Canon EOS R5 pricing is still unknown, don’t believe the reports [CR0]

[Joules]

I wouldn't make that assumption. There is a significant difference between focusing for video and focusing for stills, especially when trying to follow action.

Could you please elaborate on that? In what way do you think AF and tracking are different on a mirrorless camera between video and stills?

I'm asking because I see no difference between them. And regardless, with the performance of the 1DX III at 10 FPS and the M6 II at 30 FPS, I have little doubt AF on the R5 will be outstanding for many applications.

 

[x4dow]

The big question mark is when will governments make it possible for travel enthusiasts to plan trips in confidence that they will actually be allowed to take those trips? Even if they can afford such trips, things such as automatic 14-day quarantines and inflexible airline refund policies will cause a large number of such folks to take a wait-and-see approach to resuming travel. No one wants to be halfway around the world from home when a localized/regional virus flareup strands them there for weeks.

As for working photographers, even if they are only 20% of the market for the R5 (and I think that is a bit low - pretty much everyone I know who uses a 5D Mark IV generates at least some income from using it and most generate a significant portion of their income from photography), that's a considerable amount of revenue Canon won't be seeing for quite a long while to offset the R&D and other overall program costs.

I'm a working photographer (weddings only, which is the most affected category of photography) and I plan in buying 1 or 2 R5.

Real pros have money set aside for equipment and upgrades. Which is the main target of this camera

 

[x4dow]

Could you please elaborate on that? In what way do you think AF and tracking are different on a mirrorless camera between video and stills?

I'm asking because I see no difference between them. And regardless, with the performance of the 1DX III at 10 FPS and the M6 II at 30 FPS, I have little doubt AF on the R5 will be outstanding for many applications.

There's a massive difference between video and stills AF.
Video is designed to follow with smooth acelerations and decelarations, while stills afc burst is always at full speed hunting around and releasing the shutter everytime its confirmed focus. 2 completely different behaviours.

 

[Joules]

Real pros have money set aside for equipment and upgrades. Which is the main target of this camera

Real pros are people. And they can be in a range of different situations, especially since this pandemic affects lives very differently depending on region and social environment. Even for those that do have money set aside, there are probably good arguments to be made for reserving that for another purpose.

Also, weddings aren't the only thing hit. Sports, theater, Events, it is all affected. The current generation of gear still covers a lot of those scenarios just fine so I doubt all real pros are equally as enthusiastic about purchasing an R5 or R6.

We've seen the arguments before that Canon doesn't just care about professionals and that enthusiasts are likely also a very big chunk of buyers. I would assume that in these times they are the ones most likely to still get an R5.

 

[x4dow]

Real pros are people. And they can be in a range of different situations, especially since this pandemic affects lives very differently depending on region and social environment. Even for those that do have money set aside, there are probably good arguments to be made for reserving that for another purpose.

Also, weddings aren't the only thing hit. Sports, theater, Events, it is all affected. The current generation of gear still covers a lot of those scenarios just fine so I doubt all real pros are equally as enthusiastic about purchasing an R5 or R6.

We've seen the arguments before that Canon doesn't just care about professionals and that enthusiasts are likely also a very big chunk of buyers. I would assume that in these times they are the ones most likely to still get an R5.

Sports shooters work for agencies which supply the equipment such as getty, reuteurs etc

 

[Joules]

There's a massive difference between video and stills AF.
Video is designed to follow with smooth acelerations and decelarations, while stills afc burst is always at full speed hunting around and releasing the shutter everytime its confirmed focus. 2 completely different behaviours.

Do you mean that they are different because focus pull is slower to appear more smoothly in video mode? I agree with that, but it has nothing to do with the way the AF systems works or the quality of focus it achieves.

The way I see it, in both cases DPAF is used to determine depth information and image data is used for analyses of position and relative motion of subjects. AF may not have to be confirmed for every frame in video unlike stills. But the principles for acquiring the information that focus is based in should be the same. Else that appears highly redundant to me.

 

[x4dow]

Do you mean that they are different because focus pull is slower to appear more smoothly in video mode? I agree with that, but it has nothing to do with the way the AF systems works or the quality of focus it achieves.

The way I see it, in both cases DPAF is used to determine depth information and image data is used for analyses of position and relative motion of subjects. AF may not have to be confirmed for every frame in video unlike stills. But the principles for acquiring the information that focus is based in should be the same. Else that appears highly redundant to me.

