EOS R first impressions - post your hands-on impressions here

May 4, 2011
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'Touch and drag AF' active touch area is set to full screen - this gets rid of the horrible lag you get when you use part of the screen (when set to 'relative').

'Touch and drag AF' positioning method is set to relative - with absolute, I needed to release (a suitable) grip on the camera while moving the AF point to the left.

The main issue I had with “absolute” positioning was that I would make an adjustment to the AF point - say, move it to the lower left portion of the screen. But when I then tap the right portion of the screen to begin dragging it back, it “jumps” to that area. Which is fine if by design. Also, you have to complete the AF move with one swipe or it will “jump” back. I think I prefer relative, but they really need to address the lag issue when using it. Also, the ability to control speed of movement, much like a computer mouse on a monitor, would be nice.
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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The main issue I had with “absolute” positioning was that I would make an adjustment to the AF point - say, move it to the lower left portion of the screen. But when I then tap the right portion of the screen to begin dragging it back, it “jumps” to that area. Which is fine if by design.
Um yes, I'm quite sure that what you're describing is by design. "Absolute" means absolute. Meaning, if you touch whatever area of the screen within the area you have activated, the point will go exactly to that point. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Yes it has the potential to be very jumpy, but it also has the potential to allow for very quick movements of the AF point. I've been using bottom right and absolute, but it's a little hard to master. I do wish there was a relative setting that had adjustable speed. Relative just moves a little too slow for my taste.
 
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Dec 13, 2010
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I had a chance to play with the RF50 Today, all I can say is, no it isn’t heavy it’s a feather compared to the 85 L IS, and so insanely sharp it’s crazy! Fantastic AF, it locks dead on no matter what you point it at and the IQ is out of this world at 1.2. I honestly felt the very high price is cheap for what you get. I’m buying!
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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I tried setting the touch and drag AF to "whole panel" and "relative" last night. I actually think I like this better than absolute. I wanted to be able to master setting it to lower left and absolute, but I think the AF point is just a little too jumpy when set to this. It's hard to tap the exact spot you want the AF point to go to on the screen just by feel while you're looking through the viewfinder.

I don't know why you would set the active part of the screen to anything other than the whole screen when you are using the relative setting, unless perhaps you are accidentally touching a certain part of the screen and moving the AF point inadvertently.

Also, I ended up getting 585 photos on one battery, along with recording about a one minute video through the viewfinder. It ran down to 2% capacity at that point, and I decided to charge it. I'm pretty happy with that based on the fact that I'm still messing around in settings and menus a whole lot since the camera is still new to me. This was with a genuine Canon LP-E6N battery, but not even the new one that came with the camera. It does seem to me like using the silent shutter saves some battery.
 
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Dec 13, 2010
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I tried setting the touch and drag AF to "whole panel" and "relative" last night. I actually think I like this better than absolute. I wanted to be able to master setting it to lower left and absolute, but I think the AF point is just a little too jumpy when set to this. It's hard to tap the exact spot you want the AF point to go to on the screen just by feel while you're looking through the viewfinder.

I don't know why you would set the active part of the screen to anything other than the whole screen when you are using the relative setting, unless perhaps you are accidentally touching a certain part of the screen and moving the AF point inadvertently.

Also, I ended up getting 585 photos on one battery, along with recording about a one minute video through the viewfinder. It ran down to 2% capacity at that point, and I decided to charge it. I'm pretty happy with that based on the fact that I'm still messing around in settings and menus a whole lot since the camera is still new to me. This was with a genuine Canon LP-E6N battery, but not even the new one that came with the camera. It does seem to me like using the silent shutter saves some battery.
I guess this is why Canon have all the different touch’n drag options, as I couldn’t use the whole screen.

Last charge I got 887 pictures, hardly one burst. Very happy with it after all.
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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Really? I've been using the completely silent shutter pretty frequently, and haven't noticed an issue. The banding I saw before only showed up under one very specific set of LED stage lights.

Also, why does using the full screen for touch and drag AF not work well for you? Do you have it set to absolute? If you have it set to absolute, I can understand it, as it's hard to move the point all the way across the screen with your thumb. But as far as I can tell, limiting the area of the screen that's active when you have it set to relative doesn't seem to affect the speed or sensitivity of moving the AF point around, it just makes part of the screen not active anymore, which in my experience gets frustrating because sometimes you'll be dragging the point across the screen, and then you'll reach the edge of the active area, and the point just stops. This wouldn't happen with absolute since if you reach the edge of the active part of the screen with absolute, the AF point should already be right at that edge of the frame.
 
