Canon Australia has confirmed some more details about the EOS R5, some of which shouldn’t have needed confirmation for, some of which are new, and some of which just raise more questions. Though what I found most amusing was that there was “speculation” that the announced capabilities were being called, “a fantasy” by people online discussing the camera.

In the what we knew column, the 8K recording is going to be full sensor width. In reading a number of other articles talking about this, there seems to be a lot of people confused as to why there’s a 1.7x crop for 4K recording on the 5D mark 4, and why there wouldn’t be on the R5. Simply put, the only way you’re doing 8K on a reasonable (like 45MP) resolutions sensor is to use the full sensor.

8K requires a 8192 pixel wide frame, and this is where we keep coming back to that around 45 MP number. 8192 / 3 * 2 = 5461 * 8192 = 44.7 MP. The only way you’d have a cropped 8K mode on this camera is if it had a much higher than 45 MP sensor.

The bigger question is how will the camera handle 4K and 1080. Will they be down sampled form the 8K frame? Binned? Or something else.

Along with the full width recording, it’s confirmed 8K can be recorded at up to 30 FPS. And that all DPAF modes will be available when recording at 8K. This is of course good news to me. As a solo shooter, I tend to rely on AF heavily because there are so many things I have to keep track of. And of course in many cases, I’m also presenting to the camera where I need the camera to do AF for me since there’s no one to operate it.

Canon Au also confirmed that in body image stabilization (IBIS) will be able to work in conjunction with in lens IS providing an even better IS experience. And keep in mind, that while IBIS isn’t always as effective as in lens IS, since it can’t be tuned to each lens, it can compensate for roll which in lens IS can’t.

However, what isn’t clear is whether this dual mode IS needs an RF lens with it’s faster data bus so that the camera and lens can coordinate their IS movements, or if it will work with any lens, including the all important for me EF lenses on an EF to RF mount adapter.

Finally, Canon Au disclosed that the camera will have body, head, face, and eye detect AF for not only people but, “dogs, cats and birds.” Of course, this raise a number of questions for me as a wildlife photographer about not only the utility of the new auto AF detection stuff, but the utility of AI or machine learning based AF stuff in general. If it’s not being trained on the subject matter that matters to me, then it doesn’t really help me.

Anyway, I keep saying this, but the R5 is shaping up to look like the first mirrorless camera that I’m actually really interested in without a lot of reservations.

https://www.canon.com.au/about-canon/news-and-press-releases/canon-reveals-further-eos-r5-details