Canon has launched its most important camera in recent years – the mirrorless EOS R1. started along with 45 megapixel R5 IIit’s the company’s new flagship designed to replace it 1DX Mark III DSLR and helps Canon maintain its leadership in professional sports photography.
The R1 is all about speed, with its stacked sensor allowing 40 fps RAW bursts with continuous autofocus. Other features, including advance shooting, eye-tracking AF and sports-specific settings, are designed to help nail those crucial shots. Meanwhile, it should be great for video, thanks to support for 6K RAW capture.
One potential downside is the 24-megapixel resolution, which is lower than its competitors. Sony A1 and Nikon Z9. I was able to get some hands-on time with the R1 in Phoenix, Arizona to see how this affects image quality and gather some impressions of performance and new features.
While large for a mirrorless camera, the R1 is lighter than it looks—weighing just 2.12 pounds. The magnesium alloy body is dust and water resistant and uses new rubber to reduce slippage in a large, comfortable grip. It’s a stable platform, even with telephoto lenses, and is designed for photographers who work clearly.
The controls are very similar EOS R3, with two control buttons, a back dial, a joystick, a mode switch and lots of customizable buttons. It has compatible vertical controls with the same layout in portrait and landscape modes.
Canon has added a touch-sensitive IR button called a smart controller that offers three ways to adjust autofocus. Overall, the R1 handles like an F1 car – fast and reactive, but with a steep learning curve.
The viewfinder is Canon’s best yet, with 9.44 million dots, 0.9x zoom and 3x brightness, all tops in the EOS range. The rear display fully expresses high and low angle shots.
Canon decided to ditch SD cards in favor of two CFexpress type B slots. This allows for maximum RAW burst speeds, as well as fast and reliable backups, but you’ll be throwing your SD card collection out the window. In contrast, the Sony R1 has dual card slots for both SD UHS II and CFexpress type A.
The R1 uses a variant of the battery from the EOS R3, supporting 650 shots and 70 minutes of 6K video. Connectivity is the best I’ve seen on any Canon camera with Wi-Fi 6E, ethernet, USB-C PD and more.
The R1 is built for action, and suffice to say, it’s fast. In free electronic shooting mode, you can shoot long JPEGs and RAWs at 40fps without filling up the large buffer – Canon promises “1,000 or more” shots when shooting uncompressed RAW and JPEG files. It shoots 12 fps with a mechanical shutter, a feature that Nikon’s rival, the Z9, lacks.
The latter is usually not necessary, as the assembled shutter largely eliminates the distortion of the spring-loaded shutter.
Canon also brings numerous autofocus improvements. With regular single-point tracking, you can change the target with either a joystick or a smart controller. Additionally, the R1 features a new eye tracking system called Eye AF II, an improved version of the R3’s Eye Control AF.
As with the R3, you must first calibrate the Eye AF II. And it won’t necessarily work well for all eye types, but it worked great for me because the tracking box tracked my gaze with less drift than before. It didn’t always translate to sharp photos, but I was still using a pre-production unit.
Of course, the R1 offers face and eye detection for both humans and animals. But what happens if you’re trying to make someone stand out in a crowd of players?
First, there are now AI modes for three specific sports, volleyball, basketball, and soccer. The idea is that the system will help you hit key shots by following the movement around the ball. He also has to stick to the player even in traffic. Finally, you can register up to 10 faces to follow the entire team of athletes.
How well does it work? It’s hard to say in the short time I’ve had the camera, but I haven’t seen a dramatic improvement with chaotic movements or specific sports. But these features take time to master, so a full review will tell me more.
Another new feature that helps professionals not miss shots is the advance continuous shooting seen in many high-end cameras these days. The R1 starts taking photos when you half-press the shutter button, and records up to the last 20 frames after a full press.
Canon has been leading the way in image stabilization since the R5, and the R1 offers a solid 8.5 stops of shake reduction with supported lenses. This isn’t necessarily a huge benefit for action shots, but it does help with landscapes or low-light shots.
Canon probably anticipated complaints about the relatively low 24-megapixel resolution. In response, it introduced a new in-camera feature called zoom. It uses deep learning to quadruple the in-camera resolution to 96 megapixels after shooting, while maintaining visible resolution.
This is different from Sony’s pixel swapping scheme, which takes several separate photos and combines them into one. However, it was difficult to get a straight answer from Canon on exactly how the upgrade works. Obviously, there can be no real resolution increase without adding extra pixels.
Image quality is difficult to judge on pre-production cameras, and Canon has specifically stated that in-camera RAW processing is a work in progress. Still, JPEGs looked sharp out of camera, and the company’s usual excellent skin tones were there.
Low-light image quality is this camera’s selling point, and it performs well at higher ISOs, with decent image quality at ISO 12,800 and above. However, it’s no Sony A7S III at very high ISOs, so the maximum ISO of 102,400 is only for emergency use.
Stacked sensor cameras tend to sacrifice some dynamic range in favor of speed, but the R1 shows no sign of that. However, I need more time to get a full picture of RAW image quality, especially at high ISOs.
Although aimed primarily at photographers, the R1 is potentially a monster video camera in its own right. It lacks the R5 II’s 8K capability, but offers 6K Canon RAW video at 60fps using the full width of the sensor.
You also get full-size full-sensor 4K at 60fps or 4K pixelated or cropped at 120fps. Full HD can be recorded at up to 240fps, either cropped or pixelated. On top of Log 3, Canon’s Log 2 is now supported with 10-bit capture.
Canon has greatly reduced the previous overheating problems, although they have not been completely eliminated. You can record over 120 minutes of 6K 60p RAW with no limit for 4K 30p, as well as 4K 60p proxy recording. The main limitation is 15 minutes for 4K 120p, but this shouldn’t be a problem for most videographers or content creators.
As you’d expect, oversampled 4K 60p and 6K 60p RAW video is sharp. Canon’s RAW video is very easy to work with in post, and the Log 2 setting provides extra dynamic range and width in post.
It will be interesting to see how professional photographers react to Canon’s new flagship. They gain an extra 10 fps in RAW shooting speeds compared to Sony’s A1 and Nikon Z9, and the sensor is solid in low light. The downside is that its competitors offer a half-solution.
Eye AF II is an interesting trick that could give Canon an advantage. Other features like face memory, sports AF and cross-motion look good on paper, but I haven’t been able to get the most out of them in the short time I’ve owned the camera – so further testing is required. The EOS R1 will be available in the fall of 2024 for an estimated price of $6,300.
Canon paid for this contributor’s travel and living expenses for the launch of their new cameras in Phoenix, Arizona. This article was independently prepared for Engadget without the control of Canon.
