A few weeks ago I was invited to Arizona to test out the just-announced Canon R5 mark II, as well as the R1. Unsurprisingly, they were very tight lipped about what I was going to Phoenix to test out so my assumption was it was a hands-on event for the C400. I am a cinematographer after all, and went to the Burbank announcement event, so that would make sense right? Once I got there and signed the NDA, they announced the cameras and I immediately was interested but felt a bit out of my element. I was in a small group featuring the likes of the PetaPixel team and Ted Forbes, as well as a few other well-known creators and outlets that I unfortunately was less familiar with. They were all photographers and I was the odd one out, which I learned later was intentional.

Apparently, I specifically was called in to give my opinion on the video capabilities while the other teams were there to do their usual job of the cameras on the whole. So that’s what I’m going to do here. I’ll touch on the photo specs a bit obviously, as this is a launch article and I don’t want to leave our hybrid shooter friends out in the cold, but the focus of this article is going to be on the video capabilities of the R5II specifically, and how the R1 differs (it’s not actually very different which is cool). I want to say up front that this camera comes out months from the time of this writing and as such part of our job on this outing was to give advice to the team at Canon and therefore some of these things I experienced may be changed before the final cameras are released based on my feedback. The representatives would approach us every 15 minutes or so and just check in like “hey, how’s it going? Any pain points? What would you change?” and I really appreciated that. They were always looking to improve or help with any questions I had and were always incredibly honest and forthcoming, so I do believe certain things can be adjusted in the final firmware, which I’m looking forward to (I can say I made a difference!).

This is not going to be a comprehensive review, instead more of a “First Look, First Impressions” type article  as I had limited time with the pre-production units and as such wouldn’t want to confidently speak on too much, but that being said this is a very cool set of cameras I think many people will be happy to add to their roster if applicable. As a note, all images here are stills taken from video clips.

To start, I must say that I personally am not a hybrid shooter. I exclusively use Cinema cameras for work, only having used the Fujifilm XT3 from time to time as a B-Cam or when I needed to be very lightweight. As such, I wasn’t very familiar with the ways in which they differ.

I remember back in college using the original 5DmkII when that hit the scene and it was a pretty simple operation, basically only having the ability to hit record. One thing I love about Cinema cameras is the simplicity: I basically never come off 24fps, 180* shutter, so my only variables are ISO and Stop essentially. Makes the math simple, makes the workflow simple, it’s a nice way to be. These modern hybrid cameras are a whole different beast. Just holding the R1 in my hands I was a bit overwhelmed, I’m embarrassed to say, by how many buttons and switches there were. Top-level photographers really are driving F1 cars out here! The R5 was a bit more manageable but still made me realize I had a quick learning curve to overcome as I only had a couple days with the cameras and I wasn’t allowed to take them into public obviously so it was a relatively quick affair.

Starting with the R1 (since it was the fancy one) I immediately just dove in and tried to get the settings dialed for how I’d shoot video normally, get all my custom buttons set up, and acquaint myself with the new (to me) system and workflow. I couldn’t seem to get anything off auto, I couldn’t control the f-stop, I thought I was shooting in Log but wasn’t… I had to be missing something. 

And of course, I was.

This’ll be obvious to everyone but it’s a hybrid camera: it has photo nomenclature and behaviors in there primarily and I simply had to get off of Av mode LMAO. I’m so used to Manual by default I was essentially fighting against myself! I also had to get it out of a “Picture Style” kind of mode (you know like “Portrait” or “Landscape” or “Faithful” and so on) and into “Picture Profile” mode just like in the cine cameras. It has a “Cinema” section separate from the more traditional “Photo-style Video Mode” basically, which is actually rad and I’ll get to that in a second. Once I got the thing set to Manual and got it recording in my usual Clog2/Neutral I was cruising.

