The Canon EOS RP shipments begin on Wednesday

As long as an electronic viewfinder is not as good as the wonderful viewfinder on my 5D4, I will keep my 5D4 and my 5D3 and my three EF f2/8 zooms. And I still don't understand, why the mirrorless cameras should be "lighter" than a DSLR. What you save on weight by the elimination of the mirror incl. it's mechanical parts you have to add on batteries in order to get at least some endurance. Where is the progress??? Lot's of snow in the electronic viewfinder and an unbelievable high power consumption?. Does not sound professional at all. Will be interesting to see, how many years we have to wait for a true 5D4 killer ...

The progress is in the lenses. The shorter flange distance makes lenses like the RF 28-70 f/2 and RF 50 f/1.2 possible.
 
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The progress is in the lenses. The shorter flange distance makes lenses like the RF 28-70 f/2 and RF 50 f/1.2 possible.

I agree and I believe, that the lenses are excellent and yes, the shorter distance to the sensor is a huge advantage. But for me, that does not compensate the bad image of an electronic viewfinder. I checked it on a Sony A7R III at my local dealer last weekend. The Sony is for sure a very good mirrorless cam, but the viewfinder is far from comparable to the one on my 5D4 or 5D3, not even close. It shakes, when you turn the camera a little bit faster, you have anti-aliasing on diagonal lines and that at bright day light in the shop! It must be horrible at low light conditions, even unusable, I guess. No, as long as there is no progress in technology to build an electronic viewfinder comparable to the great view of a professional DSLR, I stay with my DSLR and my EF lenses and loose the advantage of a little bit more light intensity on the lenses. f2/8 isn't to bad for my EF zoom lenses anyway. But maybe OLED technology will make some huge steps forward in the near future. Let's wait and see.
 
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Its also interesting when reviewers and youtubers warn NOT to get it, but people still do?

Let's be honest, most of those youtubers were putting up thumbnails of pouty sadfaces and facepalms because they knew a negative review would garner them more views plus they add affiliate links in their comments to buy the same camera they spent 10 minutes bashing. I think we are all in agreement that the bashing comes from a "me me me" stand point where just because the camera doesn't tick off every feature for the youtuber doesn't automatically make it DoA. The RP is definitely aimed at a specific segment (Rebel users who want to upgrade to FF mirrorless, average person off the street who is looking for a mirrorless camera) and this camera will sell like hotcakes because it is aimed at a specific segment.
 
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I agree and I believe, that the lenses are excellent and yes, the shorter distance to the sensor is a huge advantage. But for me, that does not compensate the bad image of an electronic viewfinder. I checked it on a Sony A7R III at my local dealer last weekend. The Sony is for sure a very good mirrorless cam, but the viewfinder is far from comparable to the one on my 5D4 or 5D3, not even close. It shakes, when you turn the camera a little bit faster, you have anti-aliasing on diagonal lines and that at bright day light in the shop! It must be horrible at low light conditions, even unusable, I guess. No, as long as there is no progress in technology to build an electronic viewfinder comparable to the great view of a professional DSLR, I stay with my DSLR and my EF lenses and loose the advantage of a little bit more light intensity on the lenses. f2/8 isn't to bad for my EF zoom lenses anyway. But maybe OLED technology will make some huge steps forward in the near future. Let's wait and see.
When you used your 5D, what were some objectives (e.g. focus, exposure, FOV, etc...) of the viewfinder?
 
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I got this camera on pre order last week and they sent me an email saying some of the products were back ordered which I understand because of the pre-order. Yesterday night (Tuesday 26) got an email saying my order has shipped so I got excited but they only sent the ef-rf adapter... Ups delivered just that this morning, I mean its fine but they could have waited to ship all at once no problem, cant really use that adapter without the camera. So hopefully yes they have enough stock to send everything else today (Wednesday, 27)
 
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When you used your 5D, what were some objectives (e.g. focus, exposure, FOV, etc...) of the viewfinder?
Difficult to put in words. I still remember when I bought my 5D3 and I first looked through the viewfinder of the camera in the shop. I was impressed. The perfect clarity of what you see. And yes, the FOV, the slight magnification. It enables you to work very precisely with the AF, because you see everything so clear and sharp. The place, where you set the AF focus point is perfectly sharp in the later picture. Even in low light, the viewfinder provides a clear and sharp picture and enables you to precisely position the AF point. The faint light of a star clear in the black sky, no noise from high ISO or flicker.

My favorite vendor who is very experienced and I trust him very much told me, that you can push up the ISO level just in the EVF increase contrast in low light conditions to facilitate AF setting and the picture will be taken with a lower ISO. But he agreed, that the picture you then see in the EVF is pretty similar to heavy snow fall in a stormy winter night. Maybe this really works, but it's simply not neat. It does not give you this nice feeling of perfect control.