Video would look terrible with photography continuous af engaged.
There is softwarewise potential to do that (if your plan is to get 8k dci raw stills). But that AF mode will not be available in movie mode and if was, you'd be getiing 8kdci images, not full sensor 3:2.

Note that No1 confirmed the sensor is 45MP. It could be more. Sonys ixm409 is a 56MP sensor that does 8kdci raw and capable of 120p 4k dci (line skipping).

It wouldn't surprise me if this sensor was bigger than 45MP and pixel bin for 8k and line skip too for 4k, making it not "ideal" for video (moire, etc)

 

[Michael Clark]

I'm a working photographer (weddings only, which is the most affected category of photography) and I plan in buying 1 or 2 R5.

Real pros have money set aside for equipment and upgrades. Which is the main target of this camera

Real business managers adapt to changing market conditions and may not spend money they've planned, even when they already have it set aside and could.

How many weddings do you have booked in 2020? How many of your 2020 bookings have cancelled in the past two months? How are your 2021 bookings at this point compared to your 2020 bookings this time last year? How many of them are smaller than what you shot in 2019, 2018, etc?

If you're like most, you may buy one R5 this year, but in normal times you would have bought two without even thinking that hard about it.

I'll also disagree that weddings are the most affected category. Sports has ground to a total halt. Corporate events have ground to a total halt. Weddings have slowed a LOT, but they haven't totally disappeared.

 

[x4dow]

Real business managers adapt to changing market conditions and may not spend money the've planned, even when they could.

How many weddings do you have booked in 2020? How many of your 2020 bookings have cancelled in the past two months? How are your 2021 bookings at this point compared to your 2020 bookings this time last year? How many of them are smaller than what you shot in 2019, 2018, etc?

If you're like most, you may buy one R5 this year, but in normal times you would have bought two without even thinking that hard about it.

I'll also disagree that weddings are the most affected category. Sports has ground to a total halt. Corporate events have ground to a total halt. Weddings have slowed a LOT, but they haven't totally disappeared.

You are probably right. All my affected weddings were rescheduled, not cancelled. Sure I might lose some 2021 out of being booked now with rescheduled wedding for those dates, but my 2021 will still be near twice as busy as 2019 was. I will just have very little turnover this year, but next will be maniac

 

[Starting out EOS R]

So I've tried a little bit of everything since I normally use 1D cameras, use an EOS R at my day job, and have tried out the A9. Anytime the EOS R freezes the frame between shots, it just feels really unnatural to me and it honestly throws me off. It makes everything into a bit of a slideshow effect where I find my muscle memory is slightly overreacting because the image view is still showing where things were after I've already moved, versus not showing anything and letting me assume motion. It's been a big annoyance to me on the EOS R. I know this is a hugely personal preference and some may not feel the same, so this is an area where I'd appreciate a user setting to decide.

In regards to the 20 FPS electronic, I'd prefer it to work like the A9's 20 FPS. Nothing changes or slows in the viewfinder when you take a photo except for a white box around the frame. As much I did not like the A9 for other reasons, I'd say this is the best-case scenario, since having a nonstop live feed of your subject is the absolute easiest way to track your subject.

You are right though, the EOS R has a lot of warping in electronic shutter, but I hope the 20 FPS of the EOS R means they have a much faster sensor readout with less warping. Most of the assignments I do at my day job are slow-paced and I've been able to use the EOS R's silent shutter when I really need to, but most of the time I use the mechanical shutter anyway to save me from losing any images to bad warping with sudden movements.

I feel like such a new boy reading all these comments but I'm glad it's not just me finding it hard to follow action through the R's EVF. Your experience with the A9 sounds like a good option as at least you can still see the subject and keep it centred. I've never used an A9 or any Sony for that matter but know currently they seem to be pretty good, subject to the R5 at least.

I'm not a pro & I'll admit I'm still learning about the different modes, mechanical, live, silent etc as I mainly do landscapes & Travel so don't shoot many action shots.

I'd love someone to do a video tutorial about this showing what the EVF looks like in different modes, not necessarily solutions but just what it looks like as what I see may not be the same as you or other people. Obviously details on how they deal with it would be great.

I really hope the R5 has a better flow to the EVF, otherwise it won't matter what FPS it has.

 

[Joules]

'Id love someone to do a video tutorial about this showing what the EVF looks like in different modes, not necessarily solutions but just what it looks like as what I see may not be the same as you or other people. Obviously details on how they deal with it would be great.

If you can stand his attitude, Jared Polin did a good comparison of the 1DX III and A9:

If Canon just use the 1DX III LiveView as their EVF, it should be a very big upgrade over the R.