As I said the R1 and R5II aren’t too terribly dissimilar when it comes to the video features, the main difference being that the R1 has a top speed of 4K/120 (60fps in RAW) and the R5II comes in at 8K/60 in RAW (with a 4K/120 mode available as well). You can also get 4K out of the HDMI ports. From there it’s all roughly the same so I’ll go through the headline specs here and make a note where the R1 differs if applicable, starting with the things that stood out immediately:

Both cameras have a native video ISO of 800 (photo starts at 100) and can shoot RAW, XF-AVC S in 422 10 bit and 420 8 bit, and XF-HEVC S (h265 essentially) in the same 422/10 and 420/8 modes. The R5 also has a new cool RAW format called SRAW which is a more economical mode where instead of 8K DCI you get 4K DCI but it’s still the whole sensor readout. I wasn’t able to learn how it was doing this (pixel binning or line skipping or whatever) but it’s pretty neat when you want the flexibility of a full-sensor 14bit RAW readout with longer record times and don’t need 8K. Both cameras have RAWLITE as well, however you’ll be at 24 or 30fps but again I never come off of 24fps anyway so that’s fine for me. Outside of RAW you can shoot your standard Clog2/3 Neutral/Production/EOS modes as with the Cinema EOS line, and that’s the thing I mentioned earlier: as of now these cameras and the R5C have traditional Cinema EOS picture profiles!

A few years ago I released a product for the Cinema EOS line called OWLCOLOR (because my production company/skunkworks program is called OWL BOT, but on-topic I met a real owl on this trip seen below!) where I basically took a Vectorscope, a color chart, an Arri Alexa, and each C-Series camera and fiddled with the internal color response of the Canons until the color response was more in-line with the Alexa so one could use them more easily as a B-Cam to the Alexa, as was (is?) popular at the time. For the past 5 years or however long it’s been I’ve constantly been asked if I could make that happen for the R-Series but the picture controls simply aren’t as robust but now with the R1, R5II, and R5C it’s possible for me or anyone else to dial in the image exactly how you want as you can on the C-Line! Incredible stuff there, and really brings these cameras more in line with the big siblings.

Another feature I quickly discovered that I thought was a huge addition was focus breathing compensation! I believe Sony put it in some of their flagship Mirrorless cameras or something a while ago and I remember being pretty jealous; I hate focus breathing. Seeing it added to these cameras gives me hope it’ll come to the Cinema line as well as it’s something I think I’d basically leave on permanently, although I will say I was testing these units with the new 24-105 f2.8 and it has very very little breathing to begin with but for older lenses or ones not made with video users in mind this’ll be a great way to eek out some extra “Cinematic Value” to your images.

Another absolutely killer feature I liked was the “auto level” setting. It’s sort of like Sensor IS, which both cameras have, but instead of stabilizing the whole image it just keeps your horizon dialed. I was absolutely running around tilting from left to right pretty aggressively and the image stayed locked in, which was so cool. For handheld work that’s awesome, but even on something like a steadicam this can probably help with any rolling that might take place while on the move. Fantastic.

The stabilizer, as I mentioned, is Sensor-based (8.5 stops worth) so you don’t get any of those weird EIS wobbles but that also means an aggressive move can result in kind of a “jump” as the sensor will try to catch up to what you’re doing. I was using that and the OIS on the 28-105, though, so to be fair it could be that as well. Again, this is a first look quick hands-on report not a full review, so I may be off here and there. Either way I was very pleased with the performance of the stabilization as compared to my C500 and C70. Unfortunately auto-level isn’t available in RAW.

