As you might already have heard, Engadget was sent an invite from Canon to a November 3 event in Hollywood, dubbed with the headline “The Story Begins – Canon is making an historic global announcement”.

Pretty mighty words, but of course promising. We have all been waiting for any news on Canon’s DSLR line-up for years now (I mean it, because there was no innovation in sensor technology since the introduction of the 7D over two years ago).

I helped Sachtler introduce their rather brilliant entry-level Ace tripod system at IBC (written review shortly!), and the Sachtler/Vitec booth was right next to Canon’s mighty booth. We had a lot of conversations with the guys over there, and I really felt sorry for them – a huge booth, and no new announcements at all. The Canon 5D Mark II is now a 3-year-old camera and it’s still sitting there on the Canon booth.

Disruption in Japan … and recovery

The truth is that most of the Japanese manufacturers were hit by the catastrophe in Japan much worse than they would ever admit. I heard that from several manufacturers working closely with the big Japanese electronics giants, and while saying “all is well”, they usually can’t deliver. They did their best to cover the disruption up, but it definitely affected them in a big way. Only Sony managed to finish their line-up in time before the earthquakes (and Fukushima) happened, and now they rule the market with their new cameras – from the very small ones (e.g. Sony HX9V) to the very big ones (Sony F65), they definitely seem have the best sensors on the market right now.

“Hollywood”

However, this might well be about something else than DSLRs. The words “Hollywood” and “historic global announcement” leave us expecting something bigger. Something that Canon really hasn’t done before: a professional camera for a high-end market. It could well be an evolution of their “hair dryer concept”, shown at the last Canon Expo, which had a 4K sensor. Probably the success of the 5D Mark II and their other video capable DSLRs has made Canon realize that there’s a huge market for larger camcorders and that they already almost had the technology for that ready. A RED, Alexa or Sony F65 competitor? Who knows.

Even more interesting would be a camcorder priced around $15K, also rumored … which would of course be a direct competitor to the Sony F3.

All speculation, but interesting times indeed … I think the only thing we can be sure of is that this announcement doesn’t read like something about cheap entry level cameras like DSLRs. It sounds more like big-budget … more like Hollywood.

New rumors say the following about the announcement:

Name: Canon EOS 300C
EF and PL Versions
Dual CF Card Slots
Built in ND
Super35 Sensor
HDMI and HDSDI out
Hot shoe mounted monitor w/ 2 XLR ins
1920 x 1080 resolution
Also is able to record out of SDI – but only records 8bit internally (10bit out via SDI?)