With the Canon EOS R1 finally getting its big reveal (as hinted at just a few days ago) we now know just how much reality matches the previous hype.
The overall result has turned out to be a camera that delivers most of what was expected of it and which is largely aimed at high-speed photography of the kind that many of us who watch the photo technology world expected.
While the EOS R1 is a powerful, extremely fast camera for all kinds of possible uses, its notable focus is action photography of the sports, photojournalism and nature kind. The photos below, from Canon, are examples:
Basically, this is Canon’s flagship mirrorless camera and it’s designed to satisfy even serious pro photographers. It does however also come with some odd specs.
At its core, the R1 comes with a traditional but stacked 24-megapixel CMOS sensor with a full-frame design and a tremendously fast readout speed that’s double that of Canon’s existing pro, EOS R3 camera or most competitor cameras in the same price range. This speed translates to RAW+JPEG still shooting at 40fps.
The sensor on the EOS R1 also offers 100% AF coverage thanks to cross-type sensor technology. Essentially, we’re talking about a Dual-Pixel sensor that rotates the orientation of its two subpixels in alternate lines for a cross-type autofocus with full sensor space coverage.
All of that boils down to the sensor being able to sharply and very rapidly focus in on specific points over anything it’s capturing from edge to edge.
With the R1’s sensor technology and combination of DIGIC X and DIGIC Accelerator processing system working together, this camera can crunch massive volumes of visual information to make its autofocus system extremely fast.
Not only is the AF fast though, it can also differentiate between various types of movements and objects to predict sequences of action for particularly exceptional AF precision according to Canon.
Another part of the AF that’s particularly useful for photographers doing fast-paced shooting in the field is something called Eye Control AF.
With this, a user can adjust the autofocus point by simply looking through the viewfinder and shifting their eyes to the object or focus point on which they want.
Eye Control AF isn’t completely new to Canon cameras, but in the EOS R1 it’s designed to work better than ever before thanks to the sheer size of this camera’s electronic viewfinder. It’s huge at 9.44 million dots and with a 0.9x magnification.
By contrast, the R3’s viewfinder, impressive in itself, manages “only” 5.76 million dots and a 0.76x magnification.
At first glance, a 24MP resolution in the EOS R1 might seem a bit underwhelming considering the resolutions of many other flagship full-frame cameras on the market but Canon has designed the R1 to have a powerful upscaling capacity that can convert 24MP JPEG images to 96-megapixel versions in-camera.
The camera does this through internal AI algorithms, which deliver powerful noise-reduction capabilities and image sharpening to make the upscaled image realistically sharp.
Aside from that, bear in mind that a 24MP sensor in a full-frame camera is a sharper beast with larger individual pixels and better light absorption than those of a 45MP sensor with a mere APS-C size.
The EOS R1’s 40fps RAW+JPEG shooting speed is indeed remarkably fast but only goes that high with the camera’s electronic shutter. Using the R1’s mechanical shutter function, maximum shooting speed slows down to a still respectable 12fps.
On the other hand, the R1 delivers an enormous buffer of 1000 frames and also includes a 20-frame, half-second pre-capture burst mode.
As for its video chops, the EOS R1 is no slouch. It can capture 4K video at 60fps and is capable of 6K video recording too, also at 60fps but, oddly, via RAW video shooting.
One possible drawback of the Canon EOS R1’s sensor is that despite its stacked design, it remains pretty traditional in not being a global shutter sensor.
This relatively new technology is found in Sony’s a9 III, which has the same resolution as the R1 but can manage RAW photo shooting at a whopping 120fps thanks to its global shutter. Given Canon’s emphasis on speed for the R1, it wasn’t hard to image the camera also including a global shutter sensor.
However, the 1000-frame buffer speed in the R1 comes into play here. In the Sony a9, a buffer speed of just a couple hundred frames lets that camera fire off 120 shots per second for barely 2 seconds. The EOS R1 on the other hand can sustain its 40fps shooting speed for much longer.
As for the R1’s 24MP sensor size, despite all of the powerful new features for making the best of those pixels in this camera, it doesn’t have quite the wow factor of the sensors in other similarly priced full-frame cameras from competing brands. For example, the Z9 from Nikon delivers 45.7 megapixels and Sony’s a1 flagship camera leads the class at 50 megapixels.
Bear in mind however that these other cameras lack the same robust AF and motion prediction features as those found in the Canon EOS R1.
These are largely the reasons why Canon classifies this camera as its flagship model despite giving it its smaller sensor size.
Finally, in terms of storage for all the video and photo media it can capture, the EOS R1 comes nicely equipped with dual CFexpress Type B card slots.
CFexpress B cards not only offer faster performance than CFexpress A cards, but they’re also capable of storing more data. For a camera that can shoot at up to 40fps with a 1000-frame buffer and is capable of 6K video at 60fps, media storage is indeed crucial.
The Canon EOS R1 camera is exciting, especially if you’re both a Canon fan and a serious practitioner of action, sports, nature, or photojournalism photography.
It’s also unsurprisingly expensive as the brand’s flagship model. Canon is retailing the EOS R1 for $6,299. This price is similar to those of Nikon and Sony’s own flagship full-frame mirrorless cameras.
The Canon EOS R1 is available now for preorder and will start shipping to stores and customers in the fall.
Image credit: Canon
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