Canon Has No Plans to Make a High-Resolution Version of Its Flagship R1

Canon’s EOS R1 is a very specialized camera designed for sports, wildlife, and photojournalism. But because its form factor is so appealing, many professional photographers have expressed interest in seeing a high-resolution version of the R1 released. Canon says that won’t happen.

PetaPixel maintains that the EOS R1 is one of the most well-designed cameras tested in recent years from both a handling and interface perspective. That said, many photographers — PetaPixel‘s Chris Niccolls included — value high resolution but would like it in a body like the R1. In the past, Canon and Nikon both created “X” or “S” versions of their flagship DSLRs, so there was some hope that Canon would revisit the practice.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn’t have any plans to, it revealed in an interview with PetaPixel at the Yokohama-based CP+ show in late February.

“We consider the flagship to basically be at the pinnacle of our lineup, which means we’re not going to have two flagship models because we’ve basically put everything that we have — the best performance and the best trust — into the EOS R1. So I would say that we would probably never consider developing another model using the same body as the EOS R1,” Go Tokura, exectutive vice president and head of the Imaging Group at Canon, tells PetaPixel.

“For example, if we have higher resolution, then we know that that will skew the balance and the sensitivity will be lower. That is a physical mechanism. So in a flagship, we would never focus on just one aspect of the performance that would destroy the balance. I believe our current strategy is to have the 5-series be responsible for the high resolution quality.”

Tokura’s response pushed PetaPixel to ask a follow-up: The idea of a flagship camera seems to mean different things to different manufacturers. What does flagship mean to Canon and how does it believe it offers a more compelling product versus the competition?

“Our focus on the flagship is to provide the best possible performance and be the best and trustworthiness. Additionally, if you think about the history of R1, I think we’re in the 19th generation of the 1 series. So there’s a lot of history behind this and as a part of that process, we have been evolving every aspect of the performance throughout the years. So that’s really been our guiding principle in the development for R1 all the way,” Tokura says.

“At the same time, we’ve also placed a lot of value in the things that we should not be changing. And one of those things is the operability. We know that the professionals have been working with these cameras for a long time and we want to make sure that we don’t lose the familiar operability that they are all accustomed to. So that’s really the fundamental value that we have in the development of our flagships.”