What do you get when you take an excellent photo camera,
add important improvements to the video functionality
over the previous release, and then market it terribly
focusing on novelty features that don't perform reliably?
You get the Canon EOS R5 and, to a lesser extent, the R6.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone, and you're now manually breathing.
Alright, this video's gonna be a little different than my others.
I want to focus on the user here and make sure
the right people are buying these cameras,
because for the correct customers, these cameras
give a wonderful result and handling experience.
But for the wrong customer, they're incredibly frustrating,
borderline useless devices.
And I blame a lot of this on the initial marketing
and the specs that were highlighted early.
But before we get into that, a couple of disclosures.
First off, these are full production cameras.
And they were lent to me by Canon
just for the duration of this review.
I also borrowed some accoutrements
from Camera Canada to help with my review.
That's a retailer that I highly recommend if you're Canadian
and looking for some Canon gear.
This video is not endorsed by Canon,
and they do not get to see it before I publish.
However, this video does have a sponsor, Storyblocks.
But rather than just cut to a normal sponsor read,
let's record it on these cameras
so we can see how they sound.
[light scratching sound]
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OK, so let's start with what these cameras are not
and then move into what they do extremely well.
These are not video production workhorses.
At least not in any of the exciting new modes.
Armando Ferreira made a great video about this,
but basically, do not buy this camera thinking
you're getting an 8K video camera.
Not only is the storage and post production not optimized
for that on this camera, but it'll quickly overheat
and then become increasingly difficult to use.
I've spent nearly 40 hours
thoroughly testing the record times
in each mode on both the R5 and the R6
to see how long they last before overheating.
Feel free to pause the video here to examine this table
but this only tells part of the story.
First off, one thing I'm quite pleased with
is how accurate Canon was when they released
their own overheating table.
It's pretty similar to the results I got
when in a similar environment to their testing.
But it's also the same as when I did my tests in a 16°C room
and when I did them in a 32°C outdoor environment.
So, I like how consistent the camera is in this regard
and that it doesn't seem to be impacted by ambient temperature
much, but that also leads to its biggest flaw.
You can't improve your cool-down times.
I've tried taking the lens off, memory cards out, battery out,
leaving all the ports open and blowing an air conditioner on it
at full blast and it still took two hours to recover completely.
So, there's nothing you're going to be able to do on set
to get your precious record minutes back other than to wait.
And that can mean upwards of 20 minutes,
just to get a few minutes of record time back
in the oversampled or high frame rate modes.
And I did this test on a tripod, on a metal slab,
with a battery grip on the camera, using a dummy battery,
and also even without having a lens installed
and nothing made a noticeable difference.
And this problem persists beyond just internal recording.
If you record externally to an Atomos, you'll extend your time
by about 50%, but it will still shut down to overheating
even if you turn on every single
power saving feature on the camera.
And, the same is even true
if you're just taking pictures with the camera.
If you like to mix some photo and video,
make sure you do the video first,
because after you've shot photos for about an hour,
you'll likely be unable to shoot any of the oversampled
or high frame rate video
because the camera builds up heat just from being on.
Now, there was one surprising
but positive result to my testing.
On the R5, the 4K60 full readout mode
didn't overheat when recorded externally.
So this is good news for people who do long-form
60p content like live streaming or event work.
The R6, however, cannot make the same claim
as all of its 4K60 modes are heat-limited.
The R6 can be used externally at 4K24, though,
without overheating issues.
This will give you a nice 5.1K oversampled image as well,
making it the best choice for unencumbered
24p video recording.
Also, I should specify that these results are the same
if you switch to PAL timings,
so 25, 30p and 24p are all the same,
and then 50p and 60p are the same as well.
Now, the R5's non-HQ modes do not overheat internally
or externally, except for the 4K60,
which is heat-limited internally,
but be mindful of the 4K60 crop mode on the R5.
Activating the crop on the R5
takes you out of the full-frame line skipped mode
and puts you into a 5.1K oversample mode with a crop,
so you get similar image fidelity to the R6
unless your record times are lowered in 4K60 with a crop.
The R5 can also do 4K24 in that 5.1K cropped, oversampled mode
without overheating issues,
but considering that the camera costs a lot more than the R6,
and to get that result, you need to switch to an APS-C crop,
it seems like the worse option
compared to shooting full-frame externally on the R6.
Also, let's talk a bit about that non-HQ
line skipped option on the R5.
From what I can gather, it's not truly line skipped,
but it also isn't a nice pixel binned readout either.
It's some new combination of the two
with a very subtle AA filter.
