Canon R1 hands-on: Incredible speed but 24MP resolution may disappoint
Canon has unveiled its most important camera in years - the EOS R1 mirrorless. Launched alongside the 45-megapixel R5 II, it's the company's new flagship designed to replace the 1DX Mark III DSLR and help Canon maintain its leadership in the pro sports photography field.
The R1 is all about speed, with the stacked sensor allowing 40 fps RAW bursts with continuous autofocus. Other features are designed to help nail crucial shots, including pre-capture, eye-tracking AF and sports-specific settings. At the same time, it should be great for video, thanks to its support for 6K RAW capture.
One potential downside is the 24-megapixel resolution, which is lower than rivals like Sony's A1 and the Nikon Z9. To see how that affected image quality and gather some impressions on performance and new features, I was able to get a short amount of hands-on time with the R1 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Though massive for a mirrorless camera, the R1 is lighter than it looks - it only weighs 2.12 pounds. The magnesium alloy body is dust- and water-resistant and the large, comfortable grip uses new rubber to reduce slippage. It's a stable platform, even with telephoto lenses, and was clearly designed for working photographers.
Controls are laid out much like the EOS R3, with two control dials, a rear dial, joystick, mode switch and many customizable buttons. It has matching vertical controls, with the same layout in portrait and landscape modes.
Canon did add a touch-sensitive IR button called the smart controller, which offers three ways to adjust autofocus. Overall, the R1 handles like an F1 car - fast and reactive, but there's a steep learning curve.
The viewfinder is Canon's best yet with 9.44 million dots, 0.9 times magnification and 3x brightness, all tops in the EOS series. The rear display fully articulates for high- and low-angle shooting.
Canon decided to ditch SD cards in favor of two CFexpress type B slots. That allows for maximum RAW burst speeds, as well as fast and reliable backups, but you'll end up throwing your SD card collection out the window. By contrast, Sony's 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 that supports up to 650 shots and 70 minutes of 6K video on a charge. 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 blackout free electronic shutter mode, you can shoot JPEG and RAW frames at up to 40 fps for a long while before the massive buffer fills - with Canon promising "1,000 or more" shots when shooting uncompressed RAW and JPEG files. It hits 12 fps with the mechanical shutter, a feature missing on Nikon's rival Z9.
The latter isn't usually necessary, though, as the stacked shutter largely eliminates rolling shutter distortion.
Canon is bringing numerous autofocus improvements as well. With regular single-point tracking, you can change the target with either the joystick or smart controller. In addition, the R1 has a new eye-tracking system called Eye AF II, a more sophisticated version of its Eye Control AF from the R3.
As with the R3, you must calibrate Eye AF II first. And it won't necessarily function well for all eye types, but it worked great for me, as the tracking box followed my gaze with less drift than before. That didn't always translate to sharp photos, but again, I was 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 single out someone in a crowd of players?
First off, there are now AI modes for three specific sports, volleyball, basketball and soccer. The idea is that the system will track action around the ball to help you nail key shots. It's also supposed to stay locked on a player even in traffic. Finally, you can register up to 10 faces to keep track of a whole team of athletes.
How well does this work? It's hard to say in the short time I had the camera, but I didn't notice a dramatic improvement with chaotic action or specific sports. But these features require time to master, so a full review will tell me more.
Another new feature to help pros avoid missing shots is pre-continuous shooting, something that's seen on many high-end cameras these days. The R1 starts taking photos when you half-press the shutter button, recording up to the last 20 frames once it's fully pressed.
Canon has led 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 great benefit for action shooting, but it does help with landscapes or low-light shooting.
Canon likely anticipated complaints about the relatively low 24-megapixel resolution. In response, it unveiled a new feature called in-camera upscaling. It uses deep learning to quadruple image size to 96 megapixels in-camera after shooting, supposedly while maintaining apparent resolution.
This is different from Sony's pixel-shift scheme that takes multiple separate photos and merges them into one. However, it was hard to get a straight answer from Canon as to how exactly the upscaling works. Obviously, it can't be a true resolution increase without actually capturing extra pixels.
Image quality is difficult to judge in pre-production cameras, and Canon specifically said that in-camera RAW processing was a work in progress. Nonetheless, JPEGs looked sharp out of the camera and had the company's typically excellent skin tones.
Low-light image quality is a selling point of this camera, and it did appear to perform well at high ISOs, with decent image quality at ISO 12,800 and beyond. However, it's no Sony A7S III at very high ISOs, so the max of ISO 102,400 is for emergency use only.
Stacked sensor cameras tend to sacrifice some dynamic range in favor of speed, but there's no sign of that with the R1. However, I'll need more time to get a full idea of RAW image quality, particularly at high ISOs.
Though mainly aimed at photographers, the R1 is potentially a monster video camera on its own. It lacks the R5 II's 8K feature, but does offer 6K Canon RAW video at up to 60 fps, using the full width of the sensor.
You also get fully oversampled full-sensor 4K at up to 60fps, or 4K pixel-binned or cropped at 120 fps. Full HD can be recorded at up to 240 fps, either cropped or with pixel-binning. On top of Log 3, Canon's Log 2 is now supported with 10-bit capture.
Canon has significantly reduced its previous overheating issues, though they're not completely eliminated. You can record more than 120 minutes of 6K 60p RAW with proxy recording, as well as 4K 60p, with no restriction for 4K 30p. The primary limitation is 15 minutes for 4K 120p, but that shouldn't be an issue for most videographers or content creators.
As you'd expect, the oversampled 4K 60p and 6K 60p RAW video is sharp. Canon's RAW video is very easy to work with in post and with the Log 2 setting delivers extra dynamic range and latitude in post.
It'll be interesting to see how pro photographers react to Canon's new flagship. They do gain an extra 10 fps in RAW shooting speeds over Sony's A1 and the Nikon Z9, and the sensor is solid in low light. The downside, though, is the fact that it offers half the resolution of its rivals.
The Eye AF II is an interesting gimmick that may give Canon an edge. Other features like face-memorization, sports-specific AF and cross action seem good on paper, but I wasn't able to get the most out of them in the short time I had the camera - so further testing is required. The EOS R1 is set to arrive in the fall of 2024 with an estimated price of $6,300.
Canon paid for this contributor's travel and accommodation for the launch of its new cameras in Phoenix, Arizona. This article was produced independently for Engadget, with no oversight from Canon.
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