Well, maybe I have to look, if I can lend a Sony A7R III somewhere and check it out a few days. From what I have heard, the Canon EOS R is far less capable compared to the Sony A7R III. And you can attach all Canon EF lenses to the Sony A7R III using an adapter. He showed me with my much loved EF 11-24mm f/4L. But it looked a little bit strange, because the lens is quite heavy and much bigger than the camera.
 
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Difficult to put in words. I still remember when I bought my 5D3 and I first looked through the viewfinder of the camera in the shop. I was impressed. The perfect clarity of what you see. And yes, the FOV, the slight magnification. It enables you to work very precisely with the AF, because you see everything so clear and sharp. The place, where you set the AF focus point is perfectly sharp in the later picture. Even in low light, the viewfinder provides a clear and sharp picture and enables you to precisely position the AF point. The faint light of a star clear in the black sky, no noise from high ISO or flicker.

...
One of the advantage to EVF, utilizing the dual-pixel AF technology, is the potential to confirm focus and exposure w/in the image - it's called Focus Peaking and Zebra Stripes. Now, I don't know if that's featured on the R or RP viewfinder or not, but it's on the liveview. This technology will make things a lot easier for beginners to learn pro photography.

If DSLR generated tons of wedding photogs overnight, I bet this RP and R will make it a lot worse.
 
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I don't know the 5D4 but for instance what scenarios does it work in that the R doesn't?

The R has 3-4 parameters to adjust to control AF decision-making (you clearly know this, just mentioning for viewers at home). I haven't looked into them yet but it seems to track kid's soccer melees fine even when my boy is in the middle of the crowd, not nearest subject, and deals with him being obscured a second or two, etc. Coming from a 1DsIII it's a night-and-day improvement. but I gather not the case vs. 5D4?

The 5D4 (and at least the 5D3, I don't remember the 5D2) have multiple AF cases (i.e. symbol for ice skating or running/soccer), and each case has different settings for each of the 3-4 parameters. Some allow AF point switching, and some are more sensitive to erratic movement while others will switch focus slower when an object passes in front of the subject. And each of these cases can be customized. So I tend to use the various AF cases as shortcuts to changing all the settings.

So, when I was trying to get the AF point to follow the subject by switching to another AF point, the R wasn't doing it because I had single point AF selected. Reading the manual later revealed that it is one of the few settings that doesn't accommodate auto AF point switching. With the 5D4, I'd just select a different AF use case that had auto switching enabled and wouldn't have to remember the caveats/limitations of multiple selections.

I didn't find auto point selection subject tracking useful on the 5D4 because it was easily fooled for the kids' soccer where there are multiple subjects that the system could lock onto as opposed to a plane/bird in the sky. I was hoping to test it out on the R to track pinewood derby cars coming down the track toward the camera, but I couldn't figure it out while I was there. So I tilted the camera and zoomed to try and get the shot I wanted as the cars approached, but it would be much easier if the camera could track the cars while I focused on maintaining the framing I wanted.
 
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OK, but these sound exactly like the things the R can be adjusted for. The R doesn't give a "nickname" to a set of parameters but I wonder if it does at least have all the same parameters.

I think the point is that 5D IV will let you save multiple sets of parameters so that you don't need to adjust every setting each time you're shooting in a different scenario. You can just quickly choose a different group of settings.
 
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Don Haines

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The 5D4 (and at least the 5D3, I don't remember the 5D2) have multiple AF cases (i.e. symbol for ice skating or running/soccer), and each case has different settings for each of the 3-4 parameters. Some allow AF point switching, and some are more sensitive to erratic movement while others will switch focus slower when an object passes in front of the subject. And each of these cases can be customized. So I tend to use the various AF cases as shortcuts to changing all the settings.

So, when I was trying to get the AF point to follow the subject by switching to another AF point, the R wasn't doing it because I had single point AF selected. Reading the manual later revealed that it is one of the few settings that doesn't accommodate auto AF point switching. With the 5D4, I'd just select a different AF use case that had auto switching enabled and wouldn't have to remember the caveats/limitations of multiple selections.

I didn't find auto point selection subject tracking useful on the 5D4 because it was easily fooled for the kids' soccer where there are multiple subjects that the system could lock onto as opposed to a plane/bird in the sky. I was hoping to test it out on the R to track pinewood derby cars coming down the track toward the camera, but I couldn't figure it out while I was there. So I tilted the camera and zoomed to try and get the shot I wanted as the cars approached, but it would be much easier if the camera could track the cars while I focused on maintaining the framing I wanted.

One of the things that we should expect from face tracking on a mirrorless camera is for the camera to recognize particular faces. On some of the Olys, you can “load” people into the camera memory and the camera can recognize that person.

