Canon EOS R1 Initial Review

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The EOS R1 is Canon’s flagship mirrorless model and the first EOS body since the EOS-1D X Mark III in 2020 to sport the vaunted 1-series name, which puts it in line with a roughly triennial release cadence for the EOS-1 series over the past decade. Similar to most other 1-series models, its feature set and specifications are oriented toward sports photographers and photojournalists who demand the fastest, most rugged camera on the market.

According to Canon, the EOS R1 will have the same level of strength and reliability as the 1DX Mark III and more innovations than the EOS R3.

Key specifications

  • 24.2MP Stacked CMOS Dual Pixel sensor
  • 100% AF coverage with cross-type sensors
  • Up to 40fps blackout-free shooting (JPEG+Raw)
  • Pre-capture for photo and video: 1/2 sec. for photos, 3 or 5 sec for video
  • Eye-controlled AF with improved eye detection
  • AI-trained Autofocus and post-shot processing modes
  • 6K/60p internal Raw video capture
  • DCI-4K capture up to 120fps
  • Canon C-Log2 gamma profile
  • Wi-Fi 6E and Ethernet connectivity

Sensor

The EOS R1 is built around an all-new 24.2MP Stacked CMOS sensor. It’s also a faster sensor than we have seen put in any previous Canon camera, capable of full sensor readout at a rate of 2.8ms (1/360) when shooting stills—essentially much faster than the 5ms on the EOS R3, hence making the R1’s full sensor readout about almost twice as fast as the R3’s.

Besides the speed, the R1’s sensor also features 100% AF coverage, with cross-type sensors. This is achieved by rotating every other line of the sensor’s dual-pixel PDAF pixels 90º to form PDAF zones sensitive to horizontal lines as well as vertical. Cross-type autofocus is available only in photo mode and does not work under certain conditions, such as flickering light sources.

This new sensor is capable of up to 40fps blackout-free continuous shooting in 14-bit mode.

New Digic accelerator

The EOS R1 uses Canon’s Digic X processor along with a new Digic Accelerator co-processor, which they said was the heart of vast improvements in this camera’s autofocus, especially those using AI features derived from machine learning.

The result can turn out to be more than just identifying a subject; under certain conditions, it can identify the type of action that some particular subject, like a person, is doing—such as a basketball player driving to the basket with the ball. This allows the camera to make sure that the most important subject in the scene is prioritized and focused on.

Autofocus

The R1 comes equipped with a state-of-the-art Dual Pixel CMOS AF III system that is packed with over 1,500 AF points, capturing subjects’ focus precisely and fast. To further enhance the subject detection and tracking, it has AI-driven deep learning algorithms for the improvement of Eye, Face, Animal, and Vehicle Detection AF. This makes the R1 extremely reliable to click those moving subjects and critical moments.

Eye-controlled AF

The EOS R1 inherits an improved version of the eye-controlled AF system from the EOS R3, itself a modernized take on the system found on some of Canon’s EOS film cameras from the 1990s and 2000s. With eye-controlled focus, the camera moves an area of focus around the viewfinder by following your eye. Once this target is proximate to your intended subject, the camera will then lock onto the most likely subject upon initializing autofocus and continue to track.

Eye-controlled autofocus has been the most polarizing feature of earlier EOS models: it simply hasn’t worked well for some users. However, Canon hopes to change that. Compared with the R1 (and R5 Mark II), the system has an enormous field of view on your eye and can track your movement more comprehensively. The viewfinder area is bigger, and its eye cup is more significant. New compact optics, along with a revised line-of-sight detection algorithm, mean that it can be about twice as far away from the EVF and still work. Additionally, the system now incorporates eyeglass detection, which should offer better performance for people who wear glasses.

Action Priority AF mode

Among the other major new features is the Action Priority AF mode. Available when using Continuous autofocus mode, this mode makes use of machine learning technology to analyze a scene and attempt to predict the most relevant subject(s) based on the scene context. For example, when you’re shooting basketball, the AF system will generally try to stick with the player who has the ball, even if that person passes in front of similar-looking players. If he or she passes the ball, it’ll know to refocus its AF on the player who’s receiving it. This Action Priority AF mode has been trained on football, basketball, and volleyball thus far. One Canon representative did intimate that more could be added in the future.

Priority to pre-registered person

The EOS R1 offers the ability to preregister specific people the AF is likely to prioritize. The camera can register up to ten people; adding a person requires little more than selecting a memory bank and taking their picture. Changing relative priority among registered subjects simply involves changing their order in the menu.
The pre-registered person priority can be useful when there are a large number of identifiable subjects in a frame but with only a limited number of subjects you want the camera to focus on, like an athlete in an arena or bride and groom at a wedding reception.

