My experience with Canon refurbished and first impressions of the R

After pretty much deciding that I wasn't going to get an R camera until I could afford an R5, I was sucked in by the really good deals on refurbished models offered recently (and still, I think). The R and RF 24-105L was offered for $1911, with free shipping. I got an extra 10% off through the loyalty program, simply by phoning and giving the serial number for an old non-working Powershot (the original 2MP S100 from 2000). In theory, I am supposed to send it back to Canon for recycling, but I haven't received the packaging for that, and a customer service rep I spoke to said I didn't have to do that, so I suppose it will stay on my shelf for another 17 years! That brought the package price down to about $1720. There were delays shipping it (I spoke to a couple of reps, who said that the warehouse is very short-staffed right now, because of Covid), but every time I checked, either a person or the automated system confirmed that my order had been accepted, and was just waiting to ship. It did eventually ship, two weeks after I placed the order, so I can't really complain, given the amazing price. It arrived yesterday, and the only slightly weird thing was that it was all packed in a Powershot Vixia box (someone else said the same thing happened with their order). But everything was there, neatly wrapped just like for new items, and it all looks pristine. You certainly can't tell from looking that it isn't brand new. The second slightly weird thing was that it came with firmware 1.2. When I took a couple of test shots of a photo on the wall, and then of my wife, I noticed that the eye AF didn't seem anything like as snappy and responsive as on my M6II. When I saw the firmware, I realized why, and updated it to 1.8. The difference is quite significant. Now, I would say it's about the same as on my M6II (which is really good--though not up to R5 or R6 standards, of course), and maybe even slightly better (at least at picking up the eye from even further away). It's no big deal, but I would have thought that the refurbishing would have included installing the latest firmware. Perhaps it's actually a model that has been sitting around for quite a while.

Now, my impressions, after taking some shots with the 24-105 walking around a local lake, some low-light shots with the 35 F1.8, and a couple of test shots with the 85 F2 (I bought the 35 and 85 new separately, after selling my old 7DII and a few EF lenses). I know I haven't had it for long, but the first thing I can say is that I don't understand all the negativity this camera generated. Perhaps most of that was from the early AF performance, and whatever else was fixed by the later firmware updates, and people haven't bothered to reassess it in its latest incarnation. It seems to include a lot of what I really like about the 7DII and the M6II, with the obvious exception of burst shooting speed. I love the customizability of it. In that respect it goes beyond the 7DII and M6II. I've started playing around with different button assignments, and have a few I like so far. It even restores the one feature of the M6, that was removed in the M6II, which is the ability to change focus modes directly, rather than pressing the dial function button (on the M6II) and then turning the dial. I've assigned that function to the record button, and limited the modes to the ones I am likely to use (face+tracking with eye detect, single point and surrounds, small single point--but I might winnow it further by removing the single point with surrounds). The four-way controller gives you four different buttons to assign functions to. I've so far assigned the up button to maximize screen brightness, the left button to switch between screen and EVF (I turned off auto switching), and the down button to turn off the screen. For me, this is much more useful than a joystick. I loved the joystick on the 7DII, but with the R (and the M6II), I find it much easier to move focus points directly with the touchscreen (and using touch and drag when I'm using the EVF). I even like the touch bar so far. Following some suggestions here, I assigned ISO 100 to the left press, Auto ISO to right press, and change ISO to swipe. I also dedicated the lock button just to locking the touch bar.

I love the EVF on this camera. It's a big step up from the DC2 that I use with the M6II (though I only use that with long lenses). It's like looking through an old 35mm SLR viewfinder, but better (because of all the info, and the exposure simulation). I was expecting performance to be sluggish, after reading lots of complaints, and perhaps it is in comparison with the R5 and R6, but I'm pretty impressed. Face and eye detect works really well, and it even tracks pretty well (again contrary to what some people here have said). As I was walking around the lake, a cyclist approached from the other direction, I fired off a burst of 28 shots in high speed (5fps), with the cyclist coming towards me, and then veering off out of the frame, so the last few shots required sideways tracking (I didn't pan to keep him in the center). Every single one was perfectly sharp. And this is with a lens (the 24-105) which isn't designed for action. A bit later, when I was taking a couple of shots of geese on the ground, my wife pointed out that there were more of them flying overhead. So I just swung the camera up to point at them at the pretty feeble zoom of 105mm, and fired off a burst of about 10 shots. The camera grabbed focus right away, and every shot was sharp. I will be interested to see how this camera does with my EF 70-200 F2.8L IS II, adapted with the Villtrox control ring adapter (the Canon was out of stock). Speaking of which, I'm also loving the control ring on the lenses. I've assigned it to exposure compensation.

