New Canon Camera Bodies Appear for Certification - Updated

[Talys]

I think battery % is quite convenient on the rear display. When I am shooting video on a gimbal, I have a much better idea of my battery life that doesn't fall somewhere between 49% and 20% without diving into menus. I can't just slide out and swap the battery without having to take the entire gimbal sled off.

Would I consider this nitpicking since Canon doesn't have it? Sure. Could I survive shooting without it? Sure. Do I have to? Definitely not.. This is one of many reasons I don't shoot with Canon bodies anymore for video.

Battery % is convenient on mirrorless. I don't really care on a DSLR, because it takes a lot of effort to kill an LP6 that's fully charged, and it's almost impossible to use two of them in a single day, even if the one in the camera only has a partial charge in it. I mean, I don't even look at the battery meter on my 6D2 before I head out, even if I'm going to be taking wildlife photos for the next 12 hours, or doing an on-location 10 hour product shoot. There's a spare that's fully charged in the bag if I need it, but even a half-full battery will do a whole day of birding.

In casual, general shooting, or on a B-cam, or my glovebox 80D, a battery can last for weeks (or even months) without going to the charger, and without the camera even being turned off.

When I was using the Sony, I wouldn't head out without 2 fully charged batteries, because it's quite easy to blow through one. To be safe, I need a grip with 2 batteries (one may be partially discharged) and another fully charged one.

I suppose on an M5, it would be nice to show %, but as it is not a camera I own, it just hasn't come up.

@fullstop - personally, I hate all the stuff all around the screen (Canon, Sony, it doesn't matter). I want to focus on the photography, not see a screen full of icons. Fortunately, most of them have a way to turn off all the busy stuff. Would be great if you could customize what you saw on the screen there.

Personally, I would like (a) a battery that I didn't have to worry much about the charge of and (b) a top display that showed the battery status, that I just need to check once in a long while.

If mirrorless are so small, make it big again and give it a battery that's four times the charge in a "pro" cam so that I can just charge it once and not worry about it when I head off. I'm going to use a 1.5kg, 8" lens or bigger on it anyways.

 

[crashpc]

Got good chuckle about negative signal values readings.
Now it turns out who is the engineer and electro guy, and who just assertive nut with no usable arguments.
As it has been pointed out, battery percentage has different value to it. You can decide based on the reading easily. When you would have percentage on your signal, what would be your decision?
See the dis-similarities?

The hardware is there. The argument the hardware isn´t there is really uninformed guess from somebody who doesn´t have a clue how processors work. Especially in-house made DIGIC would be shameful to not have this feature. Correction. Many times, two of these and some more stuff around!
As usual, this is shame to continue. It is very unequal fight between devs/techs and politics and trolls.

 

[3kramd5]

btw: "service bars/dots" on phones - my "conspiracy theory" is, that service providers are pushing/forcing this type of info presentation. prefer to keep things "rather intransparent, murky and unprecise", otherwise users would notice even more, how bad signal service often is

Maaaaybe. I’m more inclined to thinking they don’t expect the average user to understand the logarithmic scale, and would freak out at negative values.

what negative values? Mobile phone signal strength at worst is zero. And percentages are easy to understand. 100% = "Optimal" = whatever defined "physical field strength" that may be. 0% = zero. Everything in between is straightforward linear.

Personal radio signal strength is typically conveyed in decibel (edit: pardon the typo) milliwatt. 0dBm is much stronger than the Rx on a phone.

The range of power between good signals and poor signals is very extreme. Displaying it in decimal would be odd.

For example, -50dBm would be a good signal, probably “full bars.” I currently have a very weak signal, -140dBm. There’s a ratio of 1 billion-to-one between those numbers. In decimal: 10000 picowatts versus .00001 picowatts. Even if you presupposed some maximum signal strength and assigned to it 100%, the scale would be confusing. Is 100% twice as strong as 50%? Is 10% ten times stronger than 1%?

Hence: dBm in personal Rx/Tx devices, and non-linear arbitrarily defined bars displayed on consumer devices.

 

[Talys]

btw: "service bars/dots" on phones - my "conspiracy theory" is, that service providers are pushing/forcing this type of info presentation. prefer to keep things "rather intransparent, murky and unprecise", otherwise users would notice even more, how bad signal service often is

Maaaaybe. I’m more inclined to thinking they don’t expect the average user to understand the logarithmic scale, and would freak out at negative values.

what negative values? Mobile phone signal strength at worst is zero. And percentages are easy to understand. 100% = "Optimal" = whatever defined "physical field strength" that may be. 0% = zero. Everything in between is straightforward linear.

