Canon display new multi-purpose concept camera at EXPO 2010 Paris to shoot over 60 frames per second

This week at Canon’s EXPO event in Paris,
Canon announced its new ‘concepts of the future’ and showcased a camera capable of shooting still images at a rate exceeding 60 frames per second.

The blogs and tweets of this camera, rumoured to have a new 8-million-pixel CMOS sensor, spread across the web yesterday but today Canon have disappointingly stated that there are no plans to develop this ‘concept’ camera at this stage. A spokesperson for Canon UK said the camera was on show merely as an idea, intended to illustrate what could be achieved in the future.


Designed as light-weight and compact, although it looks more like a bulky camcorder, the unnamed prototype multi-purpose DSLR would support both video and still image capture with ultra-high definition 4K resolution. But more importantly it could transform the future of photography by allowing very high resolution still images to be selected from video, as opposed to photographers having to choose between shooting still images or film. It would have a 20x optical zoom lens with maximum apertures ranging from f/1.8 at the wide end to f/3.8 at full telephoto.


Other highlights of their imaging innovations which aim to ‘shape the future of imaging for consumer, professional, business, and healthcare’, included a Mixed Reality concept system featuring a head-mounted display with built-in cameras, a computer which processes video to blend real and virtual realities, and a range of new medical imaging inventions.


It turns out this camera in its current form is unlikely to come onto the market anytime soon, especially with the limitations in its present state, for example it’s not compatible with Canon’s existing lenses and only has one lense. But just like Canon paved the way two years ago when it announced the first full-frame digital SLR camera with HD video, perhaps this hybrid camera of extracting stills from video will be a sign of things to come.