A couple of other things I like so far. The auto ISO implementation is the same as on the 7DII and M6II, which is excellent. I shoot in Av most of the time, and set the lowest shutter speed according to what I'm shooting (higher for people and animals, lower for landscapes and the like). It also has the HDR implementation of the 7DII, which is lacking in the M6II. Specifically, you can save all the images, making selecting HDR the easiest way to fire off a three shot bracket, and get a reasonable JPEG too (though I usually also use HDR software to process the three RAWs).

Finally, it feels really good in my hands. Solid, without being as big and heavy as the 7DII. I suspect that all the complaints about ergonomics and the touch bar specifically, are really just a sign that these forums (including the DPR staff) have quite a lot of old dogs, who are unable, or just unwilling, to learn new tricks. The thing is, the tricks aren't really that new. They're just variations of tricks we've all learned already.

So, my verdict so far, after one day, is that I really like this camera. It's obviously not an action camera, but it does everything else that I've tried so far well. And as for action, I can remember the thrill I felt when I upgraded from the 300D to the 20D. Here is a speed demon, I thought. The 20D shot at 5fps, and had a RAW buffer somewhere in the teens. But the 300D shot at 2.5 fps, and had a buffer (RAW or JPEG) of 4 frames. We've come a long way in 17 years!

Here is a short sequence of the cyclist, demonstrating Boulder mask etiquette at the approach of walkers:

And a couple of the geese:

One more thing. So far, I'm impressed with the three RF lenses I have. The 85 is good enough, and the 1:2 macro good enough for what I want out of macro, that I'm thinking of selling my EF 100 L macro.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

After pretty much deciding that I wasn't going to get an R camera until I could afford an R5, I was sucked in by the really good deals on refurbished models offered recently (and still, I think). The R and RF 24-105L was offered for $1911, with free shipping. I got an extra 10% off through the loyalty program, simply by phoning and giving the serial number for an old non-working Powershot (the original 2MP S100 from 2000). In theory, I am supposed to send it back to Canon for recycling, but I haven't received the packaging for that, and a customer service rep I spoke to said I didn't have to do that, so I suppose it will stay on my shelf for another 17 years! That brought the package price down to about $1720. There were delays shipping it (I spoke to a couple of reps, who said that the warehouse is very short-staffed right now, because of Covid), but every time I checked, either a person or the automated system confirmed that my order had been accepted, and was just waiting to ship. It did eventually ship, two weeks after I placed the order, so I can't really complain, given the amazing price. It arrived yesterday, and the only slightly weird thing was that it was all packed in a Powershot Vixia box (someone else said the same thing happened with their order). But everything was there, neatly wrapped just like for new items, and it all looks pristine. You certainly can't tell from looking that it isn't brand new. The second slightly weird thing was that it came with firmware 1.2. When I took a couple of test shots of a photo on the wall, and then of my wife, I noticed that the eye AF didn't seem anything like as snappy and responsive as on my M6II. When I saw the firmware, I realized why, and updated it to 1.8. The difference is quite significant. Now, I would say it's about the same as on my M6II (which is really good--though not up to R5 or R6 standards, of course), and maybe even slightly better (at least at picking up the eye from even further away). It's no big deal, but I would have thought that the refurbishing would have included installing the latest firmware. Perhaps it's actually a model that has been sitting around for quite a while.

Now, my impressions, after taking some shots with the 24-105 walking around a local lake, some low-light shots with the 35 F1.8, and a couple of test shots with the 85 F2 (I bought the 35 and 85 new separately, after selling my old 7DII and a few EF lenses). I know I haven't had it for long, but the first thing I can say is that I don't understand all the negativity this camera generated. Perhaps most of that was from the early AF performance, and whatever else was fixed by the later firmware updates, and people haven't bothered to reassess it in its latest incarnation. It seems to include a lot of what I really like about the 7DII and the M6II, with the obvious exception of burst shooting speed. I love the customizability of it. In that respect it goes beyond the 7DII and M6II. I've started playing around with different button assignments, and have a few I like so far. It even restores the one feature of the M6, that was removed in the M6II, which is the ability to change focus modes directly, rather than pressing the dial function button (on the M6II) and then turning the dial. I've assigned that function to the record button, and limited the modes to the ones I am likely to use (face+tracking with eye detect, single point and surrounds, small single point--but I might winnow it further by removing the single point with surrounds). The four-way controller gives you four different buttons to assign functions to. I've so far assigned the up button to maximize screen brightness, the left button to switch between screen and EVF (I turned off auto switching), and the down button to turn off the screen. For me, this is much more useful than a joystick. I loved the joystick on the 7DII, but with the R (and the M6II), I find it much easier to move focus points directly with the touchscreen (and using touch and drag when I'm using the EVF). I even like the touch bar so far. Following some suggestions here, I assigned ISO 100 to the left press, Auto ISO to right press, and change ISO to swipe. I also dedicated the lock button just to locking the touch bar.

