After a good six hours of photography with the EOS R over the weekend I thought I would share some initial thoughts on how I felt the camera performed, both good and bad. To put things in to perspective, I moved from a Canon 1D mk II and 7D 9+ years ago and have used Panasonic Lumix m4/3 cameras since. I moved from their flagship photography camera (the G9) to the EOS R.
The G9 is known for the quality of its EVF, and I don’t find the one the EOS R has to be any sort of step back whatsoever. To all intents and purposes, it feels like looking through an OVF in almost all circumstances, with the added benefit of way more shooting information and of course being able to see exactly what your exposure is going to be. I should qualify this by saying that I have used EVFs for the last 9 years and am a big fan of them. I didn’t experience any tearing or lag when using it, including when trying to follow fast moving birds with it in less than stellar light. The viewfinder is large and with good eye relief. I’m a spectacles wearer, and had no problems wearing my glasses while using the camera. Maybe I just haven’t worked out how to turn it on, but on my G9 there was an over exposure warning that highlighted blown areas live through the EVF while composing even when taking stills. At the moment, it appears that’s only available on the EOS R during playback. I found this extremely useful, and if it’s not there already, would love to see it added with a future firmware update. All in all though, I’ve found the EVF experience to be extremely good.
Coming from the G9 and its contrast based focusing system, the EOS feels different in use and I am still adjusting to it. While not slow, the EOS R does not feel as instantaneous in AF as the G9 did. I’m sure I’m splitting hairs here, but I did perceive a difference. However, I have so far found it to be very accurate in single shot AF and AI Servo for slow moving subjects (AI Servo performed very well as perched birds moved and twitched on the workshop I attended on Sunday). So far, I’ve tended to shoot using either a single AF point, or single AF point with 9 additional points around it. I have done some shots with face / eye detect AF, but so far found it inconsistent, and not as good as the G9. When it nails it, it really does nail it. However, it can miss and spectacle wears do seem to cause it some issues. Having said all of that, I am still adjusting to the different system and I am sure I will learn all of the EOS R’s AF foibles in time. I should also add that I’ve been caught out by lack of DoF on several occasions so far, which is probably not surprising saying I came from m4/3.
I’ve had very little opportunity to use AI Servo AF, but so far my experience echos what Robin has found. The last thing we did on the workshop I attended at the weekend was some in flight shots of a Great Grey Owl. Now I am no BiF expert, and we were taking these in woodland with rapidly failing light, but the keeper rate was very, very low with the bird flying straight down the barrel of the lens. I didn’t have any opportunity to adjust any of the AI Servo settings, so that might well have helped things and nor was I using one of Canon’s most recent L lenses. I hope to test AI Servo more next weekend when I head up to Croft Circuit. I suspect it will do much better on bigger targets with more predictable movement. However, I also strongly suspect that the EOS R is in no way a dedicated sports or wildlife camera! From my experience, the G9 would not have handled the BiF shooting any better than the EOS R.
I started off using the D pad to move my focus point around, but very quickly moved to using my thumb in the top right corner of the LCD screen. The rest of the LCD doesn’t respond to any touch when setup like this, so my nose resting against it didn’t have any affect or impact on performance. I found this to be a quick (so long as you weren’t going from one side of the frame to the other when two swipes of the thumb were usually needed) and accurate way to do things. I just had to remember to lift my thumb completely off the screen before moving it, otherwise it took the focus point with it. My G9 had this functionality, but it also had a joystick so I never made use of it although I kinda wish I had now. I’m sure with practice, I could be just about as quick as I would be with a joystick. I don’t have particularly large (or small) hands and found using the LCD to position the focus point with the camera to my eye and finger on the shutter button very comfortable indeed.
On that point, I found the whole ergonomics of the camera to be fantastic. Ergonomics are a very personal thing, but I found the EOS R to be excellent in this regard and extremely comfortable to use for extended periods of time handheld. With the way I had customised it, I never once had to go into the menus to make any adjustment while shooting. I just need to develop the muscle memory for where all the buttons are LOL.
The main reason I moved from the G9 to full frame was for increased image quality, and I am certainly not disappointed. I spent most of Saturday shooting between ISO1600 and ISO6400, and the images are far, far better then I ever would’ve got from my G9 at the same ISO. I will need to get some faster memory cards though, as those big raw files took some writing to what I have now.
So, there you go – my initial thoughts after a full day’s shooting with the EOS R. So far, I am extremely happy I made the change from the G9, as it is delivering exactly what I wanted. Apologies for the long post, but hopefully somebody will find it useful.
Cheers,
Simon.