Big test
PERFORMANCE: FOCUS STACKING Focus bracketing is not new on Canon mirrorless cameras – but focus stacking is. The APS-C EOS R10 and EOS R7 both have it, and the feature is now on the full-frame EOS R6 Mark II and EOS R8. To test it, I used a Canon 100mm macro lens and a tabletop scene with the camera fixed to a tripod. The set-up was about 12cm from front figure to apple. For my first attempt, I left the focus increment setting to the default and set 50 exposures. To give the feature a good test, I set the lens aperture at f/4 for a shallow depth-of-field and then focused on the front figure. In the menu, I enabled exposure smoothing and Depth Compositing, which is Canon’s term for focus stacking. Using the self-timer, the camera took just over a second to complete the 50 shots with its electronic shutter. I got an error message on the first attempt suggesting I change the aperture and that a stack wasn’t possible. However, a successful stack was present on the memory card when I checked. I set 40 frames on the second attempt and the camera’s buffer is big enough to cope without a halt. Shoot more – the limit is 999 – and the buffer will slow things down, so a tripod and static subject are needed. Handheld focus stacking with fewer frames should be possible, but I didn’t get to try it in a real situation. After the exposure sequence, the camera takes a second or so to process the images and produce a finished JPEG. The component files, Raws and JPEGs are written to card, so if the composite is sharp, you know that the in-computer stack will work, too. Focus stacking is a welcome feature that will be popular with macro and landscape photographers, and the EOS R8 worked fine with my little set-up. The only issue with my result was evidence of banding from the camera’s electronic shutter and LED lights. Flash is not an option with the EOS R8’s electronic shutter.
ALL ABOARD! Steam engine crew member captured with the EOS R8 fitted with the RF 14-35mm f/4 lens. Exposure was 1/640sec at f/5.6 and ISO 400. The Raw was edited to taste in Adobe Lightroom
FIRST IMAGE
FINAL IMAGE
FINISHED IMAGE
WAITING FOR WORK Shot with the RF 24-105mm f/4 zoom at 77mm. Exposure was 1/1000sec at f/4.5 and ISO 1600 with the shutter released by touch
information panel and a completely blank screen. As far as connectivity goes, there is Wi-Fi, low-energy Bluetooth and a useful array of inputs, including separate headphone and microphone mini-jacks, USB-C and mini HDMI. The camera houses a full-frame 24.2-megapixel sensor – the same as “ON THE WHOLE, THE AUTOFOCUS SYSTEM WORKS REALLY WELL, AS I WOULD EXPECT FROM CANON”
JPEG, PNG or in 8-, 10- or 16-bit TIFF. In Windows, they can be opened with the Photos app. CRAW is a lossy compressed Raw format that Canon introduced in 2019 and has been an option on its cameras since. For this test, I shot the same scene in both formats on a tripod-mounted camera and then compared the processed files. The CRAW file was 20MB while the full Raw was 31.5MB, and closely checking the processed files on screen in Photoshop showed negligible differences. In fact, it was only at 300% on screen that I could see that the CRAW had a little less detail and slightly more noise in the shadows, but we are deep into pixel peeping territory here. Unless you are shooting very contrasty scenes
way D-pad. While this is perfectly serviceable, I needed a shift in grip to get my thumb into position. The other option is using the monitor and touch and drag AF setting. The screen is a swing-out-to-the- side type, the style currently favoured by camera makers for models with hybrid aspirations. User customisation potential is decent enough, but some extra function buttons wouldn’t go amiss. For example, there’s no depth-of-field preview to reconfigure. One feature I like is the editable quick-control menu. The full array of options can be slightly daunting, but removing some of the items that I never use gave a much cleaner view. There is also the usual selection of view modes, including the
that of the EOS R6 Mark II – with an impressive low-light working capacity and an ISO native range which tops out at 102,400, with expansion to H1 giving the equivalent of 204,800. Images are saved to a single SD card located next to the battery and accessed through the camera base. For stills capture, there’s the option of JPEGs or memory-saving CRAW as well as full Raw, both 14-bit with the mechanical shutter and 12-bit with the electronic shutter. Set HDR and HEIF shooting is possible, but Highlight Tone priority should be enabled for the best results. HEIF gave 10-bit compressed files between 6-20MB, so a similar size or larger than JPEGs, which were 7-14MB. On a Mac, HEIF files can be opened in Preview and saved as
at higher ISOs and making very big prints, I think CRAW is a perfectly good format to standardise on, with the added attraction of getting more shots on the card and in continuous shooting before buffering. The EOS R8 has an electronic first curtain shutter assembly instead of offering a true mechanical shutter option. We tested the camera’s drive speeds using a ProGrade Digital 128GB 300MB/s SD card. With the electronic front shutter, the fastest continuous shooting rate is a claimed 6fps in H+ drive mode – and that was spot on in our test. With the full electronic shutter, a top rate of 40fps is claimed, and again the figure was correct. Canon claims 1000+ shots in JPEG, CRAW and Raw at 6fps. In my test,
Issue 106 | Photography News 15
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