Canon Officially Announces the Canon 5DS, 5DS R and 11-24mm f/4L

Canon Officially Announces the Canon 5DS, 5DS R and 11-24mm f/4L

After weeks of rumors and speculation, Canon has finally confirmed that the megapixel monster known as the 5Ds/5Ds R is real, and coming to stores here soon. Boasting 50.6MP full frame sensor, Canon has surpassed Nikon and Sony, offering us the highest resolution to date for a DSLR camera system. Alongside the new cameras, is the 11-24mm f/4L, finally bringing an updated ultra wide angle to the Canon lineup.

Rumors, leaks and speculations have been thrown around on these camera systems for weeks now, with no confirmations from Canon or other credible sources. Many of these rumors have been met with questions like "Who is the camera system for?" and "Is this their new flagship?". However seeing the specs on the systems, it's believed that this camera system is tailored to commercial photographers who need the resolution over the ISO capabilities, and that a flagship system tailored for the everyman is still on its way. Specs of the systems are below --

Canon EOS 5Ds --

 

  • CMOS sensor effective pixels 50.6MP (total number of pixels: 53MP)
  • RAW (50MP), M-RAW (28MP), S-RAW (12.4MP)
  • Media CF (UDMA7), SD / SDHC / SDXC (UHS-I)
  • Dual DIGIC6
  • Crop 1.3x and 1.6x
  • 100% field of view, magnification 0.71 times, the eye point is 21mm
  • Electronic level
  • Grid display
  • AF 61 points (41 points cross type), EV-2 support
  • ITR AF
  • Anti-flicker
  • Time-lapse movie
  • Bulb timer
  • Live View, the contrast AF (face recognition)
  • 150,000 pixel RGB-TR metering sensor. 252 zone TTL metering
  • EOS iSA system
  • ISO100-6400 (extended with ISO50 and ISO12800)
  • The shutter speed is 30 seconds -1/8000 seconds. Synchro is 1/200 sec
  • Continuous shooting 5 frames / sec.
  • Video 1920x1080 30fps (ALL-I or IPB)
  • LCD monitor 3.2 inches 1.04 million dot
  • Mini HDMI output terminal. External microphone terminal
  • Battery LP-E6N / LP-E6
  • The size 152 x 116.4 x 76.4mm
  • Weighs 930g (CIPA guidelines). 845g (body only)
  •  

Canon EOS 5Ds R --

  • Same Specs as Above, but with Low-Pass Filter Cancelled.

 

Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM --

  • Lens design 16 elements 11 groups
  • 4 aspherical lens (large diameter grinding aspheric single, large-diameter glass molded aspherical one, two glass mold aspherical)
  • One Super UD lens, one UD lens
  • SWC coating (two-sided)
  • ASC coating (one side)
  • The fluorine-coded rear and front lens
  • 9 diaphragm blades, circular aperture
  • Minimum aperture is f/22
  • In the shortest shooting distance is 24mm 0.28m, 0.32m in 11mm
  • 0.16 times at the maximum photographic magnification is 24mm, 0.06 times in 11mm
  • AF motor ring USM
  • Full-time manual focus
  • Dust and water sealed
  • Rear gelatin filter holder
  • Total length 132mm, maximum diameter 108mm
  • Weight 1180g

Press Release

Canon revolutionises resolution with the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R

London, UK, 6 February 2015 – Canon today transforms the EOS system with the arrival of the EOS 5DS and the EOS 5DS R – a new breed of ultra-high resolution full-frame DSLRs.

Breaking the boundaries of 35mm sensors,the new cameras offer the highest megapixels ever seen in a full frame sensor, an astonishing 50.6MP. Delivering unparalleled quality, the cameras provide an exceptional combination of resolution, responsiveness and durability, whether shooting landscapes, architecture, high fashion or portraiture, either personally or professionally. When nothing but the sharpest image is expected, the EOS 5DS R also features a low pass cancellation filter to maximise the sensor’s resolution and visible image quality.Alongside the new DSLRs, Canon also introduces the EF 11-24mm f/4L USM, the world’s widest-angle rectilinear zoom lens(1), the perfect companion for landscape and architecture photographers.

