I have owned the Canon EOS R for a couple months now, but with short days and busy schedule I have not had the chance to get out and shoot (and more importantly compare it to other cameras) as much as I had hoped.  Luckily I have some time off coming up, and in addition to testing my new 400 f/2.8 III I am looking forward to spending time with the EOS R as well.

Great Gray Owl EOS R at ISO 6400

The first thing I will say is that I am pleasantly surprised with the performance of the EOS R.  I had previously picked up the Sony a7iii which also surprised me, and all initial reports is that the a7iii was superior.  While I have not had a chance to compare the two head-to-head, so therefore have no opinion on which is better, at the end of the day I am very happy with the EOS R, and will be keeping it over the a7iii, with the main factor being the compatibility with all my existing lenses, and I have not been happy at all with the metabones adapter.

Autofocus

EOS R + 500mm f/4 ISO 3200

One thing that I don’t really have a handle on yet is the autofocus and how it compares to the Canon dslr’s and the Sony a7iii.  What I will say is that I am very impressed with how quickly the EOS R acquires focus, it is like you point your camera at the subject and it’s instantly in focus.  While I have used it with Big Horn Sheep and deer running, I still cannot say how well the focus stays locked-on and tracks with the subject, and whether there is a noticeable different with other cameras.

The number of AF points and the fact that you can move them over the entire viewfinder is a nice feature, especially for framing some shots, especially because I find that the Canon DSLR’s are quite limited on the edges.  I do find however that it is a bit slower navigating across all the points, as you can sometimes get yourself way over to the side accidentally. I think it will just take some getting used to.

ISO Performance
I expected the ISO performance to be “okay”, but did not have high expectations.  Well this might be one of the biggest surprises.  I have taken photos consistently at ISO 3200, and even a few at ISO 6400 that I have been extremely happy with, both in respect to noise and dynamic range.

EOS R + 400 f/2.8L II @ ISO 3200

In Body Stabilization
This is one feature available in other mirrorless cameras that have been released recently which did NOT come with the EOS R.  While I am not super upset about it because all my lenses that I shoot have image stabilization, the one area where I did notice that it was very beneficial on the a7III was when shooting video from a moving zodiac on rough water.  For me this is not a deal breaker, just a “would have been nice”.  I have also heard that it works quite well with the Nikon Z7.  I guess this will be a feature for the next Canon mirrorless.

Button Placement/Menu
I can’t say that I am in love with the placement of the buttons/size.  Having small hands, I thought that this would be nice that all the buttons are closer together, but I find some can be quite awkward to get to, especially if trying to access them while shooting and looking through the eye-piece.  I do have some difficulty going back and forth from the DSRL’s and the EOS R.

The other thing I found hard to “pick-up” was the menu, as I was expecting it to mirror (pun intended) that of the DSLR’s. Instead Canon has a lot of embedded menus, which can make it difficult to find things, or make changes….especially without the manual and in an area without cell coverage.  For example it took me over five minutes to figure out how to change the view so that the electronic level wasn’t showing in the middle of the image (making it near impossible to see the subject).  Again, I think this is just something that will take getting used to.

I’m looking forward to spending more time with the camera, and also comparing it to some of the others in my possession.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected] and if you want to see a full list of features, refer to my first blog post on the EOS R which can be found here.

Canon Announces Full Frame Mirrorless EOS R

Last week I posted about the recent Canon announcement that I was the most excited about, the new 400mm f/2.8.

I am almost as excited about the announcement of the full frame mirrorless, EOS R.  I am excited to try this out in comparison to the Sony a7iii that I recently purchased.

EOS R
Priced at $2,999 CAD, Canon’s first step into the full-frame mirrorless comes with a 30.3 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor. An interesting feature of the EOS R is that when the camera is turned off the curtain is closed to protect the sensor against getting dust and dirt on it.  Dust on the sensor has been something that I have noticed quite often with the Sony a7iii, so I am interested to see how the “closing” of the sensor works, and whether it does keep dust off the sensor.

When it comes to autofocus, Canon is using a phase-detect system with 5,655 selectable points…no that is not a typo they are actually advertising over five thousand AF Points. With this many AF points, 100% of the vertical and 88% of the horizontal sensor is covered by autofocus points.  This is pretty impressive, and hopefully this is something that can be carried over to the DSLR, because this is one of my biggest frustrations with the 1DX Mark II, sometimes the points are not where I need them, especially in the low end.

Another feature of the EOS R that Canon has added is making the AF available for “nearly the entire image” when shooting at f/8 or f/11.  So this means that you could attach a 2x extender to an f/5.6 lens (turning it to f/11) and still have AF, something that cannot even be done with my 1dx Mark II.  I am interested to test this and see how it actually performs, and whether it is an available feature that isn’t really all that useful in practice.  I have used the 1.4x extender on the 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II to see how it performed, and I found the autofocus to be incredibly slow.

The frame-rate is advertised as 8 frames per second. However, with closer reading that 8 frames per second is only when not using continuous AF.  When switched to continuous autofocus the frame rate decreases to 5 frames per second, and will drop to 3 frames per second if you have selected focus priority in your settings. I do not even remember what it is like to shoot wildlife with a camera at 3 frames per second.  The buffer is advertised to be 47 Raw files.

Low-light focusing should not be an issue with the EOS R, it has the ability to focus at EV -6, and has ISO range of 100-40000.

Surprisingly, and somewhat disappointing, is that the camera does not come with any in body image stabilization, a feature available in both of the competitors (Nikon z6 and Sony a7III). I am not sure what drove the decision by Canon to skip it, maybe they are trying to drive the sale of the IS lenses, and intend for all the RF lenses to be image stabilized and thought it was unnecessary.

For this camera Canon has created a new mount, the “RF” mount, but also has three different adapters available to use existing EF lenses with the camera.  This is a benefit over my Sony mirrorless which has a Metabones adapter that allows me to use my Canon lenses, however the autofocus is so slow that I find it is not even worth trying to use it.

The battery life of the EOS R has room for improvement, with life of 350 shots per charge, however that’s consistent with other full frame mirrorless cameras.  The benefit for anyone that owns another Canon camera, like the 5D Mark IV, the battery is the same, at least you do not need to bring an additional charger.  The camera only has one memory card slot, which holds an SD card, so there is no ability to record backup, or have image overflow.

I am really looking forward to getting my hands no my camera, which is expected to be here mid-October (of course, right after I get back from the Great Bear Rainforest). I plan to keep my Sony a7iii in order to compare the two.

More about the EOS R can be found on Canon’s website.  If you have questions, feel free to contact me [email protected].