Radio signal strength is typically conveyed in decimal milliwatt. 0dBm is much stronger than the Rx on a phone.

The range of power between good signals and poor signals is very extreme. Displaying it with decimal would be odd.

For example, -50dBm would be a good signal, probably “full bars.” I currently have a very weak signal, -140dBm. There’s a ratio of 1 billion-to-one between those numbers. In decimal: 10000 picowatts versus .00001 picowatts. Even if you presupposed some maximum signal strength and assigned to it 100%, the scale would be confusing. Is 100% twice as strong as 50%?

Hence: dBm in Rx/Tx devices.

Pfft. The solution is obvious. There should be 1 billion horizontal pixels that fill up as there is more signal! ;D

Your point is precisely the way cell phone bars work the way they do -- it's intended to tell you if you have good reception or not, because at the end of the day, you should only care about whether reception is going to be good or poor for a phone call.

Coming back around to cameras, the reason for a battery meter for me is to know whether I need to swap a battery before I head out, or charge it when I come home. I don't really care whether I have 3% or 8%, or 88% or 94%. In the former.. charge it. In the latter, leave it in the bag.

With a DSLR... long photography day = make sure battery has 3-4 bars. Grabbing a camera to take a few pictures, just make sure the battery indicator isn't flashing. Simple, right?

 

[-1]

CR wrote: "Canon test cameras code named: “K424” “K433” “EC 811”

These are confirmed to be mirrorless cameras

Beyond the EOS M5 Mark II, the other model names are unknown at this time."

Soo... Two "Kiss" crop EF-M with EVF and one EF Compatible FF???

 

[ahsanford]

CR wrote: "Canon test cameras code named: “K424” “K433” “EC 811”

These are confirmed to be mirrorless cameras

Beyond the EOS M5 Mark II, the other model names are unknown at this time."

Soo... Two "Kiss" crop EF-M with EVF and one EF Compatible FF???

Am I idiotic for thinking that an M6 Mark II will logically come out alongside an M5 Mark II?

- A

 

[DaveGrice]

Holy moly! I feel like it's a Yeti sighting.

Rumors about upcoming Canon bodies that show promise of not disappointing? Oh, happy day.

C'mon 7D3, pulling for you!

 

[bokehmon22]

We should get more confirmation and rumors near Photokina in Sept.
My wallet is ready if Canon deliver a decent FF mirrorless

 

[jolyonralph]

Fingers crossed for 5DSR II!

 

[3kramd5]

Pfft. The solution is obvious. There should be 1 billion horizontal pixels that fill up as there is more signal! ;D

I like it!

Your point is precisely the way cell phone bars work the way they do -- it's intended to tell you if you have good reception or not, because at the end of the day, you should only care about whether reception is going to be good or poor for a phone call.

Coming back around to cameras, the reason for a battery meter for me is to know whether I need to swap a battery before I head out, or charge it when I come home. I don't really care whether I have 3% or 8%, or 88% or 94%. In the former.. charge it. In the latter, leave it in the bag.

Agreed. While cell strength is a bit of a non sequitur, I bring it up because the usefulness is similar. As a user, I don’t need milliwatt level knowledge of a signal. Similarly. I don’t need coulomb level knowledge of battery charge.

That being said, more precision than quintiles (or 4 or 6, whatever the case may be) is useful to help predict remaining battery life, since it varies significantly based on how you’re using the camera at the time.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Got good chuckle about negative signal values readings.
Now it turns out who is the engineer and electro guy, and who just assertive nut with no usable arguments.

Got a good hearty guffaw about your chuckle.

You probably don’t even realize that you’ve put yourself squarely in the latter category – an assertive nut with no usable arguments.

Please try to gain a proper understanding of the concepts you’re arguing about, then if you feel up to it, come back to discuss them. In the meantime, you may want to avoid posting statements that only serve to demonstrate your lack of understanding.

Here’s some light reading that may help you out (and perhaps others):

https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/small-business-support-documents/why-is-almost-everything-negative-in-wireless/ta-p/3159743

 

[fullstop]

hehe. I know, why i absolutely hate logarithmic stuff. Luckily in business the first rules of arithmetic are fully sufficient to be successful.

PS: where i personally encounter the total disconnect between "wireless/engineering brain mode" and "real world user perspective" most is not cameras and not even cell phones, but *avalanche beacons*. Yes, I can wrap my head around the fact that radio waves spread out in a spherical pattern from the sender. But on a 2018 avalanche transceiver i want to see a display with a green dot [=me] and red dot/s [=buried victims] and 2 numerical values - how many meters away? How deep under the surface? That's all I need to hopefully find and dig out my buried friend/s in in time. It took many decades to get engineers/developers of those devices until they FINALLY put freaking 3 or 4 antennae into those things and a CPU powerful enough to display things the way I and almost all other users find it most intuitive and useful. Until then, they all wanted to LECTURE us on "false signal", "double peaks" and cr*p like that. I understand that concepts like those are important for them and near and dear to their hearts. I admit and accept that I don't have the slightest idea how those devices really work. I don't care. I don't want to build them or service them. All i want is to use them. Intuitively.

