Photography News Issue 61

Camera test 38

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

The EOS Rwith EF lenses

Performance: Rawv CRaw

Canon has ensured you can use EF and EF-S fit lenses on the EOS R. You have the choice of three adapters: the Mount Adapter EF- EOS R (£99), Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R (£199) and the Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R (£299 with circular polariser). Canon is including the Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with EOS R body and lens kits. The Control Ring Mount Adapter features a ring to mirror the one on EOS R lenses and it can be customised to various camera features including exposure compensation, while the Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter means you can use small drop-in filters behind the lens to save space The RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM proved to be a capable standard zoom giving sharp images through its focal length range. At the 24mm setting the only two disappointing apertureswere f/16 and f/22where diffraction gave relatively soft images although some unsharp mask in Photoshop helped. At the wider apertureswe sawgood edge- to-edge sharpness even at f/4 while f/8 was the best overall aperture producing contrasty images packed with crisp detail. A similar performance was seen at 50mm although here f/22 was the only slightly disappointing aperture where the image lacked bite and contrast so detail looked

and weight in the bag. The mount comes with a circular polariser while a variable ND and a clear filter are other options. All three adapters have metal front and rear mounts and are sealed against dust and moisture. I used the EF 100mm f/2.8 macro and EF 24-105mm f/4 L on EOS R with theMountAdapterEF-EOSR with no problems at all. Autofocus was accurate and effective and the adapter itself is compact and light. Canon’s website tells you which EF and EF-S mount lenses the adapters are compatible with – I counted 31 EF primes, 22 EF zooms and 15 EF-S lenses. Third party lens compatibility is not known at this time.

Canon introduced its new Raw format, suffix .CR3, on its EOS M50mirrorless camera launched earlier in 2018, to replace its existing .CR2 Raw format. An option of the .CR3 format is to shoot CRaw format, a compressed Raw format. The EOS R’s CRaw format gives files of around 22MB, compared with 35MB of full-size Raws so there’s around a space saving of around 30%. Smaller files means faster file handling too so if you want to shoot longer Raw bursts the CRaw option is the way to go. A smaller file means there’s less information to work with so there’s a potential negative impact to image quality. To see how much image quality suffered by using CRaw instead of full size Raws from the EOS R, I shot a number of scenes in both formats and then used Canon DPP and Lightroom to get the most from the files, before a close on-screen scrutiny. My shots included colourful scenes, very contrasty scenes and corrected exposure brackets, so a good mix of situations which would hopefully reveal any deficiencies in CRaw. After spending some time checking my

selection of shots at 100% and then 200% on-screen, I can say that shooting full Raw files does make a difference – but it’s tiny and you have to really look hard to see the benefits. Takea lookat the examplehere of an English Electric Lightning XM135 at the Duxford Imperial War Museum. Both shots were taken on a tripod-mounted EOS R fitted with the RF 24-105mm f/4 zoom lens at 1/20sec at f/11 and ISO 800, underexposed by 3EV and exposure corrected in Lightroom. At 200% on-screen, peer closely and you can see that the rivets are better defined in the full Raw, but whether you’ll see any difference at 300ppi at 100% on a 22x14.9in print is a point of debate. For the majority of users, shooting CRaw makes perfect sense, giving you more shots per card as well as taking up less space in your archive. If you like striving for every last gram of quality from your Raws, often shoot in contrasty situations, have impeccable technique and use the finest glass possible, then use the full size Raw option. Canon has thoughtfully provided both options in the EOS R.

Above The EF 100mm f/2.8 lens was fitted on the EOS R. The enlarged section shows there’s no quality loss.

Specs

RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM£1119.99

Price £1119.99

flat. At the other extreme, f/4 gave impressive sharpness and contrast at the centre and only dropped off slightly at the edges. Performance improved with stopping down until peak performance at f/8 and f/11 where the image across the frame was impressive. The lens gave its best at 105mm with fine detail looking excellent from f/4

Optical construction 18 elements in 14 groups Aperture range F/4-22 Diaphragmblades Nine Filter size 77mm Minimumfocus 45cm IS 5EV claimed benefit Dimensions 83.5x107.3mm Weight 700g

Raw

onwards especially in the centre although the edges lagged behind slightly. That was also the case at f/5.6; f/11 was needed to take the high level of quality from the centre to the edges.

24mm

50mm

105mm

CRaw

F/4

F/5.6

F/8

on a lens-based system so of the two lenses tried here the 50mm f/1.2 is IS-free while the 24-105mm f/4 has a claimed 5EV benefit. Inmy tests, Iwas shootingwith the 24-105mm handheld indoors with and without IS switched on, at the 24mmand 105mmfocal lengthswith shutter speeds starting from 1/60sec down to 1/4sec. Assuming 1/125sec is a safe shutter speed at 105mm a 5EV benefit means getting sharp shots at 1/4sec. I didn’t achieve that. I got one out of five shots at 1/6sec pinsharp and two at 1/15sec while at 24mm I got four sharp at 1/15sec and three at 1/8sec. That is a respectable showing but not exceptional.

Autofocus proved responsive, smooth and very fast. I tried the face/ tracking and wide zone and found they worked well in most situations but try selective focusing and they struggle to lock on the subject or in a busy general scene picks the wrong subject to focus on. Of course, having on-screen touch focus does mean what the camera decides can be over- ridden but you need to be quick to avoid missing the shot. I spent more time in the smaller zone modes and most time in single zone AF modes – there are two, single point and pinpoint. The single point system works well, and the Touch & Drag feature

F/11

F/16

F/22