Hi everyone this is Nico Carver. I recently bought this new camera from Canon called
the Canon EOS Ra which is Canon's first full-frame camera for astrophotography
and it's also mirrorless meaning it's a bit more compact and lighter than my
full-frame DSLR s and i wanted to do a quick video here with my first
impressions and mainly to explain why I bought this camera over some of the
other exciting options that are available today if you stick around to
the end of the video I'll show you my first light meaning the first image I've
taken with this camera and I just took it the other night it's of the Orion and
Running Man Nebulae okay first off this is not necessarily a reason to buy a
camera but the box is pretty darn cool look at this this is the California
Nebula feature right here it's on the front and on the side and I just thought
like what a nice clean cool image to put on your camera box okay so my main
reason for buying this camera is I wanted an upgrade to my Canon 5d Mark 3
which is what I'm shooting with right now and I wanted to use it for a bit of
everything making videos like this one astrophotography obviously both with
telescopes and with camera lenses and I wanted to use it as my everyday shooter
what I mean by an everyday shooter is Dale time you know just around the town
just taking pictures of nature and people and all that kind of stuff and
the great thing for me and this might not apply to you but going from a 5d
Mark 3 to the RA is all of my existing lenses and speed lights and even battery
packs everything works directly with this camera so instead of having to
rebuy a bunch of accessories when getting a new camera I can go straight
from the 5d to the RA hopefully sell my 5d and everything will
just work yeah but now I'm mirrorless which has a lot of advantages one of
them being that the flange distance to the sensor is much much shorter so I can
adapt many more lenses to this system that I could with my 5d where the sensor
was further back into the camera body because the mirror had to be in front it
took me a while to come to this conclusion of getting an all around her
my first thought when I was thinking about camera upgrades was to get
specialized cameras for everything you made if you're in the video world you
might know about Blackmagic Cinema Camera for making videos I was thinking
of a nikon camera for travel and lens based Astro photography and then keeping
my Canon 5d for every day shooting but I realized though that this camera the
Canon EOS RA could do all of those things and all of them pretty well so my
plan is to sell my 5d Mark 3 sell my Nikon d800 and save money in the long
run by not having to buy all new lenses and accessories so while the main thing
that I heard about this camera is that it's just too expensive for me looking
at all my options this was actually a very good value as an all-rounder let's
look at a few of the ways I'll use this camera that I just talked about and why
it makes sense for me
you might already know this but what makes this camera different than the
Canon are what makes it special for astrophotography is they factory install
a different UV IR cut filter that lets in the H a and s 2 emission lines but
still cuts out the infrared the IR this is similar to modifying a DSLR except
you don't have to worry about breaking your warranty since it comes pre
modified the only other thing that makes this camera different from the Canon
EOS R is when you were in Live View instead of going from five times zoom to
then 10 times zoom as most Canon cameras do. This one goes five times then thirty
times zoom and I actually wasn't sure how much I'd like this till I tried it
and for me it was just amazing I it worked great at all the focal lengths i
work at for fine-tuning focus with a botton of mask and it just works
perfectly i really liked it if you were a really high focal length
the 30 times might be too far zoomed in so I've heard some people say they wish
that Canon had put in like five times 15 times 30 times maybe I wouldn't I I'd
like that too so I won't say that Canon shouldn't do that maybe they should they
should I'm not really holding out hope for a lot of firmware updates for this
camera because Canon usually doesn't do that but we'll see one thing that is
missing from it and I'll go more into negatives when I do a full review after
I've had this for a while is it doesn't have any kind of built-in intervalometer
so it can you know it can go up to a 30 second shot or no I can actually do a
single long exposure because it has a built-in bulb timer but it doesn't have
a built-in intervalometer so you can't do like a series of five-minute shots
unless you have an external intervalometer or you're using a laptop
so that's one drawback another thing that you might not think about when
buying a DSLR but I actually think now it's very important is it has a flippy
screen so if I are going to do some like vlogging style content with this off
filming myself I can have it pointed towards me but the flipping the fluid
screen I sort of you know don't think of that initially is like a big factor in