The next crazy feature I used was Subject Registration Auto Focus. Essentially you can take a picture of a group of folks and then go into the menu and register something like up to 10 faces in the memory and the camera will prioritize those faces in a crowd. I thought for sure this’d be a bit flakey but it was honestly rock solid and for narrative work this could be huge. The AF system itself is actually really robust and snappy, easily holding on to subjects while I was filming both the soccer and basketball games they had us testing the cameras on, but if you’re an indie creator and a scene is only supposed to focus on one individual while there are extras in the frame, this would be an incredible value add. No AC no problem! Just lock in which person is the main point of focus for the scene and say “action.” In the fast-paced environment of the sporting event it essentially worked by highlighting all the faces in the frame but defaulting to the one dude I registered as my “main man” so when I clicked the “select” button it would always lock him down without me having to flick the focus box around. I will say that the chaos of the soccer game lead to it sometimes jumping around if there was too much crossover and I was really zoomed in, but the basketball game seemed to be less prone to that and overall I had to remember this was incredibly pre-production firmware they were actively sureing up so I won’t hold it against them til launch time. For something more “common” for us filmmakers I don’t see it being a problem as when the play slowed down a bit the system didn’t seem to have a problem grabbing the correct subject and holding on tight. They didn’t even have to be big in the frame either, it was really astounding how little of the person was needed for the AF to identify and lock them down.

From there all the usual AF modes are there with the option of just “locking on” to a surface or object or whatever in the frame by placing the AF selector box over it and clicking “select”, which was awesome. You have traditional face detect AF, eye detect, animal detect, vehicle detect, all that good stuff, which all seemed to work admirably during my brief tests and overall hope the C400 has AF this attentive. The coverage for the AF zones seems to be nearly 100% of the viewable area so that’s really rad to see as well.

Another AF feature that was pretty cool was “action priority” auto focus where essentially you tell the camera what sport you’re filming (between Soccer, Volleyball, and Basketball) and if it recognizes that there’s, for instance, someone about to shoot the ball or spike it or what have you, it’ll prioritize that player. Pretty neat, although I’d love to see more sports added to the mix. Basketball and Soccer alone probably do make up a lot of the user base who might use that feature though. Here’s hoping for Hockey!

In both cameras I was happy to see False Color as an option, a feature I use every day in conjunction with my Sekonic light meter as opposed to the Waveforms (which I obviously have available but rely on less now that False Color is so ubiquitous). I was told these cameras have 38IRE as the 18% gray target. I have a note here I wrote down saying the R1 doesn’t have Waveforms but if that’s true I’d be surprised if they didn’t include it in the final version.

Somewhat related, I didn’t get a firm number on the Dynamic Range (they’re saying a max of 16+ stops in 4K Fine) but I’m not gonna lie: it’s gotta be pretty damn high. I was running all kinds of tests exposing for shadows and highlights out in the mid-day sun in Arizona and I could see pretty much everything. If I had to guess it’s probably on par with or higher than the C500 (which actually outperforms the C70 at a tested 13.1 stops at SNR=2 by CineD, with the C70 coming in just behind at 12.8 matching the RED V-Raptor). I don’t know if we’ll be at the Alexa LF level of 13.5 (again, tested by CineD with SNR=2) but I bet it’s competitive. Really cool to see here and will definitely perform admirably as your A and certainly your B-Cam if put in that role.

On that note, we’ve got a new Full Frame, Back-Illuminated Stacked CMOS sensor in these cameras, both running the new DIGIC X processor with a DIGIC Accelerator co-processor, the only difference being the R5II is 45MP (effective, 50MP total) and the R1 is 24.2MP (26.7 total). I thought it was interesting that the flagship R1 had a smaller output but it makes sense when you realize that it’s essentially made for Olympic/Sports photographers and folks who need its 40FPS CONTINUOUS RAW PHOTO MODE with the electronic shutter.

That’s right, the R1 can rip off 40 raw photos per second for a surprisingly long time. I held down the trigger for more time than was prudent for even the sporting event they had us testing the cameras on and it didn’t seem to slow down. Absolutely bonkers. I think it actually does start to hit a buffer slowdown after 1000 frames saved but this spec sheet I have here says “or more” and that tracks with my experience. Even at 1000 frames, do you think you’ll be holding down the shutter for a 25 second burst? The R5 can pull (if I remember correctly) 30 frames per second but will start to overload the buffer after a few seconds since the images are so much bigger, which isn’t something those top-end Olympics photographers would likely want to run into, hence 24MP on the R1. Either way, 30 is crazy and in JPEG both cameras seemed to just shoot forever in continuous mode.

