Canon EOS R5: The Full EOS R Experience

Today, I have something very special. It’s not a review, but I’m talking about the Canon EOS R5 and our experience with it.

So I have the R5 in my hands and I’ve had it for about two to three weeks now, shooting professional as well as my usual hobby of photographing for my Instagram. Before we talk more about this camera, I just want to mention that the EOS R5 is a hybrid camera, and what I mean by that is it can shoot professional video as well as professional photos.

What are some of the key features that I want to emphasise? Here are some: 45 megapixels, 4K at 120 frames per second, 8K, 12Bit RAW and many other exciting features that I want to talk about. So without further ado, let’s jump straight to the design and specifications of this brilliant camera.

Before I talk about that, I just want to mention that, before the R5, I was using the Canon 5D Mark IV. It’s relevant in the sense that the 5D is a DSLR and the R5 is just a mirrorless version of it with the addition of a lot of additional functions.

Let’s talk about the body itself. In terms of weight, you’re expecting 650 grams without a battery and a card. And 738 grams with an SD card, CFexpress as well as a battery. So what are you expecting from the body itself? The body is really great in my hands and I have relatively big hands. It’s safe to say it fits really nicely. I don’t feel like it’ll drop from my hands at any time.

In terms of buttons and controls, you have a small LCD screen on the top, where you can show all the menu settings and switch them up on the go. You have your standard shutter button and your DAO to change your aperture or shutter speed. They’re all configurable within the menu system, which is very intuitive.

On the back, you have what is an exciting feature that I was really looking forward to trying out – a fully articulating LCD screen, which is also a touchscreen. For those of you who feel like they fumble around with their fingers too much when you’re shooting on the go, you can control settings here within the touchscreen itself.

In terms of SD card and CFexpress card slots, you have one of each – UHS-II SD card slot and a CFexpress Type-B slot. On the other side, you’re expecting a mic jack input, a headphone jack, HDMI as well as a USB-C. Note that the HDMI port is a micro HDMI port.

The menu system is very much similar to the other Canon cameras. You get professional-grade Canon buttons here. And switching from the 5D over to the R5 was not difficult to get used to at all.

In terms of the battery, the R5 uses an LP-E6NH, which is an upgraded version of the LP-E6 used by the 5D. I was very glad Canon sent this out to us because if I ever run out of battery, I have extra batteries I can use.

Let’s talk about real-world tests and usability. I have had quite a bit of experience with this camera. I have shot a couple of events professionally as well as just shooting some architecture.

For this part, we’re going to be testing the focus-tracking system and see how accurate it is on the R5. I have tested it out, but obviously just telling you guys won’t do it any justice. We’re about to put it into action to see how accurate it really is. I’m shooting at 4K 25 frames per second and the tracking system is now letting me know to focus on her eyes. The autofocus actually tracks the eyes. It’s just flipping back and forth right now because she’s wearing a mask.

I’ll let her walk around and see if the autofocus can track her. And it’s tracking her quite accurately. She’s now moving into a slightly darker area. I’m moving the camera around and it’s still tracking onto her. With that little experiment, you can see that the autofocus system is quite accurate. I would say that it only missed her at one point. It was very quick though to catch back onto her. Even though she was wearing a mask, the autofocus was still able to detect where her eyes were. It’s definitely not an issue to use this for both photos and videos. And I’m very glad to say that Canon has finally updated its autofocusing system and the R5 is a beast at that.

Now, I’m on electronic first-person so this is approximately 12 frames per second. I don’t know if you can hear it but it’s actually really fast. And I can hold the R5 without it lagging. Obviously, you have to use a fast card. About that, today I’m using a SanDisk 128GB which is very compatible with the Canon EOS R5. I didn’t have any issues with this camera, so definitely check it out.

For the real-world tests and usability, I haven’t had any issues with the camera so far. It is an excellent camera. No overheating as of yet. I have only tested it at regular temperatures at close to 10 minutes at a time and no overheating as of yet. So I’m quite glad to say that.

Let’s take a look at the post-processing side of handling the EOS R5’s files. I’ll first be doing the photos then I’ll move on to videos. As I’ve mentioned before, the R5 is a 45-megapixel camera. With that, you’re expecting a lot of information with each image. And the file size is you’re expecting to get is about 45MB to 55MB.

