I've been shooting for 15+ years, shot for 10 years with Canon 5D Mark III, Nikon D850 since it was first released. I only use 24-70 and 70-200 f/2.8 zooms glass and can careless about primes for my needs.ad to take here. Some additional information:

I've been shooting for 15+ years, shot for 10 years with Canon 5D Mark III, Nikon D850 since it was first released. I only use 24-70 and 70-200 f/2.8 zooms glass and can careless about primes for my needs.

I am brand agnostic, not a fanboy of either or, I have a lot of experience with both Canon and Nikon.

A few thoughts on current usage:

Huge mpix count of the D850 was something I really was looking forward to when it first came out, but realistically over many years of usage, I don't see any benefits for my personal use. I would be totally fine with lower mpix count but better IQ and ISO noise handling.

Ergonomically I have no preference of Canon or Nikon cameras, I do like newer technology in general and I see that R3 has better EVF and higher resolution screen. Not sure how much actual difference that makes.

I will be using the camera for N/C log video as well, since everyone wants photographers to do videos now, if I was deciding, video would be a 50% factor of the weight of one vs the other.

Lens IQ is a huge factor for me, in fact may be the deciding factor, if RF24-70 was that much better than 24-70 S, i'd get a Canon straight up. And in case it wasn't clear from my original post, I would be selling all my current gear and buying Z9 or R3 with the best Canon or Nikon 24-70 and 70-200 glass for those cameras.

Can anyone with experience of these two make any comments or recommendations?

Hi guys!

I’m looking to switch from Nikon D850 to Canon for multiple reasons but I’m curious which of the three cams above has the BEST autofocus and suits my work of feeld.

I shoot events fulltime from festivals/artists to big congresses and dark techno clubs so I’m willing to pay the premium to improve my workflow since getting the right shot can be crucial. I don’t care about video nor which camera has the fastest shutter or burst speed so no billion fps needed.

Thanks in advance!!

As is tradition, my almost yearly Canon body review thread.

I'm one of the lucky few that got a camera from the first batch of deliveries and of course lucky enough that I can afford it. Given that I'm predominantly shoot wildlife and birds this was a no brainer for me.

TL;DRs at each section for those who don't like to read and some sample pictures. Note: Images are not edited beside default lightroom settings and "Faithful* camera profile, WB is also in camera. All pictures taken with a Monopod + Gimbal. 100% crops are screenshots from lightroom.

^{Given that I rarely update my online presence nor that I make no money from photography and I just shoot for myself: I hope this can stay up, this is purely informational for those few curious people around here.}

Eye Control

TL;DR: Works, it reads my mind and Canon better not remove this ever from their pro camera line up, worth every penny

Let's start with the most anticipated feature. And yes, I call it a feature and not just a gimmick. It works, I have dark eyes so no issues with registration. After a few calibrations it works fine. It's not always perfect but as long as you get it into the ballpark where it should focus, it will catch onto animal/face/car or an object that stands out.

It is revolutionary. If Canon doesn't keep this around for all their pro cameras, I'll be pissed. I haven't moved the focus point with the joystick or the smart controller (nor the touch screen). It's that good. It could only get better if it read my mind. I'm almost at a point where I will disable the crosshair because I don't need it, because I trust the camera to know where I'm looking at.

Best feature ever.

Given the high percentage of dark eye colored people in Japan, I'm not surprised that this feature has some issues with bright eye colored people, I'd argue this will get fixes in future updates.

Image Quality

TL;DR: Perfectly fine 24MP sensor with very good high ISO performance, no rolling shutter for real use cases

Since the R5 has basically beaten all FF cameras with the highest dynamic range^1, no one talks about DR any more ;p But as is tradition, we Canon fanboys don't care. The sensor is fine, I don't pixel peep and I don't do DR tests on my images. But for those who want to see them here are a few shots with 100% crops at challenging lighting conditions:

1/800s f/8.0 ISO 20000 @ 1000mm - [100%]

1/160s f/8.0 ISO 6400 @ 1000mm - [100%]

1/200s f/8.0 ISO 12800 @ 1000mm - [100%]

Nothing to complain about. Some lower ISO shots:

1/400s f/4.0 ISO 640 @ 500mm - [100%]

1/250s f/4.0 ISO 1000 @ 500mm - [100%]

1/100s f/5.6 ISO 500 @ 700mm - [100%]

So let's talk about the elephant in the room. ONLY 24 MP. You might care and that's fine, you can skip this part.

Not to get into the weeds but lenses will never resolve the sensors, not a 50MP nor a 24MP, there is always a loss in sharpness. That loss is way larger on high MP sensors than smaller ones. I looked up the DXO values (yeah I know) for my lens on a 50MP sensor it will resolve around 30MP, on a 24MP (I had to extrapolate since there wasn't one in the DB) it is around 19-20MP. Note: the 50MP sensor they used is the 5DSR which has NO AA filter. So what can we take from this? The loss in MP will be significantly higher for higher resolution sensors, to be blunt and slightly imprecise: tons of useless data. But long story short. Here is the sharpest picture I could find from my R5 vs one from the R3 enlarged to 45MP as a 100% crop. Spot the difference.

One - Two

Is there a difference? Sure. Enough to bother? No.