Back to the video features, one thing that people are often concerned with when shooting mirrorless cameras like these are the prospect of overheating. Obviously this cant exist for the R1 as it has a grip “built in” but the R5II has the option of a battery grip with a fan built in (not on the back like some cameras do, like behind the LCD). In normal conditions I don’t believe you’d even need the fan grip, but just to see what we were dealing with I took the whole package out into that aforementioned mid-day Phoenix sun where we were enjoying a casual 112* day and just started filming. I didn’t run continuously but I was pretty consistently running ~30 second clips every few steps for about a half hour. About 15 or 20 minutes into my escapade I did see an “overheating bar” appear which was kind of like a segmented visual countdown to when it’d need to take a break. This notification only made it to about half-way up before I remembered that this warning was more of a comfort thing than an actual shutdown, and you can turn it off with a toggle in the menus. I went there, got the warning that the main grip (not the fan one) might feel really hot, dismissed it, and the overheating warning disappeared completely. I probably spent about an hour wandering around filming various things on the resort grounds we were on and then packed it in because I personally was overheating and I also had filled up my card. It’ll be interesting to see what people’s results are when they get production units in their hands but suffice to say you can film for about an hour “straight” in one of the hottest environments around and be good to go. With humidity it might be a different story since, as we’ve all been told 100 times, “Arizona is a dry heat” and therefore results may vary.

From there, I went back to my room to cool off and waited until nightfall to grab some clips in the dark to see how the raw did. I probably should have gotten some regular compressed clips as well but I foolishly didn’t think to do that because sometimes that just happens. Again this is pre-production anyway, we’ll do a real scientific test when the camera actually comes out for now this is just first impressions. And we’re really going to have to hammer home the “this is a pre-production unit” thing for this section because some stuff is obviously going to change.

In terms of low-light performance, at least in RAW, I’m pretty impressed. There were essentially only accent LED lights around the resort and the image looks really nice, with no blocking and very clean sharp details everywhere. I don’t know why you’d shoot exclusively in the dark lit by a pool light but safe to say you could get away with it here within reason. My only issue at the time of this writing is Resolve doesn’t exactly know what’s going on with these clips yet because it doesn’t know this camera exists so I’m unable to select ISO but all the other parameters are there. It seems to be defaulting to 3200 ISO, which of course looks a little noisy because it’s RAW, but only in the darkest areas and oddly there seems to be a big circle in the middle of all of my late-night RAW clips that’s actually less noisy than the area outside of that circle. No idea what that circle is and in the stills below you can’t even see the noise let alone the circle artifact so you’ll have to wait for me to put my video about these cameras together, but for all I know I should have black balanced or it’s just a result of the RAW implementation not existing yet or any number of things. When the image is brighter you don’t really notice it and brighter areas in general don’t have any appreciable noise but again, this isn’t a final unit by any stretch so we’ll leave that for now. None of my compressed footage from either camera has that circle.

Both cameras also have Pre-Record up to 5 seconds, which is awesome for sports or live events where you’re not entirely sure when you’ll get “the shot” but don’t want to just roll incessantly and waste card space. For something like Skateboard cinematography that’s a huge deal and I found myself incredibly thankful it was there when filming the basketball teams as I just wanted an actively zooming clip of what I can only describe as a “stunt dunk” between two players but didn’t want to have to scrub through footage later; I simply only the clips where there was a “make” because I was using pre-record. They also have what is ostensibly pre-record for photo where 15 shots are taken before you hold down the shutter, so I can see that being huge for the same crowd of sports and live event folks. Keep that viewfinder up everyone!

Something that I’m sure is big for a certain crowd is the ability to take a photo while filming. All you do is toggle it on and you’re able to (on the R5II) take a 33mp 16×9 photo while you’re filming a clip with no interruption. For generating BTS images, for instance, from your A-Cam that could be a big value-add as you’re getting a nice robust still instead of a screen capture. I personally don’t see that being a big feature for me but I’d love to see how people use that in the field.