 

[Michael Clark]

Sports shooters work for agencies which supply the equipment such as getty, reuteurs etc

Maybe ten years ago. Most of Getty's sports products these days are shot by freelancers providing their own equipment and making pennies on the dollar compared to when they were staff photographers and had gear provided. Ditto with Reuters news and sports. The AP now has one staff photographer in most (but not all) U.S. States where a decade ago they had about one staffer per million residents of most states.

 

[Starting out EOS R]

If you can stand his attitude, Jared Polin did a good comparison of the 1DX III and A9:

If Canon just use the 1DX III LiveView as their EVF, it should be a very big upgrade over the R.

Cheers, I did watch this but didn't equate it to the EVF lag on the R but the idea of using the live view feed as an EVF would make sense. Jared is an acquired taste but can be entertaining.
The video made me smile as it's a good job he works out to be able to hold both those cameras out front.

 

[Michael Clark]

You are probably right. All my affected weddings were rescheduled, not cancelled. Sure I might lose some 2021 out of being booked now with rescheduled wedding for those dates, but my 2021 will still be near twice as busy as 2019 was. I will just have very little turnover this year, but next will be maniac

... assuming the Rona is no longer a factor. What if it sticks around for about 18 months like the Spanish Flu did a century ago? A lot of your 2020 bookings delayed to 2021 will opt for vastly scaled down weddings, and your original 2021 bookings will wait until 2022.

In some ways, we'll never return to the "normal" of before COVID-19, just like we never returned to pre-9/11/2001 "normal".

 

[HarryFilm]

Just an UPDATED ESTIMATED RECORDING TIME TABLE for the Canon R5 to correct an earlier post of mine where I wrongly multiplied using bytes instead of bits (Oooops! My Bad!) This is for the Canon R5 camera for DCI 8K video recording at FULL Uncompressed RAW, 3:1 Compressed RAW and 5:1 Compressed RAW recording formats:

DCI 8K FULL RAW video at 10 Bits per colour channel (4:4:4 colour sampling at 30 bit colour) is 8192 by 4320 pixels and 35,389,440 pixels (35.38 megapixels) and 132,710,400 bytes per video frame = 3,981,312,000 bytes per second at 30 fps FULL RAW (or 3.98 Gigabytes per second!) or 238,878,720,000 bytes per minute (238.87 gigabytes per minute) of FULL uncompressed RAW recording time.

Size of CF Express Cards in Gigabytes and Calculated RAW Recording Times in minutes and seconds at 10 bits per RGB/YCbCr colour channel aka 30 bit colour:

FULL RAW using typical mathematically lossless bit-wise 2:1 LZW compression:

128 gigabytes = 50 sec
256 gigabytes = 1 min 40 sec
512 gigabytes = 3 min 20 sec

Compressed 3:1 Ratio RAW in minutes and seconds:
(algorithms used are variable but visually lossless which means the video looks really good)

128 gigabytes = 3 min 45 sec
256 gigabytes = 7 min 30 sec
512 gigabytes = 15 minutes

Compressed 5:1 Ratio RAW in minutes and seconds:
(algorithms used are variable but visually lossless which means the video looks really good)

128 gigabytes = 6 min 5 sec
256 gigabytes = 12 min 10 sec
512 gigabytes = 24 min 20 sec at DCI 8K or 98 minutes at DCI 4K at 24 to 30 fps or about 49 minutes at 4K 60fps!

If you use an external drive using a typical video-grade Four Terabyte drive, you will get about 195 minutes or 3 and a quarter hours of video at 30 fps 8K using 5:1 RAW.

I should note these are worst-case scenarios, so I expect there SHOULD BE a leeway of an extra 25% on top of the above times when filming typical action or sports video where detail is fairly limited and where motion tends to be linear.

For still images at the LIKELY 45 megapixels that will be used for this camera in stills mode, we can expect to store about about 10,500+ still images (3:2 aspect ratio) on a single 128 Gigabyte CF express card at the typical 5:1 compression ratio of the HEIF image file format.

Sooooooo, it looks like Canon has done AN OUTSTANDING JOB on FULL RAW and COMPRESSED RAW recording times for the larger 256 and 512 gigabyte CF-Express cards!

If you record only DCI 4K video multiply ALL of the above times BY FOUR !!!!!

AND .... I should note that if you use 4:2:2 H.265 DCI 8K (8192 x 4320 pixels) interframe compressed video recording, you SHOULD be able to get a fairly high record time using 50 to 150 Group-of-Frame (GOP) settings which means on a 128 gigabyte CF-Express card you should be able to get about 20 minutes minimum at the high quality pro-level video settings.

