Canon officially announces the EOS R5 and EOS R6 along with 4 new lenses and two teleconverters

Aug 7, 2018
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An EVF does not show me reality, but just a copy of reality. Bryan from "The Digital Picture" put it this way: "The EVF properties just discussed can leave the photographer feeling somewhat disconnected from the moment, akin to watching a movie of an event vs. seeing it in-person as an OVF provides the sense of. ". That are exactly my thoughts. Next year I will visit the Olympics again (if they take place and allow spectators), but if I had a camera with an EVF, it would feel like sitting at home and watching the competition on TV. It is just a digital copy of reality. If I had an EVF, I could also take a video of the event with my camera and another person at another time could watch that video on the EVF. Then he would see exactly what I saw when I was there. I do not want to travel 9,000 kilometers to see a digital copy of reality.

Another problem I have with mirrorless cameras is that the sensor is always in use. While a DSLR only uses the sensor for a fraction of a second (unless I do a long exposure), the mirrorless camera might use the sensor for hours on some day. 99.9% of that usage time is just needed to compose the image. That seems quite a waste of "sensor time" for me and as well quite a waste of battery life. If I am on a journey, I walk through a city for many hours per day and my camera is always on. For my DSLR that is not a problem. I easily manage to take 2,000 photos with a single charge. I do not even own a second battery for my camera, as I never need 2,000 shots on a single day and a second battery would cost me $150 for my camera. If you buy an R5, you need a lot of spare batteries and some logistics to have them charged if you need them.

Some innovations of the past like autofocus brought big benefits without having any major downsides. With mirrorless cameras that is not the case. While I acknowledge the benefits of mirrorless cameras - like totally silent photos - seeing the subject with my own eyes instead of a digital copy of the subject is still a very basic requirement for me. My fear is that with a mirrorless camera I would lose the fun in photography.

Another thing I hate about the R5 and R6 is how small and light they are. You have to attach a battery grip to make them look like serious cameras. A heavy camera stabilizes the photo with its own weight. If I am attacked in a dark park, I want to knock out the attacker with my camera and the camera should still work after that. In 2013 I had the choice between the 1D X and the 5D Mark III. Those cameras had more or less the same specs. The 1D X had a higher burst rate and the 5D Mark III a slightly higher resolution. I opted for the 1D X just for its larger size and higher weight, even though it was much more expensive than the 5D Mark III. At 780 grams the R5 is much too light. I hope a heavy R1 will change that problem.

I do not understand why they gave the 45 megapixel R5 higher specs than the 20 megapixel R6. Canon says that the R5 is aimed at professionals and the R6 at amateurs. What is more "professional" about having more megapixels? The 1D series cameras always had quite a low megapixels count (except the discontnued 1Ds cameras). Canon simply can't cope with image noise very well and I don't think that has changed much with the R5 and R6. 45 megapixels are too many for a Canon camera, if Canon can't even handly the noise at 20 megapixels. That's why I would prefer a "professionel" lowe megapixel camera instead of an R6 that makes me appear like an amateur who just can't afford the R5.

I might only buy an R6 as a backup for difficult low light situations where I can't use a tripod. Eight stops of IBIS are very helpful there, but they should also be implemented in future DSLRs.

Why are mirrorless cameras called the "future"? Even my smartphone is mirrorless. Of course full frame mirrorless cameras are new, but they are just a larger version of an old idea,
 
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Sharlin

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Gordon Laing reports the exact max aperture/focal length combinations of the new RF 100–400mm (when using 1/3 stop increments). I guess to some people this lens doesn't make any sense after all. What is interesting to me, however, is how it drops down to f/7.1 only at the very end of the zoom range, which definitely does go a long way to explain why Canon chose this particular design.

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Does the widest aperture really jump while you zoom in or is it getting smaller continuously and those numbers are just rounded to the nearest f-stop? Would it make sense if the camera did not use the widest possible aperture between those stops and instead always close the blade to the next narrower aperture? Your graphic for example shows f/6.3 from 363 to 472mm, but if the lens can use f/6.3 at 472 mm, it should be able to use f/6.0 or so at 420mm. Would it still close the blades down to f/6.3 and therefore lose light?
 
