Canon EOS 5DS R Digital SLR with Low-Pass Filter Effect Cancellation (Body Only) with 800mm f/5.6L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

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I have just finished my second inspection with this camera and am very very pleased. For years the ONLY way to get the truly jaw-dropping macro photograph in the field was to lug your Hasselblad, the bellows, and the maco lens, which together weighed a ton, and were not terribly flexible. Now I find that this camera, with the L 24-70 lens, or the L 100 macro lens, does work every bit as good, if not better. Not to mention the outstanding synergistic effects when combined with the 600D flash. I have the new 200 mpixel Hasselblad, and its work is not as good as this camera, not to mention the fact a 200 mp picture requires a tripod.

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Pleased with purchase. Arrived with a defective battery charger, I notified Canon, and they sent me a new one in one day. Typical Canon customer service has always been top notch, at least for me. I have shot Canon since the 1970s. Heres a company that has maintained its high standards throughout the years. I have learned to appreciate that. So many companies are not what they used to be. Looking forward to shooting with this sensor.

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I have the Canon 1DS Mark III and like it but this camera is better and lighter than the Mark III. I am so happy with this that I had to buy another just so I dont have to always change lenses from Telephoto to wide angle all the time. I do a lot of wildlife and outdoor photography and this is great for what I do.

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Upgraded my aging 5Diis to the 5DS R. Lenses matter with this camera. 50 mpix is unforgiving. The range of lenses I could use so far were the new EOS 16-35mm f/4 IS L, Sigma 50mm F/1.4 ART, EOS 70-200 f/2.8 IS L II and EOS 300mm f/2.8 IS L II. All pictures shown here where taken hand held including the night scenes - so yes you can actually use this camera without a tripod, more about this later. Handling: Coming from the 5DII/5DIII you will find this camera body very familiar – all the way down to the battery. IT is a big camera even for a DSLR, but not excessive. It is the third generation 5D-series camera based on the 5DII body and accordingly the entire button and screen layout feels very mature and natural. It’s a camera buildt to last many years. The body is clearly made for still photography. The weight alone makes shooting videos without a tripod a dog because of the combined weight of camera & lens & the fact that the 5DS R can only shoot video using live view. I really miss in-body IS or at least a swivel screen for decent hand held video operation. The software menu is probably the best Canon has made yet. The layout is an extension of the 5DII/5DIII options, however Canon has added several very useful options such as customizing the auto-rotate focus point individually for vertical and horizontal shooting. Also, the expanded custom settings available for defining your own C1-C3 shooting options are extremely useful. I strongly recommend all users to look into this. I have pre-settings for action, bracketed jpeg shooting and shooting against the sun. Overall, it’s a noticeable step up on the software side. Battery power is noticeably shorter than for the 5DII/5DIII and most people will probably be well off buying at least one spare. Depending on your shooting habits, you may even want more spares. I could imagine some people going through 3 on an intensive days shooting. The screen is excellent if not spectacular – and you can easily see if your pictures are sharp. While the screen has some menu options available for how you scroll through your pictures I still find them limited. This is important because @50 mpix you will want to check you results on-screen fairly often to ensure your shots are spot-on. What irks me a little here is that when Canon decided against a swivel screen they did not at least give the 5DS R a touch screen. Having used one on the 70D I can truly say it’s a blast for changing settings quickly as you can see and change everything at once without fiddling for buttons and sub menus around the camera body. Exactly when reviewing pictures we confront another of the 5DS R’s shortcomings: it takes time for the pictures to emerge on your screen. For me this is not an issue in spite of all the action shots I take – so it’s not as bad as I see it described sometimes – but scrolling on-screen is not 100% fluid. So if this is key to how you shoot you may want to consider this. At least you can quickly look at your picture at 100% on screen. Basic Settings & AF: Everything you need and then some. Amongst the essentials the 5DS R has wide auto-bracketing (5 frames) and Canon finally got the implementation of auto-iso right. You can now set the trade-off parameters yourself so you can confidently rely on auto-iso to make your “smart” choices. Finally, as before the "Green" auto-setting also works with RAW files giving extra editing buffer when I hand the camera over to my family members. AF is one area where the 5DS R is a significant upgrade compared to both the 5DII and 5DIII. Neither of these impressed me much, but the 5DS R is clearly better. It starts with the upgraded AF points and high customizable way you can employ these – like restricting the use to cross-type AF sensors. Combined with its new AF tracking system the 5DS R is especially better than the 5DII/5DIII when shooting moving targets. The centre AF point is excellent – matching that of the 6D, also in low light. And the 5DS R AF even trumps the 6D centre point by adding a fine centre point option making the 5DS R’s autofocus the best Canon has issued so far. For video we get face tracking – which works OK. In spite of all its custom glory and improvements Canon’s AF software offerings is still pitiful compared to the completion. Why oh why does Canon not offer a dedicated face and eye AF? This would be even more useful for this camera with its 50 mpix. Not everything is perfect and some will find the AF points are too narrow in both height and width. I also occasionally feel constrained by the narrow AF span but with 50 mpix going to a longer focus length and cropping afterwards is a real option. Recording options: 5DS R in fact does have a crop option. Its implementation however makes me wonder how useful it will be for users. When shooting raw the camera does not crop the RAW file. Hmmm. This comes with some penalties and most important of these are that neither the RAW shooting speed or back screen review speed gets any better. So why use it? Ouch. I cannot imagine ever using it myself. Shooting JPEG’s speeds everything up. But again you don’t really need the crop mode for that anyway because the camera is quick enough handling even full JPEGs. It’s a fail from Canon’s side and I wonder how difficult it would be to offer a real RAW crop mode. Instead there is the option of shooting a lightly compressed RAW format (MRAW) – but still filling the entire frame crop mode or not. The difference is only that when you open the RAW file in your editor it will open “cropped” but with the full RAW file available. As you should expect the two card slots can be set individually to record in all modes and combinations. However, the slowest of the two cards will determine your ultimate shooting speed. That narrow DOF when