Jeff Cable talks about what it’s like to shoot with the Canon EOS R3 as a pro

Jul 21, 2010
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Billybob

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Bet wildlife shooters that can afford the R3 will buy one. But I agree that most wildlife shooters will pass – because of the price tag not the MP count.
Count me out. I have an R3 on order but will almost certainly cancel. I'm waiting to see what the Z9 brings to the table. I'm looking at some of my recent R5 wildlife shots, how much cropping was required to get the image I want, and how much detail I maintained. I crave the R3's improved performance but not the lost detail. I hope that I can get both detailed cropping and high performance in a 45MP Z9 with R3/A1 speed and AF performance.

"Once you've done 45, you can't go back!"
 
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I think the embedded jpeg is more compressed and presumably the jpegs he was writing to the second card were at the highest quality settings.
Jeff wrote on his blog that he was shooting RAW+JPEG to the same or both cards. The SD slot is so slow that he yanked the SD card for the water polo finals to avoid risking key images.

EDIT: the Digital Photo Pro interview is essentially just a repost of Jeff's own blog post. No point in reading both.

I always write RAW images to both cards when I am shooting (for redundancy), and since the SD card is so much slower than the CFexpress card, I have numerous times when I filled the camera buffer and missed some great shots. For the USA Water Polo women's gold medal game, I decided to pull the SD card and shoot to just the CFexpress card. I could not risk having buffer issues during this key game!

I should mention that I shot the entire Olympics in RAW+JPEG mode, since I could not easily open a Canon R3 RAW file and had to work with the JPEGs for the whole Games. I wanted to capture the RAW files, since I plan on re-editing the best photos from the RAW files in the weeks to come, once Adobe has added the R3 to Adobe Camera RAW. Shooting RAW+JPEG really slows things down, and I don't plan on shooting that way in the future.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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A thumbnail you can zoom into to pixel peep, or are you suggesting it reprocesses the RAW file when you zoom in, if you look at the size of your RAW files I think you will see they differ largely by the size of a jpg version.
A .CR3 file from the EOS R includes a 1620x1080 jpg file. That’s 1.8 MP and is smaller than the smallest in-camera jpg setting (Small 2, 2400x1600).
 
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"Once you've done 45, you can't go back!"
Perhaps, but I don’t think Canon is targeting the R3 for R5 owners. There are a lot more 5DIII/IV shooters out there, and a smaller number of 1D X (II/III) shooters, that are the more likely targets.

It’s a common refrain on this forum that, “Mark N of a camera isn’t much of an improvement over Mark N-1 in terms of [my favorite feature], so I’ll pass.” What people fail to grasp is that Canon is targeting owners of the Mark N-2 and earlier versions, as well as owners of ‘lower’ camera lines (xxD to xD, etc.). As I have often stated, Canon has data on who buys what and when, so for example they know how many 5DIV cameras were bought by 5DIII owners vs. those with a 5DII, 7D, 80D, etc. I suspect the latter group is much larger than the former.
 
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Bet wildlife shooters that can afford the R3 will buy one. But I agree that most wildlife shooters will pass – because of the price tag not the MP count.
Absolutely agree

If I could afford an R3 and an R1 (if and when) 24 Mpx wouldn't hold me back in the slightest.

Having to pick and choose, it's only sensible for my shallow pockets to wait and see what's to come.
 
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When there is an SDexpress card used the speed will change dramatically. Canon is an Executive Board member of the SD Association.
Funnily enough, I was only thinking about this a couple of days ago.

Has Canon mentioned anything about R3 and SDexpress compatibility does anyone know?
 
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Billybob

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Perhaps, but I don’t think Canon is targeting the R3 for R5 owners. There are a lot more 5DIII/IV shooters out there, and a smaller number of 1D X (II/III) shooters, that are the more likely targets.

It’s a common refrain on this forum that, “Mark N of a camera isn’t much of an improvement over Mark N-1 in terms of [my favorite feature], so I’ll pass.” What people fail to grasp is that Canon is targeting owners of the Mark N-2 and earlier versions, as well as owners of ‘lower’ camera lines (xxD to xD, etc.). As I have often stated, Canon has data on who buys what and when, so for example they know how many 5DIV cameras were bought by 5DIII owners vs. those with a 5DII, 7D, 80D, etc. I suspect the latter group is much larger than the former.
No disagreement here. I've come to term with the clear fact that the R3 was not designed for me. Rather, my previous post was a response to your implication that the only wildlife photogs who wouldn't want the R3 were those who couldn't afford. On the contrary, there are quite a few of us wildlife photogs who are taking a hard pass on the R3 not due to the high price--I think that it's worth the price for many--but because the tradeoff between performance and resolution is not acceptable for our shooting.

Before getting the R5, I took a long hard look at the A9II (I was shooting Sony and the A1 had not yet been announced). I knew that the A9II had better AF and performance (0 EVF lag/blackout, and virtually zero rolling shutter). But for someone who is limited more by resolution than by performance, the A9 cameras were a definite no. Nothing has changed. Perhaps, I would have been better off waiting for the A1, but there are too many things about Sony that I wasn't happy with, so the jump back to Canon was worthwhile.