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Really? I've been using the completely silent shutter pretty frequently, and haven't noticed an issue. The banding I saw before only showed up under one very specific set of LED stage lights.

Also, why does using the full screen for touch and drag AF not work well for you? Do you have it set to absolute? If you have it set to absolute, I can understand it, as it's hard to move the point all the way across the screen with your thumb. But as far as I can tell, limiting the area of the screen that's active when you have it set to relative doesn't seem to affect the speed or sensitivity of moving the AF point around, it just makes part of the screen not active anymore, which in my experience gets frustrating because sometimes you'll be dragging the point across the screen, and then you'll reach the edge of the active area, and the point just stops. This wouldn't happen with absolute since if you reach the edge of the active part of the screen with absolute, the AF point should already be right at that edge of the frame.
Yeah, top right and absolute, it works smooth and reminds me of using a joystick and it's fast er and easier for me.

Here's two quick examples, but it showed in pretty much any shot in varying degree... The first one is at 1/3200s
 

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Nov 12, 2016
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I have never gotten top right absolute to work for me because my right thumb doesn't quite reach to the middle of the screen without moving my whole hand away from the natural position holding the camera. So with top right absolute I can never move the AF point to the left side of the frame, at least smoothly and quickly.

Those photos do look awful. Are those 100% crops? I don't think I've had any issues like that when using the silent shutter.
 
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Dec 13, 2010
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I have never gotten top right absolute to work for me because my right thumb doesn't quite reach to the middle of the screen without moving my whole hand away from the natural position holding the camera. So with top right absolute I can never move the AF point to the left side of the frame, at least smoothly and quickly.

Those photos do look awful. Are those 100% crops? I don't think I've had any issues like that when using the silent shutter.

Yeah, the soccer shot was in the worst lightning conditions ever for sports, but illustrates what happens to the non moving parts of an image shot with fast speeds. The other one was typical and was very frustrating, but, it all went away when using only the mechanical shutter, which works great for me. I have no use for being very silent, but for those who do, it’s worth testing at least ..
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Yeah, the soccer shot was in the worst lightning conditions ever for sports, but illustrates what happens to the non moving parts of an image shot with fast speeds. The other one was typical and was very frustrating, but, it all went away when using only the mechanical shutter, which works great for me. I have no use for being very silent, but for those who do, it’s worth testing at least ..

I agree, movement with the silent shutter is going to cause big issues. There are lots of warnings in the manual on pages 150 and 151 as well as in other places, but the best way to learn is by testing to see just what the limits are to get a image that is acceptable.

Fast shutter speeds and small apertures are said to be a issue as well.

That would be my setting of choice for a bird at close range with silent shutter, since depth of field is needed, and a fast shutter speed freezes tiny movements.
 
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I agree, movement with the silent shutter is going to cause big issues. There are lots of warnings in the manual on pages 150 and 151 as well as in other places, but the best way to learn is by testing to see just what the limits are to get a image that is acceptable.

Fast shutter speeds and small apertures are said to be a issue as well.

That would be my setting of choice for a bird at close range with silent shutter, since depth of field is needed, and a fast shutter speed freezes tiny movements.
Absolutely, the thing that threw me off was that I wasn’t paying all that much attention to that part of setting my camera up, but rather buttons and touch screen and getting used to the interface. And I didn’t know how the camera would sound like without a mirror so missed that setting. I question why it’s set like that as a Default, iit ruined a good few images for me, but lesson learned(y)
 
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May 4, 2011
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I did take a few shots with a store-model R with full mechanical shutter and found it no quieter than a (modern) DSLR TBH...(didn’t have a memory card at the time though)

I wasn’t even aware that it was using a form of “silent” mode as default. And although I did note some softness issues in my shots, I didn’t make the connection to the silent shutter mechanism. I don’t know if that was what was causing it - I just assumed the camera had generally softer output. Hmm...

Silent shooting IMHO is one of the top selling points of MILC - if it’s true that there is that kind of a compromise in image quality by setting it.......? (FTR, I never found an IQ difference between “silent” and normal mode on a 5D - just speed and FPS).
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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I did take a few shots with a store-model R with full mechanical shutter and found it no quieter than a (modern) DSLR TBH...(didn’t have a memory card at the time though)

I wasn’t even aware that it was using a form of “silent” mode as default. And although I did note some softness issues in my shots, I didn’t make the connection to the silent shutter mechanism. I don’t know if that was what was causing it - I just assumed the camera had generally softer output. Hmm...

