DPReview TV: First thoughts on the Canon R

Thank you for your answer. It answers my question in part. But what would it mean if Canon were to open up the RF mount to third parties? Would that help anything? And what do Nikon and Sony do... do they open up their mounts to third parties?

pentalex - My understanding is that third party lenses for "closed mounts" from Canon and Nikon have to be reverse engineered. In other words Tamron etc are not given access to data about lens measurements or about how the electronics communicate. So they have to strip down OEM lenses and work it out for themelves.

Some of the lens pins/contacts are probably redundant but may be given functionality on future bodies, so presumably when a new body comes out Tamron etc have to work out the electronics again and issue firmware updates for their lenses.

With "open mounts" the OEM provides the necessary data under licence and this data is used by third party manufacturers to produce their products. They would also be informed by the OEM of any upgrades needed to make the lenses communicate properly with later bodies.

I don't know whether the Sony E mount is "open" or "closed".

Thank you. I appreciate the answer.

IBIS for one. Even Nikon included that.

Only one??? Just because other's have it?
Mate, listen:
Lens IS is more optimized/efficient & robust than a global IBIS. Try a Sony IBIS, mount a lens longer than 40mm and check how effective it is. Try going long till 85 and check again. Forget it when you go 150+ FL. And when lens have it, IBIS becomes redundant. Also, if you are serious about video, glidecams works better.

On this R, there is an increase pin connectors to speed up parallel signal transfer & Canon explains in their video that it'll enhance lens IS even more, which makes sense. Also, IBIS will wear out sensor calibration soon.

But check this:
1. 10 bit 4.2.2 external recorder (Super35 crop)
2. DPAF with -6 EV sensitivity
3. Fully functional tilty touchscreen.
4. Manual Focus Assist feature from C700
5. Customizable lens ring for silent off eye adjustment during recordings.
6. Fully functional OLED EVF
7. Silent operation Customizable touch bar for during recordings.
8. Super fast lenses
9. Reliable weather sealing

Then sounds like you've got the perfect camera--for you. BTW, I assume you also work for Canon.

You don't have to work for Canon to point out the obvious. @Jack Jian you forget to mention at no.8 beside fast also the world's best selection of lenses that work flawlessly with this camera straight out of the box

Without being too presumptuous prior to a full test and field reports, I think that the speed of operations (e.g. dropping down to 3fps in some cases) is not a good sign. I feel reminded of the EOS-M with its snail-slow operations...

I think that this is a camera which many users will pick anyways. My personal impression is that Canon felt pressured to release whatever is working at the moment, in order to stop bleeding its user base, succumbing to hype of the mirror-less. Many of us, DSLR users, will not just now buy a new camera because we are happy with the functionality of what we have. Many of us will wait for the "next model". With the EOS-R and Z out, we simply have now confidence that our glass and the entire system will still work, and that counts. I commend Canon to the $100 adapter. Nikon should price theirs equally low.

@Jack Jian
did you ever try a modern mirrorless camera that combines IBIS and in-lens-stabilization? It's not redundant, the combination is superior! 1 second or more handheld, and if you don't need that, every handheld video is obviously more stable, no swaying horizon, even when walking!

Agree with Barney. This kind of off the cuff video giving us their first impressions as soon as they have it is far better than to wait for a week or two delving into all the nitty gritty. That can wait until the full review.

Everything they said makes sense. These are stop gap cameras to give existing Nikon & Canon users a mirrorless option, but not to replace their DSLRs. And to prevent them from jumping ship entirely to Sony.

@Tap0

Do you know how many camera events are going on at the same time these days and how much media coverage has to be done by a rather small dedicated team?

The last feeling I get is that dPreview is rushing anything. I see them squeezing out even more performance after a long, long day just because they had something to say that might be of interest to us. How many times exactly did you feel like dPreview rushed anything in the past? In the contrary, more often they are late to the game, because they value quality over feeding the early birds with junk food.

@Kharan, you don't need to get induced drunk because your idols are drunk.. :D

The EOS-M series is just a lower grade R series. This is typical Canon market segmentation. The R series is going to sell a lot of less expensive EF lenses w/adapter for Canon. I think Canon knows exactly what they are doing.

Jack Jian, I got a problem with that when the 4K crop on their FF body is smaller than APS-C anyway and nobody thought "wow, maybe that'd be more useful if they could just mount an APS-C lens up to begin with".

TechDev,
No way it's gonna happen! Did you watch the first ironman movie? It would be as ridiculous as Obadiah Stane telling his engineers to build the arc reactor. LOL

FuhTeng
Nikon could only do it by purchasing Sony's sensor system which is already one gen behind the sony mark3..

FuhTeng: Even if development cycles take 3 years (which is reasonable), all C&N needed to do was to pay heed to the main criticisms being levied against gen-2 Sony bodies, and make something better than that.
Instead, we got something very similar to the early EOS M and Nikon 1 offerings - gear aimed at some mythical "upgrader" that a couple of geezers in Japan swear that exists in the swamps of Louisiana :D

The crop in 4K mode is mentioned in this video and in several other places in our launch content.

They have, but they keep that guy behind the camera.

The EOS R UHD crop is greater than that of the 5D IV.

