Year in Review: My thoughts on all things Canon in 2024.

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Only 24MP :(
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Jul 20, 2010
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2024 has definitely been an interesting year for Canon. There have been some great professional cameras released that we're only starting to learn and create with, along with some innovative lenses designs. Canon even took care of the golfers out there, which is true innovation for an imaging company. You may or may not care,

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So I’m not a camera tester or anything like that, but I did go through the iso range (video) of the R1 and R3. I was pretty shocked to find the R3 performing dramatically better. I tried this in Clog 2 and 3 for the R1 and Clog 3 for the R3.

The R3 had cleaner ISO in almost all iso settings. Even 12,800…the R1 also had noise reduction on.

Method was just simply having a lens cap on and going through the iso range with shutter speed, aperture, kelvin, and fps matching each camera.

I’m hoping I did something wrong … I really want to keep the R1 and sell the R3, but the performance in low light is too good to ignore on the R3 in video mode. I’ll just use the R5 II for daytime video. R1 might not be in the cards with what I have.
 
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Canon's mistake with the R5 Mark II is obvious. They didn't make enough mistakes. When the original R5 came out, the overheating issues made it the talk of the town — but nobody's talking about the Mark II!?

In all seriousness, though, I got the R5 Mark II to supplement my original R5 and it's been doing a great job overall. My only complaint so far is about the button info message that appears the first time you do review after turning on the camera. That'll probably be fixed in the next firmware update.

But seriously... 45MP, 30fps ES with pre-shooting and extremely minimal rolling shutter, plus most of the video complaints about the R5 solved? Plus other goodies like eye control? Honestly, until/unless they come out with an R5 with a global shutter, I'm not sure what would get me to upgrade from this. Like, needing to use an external recorder for video + the 30fps ES for baseball were enough to get me to the Mark II. But at this point... hard to top that. It's a far cry from the old DSLR days. And I still love those old hunks of metal.

At this point, the "aspirational" upgrade I might make one day is to go from my EF 70-200/2.8 L IS III to the RF 70-200/2.8 Z. But I have no pressing need to do so. The EF III is still excellent (as easy as it may be to forget it). Actually, in general, I think we live in a sort of unheralded golden age of great cheap DSLR lenses (still). A bunch of DSLR Sigma Arts can be gotten for not too much and are nearly perfect on mirrorless. Tons of stuff on the used market out there.
 
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2024 has definitely been an interesting year for Canon. There have been some great professional cameras released that we're only starting to learn and create with, along with some innovative lenses designs. Canon even took care of the golfers out there, which is true innovation for an imaging company. You may or may not care,

See full article...
hah! I'm not sure my year in review would be much different.
 
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The RF lineup is looking more or less "complete." There will be more, but it's not like the early days where Canon was still coming out with new lenses that had previously only existed in EF. There are no obvious holes.

I could see them doing an 85/1.4 Z, perhaps a few upper-midrange lenses, maybe even til t-shift (though who needs more than TS-E)? And maybe a 35/1.2.

I also think that we'll see third-party FF lenses soon, now that the lineup is basically complete. Canon didn't want a Sigma 50/1.4 out on RF before their own. In 2025, I could see that changing. (Though I probably will just stick with my EF Sigmas.)
 
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Canon's mistake with the R5 Mark II is obvious. They didn't make enough mistakes. When the original R5 came out, the overheating issues made it the talk of the town — but nobody's talking about the Mark II!?

In all seriousness, though, I got the R5 Mark II to supplement my original R5 and it's been doing a great job overall. My only complaint so far is about the button info message that appears the first time you do review after turning on the camera. That'll probably be fixed in the next firmware update.

But seriously... 45MP, 30fps ES with pre-shooting and extremely minimal rolling shutter, plus most of the video complaints about the R5 solved? Plus other goodies like eye control? Honestly, until/unless they come out with an R5 with a global shutter, I'm not sure what would get me to upgrade from this. Like, needing to use an external recorder for video + the 30fps ES for baseball were enough to get me to the Mark II. But at this point... hard to top that. It's a far cry from the old DSLR days. And I still love those old hunks of metal.

At this point, the "aspirational" upgrade I might make one day is to go from my EF 70-200/2.8 L IS III to the RF 70-200/2.8 Z. But I have no pressing need to do so. The EF III is still excellent (as easy as it may be to forget it). Actually, in general, I think we live in a sort of unheralded golden age of great cheap DSLR lenses (still). A bunch of DSLR Sigma Arts can be gotten for not too much and are nearly perfect on mirrorless. Tons of stuff on the used market out there.
I agree. If I was to buy a new camera to carry my photography for the next 6 years, then the new R5ii would be top of my list. However, when the R6iii comes, that might topple that in my use case. We are now seeing incremental upgrades with each new generation of cameras. the MP war is over and the levels of noise and DR are pretty much settled too. Now it's a matter of clearing up the rest of the camera's weaknesses and deficiencies between each geneation.

The R5 was and is a legend. 45mp, 8-12fps, amazing eye detection AF, amazing EVF and pro build. Dual cards and all the features that you really want or need. However...the 20 fps electronic shutter was great for everything that didn't move very fast...and was pretty pointless in most action situations that has panning backgrounds, action with bats / balls or wings and feathers. The ES exposed us to the need for a faster read out sensor...and Canon certainly delivered this in the MkII. The Cooling has been improved for video (not that is a feature i'm interested as a stills photograspher). The ES frame rate has been uprated to 30fps and the sensor readout speed nearly matches the R3. This is an incremental upgrade that fixes most of the R5's ES deficiency. We are also now getting 14 bit RAWs across all of the frame rates...including the ES mode. This is also a great improvement as well.

Lens wise, I hear you. I also have a EF 135L and a EF 70-200 f2.8 LIS II. Both perform really well optically, certainly well enough for my 24mp R6ii's sensor. With my ef 70-200, I see very similar results to the new RF version, except for weight. The new lens is a lot lighter. I see camera bodies as a loss leader investment for 5-6 years, where I pay top dollar which slowly drops to nerly nothing by the 5th year. Where as lenses, I look at a 15-20 year investment and they seem to be worth nearly as much as i paid for them in the 5-10 year period. Lenses hold their value, camera bodies do not.
For me, my EF 135L is a bit long in the tooth and quite old and battered...it's getting time to side grade to the RF to unleash another 15-20 years of faithful service. My 70-200? it's not quite as long in the tooth yet so it's still got a few years of service in it before I side grade it for new and shiney.
 
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Very surprised by your positive comment upon the RF 28-70 f/2,8...
Definitely not a lens I'd buy.
Not good for landscapes I suppose. But I use it for lightweight portraiture and I'm happy with it. Tele-end is razor sharp so I can crop it like no tomorrow for facial closeups. Rented studios can be pricey and there is no time to rotate 50-85/135.
And 28-end is okayish for group photos.
 
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