Pre-continuous shooting mode

The R1’s pre-continuous shooting mode allows for still images or video to be taken before the shutter button is fully depressed. Continuous shooting mode can precapture a half second of buffered images, up to 20 photos at maximum shooting speed. This can be done in JPEG, HEIF, or Raw. In movie mode, it can precapture either three or five seconds of video.

AI-trained in-camera image processing

EOS R1 comes up with two new in-camera processing features that will join the deep learning functions typical of an application such as Adobe Camera Raw. Neural network noise reduction and image upscaling are introduced to push image quality without loss of detail. This feature requires a Raw image to use, and it is applied in the in-camera Raw conversion menu in playback mode. It can be applied to multiple images that you select but has to be applied selectively after capture.

Out-of-camera JPEG image (ISO 102,400)
Image reprocessed in-camera using neural network noise reduction (ISO 102,400)

In-camera upscaling increases the size of the image 2x in each orientation, resulting in a 96MP image when applied to photos from the R1. Canon hasn’t revealed much about its methodology but says this upscaling does not use generative AI. Interestingly, upscaling can only be performed on a JPEG or HEIF image.

Out-of-camera JPEG image (24MP)
Image re-processed using in-camera upscaling (96MP)

You can apply noise reduction or upscaling, but not both. Processing each image takes just a few seconds – which might explain why the facility isn’t offered in real-time while shooting. Batch processing of images is possible, for efficiency.

Blur/out-of-focus image detection

A new Blur/out-of-focus image detection feature promises to make culling images after a shoot more efficient. When enabled, the R1 looks at every picture it takes and tries to determine which ones have the main subject in focus. The camera then adds a metadata tag to each image that can be read downstream by Canon’s DPP software or used as a selection criteria in the playback menu. Canon says the feature could be implemented in any third-party application updated to support this tag.
Blur/out-of-focus image detection is only possible if the feature is turned on before you take the shot; it cannot be applied to already-captured images.

Video

As you might well hope for in a modern pro-grade camera, and especially one sporting a Stacked CMOS sensor, the EOS R1 has some rather impressive video specifications.
Its 24MP sensor means it can’t shoot 8K video, but instead, it will capture 6K Raw footage at up to 60p in the 1.89:1 aspect ratio. Conversely, the camera can shoot DCI or UHD 4K derived from this 6K capture at up to 60p. There are also subsampled DCI and UHD 4K modes that enable capture at up to 120p.
It says it wants the EOS R1 to slot easily into existing workflows that are built around its Cinema EOS cameras, and to this end, it has done much to have the camera’s footage easily compare to other types of footage.
First off, it gets Canon’s broader dynamic range C-Log2 curve, though the less ambition C-Log3 remains an option if you’re not shooting in very high DR situations. It also picks up the XF-AVC S and XF-HEVC S file formats used in Canon’s pro video cameras.
But beyond the boost in video modes, there’s a significant increase in the supporting tools that accompany them. The R1 gains false color displays to give a means of visualizing exposure, but it comes in addition to the zebras already offered; oddly, it doesn’t have the waveforms display that the EOS R5 II offers. There’s also a tally lamp on the front of the camera, which will help indicate to anyone in front that it is recording.
It can also be used with its connectors in the multi-function hot shoe to handle digital audio inputs, allowing you to individually control the levels for four-channel input.

Dual Shooting mode

The EOS R1 also has a Dual Shooting mode in which it captures JPEGs on one card while video is being recorded on the other. In this mode, the R1 captures FullHD video up to 30p while capturing JPEGs in bursts.
JPEGS are 17MP 16:9 stills 5616×3168 and can be grabbed at up to 10fps while you’re recording 1080 video. However, the still somewhat divergent shutter speed demands of stills and video capture still means you’ve got to pick one or the other as a priority.

Temperature control

This will prove very reassuring to many news and event shooters who might previously have been worried about overheating, and Canon claims that if it has not been used previously, the EOS R1 can capture footage for more than two hours at 23°C [73°F] when recording 6K/60 Raw with proxy recording also enabled. The 4K/60 derived from this footage comes at a little more of a cost, with maximum recording time dropping to 109 minutes, though it increases again to over two hours if you use the sub-sampled 4K/60 mode. The company has explicitly mentioned that there is no time limit for capturing sub-sampled 4K/30.