shooting @50mpix is something I needed to get used to. In fact DOF is the same as before but the ultra high mpix count will make even small differences in DOF more visible than before when you look at shoots @100%. Since I like to shoot wide open and still crave sharpness (an optical contradiction), I have had to reconsider my options compared to shooting with the 5DII/5DIII. This is in fact one reason I got Canon’s new 16-35mm f/4 IS L which may eventually push out my 35mm f/1.4 L. Costs and comforts of shooting 50 MPIX: Apart from taking ultra high resolution pictures another reason to get 50 mpix is the option to make deep crops. Something I need a lot for my shooting style. This does however beg the question: will the extra pixels you gain be offset by mirror slap and camera and hand shake? If the resulting 50 mpix are not ultra “sharp” why invest in all those pixels and the associated processing challenge? First the bad news: yes it is an addition challenge shooting the 5DS R hand held compared to the 5DII/5DIII. I get fewer “ultrasharp” shots with the 5DS R than I do with the 5DII/5DIII/6D. But there is also good news: Canons excellent mirror dampening system works very well, so I get as many “ultrasharp” shoots as I did with my 70D (a Canon crop sensor camera). So, if you are shooting hand held there is a potential penalty if you need to enlarge all the way to 100%. Otherwise reducing the picture to 5DII/5DIII size will do away with the difference. And of course you can opt for tripod or monopod support. Sometimes when I read about this challenge on the web I wonder what people are doing with their cameras to claim that the 5DS R cannot be used hand held. I can and I almost only use it that way with no regrets. As for processing these files on my computers. I have no difficulties at all. But I do have very powerful CPUs and videocards to match - so YMMV. Response times: Start up time is very fast. Shooting speed is 5 fps which is good for almost all kinds of shooting unless you have a very specialised need for rapid firing. However, if fps is what you really need you are not in 5DII/5DIII/5DSR territory anyway as none of them are fast shooters. One question that gets asked a lot is what kind of memory card to get for the 5DS R’s “enormous” files. Answer: not so fast as you think. So look carefully before buying ultra expensive ultra fast memory cards. Unless you have money to burn go for “fast enough” and use the split to buy more megabytes. I have a “fast” 256 GB Komputerbay compact flash card for the added speed CF cards provide with the 5DSR and a cheap PNY 256 GB to fill when speed is not of the essence. That’s ½ terra byte and with that I never expect to run out of space (shooting one card at a time). You can find tests on the net to guide you on which cards fall into the sweet-spot for 5DSR shooting. In real life shooting I can do 14-15 full RAW on my 256 GB Class 10 SDXC card. This is the in fact same shooting speed that I get with the currently fastest 128 GB Sandisk SDXC card that I also have. With the CF card I can do 18-19 shoots before the camera slows down. Fortunately Canon has made sure that the camera does not stall altogether. Instead the 5DSR continues to shoot frames – just somewhat slower. Pic IQ: Overall the 5DS R is as good as digital FF gets right now. Clarity and detail is extremely impressive when the light is good. Canon sensor tech still lags behind some of latitude of the competition (SONY/NIKON), but if the marginal difference is an issue for you I’m sure you won’t be reading this review anyway - except for entertainment. For the rest of us is more than OK - its simply great. Noise levels are extremely good taking into account the 50 mpix sensor size. If you reduce the files to match the 5DII/5DIII files size it is much better than the 5DII and a – visible – touch better than the 5DIII because of the added detail. I used to consider iso 800 my practical limit. But I now find myself happily dailing in iso 1600 which still is very good. When the 5DS R was announced I was at first dismissive due to the very low camera high iso max of 6.400 fearing that it signalled rather poor high iso ability. That was unfounded. For all practical purposes almost all DSLRs hit the ceiling when going >iso 6400 in the sense that you get the same result as simply underexposing for example iso 6400 as turning up the nominal iso to 12800 or 25600. The real life result is that the 5DS R will give you slightly better results (at equal file size) than the 5DIII @ iso 12800 & 25600. After 1600 iso pic IQ begins to take a visible hit, but I still use the entire span up to iso 6400 when needed. I have not yet used flash with my 5DS R. Light handling: Camera handles light very well. I have a non-scientific impression that light metering is better than both the 5DII and the 5DIII (which I saw as equal). Sadly, again Canon’s software engineers let their customers down. While the competition for years has offered light metering according to the AF point you select this obvious and very practical option is not available in the 5DS R. It’s a shame and another reminder that Canon’s AF and light metering software lags behind. I also feel that white balance has improved over the 5DII/5DIII. In fact I find that it is really good which is rare with digital DSLRs. Just remember not to judge the white balance looking at the screen. Grey card is the way to go. Microadjustment: It worked well during my tests as expected. Unfortunately Canons software license does not allow 3.rd party software such as Focal to automatically drive a full AF test. The result is that microadjustment is as time consuming and frustrating as always. Again something one should think Canon would like to offer its customers. I for one would be willing to pay for this and I’m sure may others would too. Canon surely has such software available already for its authorised repair shops. Sell it and make some extra JPY! Due to the high demands the 50 mpix will place on any lens I highly recommend microadjusting your lenses for the best results. It should be the very first thing to do after inserting the battery or you may be underwhelmed by the picture IQ for no other reason that a slight OOF effect. Other thoughts: No visible banding so far in my shots (as with the 5DII). Someone out there can probably provoke it. But for most photographers it will be a non-issue. No hot pixels on the sensor. Dust system works very well (as it should now-a-days). I have not cleaned the sensor yet and I do not expect to do so anytime soon. Manual focus is easy with live view, but holding the camera still is another matter as mentioned under video shooting so the 5DS R will only really work for ultra-sharp pictures with a tripod or with stationary objects. Deleting a batch of individual pictures (I do this a lot en route) is easy and there are more options on how you delete pictures than before. This can still be further improved and again the lack of a touch screen is a further limiting factor. There is a non-Canon related issue worth mentioning: Adobe has gotten the calibration files for the 5DS R all wrong. In fact so wrong that I do not recommend anyone to use Adobe’s standard color profiles with the 5DS R until they are updated. To get the best picture IQ you should either make your own profiles or download some on-line. There are good profiles for free and some cheap commercial offerings. If you use LightRoom and PhotoShop for your RAW-processing you will need these. Happy shooting!

