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christopherisonphotoblog · 6 years ago

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CANON EOS R - A REAL WORLD REVIEW

If you’re a photographer, amateur or professional, you’ll be fully aware of the ‘mirrorless revolution’. Hey, you may even be a card carrying member of it. I’m not, not yet anyway…

I’ve been a Canon EOS user since 1995 when Canon took the world by storm, introducing the EOS-1 with a new lens mount and incredibly fast AF lenses. I remember at the time that it felt like they’d almost reinvented the wheel, infinitely refined it for sure.

As an editorial and now commercial photographer Canon cameras and lenses have served me extremely well ever since. Over recent months and years however, I’ve been glancing regularly back over my shoulder as competing camera makers have been introducing, developing and refining their mirrorless ranges as Canon appeared, at least, to be ignoring this evolution of the digital genre.

Finally, after ten years of mirrorless, Canon has woken up to the possibilities of mirrorless and is embracing the innovations in lens development made by the removal of the reflex mirror and the pentaprism.

THE DECLARATION OF INTEREST

Canon has always offered excellent and comprehensive professional support which is one reason why I have stayed with the brand and they have kindly leant me an EOS R body, vertical grip, two lenses and a mount adaptor. They are not paying me and I don’t feel beholden to them. I got my hands on the kit for purely selfish reasons, to see if it will help me provide a better product for my clients. Canon haven’t even requested a blog post from me, I do this in the hope that fellow pros considering the same move might be enlightened by what I’ve found out. But I must thank Canon for the no-strings loan 🙌🏻. For the record, this loan included an EOS R body, vertical grip, RF 50mm f1.2 L USM, an RF 24-105mm f4 L USM, a control ring mount adaptor EF-EOS R and a couple of batteries.

So, with that out of the way, here is my real-world, working pro’s review of the Canon EOS-R. (I should add here that this won’t be an exhaustive, in depth, techie review. More a practical one.)

So, IS mirrorless the future??

…is the question I’ve been pondering for about 12 months now. Is the grass greener on that side of the photographic fence?

THE ASSIGNMENT

I was commissioned by the Kennel Club to shoot Crufts this year, the premier, world famous dog show held in Birmingham, UK.

Now, I’ve not shot Crufts since 1993, back in my Leica film days (also called the R series coincidentally); so this was an exciting prospect. I packed my newly acquired kit and EOS 5D mark4 and EOS 5D mark3 and headed northward to the NEC.

OVERVIEW AND INITIAL THOUGHTS - (But not conclusions. Keep reading for those…)

I didn’t have long to familiarise myself with the camera before getting stuck in to the four day assignment, but I’d had a day playing with a pre-production model before the R was released to market and as a long-term Canon user I was able to follow my nose and manage the settings as per my 5D. This got me somewhere close to ready without much trouble. There were one or two hiccups, but Canon put me straight pdq. 💪🏻

One of my main concerns with mirrorless has been the electronic viewfinders. I tried a fuji about five years ago and knew instantly we would never be friends. However, EVF technology has come leaps and bounds in the intervening years and this one is impressive. I had fully expected this to be a barrier but instead I was able to work, almost, without thinking about it.

In the hand, the camera isn’t too small but actually sits better in portrait orientation when the vertical grip is attached. There is more space if using an EF lens with the EF/RF mount adaptor fixed. I actually found this to be a benefit rather than an encumbrance.

An unexpected feature I instantly fell in love with was within the viewfinder. When shooting vertically, all the active, digital readings automatically migrate to the bottom of the viewfinder; fantastic for usability! (Unfortunately, the Canon manual doesn’t feature a picture of this and I didn’t want to steal one from another reviewer.)

I was intrigued by the silent shutter operation but initially was unable to activate it without consulting the manual - partial fail on my part but Canon do make you jump through a number of hoops in order to facilitate its use. Users must de-activate anti-flicker, activate one-shot, then switch to silent. Frustratingly, when an option is inactive and the user selects it you get a message that hints at why and then you have to hunt around to deactivate whatever is causing the problem. I think this information could have been more specific at times in order to speed up the problem solving pathway.

There are two control wheels on the top of the camera for index finger and thumb which are well positioned, the thumb one however turns the wrong way IMHO. The direction can be reversed but only as a pair, not independently of each other.