Let’s take a look at this first shot, which is a RAW file. I’m going to zoom in 300% to show you what the image looks like. This was shot at F8 with a 24mm lens. You can see the edges of the buildings are all relatively sharp. There’s no chromatic aberration whatsoever. The logos on the buildings are all sharp as well and you can clearly tell what they are.

Let’s now take a look at what the edited image looks like. I pushed the colours quite a bit to exaggerate the view. But you can see how the RAW files are really easy to adjust. Just pushing the colours a bit, you can clearly see that there’s no fuzziness or any weird colour fringing from one colour to the next. I will have to say that the EOS R5 RAW files are nice to use. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I usually push colours a bit much, but having that flexibility with the R5 made it very fun to edit with the sharpeners and colours. Having this flexibility opens up a lot of possibilities for the images that you can edit.

On top of this image, let’s take a look at something else. This was shot at Potato Head along Chinatown. I’m going to be focusing now on the low-light aspect of the R5 as well as the image stabilisation. This was shot without a tripod – I was holding the camera with my bare hands. And I was shooting at 0.3 seconds. Like I previously mentioned, with the R5 in-body stabilisation, you’ll be expecting a five-axis system. But if you use an IS lens such as the 15-35mm RF lens, which is what I used for this particular shot, you can expect up to eight-axis stabilisation. What that means is that, while shooting at 0.3 seconds handheld, I’m able to get the buildings as well as everything that’s not moving really sharp.

I even tested it out and tried to push it even further to see how far it could go while using it handheld. This was shot at 0.5 seconds. You can see the people are very blurry but everything else is all still relatively sharp. This just goes to show how well the stabilisation has improved from the DSLR Canon cameras all the way up to the mirrorless cameras.

The next segment where the R5 really stands out is how it’s able to shoot at 8K RAW at 12Bits. What 12Bit means is that there’s a lot more information in the image, which allows you to push more in post-production. When you’re shooting at a lower bit rate, pushing colours can make the image fuzzy because there’s not a lot of information from pixel to pixel. Having been able to shoot at 8K resolution and 12Bits RAW gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to colour grading. I want to show you an exaggerated colour grade to explain how much you can push in terms of the footage that you’re getting out of the EOS R5. I would say that the grass and lawn over here in this golf course is actually green, but I tried to push it a bit. I can even make it slightly more orange to give it that golden hour feel. With 8K RAW, there are endless possibilities.

Having edited different footage from different cameras, this was one that was easy to manipulate. Just tweaking the colours and trying to get keys out of the different areas, it’s a lot easier to use here compared to other cameras. It definitely takes a lot of processing power. And because it’s a professional photo and video camera, the file sizes are very large. Just shooting 12 seconds of 8K, 12Bit RAW footage can easily take up 4GB of footage on your card. That just’s something you want to consider when you want to shoot in this format.

In summary, the EOS R5 is a beast of a camera. And I’m very glad that Canon was able to send me this as well as all the RF lenses that came along with it. Switching from a DSLR system, which is also Canon, to an EOS R system, the transition was very smooth and intuitive. The menu system is very similar to what you would expect from a DSLR system. With a beefed-up camera with more functions, you expect a more complicated menu system. That being said, it’s not difficult to navigate through settings here. And if you’re a Canon user before, I would say that it’s easy to navigate this camera.

Apart from that, you can shoot 20 frames per second still images from RAW, JPEG, or even combined, which is something that works well for sports or vehicle photography.

In terms of video, for 4K, 10Bit, 4:2:2, you can get up to 100 frames per second, which is definitely useful in my line of work when I have to shoot products or when I need slo-mo. You also get 8K, 12Bit RAW. Up to now, I don’t exactly have the need to shoot at 8K, 12Bit RAW yet, but I would say that having it in my arsenal is not something I’ll turn down. Besides, as I mentioned before, if you’re shooting at 8K, you can always crop into 4K and move around the frame – definitely very useful.

I would definitely recommend you check out all the other EOS R cameras, not only the R5 because this might be a little too professional for you. But if you’re willing to spend the money, I will highly recommend you get your hands on one It’s been a bittersweet experience because I know that I have to send this camera back and move back to my 5D, which is about time for me to upgrade. Fortunately, there is another video coming soon, which is also another Canon camera. So if you’re a Canon fan, you might already know what camera I’m talking about.

This is brought to you in partnership with Canon Singapore.