Can that be done with the R? It would be great to lock onto a person, have them recognized as “buddy”, and track them as they moved in and out of a crowd, or track a bird as it flies through the forest.... or similar. I suspect that when a higher end R comes out that it will be able to, but what about the R?
 
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One of the things that we should expect from face tracking on a mirrorless camera is for the camera to recognize particular faces. On some of the Olys, you can “load” people into the camera memory and the camera can recognize that person.

Can that be done with the R? It would be great to lock onto a person, have them recognized as “buddy”, and track them as they moved in and out of a crowd, or track a bird as it flies through the forest.... or similar. I suspect that when a higher end R comes out that it will be able to, but what about the R?

No, the R doesn't do that. I tend not to use face tracking all that much because when it can't find a face, it defaults toward the center. I then tap on the person (whose head is hidden) and it keeps on wanting to go back to the center.

Face tracking is more useful for more "portrait" settings where the head is a fair fraction of the frame and the face is often looking towards the camera. With my daughter is snow gear playing on her knees in the snow with a hat pulled over her head, it doesn't work very well.
 
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I'm not saying you're wrong but this isn't my experience. When I lose a face, I get a blue rectangle on the same target--the hair/head, the shirt, etc. Now maybe we get the same success ratio, and my standards of "what works for me" are a bit lower than yours :-D

But you can also tweak 3-4 different factors on the face tracking too, that might get you better success.

Did you try it when the person is partially obstructed by another object or when the subject is smaller in the frame? My daughter was on her hands and knees to build a snowman. I tapped on the her head (her face was not facing the camera), and it gave me a red circle in the region I tapped on. I then half pressed the shutter button and the camera chose to look for points in the center of frame, not in the upper left quadrant where my daughter was. It clearly did not recognize her face because there was no face box. Perhaps it was the size of her relative to the entire frame. What I really don't like is that it starts focusing on the stuff in the center of the frame even though I tried to put the box somewhere else.
 
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I'm an R user and see no reason to ever return to traditional dSLRs. My R is smaller, lighter, cheaper, and has as good or better IQ than the 5Div. Plus the AF is amazing, mounted to my Sigma 150-600mm is a dream come true! I think the RP will be a benchmark product, which is exactly what Canon wants it to be. A true gateway FF and mirrorless. I have no need for one but am glad its out there.

Agreed. Owning the R makes you realize how stupid and compromising that huge mirrorbox space of a DSLR is. Take it from a long time FF DSLR snob. The massive mirror box/flange distance really makes it hard (and costly) to design a lens that performs. It also makes lenses unnecessarily HUGE. As the flange distance gets bigger, the lens gets exponentially larger.
 
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It also makes lenses unnecessarily HUGE. As the flange distance gets bigger, the lens gets exponentially larger.
It seems there are some serious gaps in your understanding of lens design (or minimally, in your understanding of the meaning of the word ‘exponentially’). :rolleyes:
 
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Well not exponentially, but could easily be 4-8x the size. Compare a Leica 35/1.4 with the EF 35/1.4. (I use a Leica 35/1.4 on my R as my main lens now.) The EF is twice as long, and twice as wide and twice as tall making it 8x the volume, and on top of all that it's not even that sharp wide open. (Hilarious coma in the corners.)
Sure, you can cherry pick some examples. So can I...

Leica APO-Summicron-SL 35mm F2 ASPH for Panasonic/Leica MILCs – 102mm (4”) long, weights 720 g (25.4 oz)
Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM for Canon DSLRs – 63 mm (2.5”) long, weighs 335 g (11.8 oz)

The Leica is nearly double the weight, 60% longer, and has 40% more volume (your 8x figure is wrong, unless you’re talking about the boxes the lenses come in...lenses aren’t cubes) and on top of all that it doesn’t even have IS.

And 35mm is a focal length where a shorter flange distance can have a big impact (unlike telephoto designs, for example).
 
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Agreed. Owning the R makes you realize how stupid and compromising that huge mirrorbox space of a DSLR is. Take it from a long time FF DSLR snob. The massive mirror box/flange distance really makes it hard (and costly) to design a lens that performs. It also makes lenses unnecessarily HUGE. As the flange distance gets bigger, the lens gets exponentially larger.
Are you saying that your 16-35 is "exponentially" smaller on your EOS R?
 
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Go review your fifth-grade geometry text: not only cubes but ALL solid figures are 8x more voluminous when doubled in length, depth, and width.
Oops. Then again, I generally don’t refer to cylinder dimensions by height, length and width, but rather by height and diameter.

Your picture is nice, but doesn’t address the main point – a shorter flange focal distance does not automatically mean a smaller lens.
 
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