As someone who is constantly altering my af point locations, I really liked the ability to move the af point with my thumb on the back screen without taking my eye from the viewfinder, and to almost anywhere within the frame; only narrow strips up the left and right of the frame where off-limits. I did find that this facility sometimes dictated my composition of an image. Occasionally, when shooting in a rush (of course) I found the sensitivity of the contact lacking, but I’m open to this possibly being down to ‘operator error.’ 🤷🏼‍♂️

I found the zoom ring of the RF24-105mm f4L I’d been loaned was really quite stiff which caused instability during use. Also, it’s a very compact lens with the zoom close to the mount (difficult for us with big hands) and the fact that the zoom and focus rings are adjacent without any space between them at-all makes it all a bit fiddly.

The manual function slide bar - what to say? 🤔 No comprendo just about covers it

I’ve always felt that no matter how much you study about your equipment, you only get a true understanding of its capabilities when the rubber hits the road. How does it rate in those pressure-cooker moments; well or under-par? Plot spoiler alert - this camera was both…

Firstly, and fundamentally, there were times when I thought the camera was switched on when, in fact it wasn’t! This may sound stupid but the top display continues to show the shooting mode the camera is set to even when switched off, exactly the same as when it’s gone to sleep while switched on - I found this confusing; when it’s off, it should appear to be off, no!?!

Furthermore, when it’s asleep and the user raises to camera to the eye, it takes a good three seconds from touching the shutter to actually activating/waking. There were times when I either thought there was a fault or I thought the camera was off (see above) resulting in me missing the picture.

Bringing back some positivity, I absolutely loved the exposure simulation in the evf, it saved me valuable time and offered me confidence in those pressured moments. I realised after the assignment that I’d shot the whole event in manual mode. I shoot manual often, but not 100% of the time. I put this down to this feature alone. Ironic though, that all this technology available facilitates shooting in manual.

As mentioned previously, I fully exploited using the thumb selection for the focus points, however… that function regularly went awry… I was wearing the R as a third body and because it was the lightest, I wore it necklace style. There were numerous occasions when I would lift the camera to me eye only to find the focus point way up in the top left of the frame…Aaaargh! More shots missed. I can only assume that my belly was selecting the af point while i shot with one of my other bodies. The af point can be re-centred by pressing the trash button but this is very awkward to hit quickly. I reprogrammed the star button to do the job. When using this method of focussing, a note appears briefly in the evf reminding you that the trash button has this function, even after assigning this function to a different button. I found this annoying to be told repeatedly and would have liked to switch these notifications off but I haven’t worked out how.

On a less techie note, I found the back caps for the lenses well engineered and snug fitting - a little too much actually. The EF lens back-caps can fit in two ways, but the RF only fits the one way and is very precise. Much of my Crufts was spent shooting in low light and so lining up the caps and changing lenses was an issue. If I buy an R I’ll certainly be pimping the caps with luminous stickers or paint spots to help me out. The red alignment marks on the lenses are also fairly minimalistic in comparison to the EF versions.

I had a gremlin in the body I was using. On several occasions the two control wheels locked up even thought he button lock wasn’t’t active. It was resolved by switching the camera off and back on only. This was annoying but I must say I do find the on/off switch satisfying and positive to operate.

AF AND LENSES

Generally, I found the AF pretty good but it did have major problems finding focus on dark and low contrast subjects. On several occasions with black dogs I literally gave up and had to use a 5D to get the picture - far from ideal! Bearing this in mind I wasn’t confident of using it for fast moving dogs, but I was proved wrong. The dogs competing in the Flyball competition were unbelievably fast (pic below), but largely, the R kept up, certainly better than the 5D.

I have a couple of tse lenses which I wanted to test with the R because optical viewfinders cause errors. Using them with the R was a revelation. When working in manual focus, the R offers the user an MF assist system. This took all the guess-work out of accurate manual focus...

The stiffness of the zoom ring on the 24-105mm continued to frustrate me throughout but on the up side it’s an excellent standard lens and sharp at both ends and across the frame.

