Canon R3 Review Balanced Against R5, R5C, 1DX III

[SilverBox]

I've had my R3 for about two weeks and shot my first gigs with it last week during the NBA All-Star weekend. I was very impressed with the camera however I did experience several (at least 4) lock ups that required a battery pull.

I was switching between photo and video modes often so that may have been a factor. The camera would also lock up after having been asleep where the viewfinder would light up but stay black and that would require a battery pull. This was all after doing the most recent update which was supposed to solve this lockup issue.

The other odd thing I noticed is that if you're in stills mode and start shooting video using the record button to the right of viewfinder it will shoot in 1080p regardless of what your video settings are in video mode and there does not appear to be any way to change what resolution, frame rate, etc for videos shot in stills mode. To me it seems like an oversight that needs to be corrected in firmware because if I'm doing a hybrid event it's easier to start rolling video when shooting stills rather than switching modes to shoot video on the fly, possibly missing the moment. There is no documentation in the manual about movies in stills mode either.

UPDATE
I discovered in tests that when you roll video in stills mode it uses the video settings from Custom Shooting Mode C3. So if you register your desired video settings to C3 when in video mode then you can roll video in stills mode using those settings.

 

[sharpshooter99]

I'd say the massssssive footnote with the R5C is with the 8k 60fps you need to be attached to external power which I think is pretty much a non-starter for anyone using this camera. So for all practical cases it tops out at 8k 30fps

 

[koenkooi]

I'd say the massssssive footnote with the R5C is with the 8k 60fps you need to be attached to external power which I think is pretty much a non-starter for anyone using this camera. So for all practical cases it tops out at 8k 30fps

Some of the first wave of reviews indicate that using a USB PD powerbank works for that, which makes it a lot more practical than you imply.

 

[sharpshooter99]

Some of the first wave of reviews indicate that using a USB PD powerbank works for that, which makes it a lot more practical than you imply.

There is nothing practical about having to mount a battery bank to a stills camera, also another charger to have to carry around and the added weight, its just stupid

 

[amfoto1]

I can't help but wonder one thing... Why did Canon put CFE and SD memory card slots in the R3? Why not two CFE slots? To me, for a camera of this type and price that would make more sense.

 

[sharpshooter99]

I can't help but wonder one thing... Why did Canon put CFE and SD memory card slots in the R3? Why not two CFE slots? To me, for a camera of this type and price that would make more sense.

Agreed, although if Canon can do us a favour and give us the raw capabilities of the c70 then recording RAW to an sd would be possible. But yes DUAL CFE would have made a lot more sense, but we are talking about Canon who frequently enjoy punishing people who spend the most on their cameras

 

[dirtyvu]

There is nothing practical about having to mount a battery bank to a stills camera, also another charger to have to carry around and the added weight, its just stupid

who has to mount? you have the battery in your pants pocket and run the cable to the camera. I used to do this with my smartphone whenever I was running low and was in a far away environment where it wasn't possible to charge.