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Sharlin

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Does the widest aperture really jump while you zoom in or is it getting smaller continuously

It gets smaller continuously (technically, the image of the aperture necessarily gets larger as you zoom in, but in a variable-aperture zoom it doesn't get larger fast enough to compensate for the increasing focal length). But as I mentioned in an earlier comment, the camera exposure system (whether auto or manual) discretizes the world into 1/3 (or 1/2) stop increments because the difference is too small to care about in photography (in the film world more fine-grained aperture control is sometimes useful though).
 
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Batteries may be improved, but the load is much heavier resulting in worse performance of the already poor capacity with the R. I can’t just buy a grip, first off those are incredibly expensive compared to older ones, and the reason I went away from the 1-series is size and weight. And downgrading to an R6 to get better battery? Crazy talk :p

I had high hopes seeing what the 1dx3 did to improve its capacity by doubling it. I fully expected the R5 to have 500 shots with the “best” evf settings. It feels like a Tesla, it’s all the luxury and performance, bells and whistles, but you can’t go very far before you’ll sit and wait....

Oh I am with you that I would have hoped for more battery life, however, they did work on improving the battery buy quite a bit and chose to keep the form factor rather than make a bigger battery for the R5/R6. I would grip it, all my prior cameras have been gripped otherwise it rests on my pinky and feels a bit weird. And stupid as is sounds, a gripped camera seems to make less people bug me when I am chasing street rabbits.

I'll also add the times given are all worse case. You won't always need the EVF at 120 fps and you can turn the back screen off completely. When I am out and about on my Nikon Z6 I turn it to EVF only and use the top screen to change settings, this results in a whole day shooting filling up my card with one battery that is quoted for 320 shots. And I set my EVF to not go off for 5 minutes.
 
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jolyonralph

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I need GPS in mine and a link that might work (or not) with a cell phone or some other kludge isn't going to get me to leave my 5D4s behind.

The GP-E2 will work with the EOS R5 allegedly - it certainly works fine with my EOS R.

I think the biggest reason they haven't added GPS in body to mirrorless cameras is the battery drain. The GP-E2 uses its own (AA) batteries.
 
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jolyonralph

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The EF era is definitely over, and it's not hard to see why. I'm sure many people were sad to see film go too, but that's mainly nostalgia talking. A camera is merely a tool, and people will buy the tool that gives them the best results. With mirrorless you can preview your image in the EVF as it will actually appear when you release the shutter. That is a massive advantage over DSLRs. Mirrorless can also have AF points all around the sensor, instead of having to clump them all in the middle.

Of course the EF era is over - you won't see any new EF lenses being launched - from now on everything will be RF and maybe EF-M if lucky.

This isn't as painful as the FD->EF transition when all your old lenses became obsolete overnight. At least now you can still use your legacy glass with the new system (and, amusingly, your old FD glass that you couldn't use on EF mount!)
 
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Batteries may be improved, but the load is much heavier resulting in worse performance of the already poor capacity with the R. I can’t just buy a grip, first off those are incredibly expensive compared to older ones, and the reason I went away from the 1-series is size and weight. And downgrading to an R6 to get better battery? Crazy talk :p

I had high hopes seeing what the 1dx3 did to improve its capacity by doubling it. I fully expected the R5 to have 500 shots with the “best” evf settings. It feels like a Tesla, it’s all the luxury and performance, bells and whistles, but you can’t go very far before you’ll sit and wait....

Wow, you're a hard person to please!
 
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The problem is also that there is an upper limit of how large camera batteries can be to still be allowed on a plane in some countries. That problem even restricted the battery size of the 1D series.

I must admit that I was very surprised though that the R5 and R6 can still autofocus at f/22, which your get with the 800mm f/11 and a 2x teleconverter. Most DSLRs can't autofocus at more than f/5.6.

Another thing I really like about RF is that you can even use EF-S lenses and the camera will automatically crop. I wish they had that functionality at Canon full frame DSLRs.
 
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Sharlin

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Another thing I really like about RF is that you can even use EF-S lenses and the camera will automatically crop. I wish they had that functionality at Canon full frame DSLRs.