Establishing new standards for full-frame DSLRs

Setting a new benchmark for full-frame cameras, the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R combine fast, instinctive DSLR handling with the newly-developed 50.6MP CMOS sensor, providing the flexibility to shoot a wide range of scenes and subjects, making it ideal for large format mediums, such as advertising billboards and magazine covers, where every pixel matters. The sensor’s advanced architecture provides
ISO 100-6400 sensitivity, further expandable to 50-12800, ensuring high quality images with low noise, accurate colours and wide dynamic range.
For added flexibility, the cameras’ resolution enables three new in-camera crop shooting modes–1.3x, 1.6x and 1:1. Visible through the viewfinder, the crop modes deliver outstanding results, with stills at 19 MP even when cropped to 1.6x. Built to withstand the most demanding shoots, the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R’s dual DIGIC 6 processors provide the rapid performance and responsiveness required to deliver first-class images with exceptional colour reproduction. Both processors are designed to comfortably manage huge levels of image data from the 50.6MP sensor, whilst simultaneously reducing image noise and providing the freedom to shoot at five frames per second.

Automatically exceptional
Created to ensure every detail of your exquisite landscape or high-fashion studio shoot is in focus, the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS Rfeature an advanced 61-point AF system, with 41 cross-type points, delivering incredible levels of image sharpness and accuracy across the frame.
Both cameras comfortably maintain focus with moving subjects, using EOS Intelligent Tracking and Recognition AF (iTR) to track both faces and colour. To reduce image blur, Canon’s Mirror Vibration Control System uses cams to drive the cameras’ mirror up and down in a highly controlled fashion, avoiding all sudden stops and softening the shutter-release sound. Additionally, the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R’s 150k pixel RGB+IR metering sensor with Flicker Detection ensures images can be captured with consistent and accurate exposures under varying lighting scenarios, including florescent.

Incredible detail and unrestricted creativity

Putting unrivalled image quality at your fingertips, the EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R include a number of customisable modes and settings to ensure stunning results every time. A new Fine Detail Picture Style maximises the level of detail that can be achieved from the sensor, enabling advanced sharpness adjustment without the need for edit ing software. Popular creative modes, including Multiple Exposure and HDR, provide instant, in-camera creativity, while a built-in timer allows you to shoot over long periods and create stunning time lapse videos, without being tied to the camera or needing advanced software and excessive kit.

First-class professional construction, customisable features

The EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R have been expertly constructed to allow you to operate quickly, regardless of the environment you’re shooting in. The 100% viewfinder with electronic overlay makes framing vital shots easy and can be customised to your preferred style. The large, 8.11cm (3.2”) Clear View II LCD screen, with an anti-reflective structure, minimises reflection or glare when reviewing shots and also acts as a visual and accessible dashboard of the most commonly used settings. The cameras’ new Custom Quick Control

screen means that the type, size and position of icons are also easily customisable to the user or shooting scenario. Both cameras utilise Canon’s iconic design DNA–a highly durable body constructed from high-grade magnesium alloy to provide weather resilient shooting – ideal for landscape photographers who are dedicated to getting the perfect shot, whatever the weather.

EOS 5DS R: Engineered for the ultimate in DSLR image quality

When nothing but the absolute maximum level of detail possible will do, the EOS 5DS R features a low pass cancellation filter to ensure the sharpest possible results. Great for landscape photographers, where patterns are very often organic, the camera’s low pass cancellation filter produces the stunning level of detail required to turn agreat shot into an incredible shot.

Optical Expertise: Introducing the EF 11-24mm f/4L USM

The EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R are compatible with Canon’s extensive EF lens range, spanning 71 models(2). Today Canon unveils the world’s widest-angle retilinearzoom lens (1), the EF 11-24mm f/4L USM. Perfect for photographers shooting landscape and architecture, the EF 11-24mm f/4L USM is designed to open up an entirely new world of creative opportunities, thanks to its super wide 11-24mm focal range. Boasting a newly designed optical structure, the lens features three aspherical lenses including a ground aspherical element, which maximises image quality and delivers minimal levels of distortion, while the body is rugged and robust enough to be employed in extreme weather conditions.