When I first read that, I thought, why would you put
an AA filter on a 45 megapixel camera?
Seems like a good way to make your photos
worse right out the gate.
Luckily, it didn't ruin the photo mode
and the camera produces incredibly sharp images,
but you can definitely see why they included the AA filter
when you look at the line skipped video.
It's better than some of the line skipping we've seen
in the past and it's a little better than the EOS R as well,
but it's not perfect.
It's noticeably softer than the 4KHQ
or even the 5.1K oversampled mode.
It also suffers from issues we'd normally see
with line skipping, like increased noise
and reduced clarity in areas with tight patterns
resulting in moiré,
stair-stepping and unwanted artifacts.
And I found, when I compared it to the a7S III,
that the line skipped Canon was noticeably softer
than even your basic 1:1 4K readout on the Sony
and substantially softer than the 5.1K modes on the R6,
which unfortunately means that the only camera from Canon
that has unlimited 4K60 externally,
the R5, is also the camera with the worst 4K60 image.
Now, as Armando illustrated, if you have a scene that's free
of problem areas, you can pull off some very nice shots
even when shooting in this line skipped mode,
but it's certainly not as versatile and not something
you'd want to pay big money for in a video camera.
Then, there's also the issue of dynamic range.
It's not great, but again, surprisingly consistent,
and pretty much every mode on both of these cameras,
the best you can get is around 11 stops,
and that's only when using C-Log.
This score places it below most cameras you could
consider competition- the Blackmagic Pocket,
Fuji XT3 and XT4, Sony a7 III, etc.
In fact, it's pretty much the same dynamic range as the EOS R,
which wasn't very good and it's vastly below the dynamic range
of something I'd brand as a video camera,
like the C300 and C500, or even the new Sony a7S III,
which all get you closer to 13 clean stops,
and we're not talking about visible stops
or advertised stops, but actually measured,
usably clean stops.
Now, the reason why these results are so consistent
on these Canons is because of Canon Log 1.
That log curve is limited in dynamic range
right out the gate.
I've heard rumours of Canon possibly adding
CLog3 to these cameras, so I decided to test out
some theoretical advantages we could see with that.
First, I shot 8K raw on the R5,
which can be changed to CLog3 in post.
Doing that gained about 2/3rd of a stop
which brought it more in line
with those other mirrorless cameras I mentioned earlier.
Then, I took some raw photos, which have more dynamic range
than CLog and attempted to create a few curves
that I thought would give us some conservative
projections for possible video dynamic range
based on CLog2 and CLog3 curves.
I got around the high-11s to eventually 12 stops flat
with one of my tests.
So, while we currently have mediocre dynamic range,
it's possible we could achieve a noticeably better result
if Canon put some better profiles on these cameras.
Another area where the 8K and 4K HQ modes suffer
is in rolling shutter.
Now, to be honest, it's not terrible even in 8K.
Again, it's definitely worse than what you'd want
from a workhorse video camera, but it's noticeably better
than the older Sony a7 III,
which has problematic rolling shutter.
But, you do see an improvement
when cropping or switching to the line skipped modes.
You get results closer to, but not quite as good as,
the Sony a7S III which is decent
and above the threshold of concern in my opinion.
And since we're comparing cameras,
it's important to realize that overheating,
in and of itself, isn't the issue.
Other cameras overheat.
I've seen videos showing the a7S III overheat
in certain conditions as well.
I couldn't get my Sony sample to overheat
doing the same tests I did on the Canon,
despite trying for hours and hours
to get the Sony to overheat,
but again, that's not the key issue here.
The big issue is recovery times.
I don't want people to see my table of record times and say,
"I'm fine, I only need to record ten minutes at a time anyway."
You need to keep in mind that on other cameras,
you can turn it off for a couple of minutes,
and then you're back in business.
On the Canons, even if you turn it off for 20 minutes,
you likely won't get your ten minutes back
and you'll look like a complete fool if you have a client,
a team or talent waiting for your camera to cool off
for 30-40 minute periods.
And also, consider setting up shots, the only way to get
these cameras to cool down is to have them off.
That means no framing up the next shot,
no checking focus,
no monitor to check for blocking, nothing.
You can't do anything between recordings, just sit and wait.
Or, switch to one of the non-oversampled,
non-high frame rate modes that aren't limited by heat,
but keep in mind that switching to those modes
will not help you recover from overheating.
You're still going to need to turn the camera off
to use 4KHQ again.
So, you can immediately switch
to the line skipped mode and start rolling again,
but you never will be able to switch back to 4KHQ
unless you turn the camera off for, like, half an hour.
Okay, hopefully I've driven that point home well enough.
