Photography News Issue 68

Photography News | Issue 68 | photographynews.co.uk

Techniques 14

Canon

Panasonic

Canon’s full-frame EOS R system looks to build on its DSLRdominance A newEOS

Canon’s EOS-R range launched at the back end of 2018, so like NIkon it’s had its work cut out in order to challenge the dominance of Sony’s full-frame system. But Canon has been busy since, and is certainly putting lots of effort into fleshing out its system. The EOS RF is a completely new lens mount, and the engineering should result in lenses with better optical performance and faster camera-to-lens communication. Canon has so far launched two full- frame mirrorless bodies with impressive if not extraordinary feature sets. The £2399 EOS R was the first in the range to launch, with a 30.3-megapixel CMOS sensor at its heart, and equipped with an optical low-pass filter to defeat moire patterns and false colours. It’s therefore very similar to that found in the EOS 5D Mark IV, but backed up by a faster DIGIC 8 processor. ISO range is 100-40,000. As you’d expect, the body is much more compact and lightweight than a similarly spec’d DSLR and weather sealing is built in. The layout of the controls will have a familiar feel for those who are regular Canon users, although the newmultifunction bar, which lets you control programmable functions like ISO and white-balance, takes some getting used to. There’s tremendous scope to customise the camera to your personal preferences though, for example in stills shooting, 14 buttons or controls can be customised, with up to 41 options. Autofocus has been upgraded on the EOS R. The dual pixel phase-detection AF has 5655 selectable autofocus points and the system is responsive, smooth Both the Canon EOS R and the RP bodies come with an EF lens adapter as standard, so right away you’ve got a huge number of lenses to choose from the existing EF range. In terms of dedicated RF lenses, there’s not a massive selection, but like Nikon’s Z series, that’s totally understandable – the system has been around for less than a year. At the same time as the new mount, Canon announced a 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, a 50mm f/1.2 L USM, a 28-70mm f/2L USM and a 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM, all of which rated very well in our tests. Recently launched is the 85mm f/1.2L, which should excite portrait shooters, and coming after that are a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 15-35mm f/2.8, a 70- 200mm f/2.8L IS and a 24-240mm f/4- 6.3 IS, plus a ‘DL’ version of the 85mm f/1.2L with a much smoother look to its Canon lenses

Above Panasonic has taken a no-compromise approach to its S series and the cameras and lenses are substantially built

Panasonic ready for full-frame fight S class and L glass

Canon has two camera options at the moment, the entry-level EOS RP (above) and the more advanced EOS R (right)

Despite being heavily entrenched in the crop-sensor side of themirrorless market with its Micro Four Thirds Lumix G Series, Panasonic wants a piece of the full-framemarket, too. Enter the Lumix S1 and S1R, which actually seem to eschew the idea of mirrorless being smaller and lighter, in favour of amore workhorse styling. The new system is built around the L-mount designed by Leica for its SL cameras, so there is entrenched lens support – andmore lenses added with Sigma joining Panasonic and Leica in the L-Mount Alliance. Much like the way Sony and Nikon have gone, Panasonic gives us the £2199 S1, a lower resolution all-rounder with a 24.2-megapixel full-frame sensor, and the £3399 S1Rwhich has a whopping 47.3-megapixel sensor for richly detailed stills. They have slightly different ISO ranges, of 100-51,200 for the S1 and 100-25,600 for the S1R, but other than that, both cameras have twin card slots, up to six-stop Dual Image Stabilisation when OIS lenses are used, and a high-resolution 5760KOLED EVF display with adjustable refresh rate of 60 or 120fps, and a handy option of three different magnifications. The S1R’s 47.3-megapixel resolution is the highest of any full-frame camera so far, mirrorless or DSLR, and produces 8368x5584 pixel files, but if you need something even larger, it has a high-resolutionmode that gives an equivalent resolution of 187megapixels. Here, eight shots are taken with the sensor moving between them. As well as existing Leica L-Mount lenses fitting the new bodies, many of which are quite glorious and gloriously expensive, Panasonic announced three of its own lenses at launch, a 70-200mm f/4, a 50mm f/1.4 and a 24- 105mm f/4Macro, the zooms including Optical Image Stabilisation, and all of themweather resistant like the bodies.

and very fast, focusing down to -6EV. Thanks to the touch AF function, you can also choose the precise area in a scene that’s to be the centre of focus by using your thumb and dragging the AF point to where it’s needed. More recently, Canon followed up the EOS R with the £1399 26.2-megapixel EOS RP, its price tagmaking it the most affordable full-frame mirrorless model on the market. At just 485g, it’s smaller and lighter than the R, but still features top-end tech like Dual Pixel CMOS AF, up to 4779 selectable AF points, a DIGIC 8 processor and 14-bit Raws. Both the EOS R and RP lack in-body

image stabilisation, which is enjoyed on most other mirrorless bodies cropped or full frame, and even some DSLRs. This caused some dismay at launch, but the RP does use a Dual Sensing IS (camera and lens) systemoffering 5-axis stabilisation up to 5EV, though you’ll need dedicated RF lenses for it to work.

canon.co.uk

A new standard

Above Panasonic S series cameras use the L-Mount, sharing that technology with Leica and Sigma. That does mean there will be many more lens options in time

On top of that, Sigma, as part of the lens mount alliance, recently announced that 11 of its Art and Sport lenses have been re-engineered to be in L-Mount with three due on sale this September.

manual focus options, assisted by focus peaking through the EOS R and RP’s electronic viewfinders; the 14mm f/2.8 RF and 85mm f/1.4 RF. Lensbaby is alsomaking optics for the RFmount, so far including the Composer Pro II.

bokeh. And most recently a 10x zoom has been launched, the RF 24-240mm f/4-6.3 IS USM. Check out our news story one page 3. And just as with Nikon, Samyang has stepped up to the RF plate with two

panasonic.co.uk