Finally some great news for Canon bird photographers. Officially announced today the Canon R5 full frame mirrorless, 12 fps, IBIS, and expected to be 45 Mpx. Also announced the RF 100-500 mm f/4.5-7.1 and new designs for RF 1.4x and 2x extenders. See here

Ian, it looks like you finally have the possible 5D replacement you've been waiting for.

A couple of other interesting recent observations are:
- while the 5 series seems to be a high megapixel camera, recent DSLR announcements indicate both Canon and Nikon are continuing to use a mere 20MP as the default for their high end sports/journalism oriented cameras. I suppose this has to do with data transport within the camera, where the emphasis is on speed rather than all out resolution;
- Canon is now producing lenses with f/7.1 as the maximum aperture (both the new 100-500 and the consumer 24-105 R mount). Moreover as I understand it the f/7.1 is reached early in the zoom range. I don't really understand this; continued reduction of the maximum aperture on zooms by all manufacturers seems to undermine all the work they do in sensor development. The R mount was supposed to be an opportunity to produce new high quality lenses and the wider mount and shorter flange to sensor distance of mirrorless allow for optical improvements. Lenses have gone from f/5.6 at the long end to f/6.3 (current default for many lenses) and now f/7.1. Are we approaching the 'single-aperture' lens where f/8 is the consumer default, which is already close to the limit in terms of diffraction? Manufacturers are ever more reliant on high ISO sensors and image stabilisation (now something like up to 7 stops for Olympus) to overcome limitations of lenses, at least at the consumer end of the market.

Simon

I agree that the new R5 camera looks like it will have interesting potential for bird photography, but I have to admit to some disappointment at the specifications of the new 100-500 zoom. Nikon is one manufacturer which has actually been bucking the trend towards small maximum apertures for their consumer lenses, and I would have thought that Canon might have at least matched the f/5.6 maximum aperture of Nikon's 200-500 zoom, which has proven a great lens for birds and is definitely priced towards the consumer end of the market. Canon's offering is an L series lens and may prove to have higher construction quality, but even so there is a substantial and important specification difference between f/5.6 and f/7.1 at the 500mm top end. Also (and I know I've mentioned this previously), given the likely medium-high price level of the R5 if it is intended to be a 5D equivalent, I would have thought that a Canon match for the excellent and highly sought-after Nikon 500mm f/5.6 PF (fresnel) lens would have been a good additional companion to the new camera on release. Such a lens would not be in the consumer price bracket, but also, as Nikon has demonstrated, would equally not need to be priced at the level of Canon's top-end big whites, but rather be placed in that medium-high slot that the 5D series has consistently occupied.

Cheers, David

Further news from Canon Rumors ( here ) suggests that Canon may indeed be working on slower aperture super-telephotos in DO (fresnel) design for the RF mount. If so this could be a boon for mid-market bird photographers wanting something lighter, more compact and less hard on the wallet than the fast-aperture Canon big whites. It's looking like an increasingly interesting year coming up.

Cheers, David

Canon's forthcoming EOS R5 mirrorless camera body seems to have just got even more interesting for bird photographers. According to the latest Canon press release ( here ), it will include an AF capability known as 'Advanced Animal AF' which sounds like it will recognise, lock onto and follow birds without relying only on eye recognition. This should allow for following flying birds in an off-centre composition, something like a fully automated equivalent of the semi-automatic eye-controlled focus (as opposed to eye recognition AF) that was in the EOS3 film camera of many years ago.

Cheers, David