Body and controls

Well, the EOS R1 certainly is chunky and full of heft, much like an EOS-1 series camera, with the build to suggest you could use it to pound nails into a board if you happened to misplace your hammer. It falls somewhere between the size and weight of the EOS R3 and the EOS-1D X Mark III it replaces. The most evident differences between the R1 and the 1D X Mark III are in height—the R1 is an appreciable 18mm shorter—and heft, with the R1 coming in more than 300g (10.6oz) lighter than its mirrored predecessor.

WeightWidthHeightDepth
Canon EOS R11115g158mm150mm87mm
Canon EOS R31015g150mm143mm87mm
Canon EOS-1D X III1440g158mm168mm83mm


The R3, by comparison, feels appreciably more compact in the hand than the R1. It is not only shorter; its body is nearly a full centimeter narrower in width than that of the 1-series cameras. If you’ve been shooting with an R3, know that the R1 will feel somewhat larger by comparison.

Fun fact: The R1 has a small mystery window in the lower left corner on the back of the camera. According to a Canon rep, it’s reserved for some future feature, but it does absolutely nothing right now. Feel free to speculate in the comments.

Customizable smart controller

The Canon smart controller is a two-function controller that appeared originally on the 1D X III and again on the R3, doubling as the AF-On button, which also becomes a trackpad for your thumb, in a way, and can be used to move the AF point around the viewfinder while pressing it initiates autofocus.
The smart controller becomes a three-function controller on the EOS R1 and it gets the ability to know when it has been half pressed and fully pressed. This allows some customization options along the line, for instance, it may be set to one that engages autofocus at half-pressed and switches the camera to its fastest continuous-shooting speed when fully pressed. This would allow you to use a more conservative burst rate most of the time but ramp the camera instantly to its highest burst rate at the critical moment of action.
However, the smart controller isn’t fully configurable. You can configure either the half-pressed or the fully-pressed position but not both. You can also leave one of the positions disabled, in which case the controller works much like the 1D X III or R3.

EVF

The R1 viewfinder is patently larger than those on earlier EOS mirrorless cameras – no doubt, in part, thanks to the revised eye-controlled AF system. A 9.44M-dot OLED viewfinder serves up the EVF, which Canon reckons is roughly three times as bright as that in the R3 when it’s used in OVF mode – a setting designed to replicate the experience of using an optical viewfinder. It offers 0.9x magnification, the highest available in the EOS series to date, and is 40% larger compared to that in the 1D X III.
Noticeably, the EVF’s screen does not change to a resolution lower than that for when you are shooting; although Canon did confirm that while it has a higher DR ‘Optical viewfinder simulation mode’, it cannot do HDR playback of images. Sitting above the EVF is Canon’s multi-function hotshoe, capable of providing communication and power for things such as a microphone adapter.

Updated menus

Added a new color-coded tab in Canon’s menu system, described as “olive green,” is said to centralize the camera’s control customizations into a single menu for easy access. This will include customizations for both shooting and playback modes.

Storage and connectivity

The EOS R1 has dual CFexpress type B card slots supporting capacities up to 2TB. Cards load through a door on the right side of the body, rather than through a door on the back of the camera as with the 1D X III. And like the R3, the camera also features a 2.5 GBASE-T Ethernet port and 802.11ax Wi-Fi support for direct connectivity. Most importantly, this is the new WiFi 6E standard that promises faster connections, in part by utilizing parts of the 6GHz spectrum in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz regions currently in use.
Other connections include a USB-C port, a full-sized HDMI port, 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks, a PC Sync terminal, and finally, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps).

Battery

The Canon EOS R1 is powered by the same LP-E19 battery as featured in the EOS R3 and EOS-1D X Mark III but, unlike those cameras, isn’t compatible with the earlier LP-E4N or LP-E4 batteries. In the R1, this battery delivers 700 shots per charge CIPA rating, up from 440 on the R3—a near 60% boost.
The CIPA methodology generally results in ratings that underestimate real-world performance for most users, particularly when continuous shooting is employed, as may well be the case on a sports-oriented camera. On the other hand, they normally provide a good basis for relative comparisons between models.
Canon includes a battery charger for the camera in the box. The camera can be charged by USB, too – via the PD-E1 or PD-E2 Canon power adapter – or indeed any similar-capacity USB PD power pack.

Conclusion

The Canon EOS R1 is going to rewrite the rulebook on what can be done with a mirrorless camera by delivering jaw-dropping performance, breakthrough technologies, and class-leading build quality. Outfitted with a high-resolution sensor, enhanced autofocus, brilliant video capabilities, and robust construction, it will become the ultimate tool for any professional photographer or videographer. Capture fast action, sublime landscapes, or cinematic videos—whatever is required—the EOS R1 delivers leading results every time.

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