Similarly, the RF 50mm is razor sharp, even wide open. What I was surprised about was the bokeh, or rather lack of it at f1.2. I preferred the optical qualities of my older 35 and 85 which brings me on to another reason for my interest in mirrorless - can I extend the life of my existing suite of lenses?? And the answer appears to be an emphatic Yes! Any Canon user who owns fast prime lenses (with max apertures above f2.8) will be aware of the front/back focussing problems going right back to the original EOS-1D 20 years ago. Well, I’m pleased to report that there are no such issues with the R; precise focussing, wide open on my existing EF lenses and no need to send them back to Elstree to get recalibrated to the bodies. Hurrah!!

Each day I was assigned to shoot some behind the scenes pictures with presenter Clare Balding in the Channel 4 studio on site. The R was perfect for this, the silent shutter working faultlessly and the processor dealing with the studio lights comfortably. On a separate occasion testing the shutter under fluorescent lights, I was left with horizontal stripes on the image, but I could see this clearly in the evf as I was shooting.

TOUCHSCREEN AND EVF

The screen is excellent. I did use it to select focus points with my thumb while shooting (I might have mentioned this already 😂) and occasionally felt it was slow to keep up and imprecise, but this could have been down to my lack of practice and poor implementation in those frantic moments. Time will tell on the this - the jury’s still out.

I persuaded security at the arena to allow me access into the catwalk. This is the roof space high above the arena out of bounds to the public. The articulating screen came in very handy when I was shooting top down.

Holding the camera out over the side of the suspended walkway, I composed with the angled finder and fired via the Touch Shutter. This gave me a far better view than without either facility.

My only issues with the design is that the screen doesn’t open fully, so as to be in-line with the back of the camera, instead it is about two degrees off. This makes shooting as described above feel odd, as though you’re pointing the lens at the wrong spot or wrong angle.

I couldn’t help thinking that both the open screen and the door to the SD card slot were quite vulnerable to damage and could easily get broken. Longevity of the tools is always a concern, particularly for the non-studio based professionals. Over time, the kit needs to take a beating.

As I think i mentioned previously, I was reluctant about working with an evf. However, it is very good in the R and generally it’s not an obstacle to working. The only issue I had was the occasional lag when working quickly. When shooting, re-composing and/or zooming there is a noticeable ‘jumping’ of the rendered image which can be disconcerting and result in you being in the wrong place for the next shot because it makes the user think they’ve not zoomed enough or changed angle enough when, actually, you’ve overcompensated because you’ve been misled by the evf lag.

FLASH

I use Profoto A1 heads now, not Canon Speedlites and I only used them briefly on two occasions during the course of Crufts. They worked as well as they do on the 5D bodies. So no issues there.

WORKFLOW

The back of the camera lacks the now familiar joystick and thumb-wheels which I did miss. For instance - I will occasionally need to whizz back through the playback to show a client an image and this isn’t possible without the wheel on the R. Reviewing the images on the back of the camera with the direction keys was painfully slow, and flipping through via the touch-screen slower again. However, and this kind of illustrates the dichotomy of the R, I found reviewing images in the evf really useful, particularly as a wearer of spectacles rapidly approaching a bi-focal world!

In the fast version of my workflow, when I need to supply images to tight a deadline, I will tag images in camera in order to locate and edit them quickly. But, for some strange reason, the tags weren’t appearing in Photomechanic. I’ve yet to resolve this issue.

I edit mainly in Lightroom and I was surprised to discover the Adobe has not yet added lens correction profile support for the RF range of lenses. That said, images didn’t seem to need it.

CONCLUSIONS

The EOS R is a very capable camera, but not the finished article yet. I think everyone including Canon accept that. It does sit alongside the DSLR bodies and I’d be happy to get this or the next iteration to complement my system set-up. It has capabilities beyond what a DSLR can do but also short comings.

Using the R is comparable to shooting via a highly refined, elevated live-view function on the back of a Canon DSLR. Because of this, it’s feels like ‘Digital Plus’ has arrived and traditionalists will probably not like its innovations I suspect.

Positives

Attractively priced

Crisp images straight out of camera

It’s light-weight and nicely balanced in the hand

Vertically visible meter readings in the evf.

Very customisable

Familiar usability for existing EOS users

Exciting lens developments coming as a result of the new mount and loss of the mirror.

Accurate focusing with fast prime lenses without the need for calibrating.

Negatives

I didn’t take the time to try to understand the slide bar and as it doesn’t feature on the newer RP I wonder if Canon think it an innovation too far.

It can be frustratingly slow to react, particularly from sleep and some af functions.