I just don't want anybody spending money
for the wrong reasons.
I think, in the marketing for these cameras,
too much emphasis was put on how many Ks they have
or how many megapixels, and this is something
we on social media need to do better
to manage our excitement for as well.
As we've seen with the R5,
8K doesn't necessarily mean anything good.
There's phones that do 8K, and they look like garbage,
and ARRI teaches us that resolution isn't everything.
It's disappointing how many responses I saw
on the Sony a7S III focused on 12 megapixels,
or as The Verge obtusely put it, "A camera that doesn't do 8K."
Those numbers mean very little when it comes to image quality
and performance and we need to remember that
when companies push products so that we can reward
the features that do matter.
Otherwise, they're going to keep trying to drive sales
by making unstable cameras with too much resolution.
Now, let's shift gears to some lesser talked about
aspects that Canon has done right on these cameras.
If you think of these cameras from the perspective
of a customer who already has Canon Glass and is looking for
an upgrade over the EOS R, these cameras have you covered.
Unlike the EOS R, these now shoot full-frame 4K
with slightly better detail in line skipped modes
and without that absurd 1.8 times crop.
They now have Zebras and better ergonomics by bringing
back the joystick in place of that annoying Touch Bar.
The rear dial is now a proper wheel,
like classic Canon, instead of a D-pad
and the buttons are easy to reach
with smaller thumb movements.
And the autofocus is a lot better.
The EOS R only had the option
to turn the video autofocus on or off
and the detection algorithm often misidentified objects
and it wasn't too sticky.
Well, the R5 and R6 have way better face and eye detection
that is very reliable and you can now also control
the speed and responsiveness to a similar degree
as you can on the C300 Mark III and C500 Mark II,
which is incredibly useful if you rely on autofocus.
Collectively, these are huge upgrades to the EOS R
and these are what Canon should have been focusing on.
They're not perfect, of course.
There's a bunch of things that I think still needs work,
for example, the 4K120 Mode on the R5 is half-baked.
It's only available as in-camera slow motion,
and you can't change the sub-frame rate.
It'll only produce a 30p 25% speed file with no sound,
but it does have autofocus, which is nice.
The white balance tool is still abysmal.
The only way to set a custom white balance for these in video
is to switch the camera to photo mode,
take a picture of your target, then switch back to video
to scan the image and apply the custom white balance.
And since white balance is so crucial
to getting a good image,
this desperately needs an update.
You can still only see your remaining
battery life percentage by going to a specific page in the menu.
I'd much rather see this right beside the battery icon.
Speaking of battery life, I've actually gotten
completely different experiences out of these two cameras.
On the R6, I've been getting about an hour
and 45 minutes of 4K24 on full charge with the new batteries,
but disappointing performance from the USB-C port.
You can use it to charge the batteries,
but using it to keep the battery charged
while running is not very effective.
It does extend your runtime but I was still losing
about 20% battery life every 30 minutes.
On the R5, not only was the battery life better
out of the gate, giving me just over two hours
on a full charge, which was surprising
considering it has higher resolution displays,
the top LCD and more intense recording modes,
but the USB-C performance was stellar.
I only lost 1% battery after an hour
with USB-C power delivery connected to the R5.
Now, I'm not sure if my R6 is defective,
but I made sure every setting in the menu was identical
and again, these are both full production cameras.
Also, neither camera can run on just USB power alone.
I wasn't expecting them to,
but you guys often ask me about that in the comments.
They still need the batteries installed,
but I'm happy to report that using USB-C
does not seem to negatively impact your overheating times
in any noticeable way.
Another minor disappointment was the new IBIS system.
Now, I will admit that it works really well for photos and
I'd much rather have it in its current form than have nothing
like in the EOS R, but there are some quirks to work out.
Most people already know that it has a warpy-wobbly problem
in the corners, but you should also be careful to turn it off
when using a tripod, or possibly even a gimbal.
Something I noticed is that when you change record modes,
power cycle the camera or even open the card door,
the IBIS will shift the image in a way
that can actually kill your framing or possibly
even rotate your image to unlevel your horizon.
And, control over this function is limited
when using an RF lens with stabilization
because the camera removes the menu option
and instead diverts control to the lens selector switch
which is not sufficient in choosing the best
stabilization method for the job at hand.
I think they might be adding this option in firmware,
so hopefully that addresses that.
Again, I'd rather have IBIS than no IBIS
and this is still an important upgrade over the EOS R,
but I just think there's some growing pains to work out
before I can be too excited about this feature.
But, I still really enjoy manually focusing
with these Canon cameras.