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great camera. read plenty of reviews saying 50MP is too much, cant hand hold, its only for landscape and portraiture with a tripod. I hand hold the camera without a problem. Pictures with some older lenses come out great. Its a camera, if you learn to use it, your pictures will come out great. Im still learning too though. Shoot raw, and you will be able to crop in your photos. My only complaint is the battery life is not that great. It seems much shorter than my 60D, and I can switch batteries. Its a bit heavier of a camera too. different construction to my other cameras though.

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This is my everyday shooter. Used in a professional capacity. File sizes are big so buy plenty of external hard drives.

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I was honestly worried about purchasing this camera given the various caveats even given by the manufacturer about lack of ability to give sharp pictures without a tripod and less low light performance compared to other 5D-lll cameras. In reality the camera is quite tractable the way I use it. I have it set on back button focus/one shot mode and one button is set to 9 point focus for big subjects and another button is set for center focus. By separating focus from the shutter button you can recompose your picture after you focus. If the subject moves,refocus with the 9 point button. I have used a tripod but this entirely unnecessary in good light. I do use a monopod a lot. Even with the 9 pound 400 mm f2.8 I can get sharp pictures if the subject is stationary. Of course with lighter lenses you can get tremendous pictures due to the ability to crop so much. Sure I use other cameras such as the 7D Mkll . I had some trouble working with this camera until I started using back button focusing but the controls on the 7D MkII and 5D Mk III are all about the same so the 5DS R was a natural. As far as low light performance, it has no observable problems so I push the ISO to 1250 without any hesitation if you get a low light scene. It is best to use fast lenses wide open with this camera.

