Canon EOS R | Full Frame Mirrorless Specs, Looks Cool

The Canon EOS R specs are out. If you weren’t satisfied with the screeching and raging of the Youtubers and bloggers with the Nikon Z cameras, you’re really going to love this one. 

Single SD card slot, not even UHS-II, no IBIS, no joystick.

Why does Canon do this? Why can’t anybody seem to compete with Sony?

I’ll tell you why.

Where Canon Is Going With Mirrorless

Canon has found a new market that they basically own right now and the EOS R will solidifies this dominance. That is the vlogger market. 

Canon right now has two cameras that voggers love. The 6D II, and the EOS M50.

Canon made a full frame mirrorless version of their 6DII with an improved sensor and an R mount. It actually looks like the 5DIV sensor which is 30.4MP. The EOS R will be 30.3MP. So they may have just taken the 5DIV sensor and dedicated a bunch of the pixels to phase detection.

Canon is also doing something Nikon and Sony haven’t done yet. They’ll be launching this system with some crazy fast lenses. An f2 zoom lens and a 50mm f1.2. This is something I’m actually very excited about because I mostly only care about lenses, camera bodies are just machines that come and go. 

Update: The EOS R has been announced. Here are the proper specs.

Canon EOS R Specs:

Sensor: 30.3MP Full-Frame CMOS Sensor
Processor: DIGIC 8 Image Processor
Video: UHD 4K30 Video; C-Log & 10-Bit HDMI Out
AF: Dual Pixel CMOS AF, 5655 AF Points
EVF: 3.69m-Dot OLED Electronic Viewfinder
LCD: 3.15″ 2.1m-Dot Swivel Touchscreen LCD
ISO: Expanded ISO 50-102400, 8 fps Shooting
Multi-Function Bar, Dual Pixel RAW

Canon EOS R System – BHphoto

It’s missing a few things that the A7III has, but also does a few things that the Sony doesn’t do. 30MP is suitable for landscape photography and Multi-Function Bar is neat. It also has what looks like a very nice EVF, and a swivel touchscreen. 

This camera is very appealing if you ask me. Especially if you’re not a pro and don’t need dual memory cards.

One of the coolest things about this camera I think, is the EF to R adapter with the drop in filter. This should significantly cut down on vignetting with heavy ND filters and no more crazy skies with polarizers on wide lenses. Oh man! That is significant. 🙂

If you can get past the 1 SD card slot and no IBIS (which is not that big of a deal), this might be the best overall value for a jack of all trades camera, master of vlogging. Amazing for video / vlogging, suitable for landscape photography and portraits. I think APS-C is better for street photography but the Canon 40mm pancake lens is fantastic so you can make this system fairly compact. 

Don’t trust to the reviews . . . except mine of course. 🙂

I think a lot of Youtubers and bloggers are expecting these mega corporations to fall into the catchup and compete trap. Companies shouldn’t think that way and when they do they usually end up out of business with few exceptions, the auto industry and anything that involves racing. How most successful companies work is by focusing 100% on their customers, the customer experience and providing them with better tools for how they are using their current products. It’s all about brand building. Canon is making cameras for Canon customers, they aren’t trying to make cameras for Sony customers.

Battlefield 5 fell into this trap. They tried to make Battlefield with Fortnight sprinkled on top with a social justice marketing strategy, and now their pre-orders are low and the game is delayed. At least that’s the way people perceive it. 

Canon And Nikon Still Dominate

Canon and Nikon cameras still sell really well even if they aren’t spec machines because a lot of people, especially non-pros, don’t care about one camera having -4EV auto focus or low amp glow at ISO 128,000,000,0000,0000,000. Most specs with todays cameras just don’t matter anymore, but a cameras form and function do.

The Canon 6DII was a huge disappointment for the spec nerds. A lot of reviewers trashed it, but that didn’t matter, people bought it, it became one of the best vlogging camera for the last year. It didn’t have IBIS but vloggers love gimbals or have tripods, and image stabilization lenses still exist. Also, nobody else has the flipping screen that the Canons have in full frame bodies.

Canon also has legendary dual pixel autofocus. It’s very accurate and very fast for video.

On top of all that, Canon cameras are really fun to use and they have fantastic image and color output. Great for people who want nice skin tones right away without having to add corrections to every single photo ever taken like you do on Sony. “Oh I just shoot RAW so I can adjust the flat, pale, dead zombie skin colors in post.” – on every single photo ever taken.

Get Ready For The Rediculous EOS R Reviews

What’s funny is some Youtubers trashed the Canon 6D II, but after all the vloggers started using it as a multipurpose camera, they went back and sort of changed their view in a new video. I won’t say names. But bloggers and Youtubers sort of all live in an echo chamber, they communicate with each other and kind of repeat each others reviews and it becomes this game of telephone with things get more and more ridiculous with every review. Right now everyone is hyper sensitive about battery life and dual memory cards and it hilarious.

I notice reviewers also typically try to play their reviews on the safe side, telling people what they expect to hear, unless they are trashing a Fujifilm camera to get people talking and reposting their videos as a self promoting marketing strategy. 

While “pro photographers” (what ever that means) and wedding shooters are going to rage and screech about the EOS R, it’s going to dominate as a vlogging camera. In 2018, a lot of people want to be vloggers and nothing can match how incredibly useful the Canon flip out screen is and a lot of people including myself, still have a ton of Canon lenses that will adapt perfectly to this new body without having to deal with the slow and unreliable autofocus from using a Metabones adapter on Sony cameras. 

The camera doesn’t have a joystick but it doesn’t really need one. Like Nikon, Canon touch screen is really good. Sony and Fujifilm haven’t really nailed it yet I don’t think. So with great touchscreen functions, you don’t need a joystick to control the focus point. 

Final Thoughts | Canon EOS R

I actually really like the Canon 6DII, it was a very fun camera to use and I’ll be very happy to see a mirrorless version of it with a 5DIV sensor and a few other bells and whistles. You can see my Canon 6DII impressions here.

The new R mount looks cool and the new lenses look great. Canon will have a great future with this platform.

If you’re not happy with the specs of the new EOS R, remember that this is just the 6D II turned mirrorless. Wait until Canon does a Canon 5D V and the mirrorless version of that. In the meantime, when the EOS R is announced, I believe you’ll be able to get one for less than the cost of a Sony A7III and start collecting lenses for a mount that is pretty much future proof.

Now I have to decide if I want to invest into this Canon system with an adapter where I already have a ton of EOS lenses, or invest into Nikon where I have no lenses.

My advice, lets wait till Panasonic announced their full frame mirrorless, Fujifilm has an X-Pro like Medium Format camera on the way and Zeiss has a full frame fixed lens X100F like camera in the works.

There is a lot going on and no need to rush into any system. Wait until all the cameras are released, they get into normal photographers hands and then, when the smoke clears, we can see what camera is what. 

You can see all the specs at Canonrumors.

Shortlist of Canon EOS R specs

Sensor: 30.3MP Full Frame
Image Type: 14-bit RAW / C-RAW with Dual Pixel Support
Continous Shooting: 8fps / with AF 5fps
Video: 4k30p / 1080p60 / 720p120
LCD: 3.15″ – 2.1m-dot Touch
Memory Cards: 1 – SD