You have the option to make your RF lenses linear
in response and Canon's focus guide is terrific.
Now, I don't want to talk too much about colour,
because one, I'm someone who thinks that
"Canon colour science" is one of the most misunderstood
and overhyped terms in this game,
but also, colour is so subjective
that it's borderline pointless to review.
All we can ever truly evaluate is accuracy,
not what you might find personally pleasing.
That being said, some of the full contrast profiles
on these Canon cameras are not very colour accurate,
so if you want the best colour
you can get out of these cameras,
choose Log and then set the matrix to Neutral.
If you do this, there's a lot provided by Canon
that you can download from the EOS R support page
that will give you extremely accurate colour
with nice gradations and your final result will look better
now that these cameras can do 10-bit internal
when shooting log;
another way that they're a major upgrade over the EOS R.
So basically, don't shoot Canon standard
or something similar if you don't have to.
It's 8-bit with inaccurate colour.
Shoot Canon log with a neutral matrix
for 10-bit with good colour.
And now, with two sets of zebras,
it's quite easy to expose your Canon log on these cameras
versus the EOS R as well.
You can place one set of Zebras at 95%,
which is a good clipping point indicator
for overexposure with Canon log and set the other to 35%
+/-5 to help expose for middle grey.
The last aspect of image quality I want to touch on is noise.
Both of these cameras very usable and improved
over the EOS R, but it'll depend on which mode you're in.
The oversampled images have better noise performance
than the non-oversampled modes,
so the modes that don't overheat have worse noise,
but I still think you can get up to ISO 6400
without much concern.
However, even though the distance is probably smaller
than people would have hoped,
the R6 is a bit cleaner than the R5
when comparing their corresponding oversampled modes,
but the R5 is a tad sharper,
unless you put the R5 in cropped mode,
in which case it matches the R6
except for the fact that it's cropped.
So, I'd say the sweet spot on these cameras is that
5.1K oversampled mode which balances a detailed image
with a good signal-to-noise ratio and allowing
for unlimited external recording in certain frame rates.
Now, I want to focus a bit more on the internal
and external file acquisition.
Something that might seem like an advantage over the EOS R
is that these cameras now have dual card slots
and for photography, it certainly is an advantage.
You can write to both cards simultaneously for backup,
but you can't do this in video.
You can't do it on the R5 even when recording in a mode
that both cards are fast enough for
and you can't do it on the R6
even though both card slots are the same.
You also can't record both internally and externally
at the same time on the R6, but you can on the R5,
but there are some things to be mindful of when doing this.
There's two HDMI output options.
You can either put everything on the external display
including menus and onscreen info
or you can keep your LCD going and just put out a clean feed
to the external recorder.
Doing the clean feed route
disables the overheat control function because it assumes
you want to capture the highest quality image possible,
but this makes the camera heat up faster.
And, if you press Menu on the camera,
the menu still shows up on the external clean feed.
This makes no sense.
This means you could potentially ruin your take
if you accidentally press menu on the camera,
because it will replace your subject with a big,
fat menu screen in the external recording.
And, when recording internally, these cameras still have that
30 minute time limit even though I though the taxation or law
that required that has been abolished
and that shouldn't be on new cameras,
maybe I'm mistaken on that, though?
But either way, 30 minute record limits are lame.
So, effectively, these cameras are still
single card slot cameras for video and they still have
the 30 minute limit when recording internally.
And the advantage I mentioned earlier
about Log giving you 10-bit internally,
unfortunately forces you to use H.265 even if shooting ALL-I,
which means you're going to require transcoding,
because editing these files is not smooth at all,
which is disappointing because one of the main advantages
of All-Intra codecs is smoother editing performance.
I also hate that the very act of opening the card door
seems to turn off the camera,
so relay recording is not an option,
and as I mentioned earlier, depending on your settings,
opening the card door can change your focus,
move your IBIS around
and even shut off your external recording.
But something that I get asked about a lot
when it comes to codecs, All-Intra,
internal vs. external, etc. is is there a quality difference?
The answer is no.
Up to 4K60, it doesn't really matter whether you record
internally or externally or whether you choose
IPB or ALL-I, you're going to get pretty much
exactly the same dynamic range, colour, noise and sharpness.
The only time it changes is if you change from oversampled
to not or to cropped, as we mentioned earlier.
There's also two little bug reports that I want to make.
The first one is that my clock doesn't seem to work
correctly on the R5.
The recording time in metadata always seems to be
one hour ahead of my camera clock.
I've tried changing time zones,
turning daylight savings time on and off,
it doesn't seem to matter.
