Canon's recent worst kept secret, the 90D, has been formally announced according to various websites. Seems to be an 80D replacement rather than 7DII replacement in general format. Some improvements including in resolution, battery life and autofocus (many more through-the-viewfinder autofocus points as well as eye detection which will be useful to some). Also a joystick on the back.

I will be interested to see autofocus performance in the field (I have always thought the 80D to be a bit lacking in this area) and what the new sensor looks like compared to the current one (eg will there be a noise penalty to offset any advantage from the extra megapixels).

The 90D seems to be about $1800-1900 body only on pre-order. This is currently about $500 more than the 80D.

Simon

Now that we have the full specs for the 90D it is becoming clear that this will be a serious bird photography camera. The 80D was good but the 90D looks much better. Some key features that I believe make it very attractive are:

1. Smallish size and weight.

2. 32.5 MP sensor with pixels about 3.2 micron size.

3. Frame rate in continuous focus AF 10 fps.

The small pixels means that the 90D + 300 mm lens will have approximately the same resolution as a 1DxII + 600 mm lens. Together with the high frame rate, this will make it a killer combination for many BIF assignments. For opportunistic general bird photography the 90D + 400 mm will be an outstanding combination with resolution equivalent to 1DxII + 800 mm. Think about 90D + 100-400 mm Mk II and 90D + 400 mm f/4 DO II.

Cheers, Ian

Thanks Ian and Simon for the comments on the 90D.

I'm also looking with interest, but from the different perspective of the comparison against the 7D MkII, which is increasingly looking like the last of a terminated model series from Canon. Once the in-depth reviews start coming out, I'll be looking closely at comparisons with the 7D MkII in autofocus performance, digital noise, dynamic range and high-ISO performance. In my experience, all of these parameters have some issues on the 7D MkII, perhaps most notably digital noise above ISO 800, which can be a pest in lower light levels. If the new 90D shows significant improvements in all of these areas, I may get tempted given the much-anticipated 7D MkIII now seems unlikely to appear.

Cheers, David

Addendum:
Current (August 30) perspective on this from CanonWatch:

"What about the Canon EOS 7D Mark III?

We are still investigating the claim that the Canon EOS 90D replaces both the EOS 80D and EOS 7D Mark II. The EOS 90D got some features previously featured on the 7D series, like a joystick, magnesium alloy, better weather sealing (compared to EOS 80D). For the time being it is not entirely clear what the future of the 7D lineup will be. On the other hand the EOS 90D is not advanced enough to be seen as a full fledged EOS 7D Mark II replacement. Another thing we wonder is: will Canon give up the highly popular 7D series? Seems unlikely to some degree."

The 80D already had a better sensor than the 7DII and the first results I have seen for the 90D show improvement over the 80D. This is very significant given that the pixel size has been reduced from about 3.9 micron on the 80D to 3.2 micron on the 90D. See here for recent measurements of the dynamic range and read noise of the 90D compared with the 80D.

Thanks Ian, this is good news, a little more DR at ISO 800 and above will not go astray as I find I often use this sort of level. While the pixel count is only something like 15% increased on each axis, this will also give a little more cropping ability. I will be interested in the scope of improvements to AF as well, once the tests start to come out. Then wait for the inevitable cost reductions once the newness has past and sales start to flag (Black Friday, post Christmas, eofy?)!

I have been hanging out for a long time to see what Canon had to offer here and so far, so good. Regarding the issue of extra pixels and the ability to crop harder, this may not come to play for many of us. I use the EF 100-400mm Mark II (as does Simon). The optical quality of this lens is great but based on the DXO lab report on this lens, it's likely to be the limit in this case, not the sensor resolution. It might be a different story for one of the big Canon primes. That wouldn't stop me buying the 90D though given the faster frame rate and hopefully improved tracking AF performance but I won't expect any reports on the latter until a lot of these start shipping.