Canon EOS R - Real World Review VS Canon 5D MarkIV

What up guys, welcome back to another episode. My name is Eddie Ware and welcome to the real world review of the EOS R. When the EOS R got announced on paper, to be honest, the camera didn't look too good. And lots of the opinions and reviews and whatnot on the internet that got released were based on those fact sheets. But these fact sheets are kind of deceiving. So the moment you the camera into the real world, a lot of things are changing and things that don't look so good on paper start to look pretty good when you're using them. So in today's real world review, I will compare my Canon 5D Mark IV with my new EOS R and I will show you what's inside the box and also how the footage of the 5D Mark IV actually compares to the new C-Log footage of the EOS R and also what advantages I see on top of the EOS R compared to the 5D Mark IV. And now before we get to the unboxing, let me switch the cameras real quick here. So how does it look? Do you see a difference between the 5D Mark IV and the EOS R here? So this footage was recorded in 4K C-Log in 8-bit, not the 10-bit since I don't own an external 10-bit video recorder. Before we jump to the unboxing of the EOS R, I wanted to say something about the whole new ecosystem that Canon created with the EOS R. So the EOS R is not only the first full-frame mirrorless camera that Canon released, it's also a completely new system. So you know the look and feel of Canon, but also the way how you interact with the camera, how you control it and how it works is completely different to the old Canon cameras like the 5D Mark IV or the 6D or whatever you're using from Canon. So with the EOS R, a completely new ecosystem has been launched and a lot of things have changed within the menus and how the cameras work. But don't let get us ahead of ourselves, roll the intro and let's get unboxing! We already start with some paperwork. We have the Canon charger. It's the same we already know from the 5D Mark IV. And here we have the LP6 battery, the same that goes into the 5D Mark IV. Power cable. We have a big USB cable for the camera. And surprise surprise, it's USB-C. Really nice work from Canon to finally upgrade to USB-C. So what's next? This is the Canon EOS R to EOFS adapter. So this adapter is capable of mounting EF and EFS lenses onto your EOS R. And if you take off the hood, this is the whole adapter and oh see, there is no glass in here. I'm really looking forward for these adapters since one of them is capable of mounting a variable ND filter inside this housing. So this means it doesn't matter what kind of filter thread you have in front of your lens, you can adjust the brightness through the ND filter back in here. Also included in the box is the obligatory shoulder strap with a nice EOS R logo. And now let's get to the crown jewels. Really slick. This is the first time I ever held a Canon EOS R and the first thing that gets me is that it feels really great. The grip is decently wide, so I mean I have small hands, but nevertheless this grip can pretty much fit even bigger hands and there is enough room for for people with bigger hands so you won't having an issue if you kind of like big grips. On the side, as you pretty much have seen from all the other reviews by now, you have a mic in, mic out, HDMI mini out and a USB-C connector and also the remote shutter. And now brace yourself for some sensor action. Oh no, look there's a lid in front of it. Canon is actually the first manufacturer who closes this lid whenever the camera is powered off. In order to lift the lid in front of the sensor so you don't get any debris or or dust or whatever on your sensor, you have to power on the camera. I wasn't looking for this symbol here. See, that's the sensor. The moment I power off the camera, it closes the lid and there is nothing that can't penetrate this little shield here. Now let's take a look at the tilty flippy screen. So flip out screen, tilt, look a selfie. Ah Canon, you're the best. So what has changed with the new EOS R mount? We have more pins on the bottom in order to connect the camera with the lens and you will notice that there now is this little pin shaped stripe thingy that actually shows you where you have to align your new EOS R lenses. Since I don't have an EOS R lens yet, let me show you with the help of the EOS adapter how you have to mount your lenses onto your new Canon EOS R. So they also changed the caps for the lenses so you have to align this little stripe here with the red stripe on your lens or your adapter in order to take your cap off and to mount it back on. Otherwise it will not fit. It kind of fits but not really. Now you take your EOS R camera, you take your EOS R lens or adapter, align the two stripes and boom! This is the first time ever this camera has seen a lens. One of the biggest advantages with the Canon EOS R is the fact that you can mount EF-S lenses on the body. So it is a huge advantage compared to the old full-frame systems where you only could mount EF lenses and not EF-S lenses which are way cheaper. When you start out as a photographer and a video creator it's hard in the beginning to save up the huge amount of money you need to get