I love my Canon 5D, but it’s getting really long in the tooth. It’s basically a Canon 20D with a vastly improved sensor, and the 20D’s replacement’s replacement has now been replaced by the 50D. While the 5D was once the top of the market, Nikon’s D700 now outclasses it in almost every way. There have been rumors about a 5D replacement for years, and none of them have ever went anywhere.

It looks like that has finally changed. Canon’s running a teaser ad showing a very 5D-like silhouette with the words “Destined Evolution”.

Personally, I’d be happy if they’d take the 50D, give it a full-frame sensor with about 2 extra stops of dynamic range over the 5D, and improve the AF a bit. I still miss my EOS 3’s autofocus, which is insane–it’s 10 years old, and it’s still better then any of Canon’s midline DSLRs. Rationally speaking, I understand that they’ve been keeping the 1-series’s 45-point AF unit for their top-of-the-line models, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now that the D700’s on the market. Canon got lazy, and Nikon’s passed them up. They can’t afford to leave features out of their semi-pro models just to protect their (slightly lackluster, compared to the D3) top-of-the-line.

Personally, I’d be happy if they’d keep the resolution the same as the 5D at 12 MP, but that’ll never happen. There’s just too much marketing pressure to crank it up, even though it ends up hurting the image quality. I suspect that most of their users would prefer 12 MP with a D700-like ISO 6400 over 21 MP with too much noise to make 6400 usable.