Imagine for a moment that you're a camera designer in charge of developing Canon's (so far) mythical interchangeable lens camera (ILC). We hope that your designs look something like this.
Artist and designer David Riesenberg has come up with an excellent-looking concept of a Canon mirrorless system, which he dubs the AE-D. Taking inspiration from the classic AE and AE-P cameras from the 1970s, Riesenberg's renders have enough retro style and modern touches to make any camera spotter weep with joy. Before you think that such a concept would be far from the aesthetics of modern camera designers, just take a look at what Olympus did with the OM-D.
Inside, the AE-D would have a full-frame sensor, the same 18.1-megapixel model that appears on the Canon 1DX. There would also be a brand new lens mount, given the challenges of mounting the existing EF lenses on a camera of this size.
[The new lens mount] was the source of most headaches for me. Naturally, I wanted to design it around the EF mount, for reasons that I don't need to state, but it proved to be very problematic. Both the flange depth and the actual mount diameter meant that the camera needed to be much thicker and possibly taller to accommodate EF lenses. So this "CM-D" lens mount is roughly FD sized, which keeps the dimensions close to the original and enables lenses that are not too huge.
Also on the specs is a 50mm f/1.0L prime lens as part of the kit configuration. As amazing as this would be for photographers, this is the only part of the concept that we think is really wishlist-thinking, given the manufacturing costs. There's also the option of a detachable electronic viewfinder that sits in the hotshoe.
You can find more images of the concept at Riesenberg's website. All we have left to say is: Canon, are you watching?