Jack Jian: I'm not Photoworks, but there's *plenty*.
For starters, image quality in low light suffers, because of the reduced capture surface (might as well shoot a Panasonic GH5 then, since it's still miles above the Canon in specs and actual use).
Lenses need to be adapted for wide angle shots. That beautiful 11-24mm f/4 L that costs an arm and leg isn't so great when cropped 1.8x times, and often there isn't a good alternative for an EF lens on crop.
DoF control is made more complicated - diffraction appears much earlier on smaller surface areas, and the crop means that blurry wide-angle shots are rendered impossible in some cases.
Also, and this isn't completely related, the rolling shutter on Canon sensors is *horrible*.

It has nothing to do with the adapter, and everything to do with microlenses on top of the sensor. It took Sony at least a generation to improve that aspect (and even now it's debatable); Canon, despite their 4 generations of EOS M cameras, have never lifted a finger to correct it.
I don't expect their latest disappointment to be any better.

Well , if somebody pays your trip , you are automatically less inclined to criticise, but DPR crew are pros and I am sure it will come later with more detail review.

Gimmicky ergonomics (including fake useless on/off switch/dial) will be fail in real life IMHO.

"f somebody pays your trip , you are automatically less inclined to criticise"

Untrue - at least for us. Fortunately we have earned enough respect to be pretty frank with manufacturers, regardless of who paid for dinner, and still get invited back. The fact that those conversations aren't always on the record doesn't mean that they don't happen.

Yes! How dare they! After all the money I pay for these rev... oh wait! this is FREE effing CONTENT! And they are working RIGHT after the event to deliver it the soonest possible. AND they warned it was going to be a half assed job...

Man, some people are spoiled and feel entitled to just about ANYTHING...

simple answer= JETLAG, shot at around midnight, body clock- set to 4AM morning, so praise them that they doen it instead going to bed straight away!

Since I have a production camera in my hands and have just checked, I'm going to reinforce what Rishi said.

The system is well designed, as you describe, but it's not terribly quick. I'm using relative mode and particularly with a small autofocus point, found I couldn't always get the point to move in time to capture the moment I wanted.

Thanks for clarifying 👍🏻

I use Absolute positioning and I limit it to the upper right corner of the screen, for the fastest operation. Still the update rate when moving the AF point is far too slow, it's very choppy. So, yes, that's laggy.

In Playback mode, swiping between images: laggy. It's unfortunate, but that's the plain truth. Fine in an M-series class product, not fine for this sort of camera.

PWPhotography: So far as we can tell, the left hand half of the pixel produces a 14-bit value, the right hand side produces a 14-bit value. These are then added together and saved as a 14-bit value (The Dual Pixel Raw saves data for L and L+R, rather than saving full left and right data).

This means that if both half pixels are within 1EV of clipping, the L+R value ends up higher than there's room to retain, so it's recorded as clipped. This appears to throw away 1EV of highlight data, based on what we've seen.

PhotoKhan: The touchscreen on a new, untested model is different... DIFFERENT from your biased expectations!? Oh my, PhotoKhan, how poorly it reflects on you to chastise honest reviewers when you don't have a single iota of experience with the EOS R.
Let me put the record straight: you have no idea of how this touchscreen works. OTOH, the DPR staff have used almost every camera under the sun today, *including* the EOS R. But you have the gall to imply that they're nincompoops who can't do their jobs!?

Richard has the basic idea but the problem is a bit more fundamental: the ADCs appear to be tuned such that a max signal from only one of the two photodiodes in a pixel maxes out the ADC (generates a maximum 14-bit value).

The two photodiodes are actually binned during readout, so there aren't two separate 14-bit values that are added (that would require twice the readout time: reading twice the number of pixels!).

Meaning that the ADC maxes out at half of the full well capacity of a pixel.

Yeah, it seems that stupid. I have a guess as to why: in Dual Pixel Raw you actually really the binned value as well as one of the individual photodiodes. The latter benefits from the properly matched FWC to max ADC signal because it helps it overcome read noise (which is higher on Canon sensors than Sony sensors). Incidentally this extra read phase to get the individual photodiode signal is why Dual Pixel Raw has a far slower burst rate.

...

In anycase the issue with the focus assist light being blinding when used in dark for people subject can be lessend by using darkening stickers typically used to darken status lights on electronics. I use it on my micro 4/3 cams and they can still focus well with the darkened assist light which is not blinding anymore.

That's what we've always assumed to be the reason why everybody doesn't just focus wide-open. There's a question over whether it's possible to compensate for any focus shift, perhaps by storing correction factors based on shooting F-number and measured distance (it's exactly the sort of thing camera companies tend not to talk about).

That said, some brands seem to get it to work, so...

My A7R3 stops down when focusing. In theory this should make it more accurate as it compensates for focus shift at narrower apertures, but in practice I've found that the AF can be a little bit off when shooting landscapes at f8 for example. I think the problem is that the AF system has difficulty calculating where the sharpest plane of focus lies due to the deep DoF of the lens when stopped down.

They say focus-shift at different apertures is not problematic for roughly f/2 lenses or slower (see article on focus-shift at Photography Life) . I wish someone would explain the reasons behind some of these design decisions so we can all understand the trade-offs involved - like "Yeah, we could do that but our lenses would cost more/get bigger than we want/not be as sharp/etc."

Seems to make sense. Any method is a compromise unless wide open with "secret" hidden data to compensate for focus shift is used... I'm guessing that there is no secret hidden data and it is assumed the focus shift is considered negligible and/or no better or worse than dealing with less light and a deeper depth of field.

If thats the case it's a bad joke Richard.

No one was drunk, sorry.