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Its like heaven in a peice of metal. I love it.

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Well after months of waiting on pre-order, it finally arrived. Heres the high points thus far: 1) The build and feel is 99% identical to a 5D3, which is fantastic ergonomically, and experienced Canon shooters will feel right at home with this one. Its solid, study. weather sealed, and the mode dial got a nice little upgrade with raised icons and what seems like a bit more solid grip. The new LPE6N battery provides longer life but Im using my old LPE6 (standard) in it just fine right now. Dual Digic 6 chip do suck up a lot of juice. 2) The lag time between the shutter and the jpg preview popping up on the rear LCD is a little longer than the 5D3, but thats to be expected as were talking 70MB RAW files here. Yes, 70MB. 3) Speaking of the shutter, the sexiest thing about this camera (besides the red "R") is the new shutter and its new sound. Its like a sniper rifle with a silencer. Its very stealth and sleek with its new all motor driven mechanism (as opposed to the old standard motor lift and spring return). By the way, the RGB+IR metering system they brought down from the 1DX for this? Awesome. Love it. I feel like the metering has been more accurate than my 5D3, and Ive even used the 1DX many times myself. 4) Ive been handheld shooting with a Canon 135 f2 L. First of all, what a lethal combo with this new 5DSR. Wow. Resolution is off the charts good. I found handheld shooting certainly requires a bit more care than the 5D3 to get the most out of the sensor, but we all knew that going in. This is a studio/tripod loving camera. HOWEVER, you can get really good results going about 4-5 times focal length with your shutter speed. (50mm lens x 5 = 1/250th second). Of course, having IS on your lens really helps. By the way, add "Mirror LockUp" to your custom menu (the green tabs). This way you can go in quickly and alter your shutter release lag time if need be, which is precisely why they built the new shutter. That way, you press the button, and the mirror flips up and the camera waits anywhere from 1/8 to 1 second before dropping the curtains on the sensor. You can set it in that range or just turn it off, or engage traditional old manual mirror lock up with the first button press lifting the mirror and the second button press dropping the curtains. 5) I cant get this thing to Moire. I have deliberately shot some really small fabric patterns and weaves, brickwalls, so on and so forth, I cant get it to create the negative artifact. Without the Low Pass Filter effect (this camera has TWO LFPs that cancel each other out to raise sharpness) the propensity for generating Moire and Aliasing goes up.... THAT SAID, at 50MP even the smallest details can get resolved well, so artifacts dont really seem to be a problem so far. Now I know I have some dancers I shoot that wear silky shiny dresses with tight fabric weaves and I suspect I may encounter some color moire there. However... Lightrooms Moire tool does a really good job to easily and quickly remove it if need be. 6) This is NOT NOT NOT a general use, everyday camera. Please get a Canon 5D Mark III (5D3) for that or the amazing 6D for half the price of 5D3. The 5DS and 5DSR really are for professionals who need the ultra high resolving capabilities for a variety of reasons such as Large Print work, studio work, pictures of large groups, architecture and landscapes, and the ability to shoot wide and crop in post without losing details. You dont want to buy this camera to take family pictures. Its overkill and the file sizes, as I mentioned before, are enormous. I own both the 5D3 and 6D. Both are excellent cameras and both are excellent general purpose cameras. 7) Buy Glass. Dont buy this camera expecting the world from even your 24-105 F4 L lens. I have one. Good lens. 5DSR DOES make it look better than on a 5D3... BUT, if you really want to take advantage of what this machine can do, you need to look into some of the upper level L glass like the the new 16-35 f4 L or the 70-200 f2.8 IS II. The 135 f2 L is STILL one of the sharpest lenses ever made and looks gorgeous on this, as do the new Sigma ART lenses. (Everything I just mentioned, I own and have shot on this 5DSR now) 8) ISO performance - Ok its a studio and landscape camera. Its meant to be shot at or near base ISO, right? (100-800). Well last night I shot a bunch of stuff in my house handheld at 6400 ISO. Lemme tell ya... It looks...really....nice. For all the flak on how much this camera would suck at higher ISOs I think it looks no worse than a 5D3 and maybe even a bit better (again, mostly dependent on your technique.) I would suggest as I always do with higher ISO... ETTR. Expose To The Right. Push your camera exposure compensation UP one stop and pull back highlights in post if need be. I think the 5DSR images at 6400 are really very clean for that sensitivity, but everyone has their own personal feelings about what is "usable" Not here to debate. Thats just me. Id put the 6400 ISO