where's the Canon EOS R3 Mark II we were told it was coming in 2025 but then Canon released the R1 leaving very little room for the R3 Mark II some would even say that there's really no point to an R3 Mark II that it's dead but a recent source has told us that it's coming but the big question is who is it for well I'll answer this question in this video but first I have a simple and yet humble request please subscribe to this channel it doesn't cost you anything it helps this channel grow and it keeps you informed on the latest camera gear such as the R3 Mark II canon announced the EOS R1 on July the 17th 2024 doubling down on a purpose-built fast action sports fashion photography camera delivering a high hit rate with low noise at high ISO a contrast indeed to Nikon's Z9 which is capable of 45.7 pixels versus the R1's 24 megapixels since then pro wildlife photographers such as Joshua Hulu have said that the idea of an R3 successor is dead while others are disappointed and angry that Canon has abandoned the idea of a highresolution follow-up to the R1 and are instead looking to the Z9 as a better option later Canon explained "We consider the flagship to basically be the pinnacle of our lineup which means we're not going to have two flagship models because we 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." And after reading that quote many of us said "Okay the idea of Canon coming out with something like an R1X a a a camera that's very similar to the Nikon Z9 it's got the best video it's got the best stills it's the best of both worlds." That the idea of that camera is completely gone and by parallel we thought well the R3 has the same body as the R1 with some slight changes the idea of any sort of Nikon Z9 like Canon EOS R1 or R3 Mark II was very quickly well poo pooed however a source of this channel recently told us something very interesting there will be a follow-up to the Canon EOS R3 i've seen the road map now no timeline was given but Canon Rumors has said that the R3 Mark II will appear in 2025 but that rumor is a little bit old i think it might go back to 2023 or at least early 2024 the idea of a high resolution R1 has been well shot down by Canon which leaves us to well grasp its straws and suggest well maybe just maybe the Canon EOS R3 Mark II could take on that role it's like the Nikon Z what is it the Z7 Mark II they haven't come out with a Z7 Mark III yet and the conjecture was that if they repurposed that as a high resolution camera it would make sense but still almost a year later we don't have a Z7 follow-up yet and so now on the Canon platform many of us are thinking that well perhaps just perhaps Canon's going to repurpose the R3 to a high resolution camera and that's something that I speculated back in October of 2024 and that would appeal to many photographers like Scott a high resolution Canon RF camera has been teased going all the way back to 2018 and 2019 i agree with Josh the R1 makes a well follow-up to the R3 Mark II in its current form as a 24 megapixel sensor all but dead but just imagine for a moment that the R3 Mark II does take on a similar role as the Nikon Z9 a high resolution camera the best of the best what was that statement that that quote from Canon Rumors from a year a few years ago a master of everything a jack of all trades but you see while that in the R3 Mark II would not constrain be constrained against the Canon EOS R1 it would indeed constrain the Canon EOS R5 Mark III and that's important because the 5 series is Canon's top selling camera it's the camera with the highest margins why would you constrain the 5 series doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it and well Canon agrees with me i believe our current strategy is to have the 5 series be responsible for the high resolution quality so if you're looking for an awful lot of pickles a lot of megapixels well it looks like Canon's pointing us to the 5 series so if we are getting a high resolution camera sounds like Canon's saying don't look for the R3 Mark II look for it in the 5 series and history here does play a role if I don't a lot of people don't like history but all we have to do is go back to the 5D series we had what the 5D RS or the SR this camera did have some problems but at the time 50 megapixels was an awful lot and here Canon is once again saying in late 2024 that well or was it early 2025 at um CP plus i I can't remember but it's it's pretty recent but they're saying that when it comes to high resolution look to the 5 series if you want low noise at high ISO and you want that high hit rate that high trust well then you're looking at the 1 series i don't know my source who told me that the R3 Mark II is coming that they've seen evidence i'll tell you this this source i've known this source for a long time and the source hasn't gotten things right all the time i don't know again one thing I will say that in this game that the the closer we get to announcement the more reliable the rumors can be because what happens is if we're a year or two away from an actual announcement what can happen is Canon can look at the road map and say "Okay based on this data this real world data that's coming into us right now this camera model doesn't make sense." And what we need to do is we need to switch gears and that's what they did just recently with the EOS RV line such as the 50V the Canon 5D Mark 5 that was real it was cancelled when they saw the success of the EOS R5 and the 7D Mark III also cancelled we don't know why but it was things can change so for now the R3 Mark II it's real it's hanging on there but in terms of what form it will take we have no idea i mean the 5 series is responsible for high resolution and it's responsible for video the R1 sports fast action photography high hit rate low noise low noise low noise high ISO uh high trust that leaves the R3 the R3 has is more or less like a mini R1 it's almost like taking that R1 like Nikon did with the Z8 it's a mini Z9 and reducing some of the capability so I'm just going to postulate something here let me know if you think I'm on to something here we're going to take the R1 and we're going to put it inside the R3 body and we're going to keep a single CF Express TypeB card