Canon R5 major firmware upgrade on the horizon?

Canon has been teasing us with a few upcoming cameras such as their flagship R1, the R5 Mark II and even a rumoured high megapixel R5S. But the reality of these cameras reaching our hands within this year seems to be slipping away. Fortunately, competition from Nikon (the upcoming Z8) and Sony (the new A7RV) may have encouraged Canon to rejuvenate the current R5 with a major firmware update.

While the latest R6 Mark II, R7 & R8 may share the same Digic X processor as the R5, many of the newer intriguing and clever camera functions have been sadly missing in the R5. According to some Canon rumours sites, Canon may be about to release a new firmware update that will give the R5 new functionality, including a completely new function called ‘pixel shift’ (which is already available in the Sony A7RV).

What is pixel shift? This is where the camera’s IS sensor is ‘shifted’ ever so slightly to take multiple images thus creating huge ‘super resolution’ 200MB images with increased colour resolution as well as less moiré and noise. While super resolution images are theoretically great, the only real applications are with perfectly still subjects (such as architectural, landscape or product) as the fastest shutter speed is 1/13s. Perhaps with faster processors in the future, this shutter speed may increase to something more usable such as 1/60s.