performance on par with a 6D. Im perfectly happy with it. 9) If youre a pro who needs the juice. Buy this. You will not regret it. Its an excellent and well built professional tool. I cant wait to do a REAL studio test with this. I will update as I do. UPDATE: 6/24 - Posting pictures shot with this seems futile given how images are compressed to post on the review, but here ya go: (Handheld shot using the Canon 16-35 f4 L on the Boat and Canon 135 f2 L on the girl) UPDATE: 6/26 - I have run across an owner or two who have gotten very minute amounts of Moire in some extreme situations (wildlife in this case). But nothing that wasnt quickly corrected in Lightroom without any damage to the image quality. That said, I still have not had the issue. It confirms my second thoughts when I cancelled my initial order of the 5DS in favor of the 5DSR UPDATE 7/14 - First studio shoot last weekend was a big success so far as Im concerned. Was amazed by how much detail was retained on the face and hair even from half and full length poses. Headshots were amazing. EVen though you tend to soften the skin in post, the ultra fine details you can retain where you really want to keep it (eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows, hair, etc) is uncanny. Very happy with the results. Its being able to crop in and turn a wider shot into headshot and still have the same resolution in so doing as I would had I just taken a headshot with the 5D3. Loads of flexibility!!! UPDATE 7/21 - Someone posted a good question about the contrast and saturation compared to other popular current Canon models like the 5D3. Yes, contrast and particularly color saturation seem to be more and richer. Canon previously stated months ago that this camera would be using a better CFA (Color Filter Array) more akin to those of the vaunted and still loved Canon 1Ds III. I just two days ago did direct comparisons between the 5D3 and 5DSR and concur this indeed seems to be the case when I had both cameras in a controlled situation in a studio setup using the same lens, exposure settings, strobe power, and even manually set white balance of 5600k on both cameras. The 5DSR naturally produced a bit warmer and richer color palate (as in zero LightRoom adjustment on both cameras) UPDATE 7/27 - Took the R to a small play my kids were in. 70-200 f2.8L IS II running in ISO 6400 the whole way through. Keeping at f2.8 I was getting anywhere from 160th to 320th in Aperture Priority mode with changing stage lighting. (Shooting RAW as always) Gotta say Im still very pleased with the results, and even more so after a bit of NR added in Lightroom in the Luminance channel. UPDATE 8/3 - DIFFRACTION LIMITS - Ok this is a bit more technical for us geeks but in general, all lenses become diffraction limited around f16, which has in recent history been correct with all our 20MP-ish cameras. Diffraction limits are correlated to pixel size and density though. So at 50MP, the same lens that was DL at f16 on a Canon 5D III is now DL between f11-f14 on a Canon 5DS. I have shot many frames at f11 on my 5DSR and they look amazing (using Canon 16-35L f4 IS). The diffraction effects will start creeping in beyond this, so effectively f11 is the smallest aperture you can stop down to before you begin to LOSE sharpness. a 5D III gets you to f16 because the pixels are much bigger than the 5DS. With the smaller pixels, more fine detail can be resolved so the DL hits sooner (bigger aperture). If you shoot a lot of Macro stuff I dont see much ever done smaller than f11-f14 anyway. So this should not be a problem. As for landscapers, f11 on a serious wide angle lens (assuming youre using good focus point technique) should get you close to infinity focus through the frame anyway. If you really need deeper focus, then consider focus stacking anyway. I dont think Ive ever shot anything at f16 more than once or twice even on my 5D III.

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He is my average guy review for the average guy. After using the 5DS side by with my 5D Mark III, I have determine the following about the 5DS: 1. Better out of the box dynamic range that you will notice, 2. Better exposure metering in bright daylight when us average guys shoot, 3. Has a fantastic electronic level so I can finally get my shots straight, 4. Resolution finally exceeds your ability to shoot handheld so this ends the megapixel war (so everyone stop talking about it), 5. There is a usable gain in resolution over the 5D Mark III if you use a tripod and mirror lock up (so this is rare), 6. They put a USB 3 on the side with a cable protector (finally) so you can safely shoot tethered, this was a problem with the Mark III with the slower USB port, 7. It has usable mirror lock up delays that do help get better pictures, 8. The silent shutter is much nicer (pleasing to the ear) and make you bother people less at performances or weddings... Bottom line, if I had a choice between the 5D Mark III and the 5DS even just for walk around shooting in any light, I would pick the 5DS hands down.

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