I love the EVF on this camera. It's a big step up from the DC2 that I use with the M6II (though I only use that with long lenses). It's like looking through an old 35mm SLR viewfinder, but better (because of all the info, and the exposure simulation). I was expecting performance to be sluggish, after reading lots of complaints, and perhaps it is in comparison with the R5 and R6, but I'm pretty impressed. Face and eye detect works really well, and it even tracks pretty well (again contrary to what some people here have said). As I was walking around the lake, a cyclist approached from the other direction, I fired off a burst of 28 shots in high speed (5fps), with the cyclist coming towards me, and then veering off out of the frame, so the last few shots required sideways tracking (I didn't pan to keep him in the center). Every single one was perfectly sharp. And this is with a lens (the 24-105) which isn't designed for action. A bit later, when I was taking a couple of shots of geese on the ground, my wife pointed out that there were more of them flying overhead. So I just swung the camera up to point at them at the pretty feeble zoom of 105mm, and fired off a burst of about 10 shots. The camera grabbed focus right away, and every shot was sharp. I will be interested to see how this camera does with my EF 70-200 F2.8L IS II, adapted with the Villtrox control ring adapter (the Canon was out of stock). Speaking of which, I'm also loving the control ring on the lenses. I've assigned it to exposure compensation.

A couple of other things I like so far. The auto ISO implementation is the same as on the 7DII and M6II, which is excellent. I shoot in Av most of the time, and set the lowest shutter speed according to what I'm shooting (higher for people and animals, lower for landscapes and the like). It also has the HDR implementation of the 7DII, which is lacking in the M6II. Specifically, you can save all the images, making selecting HDR the easiest way to fire off a three shot bracket, and get a reasonable JPEG too (though I usually also use HDR software to process the three RAWs).

Finally, it feels really good in my hands. Solid, without being as big and heavy as the 7DII. I suspect that all the complaints about ergonomics and the touch bar specifically, are really just a sign that these forums (including the DPR staff) have quite a lot of old dogs, who are unable, or just unwilling, to learn new tricks. The thing is, the tricks aren't really that new. They're just variations of tricks we've all learned already.

So, my verdict so far, after one day, is that I really like this camera. It's obviously not an action camera, but it does everything else that I've tried so far well. And as for action, I can remember the thrill I felt when I upgraded from the 300D to the 20D. Here is a speed demon, I thought. The 20D shot at 5fps, and had a RAW buffer somewhere in the teens. But the 300D shot at 2.5 fps, and had a buffer (RAW or JPEG) of 4 frames. We've come a long way in 17 years!

Here is a short sequence of the cyclist, demonstrating Boulder mask etiquette at the approach of walkers:

And a couple of the geese:

One more thing. So far, I'm impressed with the three RF lenses I have. The 85 is good enough, and the 1:2 macro good enough for what I want out of macro, that I'm thinking of selling my EF 100 L macro.

It seems that bashing new Camera models is an old tradition as the limitations of the new model are portrayed and travesties without recourse. Of the new models have good and bad points but the bad are bashed for months on end after the first new models are shipped.

The EOS 5 Mk IV was bashed with revolutionary 4K video with dual pixel phase autofocus. This was in a long tradition dating back to the EOS 5 MkII which was revolutionary in combining HD video in a versatile high performance DSLR. Basher and haters come out in droves for a new great Canon camera just like they did in spades for the R5 which another truly great Canon camera in the tradition of the 5 series DSLRs.

The EOS R in my opinion is a good prosumer FF camera a very affordable price for a Canon camera in high end magnesium rugged weather proof case. It is verstale and and a leadership 30MP sensors The major limitation of the EOS R is IMHO is the high action performance in comparison with APS-C models that were introduced a few years earlier such as the 7D Mk 2 and the 90D. However, I have shot BIF and other moving subjects. It can be done but it more limited than the others. The R5 and R6 are incredibly good at high action shooting in combination with excellent autofocus at the highest level.

There is a lot to like about the EOS R. I am keeping mine along with my R5 and 5D MkIV.

Congratulations on getting the good price on the refurb of a great camera and good luck shooting with it.   I love the consistent accuracy of the focus using large aperature lenses and the excellent dynamic range of the sensor as well as very good low light light performance of the camera.