What else? Rolling shutter performance looked pretty decent and didn’t stand out to me which is nice. I loved seeing the whole screen surrounded by red to confirm you’re recording, that was great. The screen itself is pretty good out in the sun and the touch functions are simple to understand and use. The viewfinders look fantastic although on the stills side I’ve got some pretty old cameras all things considered so I might just be easy to please. You can install LUTs in those picture profiles just like the C-Series, so that’s cool. The R5mkII only has 1 CFexpress card slot whereas the R1 has two, but both can record beautiful proxy footage to the SD card (a trick I’ve used all the time on my C500 when I needed like… way more or lighter-weight footage but 2K was acceptable and there wasn’t going to be heavy grading). Both cameras have a Tally Lamp which is neat. One thing I didn’t love, actually, was the fact that the cameras don’t have a 180* shutter mode or even a 1/48 shutter option for video, which I mentioned to them on-site and hope will be added before the cameras launch. 4K/120 is cool, like I said at the top, although I’m not the core target for that kind of speed, rarely going over 48 or 60fps in my line of work. There’s eye-tracking AF (as in the camera tracks YOUR eye and focuses on where you’re looking) for photo which is really neat… yeah I think that covers it all, right?

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and I’d love to answer them for you! Again, I’ll have a video accompaniment to this article up soon I just haven’t had time to edit it together since I got back. I’ll update this article with a link when I do.

Overall I very much enjoyed my experience with both cameras, specifically the R5II, and have to note that DSLR/Mirrorless/Hybrid video has really come up so far in the past few years it’s insane. Between the R5II and other manufacturers offerings, there’s just nothing image-wise that should stand in your way. When the 5DmkII came out there were a ton of things that made it difficult to use in a video capacity but the quality of that video was so far and away better than the camcorders we had available to us that we worked around it when we could for that sweet sweet depth of field and 1080p. Nowadays these cameras aren’t missing much! XLR jacks here, built-in ND’s there, but these are hybrids not dedicated Cinema cameras! It’s still quite impressive. At this price point would I pick an R5mkII over something like a C70? Probably not, but I almost never take photos professionally. Considering how excellent the video is in both of these cameras, let alone the R5, I could see it being a compelling option for Photographers who need to bring the heat when it comes to video.

It’s funny: I’m from California and went to Arizona State for college, graduated in 2012, moved back to LA in 2015 and hadn’t been back since. When I was there I was enrolled in the then just-started film school (which has since exploded into an incredibly respectable full-fledged department), sometimes using that aforementioned 5DmkII when we could get it from the school, but for a handful of years I was an events photographer for Red Bull which kept me there after. It was kind of a full-circle moment to be invited back to the desert to test what is ostensibly the spiritual successor to the 5DmkII in the same environment I started my career and first discovered DSLR video. On the last day of my short trip, my flight was leaving later in the afternoon so I took the time to grab a late breakfast and hang out on my hotel patio overlooking a nice area of the hotel and just reflect on how my work life’s gone so far. This year especially has been tough, obviously, for everyone and it’s been easy to think it’s a wrap on the ol’ film career but sitting there in the morning AZ sun like I used to as a young adult, I was struck with how calm I was as opposed to back then and realized things are actually pretty good all things considered. It was a very meditative experience and I appreciate Canon affording me the opportunity to have it, even though that brief half-hour or whatever it was was in no way the reason they flew me out there haha

The Canon EOS R1 camera is expected to be available in the Fall of 2024, for an estimated retail price of $6,299.00. The Canon EOS R5 Mark II camera is expected to be available in August 2024, for an estimated retail price of $4,299.00 for the camera body only. The EOS R5 Mark II camera kit, which will include the RF24-105mm F4 L IS USM lens, will have an estimated retail price of $5,399.00.