Same for cars, washing machines, micro-wave ovens, cameras, lenses and all other "technical gear". I want to use those ... as tools to get done what I want to get done. And I want my tools to be as intuitive in use as possible. Asking too much? ;D

 

[unfocused]

This thread illustrates that some people will argue over the most ridiculous stuff. It’s a battery level indicator. Who cares?

 

[crashpc]

So we´re obviously going to overpower each other with who is more assertive and mean, right neuro?
Okay, I stop it for you with this last post. Again...

 

[mb66energy]

Got good chuckle about negative signal values readings.
Now it turns out who is the engineer and electro guy, and who just assertive nut with no usable arguments.
As it has been pointed out, battery percentage has different value to it. You can decide based on the reading easily. When you would have percentage on your signal, what would be your decision?
See the dis-similarities?

The hardware is there. The argument the hardware isn´t there is really uninformed guess from somebody who doesn´t have a clue how processors work. Especially in-house made DIGIC would be shameful to not have this feature . Correction. Many times, two of these and some more stuff around!
As usual, this is shame to continue. It is very unequal fight between devs/techs and politics and trolls.

Very interesting idea to measure current, voltage and internal battery temperature to calculate the remaining capacity of a battery with a DIGIC CPU The stuff around you added later makes it possible and it has to be - at least some parts of it - inside the battery.

Than you have to integrate over the power to get the energy transfer from battery to camera AND you have to know the initial energy content of the battery INCLUDING THE TEMPERATURE-DEPENDANT capacity corrections.
A reading of 18% is only helpful if it belongs to the standard capacity at standard conditions e.g. 20°C. If you only measure the voltage of the battery you have a relative capacity which is varying with temperature.
That's what I tried to say / write that the comparison between a mobile and a camera is like comparing apples with mice.

I am not defending Canon - I just tried to make clear that a %-number isn't helpful if it isn't reliable and that a simple indicator is, at least in low...mid level DSLRs, good enough for 99% of their users.

STOP

@unfocused: I think a battery level indicator is not too ridiculous especially for pros who use their equipment to the limit (e.g. photography in antarctica @-30°C) - but parts of the discussion are! Sorry if I contributed to it too much!

 

[neuroanatomist]

I guess a simple, "I was wrong," is beyond some people.

 

[Kit.]

Re: New Canon Camera Bodies Appear for Certification

Actually, if you are engineer, you will probably not want to make a gauge with the precision an order of magnitude higher than the accuracy of the value it displays.

That equation doesn´t hold up well.
Why not? If your display medium cannot display the precise value, you simply round it accordingly, so to speak.
Then you have precise meter "once for all", and you scale the output accordingly for the device/display. That is, changing one or few variables in your code. Legs on the table.

You seem to misunderstand the problem. The precision of the scale may be "fine"; it's the accuracy of what you want to display on the scale what is lacking.

If you are an engineer, you must know the difference, and would not want this "overprecise" scale to be lying to you, telling you that it "knows" the remaining battery charge better than it really does.

 

[fullstop]

This thread illustrates that some people will argue over the most ridiculous stuff. It’s a battery level indicator. Who cares?

i do. Only Canapologists would not.

 

[ahsanford]

Meanwhile, back on topic, a less-than-reliable rumor aggregator than CR is claiming they have a source who says the following:

K436 = 80D Mk II (not 90D)
K437 = 7D3
EC 811 = M5 Mk II

...with all three having the same new 28 MP AA-filter-free APS-C sensor. :

We can pick this apart a host of ways, but I think the obvious steaming turd to this rumor would be K436 -- with a Rebel-class battery -- being put into a product line heretofore rocking the bigger LP-E6/N battery that the nicer cameras get. On paper, if K436 is an SLR getting a smaller battery, good money says it's the next Rebel and not the next 80D.

- A

 

[dak723]

This thread illustrates that some people will argue over the most ridiculous stuff. It’s a battery level indicator. Who cares?

i do. Only Canapologists would not.

No. Plenty of people don't care. That doesn't make them Canopoligists. Just like those that whine about it aren't all trolls. Some clearly are, but not all. The fact that your logic is ridiculously stupid and that you have to lump everyone into your self-made category in order to insult them, proves that you are a troll.