buying a camera but it actually did play a big part in my decision when it comes
to the next use I'll talk about which is for travel and lens based Astro
photography my biggest complaint about my current camera for that purpose for
travel and lens bays Astro photography the Nikon d800 is the lack of a flippy
screen it has what's called a fixed screen into the camera body like this
and I'm just getting really tired of laying on the cold ground to frame my
shots when doing Astro photography without a laptop which I usually don't
use a laptop when traveling so with this flippy screen what I can do is I can
just point it up like this the camera can be at any angle and I can still
frame and see my shot for making videos I got very spoiled in my last job I was
a multimedia librarian I had access to a Canon c100 which is one of their cinema
cameras and it has a bunch of features for video that make it much better than
my 5d Mark 3 for the dual pixel autofocus which was the first
implementation of continuous autofocus while shooting video that actually
worked perfectly for me I'm not using autofocus right now because this is a
Canon 5d Mark 3 so it's manual focus so if I hold something up like that it'll
probably be out of focus because there's a certain focal plane here where it's in
focus so when I'm holding up stuff like this I have to keep it fairly close to
my face that's not an issue with the Canon EOS RA or Canon cinema cameras
because they have dual pixel autofocus so it continually can rack the focus if
you're using a Canon lens pretty cool the second cinema feature I really I
really wanted was Canon log which is a color profile that you put in the camera
and then you apply a color grade and post-processing and it makes your
footage more cinematic because you're starting out at a more sort of log flat
color profile and then you can stretch it while retaining a lot of shadow
detail and stuff like that
one feature I want to briefly mention about this camera that hasn't been
getting a lot of attention is that canon has this official adapter for drop-in
filters so basically what this adapter does is you put it on there then any EF
lens you have from any maker you can put it on here and you still have full
autofocus capability full control over the iris and but it has this little slot
for drop-in filters Canon has officially only released
I think neutral density filters and like a clear filter but there are already
manufacturers for astronomy that are making other cool astronomy filters for
this drop-in filter system so I have one right here I haven't tried it yet but
I'm looking forward to this is the IDAS nebula booster 2 and NB2 DR and this lets
in the Ha and O3 emissions or blocking out most of everything else the cool
thing here is I can just slide this right in to the adapter here it locks
into place really satisfyingly if I need to switch out to like a clear or
something like that it's really just as easy as letting out this little locking
pin and putting in a clear and all while this is all attached to a telescope or
attached to a camera lens it's very easy to switch out filters with this system
which I have not seen if you're like trying to like put a 2-inch filter into
a focus or something like that so this is actually a pretty cool innovation
that I don't think a lot of people are talking about and I hope other films
they're makers like opt along and astronomy develop filters for this drop
in system - now that the canon eos ra is out because it's really really slick
last thing I'll say part of making this decision for me is just what feels right
and I've been using Canon cameras for over a decade and I just like them for
me the ergonomics are always right on they just really know how to do a grip
and where to put the buttons and that kind of thing the menus are always
amazing I don't get lost in the menus and then lastly for like daytime and in
this kind of photography skin tone and stuff like that I think the colors are
typically better than what I see from other camera makers
I am impartial though I'll try any cameras because I'm a camera nut I've
tried Sony I've tried Panasonic Fuji Nikon even Olympus and nothing has ever
felt as right in my hands as a canon camera I'm not paid by them I'd have no
affiliation but I just love Canon cameras but I totally get that others
feel the same way that I do about canon but for a Nikon or Sony or Fuji so I'll
just leave you with this specs aren't everything
it's more about what you do with the camera as a photographer and with that
said as a treat for people who stayed to the end of the video here's my first
light with the camera this is just under an hour just about thirty sub exposures
at ninety seconds each and it's the Orion and running the nebula
okay till next time clear skies everyone if
you're interested in buying the Canon EOS Ra I'll put my affiliate link in the
description and please subscribe you can also support me on patreon I've been
getting a lot of new patrons on patreon which I really really appreciate for
doing these videos and keeping to a schedule. All right thanks!