The second one is that sometimes my ISO changes
when swapping batteries.
This is weird and intermittent but perhaps Canon
can try and reproduce it and fix it in future firmware.
Something quirky I really like about these cameras, though,
is that you can set your f-stop adjustment to smaller increments
down to 1/8th stops and then you can assign that
to be your lens control ring on the RF lenses
which really makes it feel like you have a precision
iris adjustment like on a cine lens.
The only drawback is that these control rings are clicked,
but apparently Canon offers a service to declick that ring
for you if you want, so you really could get a smooth,
precise iris control on these RF lenses.
Fun feature.
Now, when it comes to audio, while it's annoying that Canon
doesn't offer any kind of XLR module for these cameras,
I do like that they've included a built-in attenuator that
allows me to feed the line-level signal from my Zoom F6
right into the camera which is what you heard
during the Storyblocks segment at the beginning of the video.
I think in terms of mirrorless camera preamps,
it offers a good, clean sound
and I like that it offers uncompressed,
linear PCM as a recording option.
My only gripe would be that when monitoring with headphones,
I don't like how it mutes and unmutes the headphones
as you navigate the different sections of the menu.
I'd prefer that they just kept the headphones
monitoring the entire time.
It would be more useful and less jarring when they turn back on.
But, both cameras have a mic and a headphone jack and overall,
I'm happy with the audio quality and functionality.
Okay, regarding photography, these days I don't fancy myself
much of a photographer, but it wasn't that long ago
my partner and I ran a sports photography business
that used Canon cameras.
I can tell you this.
Having either of these cameras then
would have been an absolute dream.
I literally have nothing to say about these cameras
from a photographic capability standpoint.
And, as someone who naturally finds problems with everything,
take that to mean the highest praise.
The R5 easily trades blows with the Sony a7R IV,
which I called the best photo camera for the money.
These Canons are fun to use, offer great handling,
have terrific lenses, focus reliably.
They're just fantastic.
When the EOS R came out,
you had a decision to make between it and the 5D Mark IV
and in many ways, the DSLR was better.
With these two cameras, there's no decision to make anymore.
They're better than the EOS R and they're better
than pretty much every other Canon camera,
save for maybe the 1DX Mark III,
but it looks like the R6 might even be using the same sensor
as the 1DX Mark III,
so you really are getting Canon's best here.
Of course, if you're all about photography
and can afford the bigger price tag,
the R5 is the better camera.
It drives just as fast as the R6
but with more detailed images,
a nicer LCD screen and a higher resolution Viewfinder
and a lot of the complaints that I made about video
don't carry over when you toggle to photo mode.
Now, you do have two card slots.
Now, your IBIS is very good.
I was getting four to five stops of improvements
on an 85mm manual lens and although taking photo
affects your video record time due to heat,
I couldn't get the camera to overheat
while in photo mode.
So, I don't think that will be an issue
even if you firing high bursts for long durations.
Okay, so when you put all of this together,
I think it paints a clear picture of how these cameras
should have been positioned and who should buy them.
If you have Canon Glass and you want a quality
mirrorless body for photography, buy these cameras.
If you have the money, buy the R5 specifically
but don't be worried about the R6, it's great too.
Are you a hybrid Canon shooter?
And you're happy with the quality of the EOS R,
you just wish it wasn't cropped in 4K
and had more refined controls for video or 10-bit colour?
Buy these cameras.
They fix all of your concerns.
Are you mainly video focused but prefer to stick with Canon
and just want a nice 24p,
4K image without time or heat limitations?
Get the R6 with an Atomos Ninja V.
You can record oversampled 4K up to 30fps without limits.
If, however, you need unlimited 4K up to 60fps
and still want to stick with Canon,
and you don't care if the image is line skipped,
get the R5 with an Atomos Ninja V.
You can record the regular 4K on that camera
up to 4K60 without limits externally.
Do you need 8K?
Do not buy these cameras.
Do you need high quality 4K
without limit at high frame rates?
Do not buy these cameras.
Do you need a video camera
that can excel without an external recorder?
Do not buy these cameras.
And is dynamic range more important to you
than resolution or ergonomics?
Do not buy these cameras.
For the last three points,
I would recommend either a Canon cinema camera
like the C300 Mark III or C500 Mark II
or the Sony a7S III.
In the end, I don't really care which brand you go with
or what camera you buy as long as you're happy with it.
What I do care about is you buying the wrong camera
because of bad marketing wasting your hard-earned money
and feeling stuck in a system that isn't doing what you need,
and so I hope this video helps
prevent that from happening to you.
But that's going to be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining
or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.