp and probably shoot 8K video at least at 60fps. I cannot say whether this camera will be video-centric and compatible with the dual fisheye lens for shooting VR 180 video. However, the extra-fast processing power would be highly compatible with shooting 8K RAW at high frame rates.

Interestingly, all of the information we have so far suggests that this camera is a better version of the R3. So why isn’t it being released as an R3 mark II? Perhaps some additional super-duper technological wizardry will make the R1 extra special and justify what will (probably) be an exceptionally high price tag, with people guessing between $7000 and $9000.

Watch this space!