Canon has registered a new Speedlite for release – and it may be the manufacturer's first flashgun to feature an air cooling system and LED component to produce continuous lighting.
The new Speedlite – which had been expected to launch with all the new RF lenses and teleconverters alongside the Canon EOS R5 and Canon EOS R6 – would potentially challenge the best LED light panels such as those made by Rotolight and LumeCube.
With the video capabilities of the EOS R5 and R6 being such a huge part of their feature set, a first-party continuous lighting product for filmmaking would certainly make a great deal of sense (though it's not without a hint of irony that both cameras could use a cooling system like the one apparently possessed by the Speedlite).
Alternatively, the LEDs could serve as a modeling light – a pre-flash, low-power, continuous light to indicate to the photographer exactly where the light will fall when the flash is fired.
The certification for the new Speedlite was spotted by super-sleuth Nokishita, with a report by Canon News pointing back to a patent application that was spotted in October 2019.
Canon's design for a new Speedlite with LEDs and an underside cooling system (Image credit: Canon News / JPO)
"In this patent application, Canon details a speedlite with built in forced air cooling to keep the flash head cool," wrote the site.
"The mechanical design of the speedlite is quite developed in the patent application leading me to believe that the development is quite far along for this flash. This speedlite is also a hybrid speedlite that contains a LED portion for continuous lighting (or perhaps as a modelling light).
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"Canon also mentions the flash head having LED's. In the images below, 401 and 402 are LED's where the flash discharge tube is 102. You can see from the air flow path that both the discharge tube and the LED's have air circulation around them. The fan unit would be underside the flash head, protected mostly against the elements."
The site speculates that we might see the new Speedlite announced in the August-September window, and the certification filing certainly suggests that a reveal for the product is imminent. Flashguns don't usually get us too excited, but this one definitely has us intrigued!
James has 22 years experience as a journalist, serving as editor of Digital Camera World for 6 of them. He started working in the photography industry in 2014, product testing and shooting ad campaigns for Olympus, as well as clients like Aston Martin Racing, Elinchrom and L'Oréal. An Olympus, Canon and Hasselblad shooter, he has a wealth of knowledge on cameras of all makes.
