Canon eos R5 - Fabulously Feature Rich

Boasting a large number of industry-leading features, the Canon EOS R5 sets a high bar for its competitors. K Madhavan Pillai puts it to the test.

- K Madhavan Pillai

The Canon EOS R5 has already begun to get a large following. With many firsts to its credit, not only does the R5 boast of options that make it a perfect choice for almost any genre from sports, portraiture, and street, to weddings, fashion or within a studio, many of its features set new standards for full-frame cameras at its price. The EOS R5 came to me for review with the exceptional RF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens. Let’s dive right in.

Features

With well-designed cameras, each feature leads seamlessly to the next. At the heart of the EOS R5 is a newly developed 45MP full-frame CMOS sensor with significantly faster readout speeds. Coupled with a fast Digic X processor (first seen in Canon’s current flagship, the EOS-1DX Mark III), the R5 is capable of continuous shooting speed of up to 20fps at full resolution using the electronic shutter, and with full AF and AE tracking (a first at this resolution). The mechanical shutter is capable of 12fps and is tested up to 5,00,000 cycles. The R5 lets you select between fully mechanical, electronic first curtain, or fully electronic shutter release.

Notable inclusions that are also new to the R series so far are the EOS R5’s maximum native ISO of 51,200 despite 45MP (hinting at a more stable low ISO dynamic range, noise and colour stability), support for 10-bit HDR PQ HEIF format recording that allows more far colour information to be encoded into a compressed file format. There is also a new ‘Face Lighting Compensation’ function in the Auto Lighting Optimizer (ALO) during RAW post-processing, and a new ‘Portrait relighting’ feature in Dual Pixel RAW that allows users to adjust the direction and intensity of lighting after the shoot.