 

As for prices, they're not cheap. The Canon 5DS comes in at $3699, Canon 5DS R is $3,899, and the 11-24mm f/4L is $2,999.

Zach Sutton's picture

Zach Sutton is an award-winning and internationally published commercial and headshot photographer based out of Los Angeles, CA. His work highlights environmental portraiture, blending landscapes and scenes with portrait photography. Zach writes for various publications on the topic of photography and retouching.

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83 Comments

I WANT THAT CAMERA!!! MEOW!

You are not alone, Rebecca, you are not alone...

Now all the Mk. III people know what it felt like to D700 people when the D800 came out. This definitely isn't a linear upgrade. I'm surprised they didn't make two models: a "normal" 20-30mp and a high-res 50mp. What do y'all 5D people think?

Actually the 5D mk4 is supposed to be announced in october. (something tells me it will be a 4k camera with a modest MP rating, while the 5ds 5dsr are meant mostly for photography).

I actually hadn't heard that. Cool!

Hopefully MkIII will then see a price drop. Better start saving my pennies.

Like someone below said, I think that Canon is segmenting the next generation of 5D's to meet different needs. I just hope they don't decide to slap a $4000 price tag on these cameras.

It's pretty close, B&H prices are below the article.

Oh , I didn't notice. How fun. I guess Canon knows people will pay that much. I recall the 5DII being around $2700 at launch.

I think they should release a model with less megapixels (10-12MPx) but high sensitivity for video shooting, something similar to Sony a7s

I think that 2 50MP models is an overkill...They should have made one without the low pass filter (D810) and just release a direct 5D3 upgrade...

This is exactly what Nikon did in 2012 and we all know what happened....

Don't mind a bit. They don't have the lowlight capabilities and many other features the Mark III has. I may replace my 6D late this year or early next with one of these (if reviews pan out) but it wouldn't replace my Mark III as my main body.

I got my 5DIII in Nov 2012. I was actually hoping for a few more features. Wi-fi and upgraded LCD (with tilt) would have been nice features to see. I'm not sure I see enough of a reason to upgrade. I am interested in the low pass filter removal tho :)

I'm mostly just interested to see how the cropping system works.

It's a 1.3x crop like the 1D series....but has the ability to shoot at 1.6x crop? Nice...

It's a full frame according to specs. It has the ability to crop down to 1.3 or 1.6. Nikon did that on the D3 back in the day, by cropping down to 1.5x.

this is what The Digital Picture says about the crop mode: " If you want an APS-C camera's 1.6x narrower angle of view, simply use the 5Ds' 1.6x center crop mode with 19.6 megapixel (5424 x 3616) images captured. Prefer the old 1D 1.3x framing? No problem as that crop mode is also available with 30.5 megapixel (6768 x 4512) images captured. Especially nice is the viewfinder-provided crop lines (mask or outline) for these two crop modes."

Doubtful though, that EF-S lenses can be mounted to take advantage of that. Still, could be interesting to use with lenses like the Sigma 18-35 1.8... the 5D S has got almost the same pixel density as the 70D or 7D mkII, so it might actually turn out pretty okay

YAY YAY YAY more megapickles! Just what we wanted, YAYYYYYY!!! More more more!!!! Now my pictures will be really great YAYYYYY!!!!

Don't be a clown

Just having fun Mike, no offense intended ;-)

Forgot to add - 300 megabyte tiff files, YAYYYYY!!!!!

RAW and one layer TIFF would be around 50-60MB. But as for file sizes during the retouching, I'd be happy to have final, retouched images with all layers being just 300MB. Typically I end up with anything between 600MB - 1GB (depending on the image) and my current camera is well below 20MP... So I don't see file size being an issue here. How much does it cost to have 1TB of storage these days? 50 bucks? Not an issue.

Canon has stated that 16bit TIFFs from the 5Ds/sR are about 282MB.