good glass. So having the option to start out with EF-S lenses in order to get a soft and cheap launch into the whole video and creative world makes it way easier with your full-frame camera. So this is a huge step up compared to the old ecosystem. But there is also a huge downside in the EOS R if you're using EF-S lenses. One being your camera will automatically switch to a 1.6 crop when you're recording no matter you're recording 4k video or full hd. The second downside when you're using an EF-S lens on a Canon EOS R is the fact that Canon does not allow you to record 60 frames full hd video. Why they do it I don't know. It's a weird thing to do because it does not seem that there is kind of a hardware limitation there. So I'm really hoping that Canon will get rid of some of the frame rate limitations with their first big firmware update that they already announced. So I'm really pumped to see what they will change in the EOS R. So with that said let's get back to it. This lens here this is a 60mm macro lens. This was made for a crop sensor camera. You could actually mount it with the help of this adapter ring onto a full-frame camera otherwise the EF-S mount would not fit a full-frame Canon camera. Let's take off the camera and now you can take this EF-S lens and you see here is the white square. You also make out the white square on the adapter. You align it and here you go. Now you have an EF-S lens on a full-frame camera. As I said in the beginning Canon revamped the way how you control your camera with the introduction of the EOS R system and with that the quick control dial also got removed. So you know the quick control dial from the 6D and also from the 5D Mark IV, the big wheel on the back. So this one got removed and got replaced with a new wheel that is actually more ergonomic than the old quick dial wheel was. So you now find this wheel on top of the camera. So it's more on a resting place where your thumb normally is placed when you're holding the camera. So this makes it kind of more natural when you are switching your aperture for example. Also in this dial you will find the menu button and with the push of the menu button and then pushing the info button you can switch between photo and video mode. I kind of like the old way how the 5D Mark IV was handling it better. So you had a dedicated switch where you could switch between photo and video recording. But maybe Canon will kind of improve on that. We heard rumors that there will be a bigger body for the EOS R, a more professional one, releasing somewhere next year. So maybe they will include something in there. And now let's talk about something I totally dislike on the EOS R system and this is the new multifunction bar that is located where you every time place your thumb. I end up hitting this bar all the time. This is also the reason why I don't assign any kind of features to it. Every time I'm holding the Canon EOS R my thumb ends up on the multifunction bar and it kind of wants to switch things and do stuff. So this is something that is totally not usable and in the wrongest position ever in this camera. And if you were wondering, the manual function bar is actually a hard plastic part. So there is no pressure point or rubber or whatever on it. So it's kind of really like a display. You swipe on it and stuff like this. So since the EOS R is a mirrorless camera you don't have an optical viewfinder anymore as you're used to from the 5D Mark IV. So with the EOS R they had to implement a new electronic viewfinder. So this means if you look into this little hole on your camera you will see a picture but it's not the actual picture that is reflected through the lens through a mirror into your eye. So it's a little display. So if you pick up your camera and you place it to your eye, the whole flippy screen is turned off and the electronic viewfinder, short EVF, is activated and you see the whole picture that was before on the flippy screen now in this little viewfinder. Having an electronic viewfinder also brings huge advantages compared to the old optical viewfinder. In an electronic viewfinder you can display every kind of information you want. You even can go as far and customize the things you want to see in there. So in this example you can see here, this by the way is filmed off right of the back of the camera. So this is the high resolution you see if you look into the viewfinder and since this is my first mirrorless camera, to be honest, I was really surprised how sharp the image in the electronic viewfinder is. But also you will need some time to get adjusted to it if you're used to an optical viewfinder as myself. In the EVF you can customize everything pretty easy. You can set your focus point, you can set your aperture, shutter speed, picture style, name it. You even can display your histogram in there. Another huge advantage when you're using the EVF of the EOS R is the fact that the picture you are shown in the EVF is a simulated picture. So the picture you are seeing in the EVF will be your final picture that you shoot or the footage you are recording. This not only applies to your brightness settings, this also applies to your depth of field. And this is one of the coolest things