Canon may soon be firing Thunderbolts from its cameras, according to a statement by the boss of Canon’s Video Products Group, Hiroo Edakubo. The press statement is the usual vapid fluff, but is pretty concrete when it comes to Canon's intentions:

We are excited about Thunderbolt technology and feel it will bring new levels of performance and simplicity to the video creation market.

Thunderbolt is perfect for video, and especially the kind of high-end video market Canon caters to. Using the super high-speed connection, you could hook a camera through a RAID drive and into a monitor, neatly daisy-chained all along the way. And if you opt for the optical option, coming in the future, then you can use crazy long cables to make hooking up gear even easier. Thunderbolt on camcorders makes perfect sense.

But does this mean we'll get Thunderbolt on our SLRs? Not necessarily. Canon and Sony, both of whom make still and video devices, have long used FireWire for video cameras and USB for stills cameras. This is unlikely to change until Thunderbolt becomes as ubiquitous as USB. After all, sensor sizes (and therefore file sizes) aren't getting much bigger these days, and no manufacturer want to hobble their hardware by making it compatible with only a few computers.

On the other hand, I think we can expect Thunderbolt SD and CF card readers very soon. Imagine having your entire 8GB photo-shoot slurped into your computer in a few seconds. Yes please.

Chip Shot: Canon Signals Support for Intel Thunderbolt Technology [Intel]

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