For the 512 Gigabyte cards, that's at least 50 minutes of very high quality 30 fps H.265 DCI 8K video and up to 200 minutes of 30 fps DCI 4k video or 100 minutes of 60 fps DCI 4K video and somewhere between 35 to 50 minutes of 4K at 120 fps (120 fps is very hard to compress in real time!).

That's pretty good as DCI 8K video record times for full 8192 by 4320 pixel video resolution and DCI 4K 4096 by 2160 pixel video! I should note though that H.265 is rather finicky on CONTENT DETAIL and EXCESSIVE MOTION, so your recording time mileage may vary! DO EXPECT A PLUS OR MINUS 25% leeway on either side of my above estimated 8K video record times!

This will get Sony's Goat to No End !!!

v

 

[HarryFilm]

AND .... My guess on Canon R5 body-only pricing is $3949 US ($5509 Canadian or 3615 Euros)

That's fine with us! We'll buy a few anyways for the interns!

V

 

[Quarkcharmed]

Picture this scenario, take a picture with a 6D II at a hand held speed and reproduction size you consider just acceptable, by definition you are defining the airy disc size/blur arc angle, now do that with a 5DSr, there is no more detail in the 50mp image as there isn't even detail the lower mp sensor could resolve

5DSr will always resolve better detail even in a shaky image. The only caveat is that the resolved detail is in the blur so not very usable.
But a 50mp camera is designed for tripod use, or very good IS, or very high shutter speeds. Otherwise, as above, all the additional resolving power goes to the motion blur.

One of the reasons I left Photo.net years ago was because I was pilloried in the medium format threads because I maintained, and illustrated/proved, nobody could tell the difference between a medium format 1GB film scan and a 4mp 1D when both were reduced to 720px in line images, and it was true, but they didn't like hearing that their magical "medium format look" was utter bullsh!t.

The 'medium format look' could be BS, but the experiment with reduction to 720px seems kinda pointless to be honest. Better detail is where medium format shines. You reduce a large image to a ridiculously small size and claim there's no advantage. That sounds unfair

 

[Sporgon]

++++ nobody could tell the difference between a medium format 1GB film scan and a 4mp 1D when both were reduced to 720px in line images, and it was true, but they didn't like hearing that their magical "medium format look" was utter bullsh!t.

A.M.: oh, that’s heresy. how dare you!

I must lend Private my copy sometime

 

[Quarkcharmed]

But when you reduce the output size to 24 mp the difference in resolution becomes too small to be seen !

But in the previous message you said the 24mp image could be sharpened and brought to the level of downsampled 50->24mp image. So implicitly you acknowledged the difference is noticeable

So that extra "information" that the 5DS recorded isn't going to be seen at smaller sizes when compared with a 24 mp FF sensor, which in it's own right is pretty high "resolution" anyway.

Well if you downsample both to say 12mp, the difference will be negligible I suspect.
But the example was to downsample 50mp to 24mp and compare the native 24mp with 50->24mp downsampled.
If it's the same scene shot with the same lens, downsampled one will be sharper.

Whether it's worth or practical to have a 50mp camera is a totally different question.

 

[unfocused]

Could you please elaborate on that? In what way do you think AF and tracking are different on a mirrorless camera between video and stills?

I'm asking because I see no difference between them....

There's a massive difference between video and stills AF.
Video is designed to follow with smooth acelerations and decelarations, while stills afc burst is always at full speed hunting around and releasing the shutter everytime its confirmed focus. 2 completely different behaviours.

Yes. Well said.

To elaborate from my point of view, it's all about the story being told. Video is all about the action, telling the story of what happens by building to the climax. Stills are all about the emotion. Freezing a moment in time and taking it out of the stream to examine as an individual slice of time. (Not that these two don't intersect).

In a sports video, you want to capture the play, the reaction or other events as they occur. You are seeing the action unfold over time.

Stills are all about stopping time. You want to capture the emotion on the player's face as she returns a serve. The joy on the face after a winning play. The frustration of a missed return. The look on the players face when he dunks the basketball, etc. etc. etc. Freezing time and getting a sharp image is different than following action and getting a smooth image that flows.

That's one reason why videos are generally shot at no more than twice the frame rate (1/60th of a second for example) while stills are shot at the highest possible shutter speed.

Thanks @x4dow for your reply. That's why I said there is a significant difference between autofocus for stills and video.