Silent shooting IMHO is one of the top selling points of MILC - if it’s true that there is that kind of a compromise in image quality by setting it.......? (FTR, I never found an IQ difference between “silent” and normal mode on a 5D - just speed and FPS).

A mirrorless camera always starts with the shutter open, you would not see a image otherwise. The shutter closes after the image is captured. Its much quieter than a mirror clacking up, shutter opening and closing, and mirror clacking down.

Silent shooting does not close the shutter between shots, and since readout is done by scanning the sensor, not all at once, it is susceptible to any movement of the camera or the subject, a form of rolling shutter that happens in video.

So far, there is no practical global shutter for FF DSLR's, there are many technical hurdles.

Once those hurdles are overcome, mirrorless cameras can take a big leap forward, it might be practical, for example to take two very fast frames of a scene with two different subjects or areas in focus and stack them. Cameras try to do that now, but its not very good, and motion limits the technique. With global shutters, we will see a whole host of new things, but when?
 
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The EOS R with mechanical shutter is much quieter than the 1dx2 in normal shooting mode. I have only had perfect sharp shots after I switched to mechanical shutter and I’m not going back, lol.

I certainly wouldn’t trust it at a wedding, where it might be useful, and come home to find out the shots are blurry. If someone takes offense to me using a non-silent shutter, they are welcome to tell me, and I can tell them I care thismuch.
 
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Got mine today.

Ergonomics: Great feel to it .. nice grip for XL hands. Keep going for playback button on bottom left a la 5D but I'll get used to that.

Autofocus: lightening quick. Quicker than my 5D IV and it is pure witchcraft how dark this can still nail the focus in. I swear it could even focus in Hollister:)

Screen af drag.. set to Top right / relative and it is so intuitive.. brilliant. Much better than the joystick.

MF bar .. set to iso but with disabled initially set. Works well but I will probably change this.

Other buttons allocated to things that I find useful like one shot / servo toggling, af zone toggling and iso again

Viewfinder is bright and clear albeit different to optical... so nice having histogram in there though and actually seeing the exposure. That is amazing. For a first gen mirrorless ... well done Canon this line is going to be even more incredible once the wrinkles ironed out
 
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Oct 26, 2013
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Got mine today.

Ergonomics: Great feel to it .. nice grip for XL hands. Keep going for playback button on bottom left a la 5D but I'll get used to that.

Autofocus: lightening quick. Quicker than my 5D IV and it is pure witchcraft how dark this can still nail the focus in. I swear it could even focus in Hollister:)

Screen af drag.. set to Top right / relative and it is so intuitive.. brilliant. Much better than the joystick.

MF bar .. set to iso but with disabled initially set. Works well but I will probably change this.

Other buttons allocated to things that I find useful like one shot / servo toggling, af zone toggling and iso again

Viewfinder is bright and clear albeit different to optical... so nice having histogram in there though and actually seeing the exposure. That is amazing. For a first gen mirrorless ... well done Canon this line is going to be even more incredible once the wrinkles ironed out


Rented one for the past three days. I shoot stills (not action) and I agree with all your points. I have small hands, but ergonomics were excellent, AF performance excellent. Screen touch and drag is nice - not as good as on the M50, but since the sensor is bigger with many more AF points, that is to be expected. I set up MF bar to disable swiping, but enabled each end - so, in essence, it gives me two buttons. With small hands, I never accidentally triggered the bar. EVF clear and bright.

For my use, I found no wrinkles to iron out.
 
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After a weekend of trying all my EF lens and working the camera hard, I'm now extremely happy with how you select AF point (and the AF in general). The AF Point button enables the d-pad to select AF points much like the AF Point button on my 5D Mark III enabled the nubbin to do so. But the buttons on the d-pad repeat rapidly, and address two magnitudes more AF points. The implementation is great. Add that to being able to drag the AF point around with you thumb on the touch screen (fully configureable) while looking through the viewfinder, you have a winner.

I've discussed more on my blog where I've discussed what I've learned using the camera. https://eosrreview.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/the-nubbin-conundrum/
 
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May 4, 2011
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I don’t have an issue with the drag-and-drop AF point selection method; I just think it needs refinement. Give the user more control over speed, and get rid of the lag in response time. It has tremendous potential but it all has to be fluid.

This may even be doable by firmware if the processing power exists in-camera. Kind of like how they sped up the AF with the original M...
 
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