Camera preview 37
Photography News | Issue 60 | photographynews.co.uk
Prices
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EOS R body £2349.99 EOS R with RF 24- 105mm f/4L IS USM and EF-EOS R mount adapter kit £3269.9 RF 50mm f/1.2L USM £2349.99 RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM £1119.99 EF-EOS R mount adapter £99.99 Control mount ring adapter EF-EOS R £199.99
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AVAILABLE FROM DECEMBER 2018: •
RF 28-70mm f/2L USM lens £3049.99 RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM lens £519.99
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It focuses extremely quickly, with Canon suggesting that it’s 0.05 seconds
RF 28-70mm f/2L USM
The setting was also to show us how good the new AF system is, thanks to the impressive number of autofocusing points it features, no fewer than 5655 manually selectable points up to f/11 (compared to a more modest 61 in the EOS 5D Mark IV). It uses Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS autofocusing system and can acquire focus in very low light, right down to -6 EV. It also focuses extremely quickly, with Canon suggesting that it’s 0.05 seconds. Focus acquisition is the fastest in the world, claims Canon. Suffice to say that I found AF to be lightning-fast, even when the lighting got really atmospheric, and this is set to be one of the big selling points.
Although it wasn’t necessary in the situation I was in, I can also confirm that the camera operated in complete silence, which could be crucial for those in wedding or tense sporting situations. So quiet is the whole process that, at first, it can be difficult to believe that the shutter has actually fired, but fortunately Canon has thought this one through and there is confirmation in the viewfinder that the shot has been successfully taken. At the heart of the camera is a 30.3-megapixel CMOS sensor with a native ISO range of 100-40,000 (expandable to 50-102,400), backed by a DIGIC 8 image processor. There’s a low pass filter in front
RF 50mm f/1.2L USM
of the sensor that helps combat moiré patterns at the cost of slightly reduced sharpness, and the camera features an 8fps continuous shooting speed for bursts of up to 100 max- quality JPEGs, 47 Raw, or 78 C-Raw. The shutter lag is as short as 50 milliseconds, and a start-up time is 0.9 seconds. I managed a few short video clips, and having subsequently spoken to a few filmmaking pros they tend to agree that there’s enough onboard here to satisfy most professionals that might want to shoot some video around the stills for the benefit of their clients. TheEOSRcanshoot in4Kat 30fps – though, as many have pointed out, not at 60fps, which is only available at 1080p. This, however, will still be more thanenoughformostusers, and there are further video-orientated features on board such as Canon Log with 12 stops of dynamic range, 10bit 4:2:2 HDMI output and a maximum recording time of 29 minutes and 59 seconds. The side of the camera also
features microphone and headphone jacks, but this is still clearly a photographer’s camera rather than one specifically aimed at filmmakers. SUMMARY Clearly a lot of thought has gone into what is not so much the launch of a new camera but the unveiling of what will become a complete system. The signs aregoodand, givenCanon’s pedigree, you sense it knows exactly what will be required to make it all work successfully. The full benefit of the new RF systemwill reveal itself inthe fullness of time, but lenses such as the new fast 50mm f/1.2 provide a tantalising taste of what can be expected; this is where all the innovation will be coming in the future. There will also be a line-up of R camera models to choose from, with this first one destined to be somewhere in the middle of the range. It’s best to hold judgement until we put the Canon EOS R through a full test. See our next issue for that.
RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM
Left PN got hands-on with a production sample of the new EOS R.
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