If I knew that the R1 was going to be high-resolution, I might wait, but I'm not convinced that the speculations are accurate. If the Z9 is disappointing, then waiting is what I'll do.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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On the contrary, there are quite a few of us wildlife photogs who are taking a hard pass on the R3 not due to the high price--I think that it's worth the price for many--but because the tradeoff between performance and resolution is not acceptable for our shooting.
I’m not sure there’s really a trade-off between performance and resolution. The performance is high, the resolution is lower but that was a declarative choice by Canon since the R5 clearly shows at least 30 MP was possible at 30 fps.

Regardless, 24 MP is not enough for you. What did you do before there were 24 MP cameras?
 
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entoman

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Bet wildlife shooters that can afford the R3 will buy one. But I agree that most wildlife shooters will pass – because of the price tag not the MP count.
I can’t speak for “most” wildlife shooters, but:

I don’t think the body price would dissuade many of us from getting the R3, after all, hordes of us are already shooting on the 1Dxii and 1DXiii, which cost around the same price, and the R3 is clearly a far better camera (in all regards other than battery life).

But there are a huge number of people currently shooting wildlife on 5DMkiv or 7DMkii, who may be considering a top of the range Canon. Some of them will buy the R5, others will be toying with the idea of getting an R3 or a Sony a1.

What is really likely to dissuade them is not the cost of an R3 body, but the cost of lenses. A hi-res sensor would allow them to use shorter, lighter and far less expensive lenses, as it offers far more flexibility when cropping.

It’s the lenses where the savings occur - not only in cost, but also in bulk and weight.
 
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A thumbnail you can zoom into to pixel peep, or are you suggesting it reprocesses the RAW file when you zoom in, if you look at the size of your RAW files I think you will see they differ largely by the size of a jpg version.
It’s a jpeg. You can’t really pixel peep a jpeg. I’ve never seen embedded jpegs being of any really usable quality. You can use them to go through a large batch of photos to see what they are without having to open the far larger file. You can get some idea about color and exposure. But you can’t rely on them for much else. That’s their main use.
 
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It’s a jpeg. You can’t really pixel peep a jpeg. I’ve never seen embedded jpegs being of any really usable quality. You can use them to go through a large batch of photos to see what they are without having to open the far larger file. You can get some idea about color and exposure. But you can’t rely on them for much else. That’s their main use.
I suspect the question was about pixel peeping on-camera (aka ‘chimping’). If you shoot RAW only, what is shown on the LCD/EVF image review? The jpg thumbnail in the RAW container. That jpg is also used to generate the histogram and 'blinkies' (which is why judging exposure/clipping based on an 8-bit version conversion of the 14-bit RAW file can be a challenge).
 
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I suspect the question was about pixel peeping on-camera (aka ‘chimping’). If you shoot RAW only, what is shown on the LCD/EVF image review? The jpg thumbnail in the RAW container. That jpg is also used to generate the histogram and 'blinkies' (which is why judging exposure/clipping based on an 8-bit version conversion of the 14-bit RAW file can be a challenge).
I\ve come to teach myself that a little bit of clipping due to over-exposure (blinkies) in the jpeg thumbnaail is usually OK, but not a lot. But it's definitely a judgement call, depending on the subject and what you want to achieve. A solid "Your Milage May Vary"
 
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Funnily enough, I was only thinking about this a couple of days ago.

Has Canon mentioned anything about R3 and SDexpress compatibility does anyone know?

It does not have SD Express. SD Express would set your existing SD cards back to UHS-1 speeds if/when it comes you’ll be wholesale buying new cards or you’ll be waiting a good while on the buffer clearing.
 
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“Image copy command”!? Somehow I’ve never noticed that before. Is tha feature in all Canon pro and prosumer bodies? I have the R5.
It's on the R5 and I also used it on the 5DIV. I started using it to replace taking a laptop on trips to backup my photos to save on weight. It also makes it easy to backup in the field. I have a couple on large capacity SD cards I write dual backups to, then clear my main card if I need to. The copy function works very much the same as the file copy feature in Windows so you can elect to replace or ignore.
 
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unfocused

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Bet wildlife shooters that can afford the R3 will buy one. But I agree that most wildlife shooters will pass – because of the price tag not the MP count.

I'm not so sure about that. If you read Jeff Cable's take, he said he chose to take R5s with him on his wildlife trip to Africa, not the R3.

When the resolution of the R3 came out, there were a lot of wildlife and bird photographers on this forum complaining. My response was simple, Canon views the R5 as their wildlife and bird photography body and the R3 as their sports body. Of course, either one can be used for the other purpose, but there will be compromises.

The other day, just to experiment I shot a soccer game 1/2 with the 1DxIII and 1/2 with the R5. I got about the same number of keepers with each camera but with the R5 I was constantly running into buffer problems and missed some key shots. I've never had buffer problems shooting birds with the R5 (different use cases require different bodies).

Bottom line, I expect the R5 to still be better for overall for wildlife and birds and the R3 to be better for sports. Which is what Cable concluded.
 
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