Canon EOS R5: The World’s Powerful Hybrid Camera

The Canon EOS R5 is expected to be the game-changing mirrorless camera in the large market of competitors. A true hybrid that’s simply as convincing for video as for stills, it will be a completely fascinating alternative for everyone from landscape photographers to pro videographers. If the image quality and IBIS performance match, we can say that it’ll be the best camera in the world with few settlements besides the costly price tag.

The Canon EOS R5 is a supercomputer embedded in the body of a full-frame mirrorless camera that’s the size of last year’s Canon EOS R. It is currently regarded as the best hybrid camera in the world.

Canon EOS R5

At 45 megapixels, it’s the highest-resolution camera on Canon’s works besides for the EOS 5DS from 2015. It captures full-resolution stills at up to 20fps using the electronic shutter, or 12fps using the mechanical shutter, for up to 350 JPEGs or 180 raw files.

Along with its more reasonable Canon EOS R6 sibling, it’s also the first Canon camera to allow in-body image stabilization, across all five axes. Use it with compatible, supported lenses – or even ones with no built-in IS, as the RF 28-70mm f/2.

Design

Talking of width and height, the EOS R5 is all-but equal to that latter camera; three hidden millimeters have been added to its depth, and 70g has been combined to its weight.

The elegant, touch-sensitive autofocus point controller on the Canon EOS 1D X Mark III is, unfortunately, missing. But, as on the EOS R, you get a small, high-contrast square display on the top of the camera which displays current shooting details.

The monitor on the back of the EOS R5 shares its specs with the unit on the EOS R – it’s a 3.15-inch, 2.1MP vari-angle touchscreen – but the electronic viewfinder receives a visible upgrade.

It’s the equivalent size, at 0.5 inches, and it’s still an OLED, but where the EOS R’s unique viewfinder had a resolution of 1280 x 960, the EOS R5’s is much more elegant, at 1600 x 1200, or 5.69MP.

The latest piece allows 2,130mAh against the old one’s 1,865mAh and declared performance – per CIPA’s famously traditional trial – is up to 490 stills if you frame up using the large touchscreen monitor, or up to 320 shots using the EVF.

Specifications

The Canon EOS R5’s prominent features are jaw-dropping: 45MP stills… burst shooting up to 20fps… 8K video. It’s the original R range camera (along with the R6) to introduce in-body stabilization; use it with the equally supported lenses and it will give up to eight stops of compensation.

Now if you change the mode selector to video and you will get an out-of-this-world performance. 4K, naturally, but up to 120fps, and with the choice of shooting raw.

Or, the headliner: 8K video. Again, the choice of shooting raw is there, at 30, 25, 24 or 23.98fps, and a galactic bitrate of around 2,600Mbps. Opting to shoot H.265 files, at the same settings, reduces the bitrate to about 1,300Mbps, while H.264 drops it further to 300Mbps.

Talking of autofocus, the R5 allows autofocus points across the full width and height of its full-frame sensor. Flip open the memory card slot and there’s an extra nod to professionals: a pair of slots, one SD slot, and one new-fangled CFexpress slot.

You also get internal 802.11a/b/g/n/AC wireless at Bluetooth 4.2, including the capability to upload to an FTP site via Wi-Fi – convenient for beginners. Those with absolutely demanding customers can go for the WFT-R10 wireless transmitter, which incorporates a pair of battery slots as well as the capability to transmit via SFTP or the gigabit Ethernet port.