Jeff Cable, a photographer covering the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, appears to have accidentally shared the sensor resolution of Canon’s forthcoming EOS R3 mirrorless camera
To date, Canon has announced the EOS R3 is in development and even shown off the body of the camera, but it hasn’t yet revealed what specifications we’ll find from the hardware inside the camera. However, we might have at least one piece of the puzzle thanks to Cable, who has been testing out Canon’s unreleased EOS R3 camera at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Note the ‘Image Width’ and ‘Image Height’ sections on the left screenshot and ‘[Camera] Model’ in the right screenshot. Click to enlarge.
On a blog where Cable is sharing his photos from his time covering the Olympics, he’s uploaded a few images that still have that metadata attached. As spotted by members of Canon Rumors’ forums, this metadata can be read by the Chrome plugin EXIF Viewer Pro, which shows at least some of the images were taken by a Canon EOS R3 camera and have a resolution of 6,000 pixels by 4,000 pixels — the image size coming from a 24MP sensor.
This isn’t necessarily confirmation Canon’s EOS R3 mirrorless camera will have a 24MP sensor, but the data is there to see and appears to be legitimate so far as we can tell (we have been able to confirm the metadata in the images). DPReview has contacted Canon for a comment on the matter, but no response has been received as of the time of publishing this article.
As for why the metadata was still attached, PetaPixel says Cable ‘was not instructed by Canon to scrub the EXIF data from any photos he uploaded to his blog.’ It might seem unusual Canon wouldn’t impose these kinds of restrictions, but it wouldn’t be practical for working photographers. Many news organizations and photo agencies require metadata to stay attached to the original image for archival and ethical reasons, so if Canon were to limit this, Cable (and others testing the EOS R3) wouldn’t be able to submit the images he captured with the camera.