They can't because the whole point of EF-S is the S meaning short backfocus. Which is to say, EF-S lenses are allowed to protrude more into the mirror box thanks to the smaller mirror of a crop body. Note that there are no third-party EF-S lenses, they're all EF even when meant for crop sensors, and as far as the camera is concerned, EF is EF.
 
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koenkooi

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I had a GP-E2 on a 5D3 - I never liked it. Sure it works, but separate battery you need to keep charged daily, with a separate charger you need to take on the trip, needing another outlet at the hotel,[..]

I solved that specific issue with a USB AA charger, it was €4 or so at the local Ikea. I can charge pretty much everything off a big powerbank or laptop overnight nowadays: watch, phone, camera, AA batteries.

[..]
The software to use the GP-E2 (on a mac at least) sucks (like all canon software), the file format it creates for tracks is a proprietary format needing conversion.[..]

The recent update gives you 2 options: NMEA 0183 and kmz. NMEA 0183 isn't proprietary, but the Canon implementation does report a fix, when it actually hasn't. GPSbabel has a gpgga=0 option to fix that. But you are correct that it needs converting, almost no photo tools accept NMEA, it's pretty much a GPX world out there.
The current UI is a lot less awful than it was in the Map Utility days, I only need to use it when I go out shooting with more than one camera. I really don't understand why Canon makes it so awkward to use, why can't it automatically import all logs when connecting?

Same goes for automatically setting the clock to match the computer, there's a setting in EOS utility do exactly that, but for some reason it never actually does. Same for the Canon Connect app on the phone, it keeps disabling the "Automatically sync time with phone" toggle. And you can only set time over wifi, not bluetooth. And no option to set the time from a timeserver on the internet either.
The "set time automatically from GP-E2" option does work, thankfully.

That time sync issue is what really bugs me, since the internal clocks on my RP and M6II go out of sync about 6 seconds each and every day, which makes syncing up the geotags a pain.

All in all, I personally find using the GP-E2 in the hot shoe less work than using a separate logger, but Canon could make about every step in the process a lot less painful just by changing the software a bit. And use higher quality RTCs in the cameras.

There, rant over :)
 
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koenkooi

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Am I , really? How much fun is a track day with a SP90, if the tank is 2 liters? I’ve owned the R since it was new and I get pretty much exactly the given battery capacity, so I expect no different here .

For tethered shooting, the R5 and R6 are said to be able to use USB power while shooting, which should avoid draining the battery. For non-tethered shooting, a bandolier filled with LP-E6's would help :)

I wonder how long a battery lasts when I go out chasing dragonflies with the EVF set to 120Hz. With burst shooting I'll get a lot more than the rated 200-ish shots, but will it last 3 hours or more like one hour? I get about 3 hours out of my puny RP battery, provided the lens doesn't have IS.
 
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Am I , really? How much fun is a track day with a SP90, if the tank is 2 liters? I’ve owned the R since it was new and I get pretty much exactly the given battery capacity, so I expect no different here .

I don't understand your metaphor, is it a car thing? The way I look at it is, they massively increased the stuff the camera is doing, and the battery life is slightly better. That's hard to achieve! It's like people complain about their phones needing to be charged a lot, whilst forgetting that they're doing a hundred things that stalwart Nokia 20 years ago wasn't.

Battery life is definitely an advantage DSLRs continue to have over mirrorless, but we know that already. If I made the switch I'd either get a battery grip, and/or spare batteries. It's not insurmountable, it's not a Canon-specific problem, and they're doing their best from what I can tell.
 
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Regarding the RF 100mm -500mm lens, according to Gordon at CameraLabs, here is the breakdown of apertures across the zoom range. Not too disappointing:
  1. f/4.5: 100mm - 151mm
  2. f/5.0: 152mm - 254mm
  3. f/5.6: 255mm - 363mm
  4. f/6.3: 364mm - 472mm
  5. f/7.1: 473mm - 500mm

It would sure be nice if they had a lockout at 473mm...I'd give up a tiny bit of range for not having to worry about losing 1/3 stop.
These apertures are likely just the ones reported to metafile. Actual aperture would continuously vary with zoom setting. Reported value would be to nearest 1/3 stop When shooting wide open.
 
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