slot and a U test two card slot now that's going to knock a couple of grand off the price of the camera and what we're also going to do is maybe we're going to do some other things we we perhaps we'll keep the crosstype autofocus on the sensor but we'll do some other things that well if you're a pro first of all you're not going to go with a single UHS2 or sorry a single CF Express CF Express TypeB card slot right sometimes I have trouble speaking it's cold here i'm old and sometimes my mouth just doesn't work anyhows um not having dual card slots is going to turn a lot of people off and even if you drop it by $2,000 you're not going to attract the pros like Joshua Hulu you you you think that $10,000 is a lot for a camera okay so in US dollars it's $6,500 but you think that's a lot for a camera tack on the lens and who knows where you're up to but to go to shoot in the Arctic or the Antarctic do you have any idea how much that costs a lot of times actually getting to the location can cost as much or more than the actual gear so I think an R3 Mark II basically having the same capabilities as the R1 but with a single CF Express TypeB card slot will make a huge difference and there'll be some other minor differences maybe in codecs maybe in terms of refresh rates or in terms of the continuous shooting speed and I think what that would do is make something like the R1 a bit more approachable to people who can deal with just having a single card slot or working with a UH UHS2 card slot as its backup i think that makes a little bit more sense now could they raise the resolution just a little bit sure to 26 30 or even 32 megapixels i think if they do increase the resolution it's not going to be a high resolution camera i think it might just be a little bit of a bump and maybe that bump could be a test to see well how well it performs because 30 megapixels isn't that far off of 24 megapixels on a full-frame sensor if they're able to make improvements into the sensor technology itself remember it's that noise floor that makes the difference for each photo site you have a well that's able to collect electrons or that are converted into photons anyway you've got this electron well and the problem is now when you fill that all the way up you're al obviously going to clip and you can't hold any more information so you need to make the well deeper and that's where we have problems in the shadows now stack sensors really help with that but if they can somehow make further improvements well that would be huge and could they also try out a glo a global shutter sensor yeah now that would certainly have people who have the R1 going well a little bit now it depends on dynamic range right that's why Canon has avoided a global shutter sensor for a very long time now they've been working on that technology we have patents going back about 8 to nine years i would think that if they were going to release a global shutter sensor it would be on the 1 series first but rethinking the R3 with a global shutter sensor well that's what Sony did with the A93 interesting right well if you are interested in the R3 Mark II but are not willing to wait then you might want to consider the R3 that's currently on sale right now for $39.99 we also have the R5 Mark II on sale for the same price $39.99 and of course the Mark 1 is $29.99 and I have the links to both of these camera models in the description down below for both B&H Adorama as well as Amazon.com these guys right here however there's an awful lot on sale right now we're seeing tons of camera deals not just in Canada the United States but around the world the links I have down below are for Adorama and B&H we're seeing oh up to $600 off the Nikon Z8 was recently $600 off it's now $300 off but as we move into a new week we might see that price change again um what you might want to do with a lot of uncertainty that's going on right now um tap into some of these deals because they're really good and as we are getting into spring well if you can pick up a new lens or a new camera body to get you out there and doing wildlife photography take a closer look we might not be seeing deals like this for well a while now anyhows thank you so much for tuning in thank you so much for watching oh one other thing I should tell you if you do use these links I get a small commission back of anywhere from two to five percent which help keeps the lights on i'm not laughing at that i'm just laughing at uh the the amount of trouble I've had inunciating my words this morning i'm cold and when I'm cold I just have trouble kind of moving my the muscles that control speech but I think also as I'm getting older I slur my words a little bit more and the one thing this channel is forcing me to do is to recognize that and to annunciate more clearly and what I would normally do is take multiple takes but you know what it's Sunday morning at the time that I'm recording this and um I I kind of I'm more relaxed on the weekend because I don't have my day job and I'm not striving for perfection i'm just trying to have fun because to keep doing this channel year after year as a full-time job on top of my other full-time job I have to enjoy it i admire people like Casey of Camera Conspiracies who can lo uh Lo who can joke around and do all that and I would like to get to the point where I can do that i think having a daytime job where I'm well Mr serious Pants most of the times um I think it carries over into this channel as well so anyhow thank you so much for tuning in i wouldn't be surprised if this video shakes the rumor tree a little bit hopefully we'll find out a little bit more soon but what I'm really keenly interested on for 2025 is a refresh of the R seven and the R six and you might say well what about Sony well I get a sense from Sony that their stuff is getting delayed and pushed into Q1 of 2026 and Nikon well October yeah October z9 Mark II um I'm not going to go into the details there i've already published several videos on the Nikon Z9 Mark II about specifications and when we can expect to see that camera and price points so until I get more new information hang tight anyhows thanks for tuning in have yourself a great day a great week and we'll see you again soon