because when you were shooting with an optical viewfinder, you had to take your shot, check the footage or the picture, get back, adjust your settings. Now you can adjust your settings in the optical viewfinder and you can be sure that the footage you see there will be the footage that you are recording. In my personal opinion, the positive side of an electronic viewfinder outweighs the advantages of an optical viewfinder. Especially if you are shooting with your camera in burst mode, with a mirrorless camera, you always got lost for a second there while the mirror was flipping in the body of the camera. With an EVF, there is no mirror that has to flip. So this means the footage you're seeing in your EVF is the actual footage of your subject. So here's an example how it looks when you're shooting in burst mode. And as you can see here, I'm shooting full burst and you only get a quick stop within the picture that you know that the camera took actually a picture. But otherwise, it is a smooth video feed, so there is no pausing or there is no disruption in your viewfield. And now let's talk about the video capabilities of the EOS R. Because we all know that the EOS R is a good stills camera and pretty much every DSLR camera at the moment, or mirrorless camera so to say, can take good pictures. But what about good video? Unfortunately, we all know Canon is sticking to a huge crop when it comes to their cameras, but I wanted to give you a comparison how it looks if you take a full HD video compared to a 4k video and even if you use the image stabilization that the EOS R actually has. Yeah, you heard right, the EOS R has image stabilization. It's not a physical image stabilization, but let's get back to the whole image video quality. Let's begin with the full HD footage that was recorded in C-Log in full HD at 16 mils on the 16-35mm lens. With these settings you can acquire beautiful wide landscape shots, but let's add 4k footage to it. The moment you switch to 4k recording you get a crop of 1.6, so this means you're almost losing half of your view field. But don't let us stop there, let us enable the digital image stabilization. So we end up with a crop somewhere around 1.7 and if we switch to the enhanced image stabilization it even goes down to somewhere around 1.8. At the end of the day this means if you start out with a 16mm lens and if you enable all these features you will almost end up with footage that looks like it was recorded with 35mm. So, so much for how much footage you are losing if you are using certain settings within the EOS R, but now let's take about the image stabilization and this is something i can't wrap my head around it why nobody was really talking about this topic because image stabilization is one of the coolest things you can have right now in such a professional camera and the EOS R is by any means a professional camera even though it has no second card slots here but i wanted to give you this example footage here this was handheld shot with my EOS R no stabilization not in the lens none so ever and as you can see it's pretty okay but you wouldn't want to hand this kind of footage to any kind of customer or even in a vlog or something like that but now let's switch on the basic software image stabilization of the EOS R and see what happens you can see in this footage that the stabilization is rather good and it is actually useful you have a crop but it's not so heavy that you could not utilize it and it will help you if you don't have a gimbal or something to stabilize your footage with so if you're on the run this is definitely a helpful feature but now what about the enhanced image stabilization that the camera is also packing i only can recommend you to not use the enhanced image stabilization of the EOS R since i had some weird effects especially in the pan movements it kind of can happen that the image is getting stuck because the camera thinks you're not moving anymore so this is something i would absolutely recommend not to use so rather go with the standard image stabilization now you know how the image of the EOS R is looking crop wise but what about image quality and dynamic range when it comes to the EOS R versus the 5d mark 4 on my canon 5d mark 4 i'm always using a flat profile so i can grade my footage better in post and this footage here is the raw footage right off the camera let's throw the raw EOS R footage right on top of it even though this footage is in 8-bit you can see a massive difference in all the shadows so the walls have more details and also the leaves have way more depth and details on them if you compare the sample footage right next to you can see a huge detail loss on the 5d mark 4 lots of the details were blown out even though they were recorded at the same settings when you apply grading to the footage you can see that this is still a very decent footage but nevertheless if you compare it to the EOS R footage with grading you can see that there is a huge difference there although the sky is blown out since this was a very sunny day i was able to recover some of the blue details near the treetops in the close-up you can see that in the footage from the 5d mark 4 the sky is completely blown out so it's only