The basic (one layer) 16 bit file will be about 300MB, as Roman says below. So your layered files will be well over 1GB if you find yourself going that big with your 20MP camera, maybe 2-3? But back to the 300MB files. Say you do a typical shoot with over 1000 images, you are looking at storing 300+ gigs. And if you back up your work in 2 other places (I do one local and one remote backup) then there is your 1TB hard drive space used up in one shoot. And no, none of this technology is cheap, nor reliable. I've lost count but I think I have over 25 hard drives now, 7 in my modded Mac Pro alone.

Are you going to render tiff from each of 1000 images or just few?

"Canon has surpassed Nikon and Sony, offering us the highest resolution to date..."

Possibly not. There has been talk that Canon worked with Sony on developing this sensor. So it may actually be at least partly a Sony sensor, and considering Sony's track record, more Sony than Canon.

There has been no official reports that suggest Sony made the sensor, so I don't believe that to be true. Especially considering that Canon has pretty much always made their own sensors.

Canon also makes claims to them developing the sensor in their press release --
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/about_canon?pageKeyCode=pressreldetail&doc...

Zach droppin' facts!

Well good for them then. I have to say I'm rather amused by all the negative votes on my original comment however. Technology, the new religion...

Am I the only one who thinks the samples online from it look a little underwhelming? The noise at 400-800 I've seen so far is terrible compared to the 5DII. And it seems like the Canon lenses can't keep up with the sensor. (guess the Zeiss Otus will be a popular option). It will be interesting to see how long it will take Canon to bring out lenses that can handle 50MP. Nikon has problems in the lens department to keep up with the res of the D810 (Couldn't imagine any of SLR lenses out there now that will really that will take full advantage of the sensor MP count manufactures are coming out with now. Maybe in a few years lens take will catch up, till then everyone will be shooting a high MP camera with low performing glass).

Where are you finding samples from the 5Ds? From what I can tell, none have been released or leaked yet.

You act like that is going to stop Internet Photographers from complaining about it.

Ah. My search engine only indexes English pages so that's probably why I couldn't find it.

But if you think the noise in that JPEG is worse than the 5DII, then you must have gotten a spectacular copy of the 5D2, because I'm not seeing any jump back in quality, especially when taking into account the resolution.

Uhhh. Yeah. That image of Tokyo skyline at ISO 800 looks like something my cell phone would take. All but the very center of that images is useless. To think a $4k camera took that....

PHEW! I was worried that we were going to get through a whole comment thread about gear without hyperbolic cell-phone comparisons. Narrow miss!

Nothing about the settings on this shot say that it was done in the way a meticulous landscape picture would actually be taken in. Like, who is shooting serious landscape at ISO 800 wide open?

The notion of lenses not being able to keep up with high megapixel cameras is a little misleading and founded in myth. People started saying this over 10 years ago when 12 MP was a big deal. Any lens (of any quality) will show more detail with a higher resolution sensor and vice-versa every sensor will make better images with a sharper lens. This doesn't change just because you now have more megapixels to work with. Case in point, if we compare an image made on 35mm film with a modern high-quality Zeiss lens to an image made on large or medium format film with an ancient low-tech lens from the 1950's, guess which one will resolve more detail? (Larger format of course). Typically larger format lenses have had less resolving power than lenses for 35mm but that doesn't hold back the resolution of the system. So yes, you can take advantage of the higher megapixel count with the lenses currently on the market, but better glass makes "technically" better images with any sensor whether it's a 12 or 50 megapixels.

OK guy........there is one image in that range and its at iso800(where did you see iso400?). Where did you buy your 5d2? I ask because mine (and almost every other copy) has a lot more noise than the 5ds samples.

I will wait for full independent reviews regarding noise. With other high res sensors like the D800, noise does creep up early in RAW. However it has a pleasing fine film like grain with the smaller pixel size. Also with the noise being so fine, it is very easy to knock it out in Lightroom or Capture One without harming the quality of the finished image. What I like the most and find the most useful about the high res shots from my D800e isn't the extra resolution but that the larger file size allows those of us who like to process and even aggressively process RAW files or do aggressive image manipulation, the larger files hold up the IQ far better. Hopefully the larger RAW files on the 5DS will also have some of these qualities.