30 FPS

TL;DR: Crazy but most of the time pure overkill, but perfect for my use cases

I really need a quick way to switch between full 30 FPS and slower FPS settings because you can't take pictures fast enough without going through 2-3 shots:

Lightroom Library View

Trying to taking single pictures, not happening with 30FPS and trying to avoid camera shake by slowly taking the finger off the trigger doesn't help either. Adding to that, most situations even when you need burst 15-20FPS is enough. Humans don't move that fast and you just end up with 20 shots that look more or less the same.

I see tons of culling in my future ;p

There are some use cases however. You can find the "perfect" shot where everything lines up. When you take 10 shots in a fraction of a second, one of the shots will just look better than the other. If it's slight motion blur, camera shake or eyes open/closed, I noticed this myself already.

BUT when there is action, it's worth every penny. I didn't do any measurements, but most reviewers claim it is 30FPS no matter what. I didn't find a setting to prefer "in focus" over "FPS" that only exists for non-servo AF which is kinda weird. I did notice slight slow downs when there is no focus at all.

full 30FPS

full 30FPS

Even if 50% of those shots were out of focus, still tons to pick from. But let's talk about Auto Focus to put this into perspective.

Auto Focus

TL;DR: Snaps better than my 1DX II, sticks better to the subject than my R5 and does it all at 30 FPS

I only have a single RF lens (70-200 f/2.8) so it's hard to know if there is more potential there. Canon claims there is, and from this single data point that I have, I tend to agree with them. The 70-200 snaps. Infinity to close range is fractions of a second and it doesn't yoyo, it sticks. My wildlife lens is the older EF 500mm f/4.0 II so it doesn't have the new motors but given the larger battery, the camera can drive the focus faster.

And boy does it do a good job (choice frames in a series, 100% crops on the focus point):

1 - 2 - 3

note that I included the border of the last frame, it was easily keeping focus so close to the border.

These two shots were taken moments apart using the Eye Control to switch between them:

One - Two

Timestamp is 1 sec apart but I'm certain I took the shots within a second.

It's really crazy: Finds eyes on every animal I shot today and tracking is spot on. I'd say Cats + Dogs will be easy work for this camera. Small birds are another thing entirely. The kingfisher from before, well it couldn't track it:

Crude Photoshop stacking

There is a visible gap, either me going off the trigger or the AF couldn't keep up and thus didn't take a picture. There could be many reasons why it failed:

1. bad AF settings (I didn't adjust the default AUTO mode for now, it's a new mode which detects the use case and adjust AF settings, so I had to try it out)

2. Old lens with a 1.4x

3. Or the camera just can't comply. Small birds flying partially at camera at close range and bad lighting conditions is just an edge cases most reviewers never test, so here it is, maybe the camera, maybe me. We'll see in the future.

Overall

TL;DR: Best camera I've used, Eye Control is the future unless I can implant a chip into my brain

Many reasons why this Camera is perfect for me: Fanboy, sunken cost fallacy and GAS. I like the small image files, editing flies by. I had a blast going through all the image and it becomes harder and harder to find the out of focus images to delete... It's clearly better than the R5 and 1DXII is no competition, luckily enough the batteries from the 1DXII work like a charm for this camera. Eye Control is a joy to use even though I only used it for 2 days I trust it blindly (no pun intended).

Also: 1300+ shots today and slight above 50% battery still left.

Verdict

10/10

★★★★★

Gallery

Edited images

• 1/250s f/4.0 ISO 1000

Lions were a bit tired and scuttled away when it started to rain

• 1/100s f/5.6 ISO 500

IS works like a charm

• 1/200s f/8.0 ISO 25600

Noise somehow cleaned up nicely

• 1/200s f/8.0 ISO 12800

Sometimes blurry feathers look nice

• 1/250s f/8.0 ISO 25600

Black birds are always tough, worked out good enough

• 1/160s f/8.0 ISO 6400

Pretty eyes, never seen that before

• 1/800s f/8.0 ISO 20000

I got swarmed by sparrows, I think they thought I had food

• 1/2500s f/4.0 ISO 16000

Not full sprint, but running directly towards me, all shots in this series were in focus

• 1/320s f/4.0 ISO 1000

Family shot

• 1/800s f/4.0 ISO 3200

Taking in the morning air

• 1/2500s f/5.6 ISO 25600

Beautiful bird, now that I know where to find him, I'll sure be there again soon

^{Note: lightroom introduced some weird red blotches in the background, not sure why, doesn't happen with Canons own software. Sadly not a lot of action shots, even though they are all in focus, the shots are too bad ;p Guess good cameras don't make good photographers ;p Also some shots are through fences which creates a messy bokeh, this is not the camera.}

AMA

I'll answer any questions as soon as I can.

EDIT

• I just checked, PhotonsToPhoton now says the R3 is currently the dynamic range leader for FF cameras. Only being beaten by pixel shift modes.

DR really doesn't matter any more when Canon is on top...

• So there has been the critique brought up, that because Canon is cooking their Raws (which I don't like either) that's why they have more dynamic range. I may not be a sensor specialist but I worked with data, the moment you remove noise, you lose information, and when you lose information, you do not magically gain "more" range.

One could argue that the information "gained" is fake and it just looks like data but is washed out noise. My theory is, Canon figured out how to remove noise from signal because the R6 and 1DXII are suspected to be the same sensor. Here are the DR charts:

Dynamic Range, 1DXII vs R6

And here are DPReviews Dynamic range test shots. You can see more detail in the R6 than the 1DXII. Maybe it's better image processing, but I suspect, the raw noise reduction actually works:

Comparison