By Yadira B. Arnold After Sony launched the A7 III, I wondered if Canon and Nikon could one day catch up with Autofocus and other technologies. However, with the introduction of the 24 megapixel EOS R3, it is Canon that is up to date with its AF “Eye Control” which allows you to focus on a subject simply by looking at it.
The R3 is also Canon’s first camera with a backlit stacked sensor. This gives it burst striking speeds in silent mode up to 30 fps with auto focus and auto exposure enabled. In addition, it has top-notch video specifications with RAW striking at 6K up to 60 fps.
Here’s the catch, though: for 6,000, it has a relatively low resolution, while Canon’s 45-megapixel EOS R5 costs more than 2,000 less. So, who exactly is this camera for? And is the eye control AF a useful feature or just a toy? With the help of my professional photographer friends, I spent some time with a final production model to figure it out.
Construction and handling
The first thing you’ll notice about the R3 is the large camera grip body that makes it look like a mashup of DSLR and mirrorless camera. Similar to the 1DX Mark III that inspired it, it has two controls for landscape and portrait striking modes, including a shutter release, dials and matching joysticks.
Canon EOS R3 mirrorless camera review
Despite the large body, the EOS R3 is relatively light at 2.3 weight, battery and memory card included. The 1DX Mark III, on the other hand, tips the scales at 3.17 weight, while the EOS R5 weighs 1.6 weight.
As one would hope for a big camera, it has a great grip. It gives a feeling of security when you hold it in your hand, and it also works great with large telephoto lenses like the canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8.
The R3 also includes many dials and catch’s, allowing you to operate the camera for the most part without having to dive into the menus. The control layout is similar to that of the 1DX Mark III and uses the same infrared control catch. So you can adjust the focus point by simply sliding your thumb over it – faster than a Joystick, but easier to accidentally activate until you get used to it.
A dedicated catch allows you to easily switch in the middle photo and video modes, while you get separate settings and menus for each mode. However, it uses the same old Canon menus, which are not as intuitive as the recent models from Sony, Nikon and Panasonic. However, you can control it in different ways using the dials, the Joystick or the touch screen. This allows quick access to a parameter once you have determined where it is located.
The large 3.2-inch touchscreen has a net resolution of 4.15 thousand dots, almost double that of the R5. To scroll through menus, browse photos and much more, it is extremely responsive – much faster than Sony’s A1 or any other camera I have tried. The screen also folds down for low-angle striking or vlogging, although the R3 is a bit heavy for the latter.
The 5.76 thousand-dot OLED EVF is also sharp, offering a uniform refresh rate of 120 Hz. It doesn’t add up on Paper to the 9.4 thousand points, 240 Hz EVF found on the A1, but honestly, I couldn’t tell much difference in the middle them.
It uses the same great LP-E19 battery from the 1DX Mark III, which provides up to 620 recordings on a single power, or about two and a half hours of 4K 30P video recording. However, depending on how you strike, you can easily smack these numbers.
For storage, you get a fast CFexpress type B and SD UHS II slot. It’s nice to have The SD Option if you prefer to take photos with these cards. However, if you want to back up the CFexpress card with SD, the performance will be affected. Since this is mainly a professional camera, Canon, like Sony, should have offered two slots for both, or maybe two CFexpress slots.
It has a new hotshoe interface that supports Speedlite and other flashes, as well as accessories such as Tascam’s new 4-channel XLR microphone interface. This finally corresponds to what Sony and Panasonic have been offering for years.
The delicate Micro-HDMI port is not ideal for video recording, and this is a strange decision considering that Canon had room with the large body of the R3. It also comes with USB-C for data transfers and camera powering, although you will need another optional accessory if you want to power the camera externally while striking.
Now let’s talk about Canon’s new eye control feature. It’s only really useful if you calibrate it, but fortunately it’s easy – you only look at five points. You may need to calibrate it several times depending on whether you wear glasses and contact lenses or even for different environments. Fortunately, you can save up to six different settings.
Once calibrated, I could select an object to focus on just by looking at it. Even if the eye control circle wasn’t quite on a subject, the autofocus would usually select it when it was close. From there, face, eye or subject tracking would be activated as needed to track the subject.
It has even worked in difficult environments with a lot of subjects or movements, although it turns off as soon as you press the focus catch and start recording. It worked well for me, but it didn’t work at all for my photographer friend with light sapphire eyes and astigmatism. So if you are interested in the feature, you might want to test it before buying it, because the feature seems to depend on your eye color and other factors.
Performance
First of all, the EOS R3 is a speed demon. It starts with the shutter, which is up to 1/64, 000 second faster in electronic mode than any other consumer camera. It also supports some of the fastest bursts we’ve ever seen, up to 30 fps in silent mode or 12 FPS with the mechanical shutter. Unlike some newer Sony models, you get these full speeds with uncompressed RAW folders and not just lossy.
You can also take a lot of photos in these modes. At 30 fps with the electronic shutter, Canon says you can take 150 photos on a UHS II or CFexpress SD card before the buffer fills up. However, a fast cfexpress card allowed me to record much more, with only a slight reduction in striking speeds after the 150-frame mark. It processes 1,000 or more uncompressed RAW photos with the mechanical shutter before stopping.
The two-pixel autofocus can also keep up with these speeds, so I had very few photos that weren’t sharp. Face and eye recognition is fast and smooth for humans, but a little less reliable for animals or birds. The EOS R has an automatic tracking function designed mainly for racing cars and, unfortunately, I did not have access to a Bugatti Chiron during the Tests.
The sport of striking is the strong point of this camera, and during an indoor football match with decent lighting, Samuel, The professional photographer I was working with, had few blurry photos. It didn’t work as well as the A1 for birds, but it was still superior than most cameras I’ve tried. Overall, the EOS R3 has a very powerful AF system that allows Canon to get closer to Sony.
The IBIS system can provide 8 stops of camera shake reduction with the supported lenses, more than any competing camera. This allowed me to take sharp photos by hand at low shutter speeds when striking in low light. And thanks to the fast reading speeds of the sensor, the roller shutter is well controlled and is only visible on fast-moving subjects or fast panoramas.