Whatever... if will ever need 50mp I will rent PhaseOne.

Phase would have the advantage of being MF and an amazing camera, of course. It's a completely different market and use though. Renting just the digital back takes about $700 out of your pocket. If you do it once in a year (and let's say you have some MF body and lenses to use with it) then it may be an option. If you do commercial photography and do 10-20 shoots a year when you may benefit from higher resolution sensor, then you are much better off with either buying a Pentax MF (same sensor as Phase One). If this Canon goes anywhere near MF sensor IQ wise (and if the example of Nikon 36MP sensors is anything to judge by, this 50MP sensor might be good enough) and considering the fact Canon lenses are generally speaking better than what Pentax has on offer, these new 5Ds and 5DsR might be a much better, more versatile option than Pentax 645 and certainly much cheaper than buying Hassy or Phase.
Personally, I think I'd rather go with 5DsR to do the job and some MF film camera just for fun.

If I will need 50mp the client will pay for MF rental. Even billboards don't require that high resolution because of the viewing distance.
35mm/50mp = high pixel density <=> nice details of chromatic aberration... problems with diffraction limitations and loss of sharpness.
What I would like to see in new Canon is wider dynamic range. I guess pixels sell better.
Edit:
According to this presentation http://youtu.be/Hl6AKRadEsw?t=2m

pixel size should be the same as in 7D so current lenses should perform similarly (I have never used 7D so I can't compare to 5dmk3)

This is exciting, to someone who actually prints huge regularly. I wonder how it will compare to medium format cameras in the same MP range. Time will tell.

Hmmm, I printed a 18 megapixel file 29 feet long at a museum and it looks great, but 50 MP would look so much better, I hope we can re-shoot it!

Mike Kelley, are you going to buy it for your architecture & interior photography?

This could be great! I'm just really curious if there are any canon lenses able to resolve that type of pixel power, looks like many nikon lenses can't even hold up against the 36mp of the d800.

No matter what lens you use it will resolve more detail with 50MP compared to a sensor with lower MP. Considering that both Canon and Nikon make lenses that are equal to or better than the lenses used with medium format systems (which obviously make photos with stunning detail) I wouldn't worry about being held back by the lenses. Most of that notion is founded in a misunderstanding of how resolution works. Resolution is a joint effort by the sensor and lens and isn't capped by one or the other unless there is a serious mis-match in quality (like putting a coke bottle in front of your 5D.

Precisely

Lens has a limited resolution. Even theoretically perfect lens has a diffraction limitation. So yes, the resolution can be capped by one or another.

Diffraction limitations deal with how much any lens can be stopped down before resolution starts to degrade. That's a little bit different than saying the lens isn't capable of resolving a certain amount of detail. While I am no optical engineer I don't think the lens is such limiting factor. Greatly increasing the resolution capabilities of the sensor (or film) increases the overall resolution of the system as a whole. For example, you take an unimpressive large format lens from the 1950's that has all sorts of "issues" that modern lenses are corrected for, but you use it to make images with 4x5 sheet film with incredible resolution capabilities and that system as a whole will easily out resolve any modern, well-corrected 35mm format lens shot on 35mm film. Hence you aren't exactly being capped by the resolution of your lens. Of course higher resolution sensors magnify lens defects as well and therefore sharper lenses will also make sharper photos no matter what the resolution capabilities of the film or sensor. So I agree that bad lenses make lower resolution photos than good lenses given that the sensor/pixel count is equal. I just think there is a little misinformation surrounding statements like "the lens can't even resolve that much detail" or "the sensor is out-resolving the lens." It doesn't really work like that.

You are comparing different medium format sizes. Keep in mind that diffraction is a characteristic of a light.
I am not saying that it will be huge issue in new canon even though I think pixel-peepers will be able to notice the difference; I am just saying that the resolution can be capped by either lens or recording medium.

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