white and at the EOS R footage you can see the blue of the sky on the leaves in the background you can see that there is more contrast and you can differentiate between the different shades of even with the 8-bit c-log footage that comes out of the EOS R you get great footage and great results and i played around with some of my footage and i was really able to get the best out of it really easy so it is way smoother to grade than the flat profile that i have installed on my 5d mark 4 using c-log unfortunately also comes with a huge downside so the moment you activate c-log in your menus you are not able to choose auto iso in your settings so if you're somebody who does a lot of vlogs this feature could be a bummer but still then you could also revert to normal recording mode and install a flatter profile you will not get that amount of dynamic range out of your camera but it will be still a very decent footage now let's talk about some facts and features that i discovered while i was using the EOS R compared to the 5d mark 4 that i noticed that not too many people covered yet or most of the people didn't even notice so one of the most obvious things since this is a mirrorless camera and not a mirror camera like the 5d mark 4 this camera is way lighter even if i'm using the EOS R to EF-S lens adapter the camera only weighs somewhere around 770 grams compared to the 5d mark 4 which is almost packing 900 grams this is something that you can consider when you're going up on a mountain or something and if you at some point are switching to EOS R lenses your weight will even go down further so i also noticed that there is no gps module that you actually have in the 5d mark 4 some of you may rely on such a feature i personally love to have the ability to pinpoint every picture i take to a location sure you still can link your EOS R with your mobile phone and the EOS R then will use the gps coordinates of your mobile phone in order to tag your pictures but still this is also a battery issue i have no experience on how much this one will drain your battery extra but i guess we have to test out this later another thing that was brought to my attention through somebody on instagram is the fact that the EOS R is actually not able to fire the autofocus assist beam of the speedlight flashes from canon if you take a good old 5d mark 4 and you have a dark room then this little infrared beam in front of it will engage and you have this little cross thingy on the wall or on your subject and this makes it easy to focus even in low light situations with the EOS R this flash is not engaged since the EOS R is not able to process infrared light anymore as the old canon cameras do so this is also something you have to consider if you're doing a lot of work in low light yes the EOS R has an autofocus assist beam but that's one that you know from the smaller bodies of the old canon cameras where you have this little orange led that kind of illuminates everything around you you have to decide for yourself whether this is something you could pass on so yeah it's up to you another thing i noticed and this is something a bit off topic the EOS R is not supported by the DJI Ronin S or vice versa canon EOS R is not supporting the DJI Ronin so this means you can mount the camera on it and it can be balanced and it's actually way easier to balance than the 5d mark 4 but unfortunately you cannot trigger remotely the shutter or anything like this if you're relying on the remote control features of the Ronin in combination with your DSLR you either have to use another camera or stick with the 5d mark 4 so what is my final verdict about the canon EOS R well i think it's a pretty amazing camera and after i used it for about two weeks now i can tell you that much that the moment i pick up my 5d mark 4 it kind of feels weird to have a big camera like the 5d in my hand again so you pretty much get really fast adjusted to the new EOS R and i wouldn't want to miss it but still there are situations when the canon 5d mark 4 is still better than the EOS R for most of my video work i will switch to my EOS R and it's nice to have a camera that can outperform my good trusty DSLR if you're somebody who is heavily relying on photography and not videography i'm not sure if i would recommend you to upgrade from a 5d mark 4 to a EOS R i would rather wait for a bit longer for maybe the upgraded EOS R that's supposed to be released maybe next year if you have to decide whether you want to get a canon 5d mark 4 or the EOS R it is absolutely a no-brainer at the price point of the EOS R you can't do anything wrong especially with the huge amount of focus points that the EOS R is packing you get a lot of benefits even for photography so what do you think about the results of today's video hit me up in the comments and tell me whether you would go for the EOS R or if you're sticking to your 5d mark 4 or maybe you want to wait for the new canon camera that maybe will come out next year or are you even going to go for a canon camera maybe a fuji maybe a sony hit me up in the comments and let me know what you think and with that said if you like today's episode don't forget to 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