Hi everyone this is Nico Carver from nebulaphotos.com and this video is just
an update on the Canon EOS Ra which is Canon's first full-frame mirrorless
camera designed for astrophotography. I did a first impressions video a few
months back and it was fairly glowing but since then i've had some issues with
this camera so i just wanted to make a quick update video explaining these
issues so if anyone out there was considering purchasing this camera
they're aware that it's not all roses the first issue I had was maybe just a
fluke I only mention it because I've never had an issue like this with any
other Canon camera and I've owned many over the years so I found it a little
bit alarming basically about two months ago and about two months into owning the
camera I was recording a video in 4k which is one of the reasons I bought
this camera and when I noticed while recording I basically had the screen on
me like this and while recording I noticed all of a sudden the screen froze
up and it was just my face as a still screen and this was during recording so
I was like oh that's weird maybe the battery died or the SD card filled up or
something so I tried to get it to respond by first you know just pressing
on the screen then pressing the different buttons trying to you know
stop the recording and nothing responded so then I just tried turning it off with
the on/off switch and again it still just had that frozen screen right here
so eventually I just took out the actual battery and that reset it and I was able
to put the battery back in and get it going again but only for about one
minute before the whole camera froze up again and it just was a repeat of this
process over and over again it just kept freezing up so I sent it into the Canon
service center and surprisingly at first they couldn't replicate the issue even
though I was having it over and over and they asked me to send the lens I was
using and this Canon EF RF adapter that I was using
and eventually I guess they replaced some power parts something to do with
the power management that they said was broken and they fixed it and sent it
back to me so I was fine I haven't had that issue since but the that repair
took over a month and so it slowed down my testing a little bit with this camera
and then ever since I got it back whenever I take out the battery to
charge it and then put the battery back in and turn the camera back on I get
this screen the reset the date and time screen and so what's going on is there's
another battery inside a Canon camera that just keeps the date and time for
you basically just like a watch battery but I think a little bit better than
that and it's supposed to I think be a rechargeable battery that charges while
the camera is on but for whatever reason I've been using this camera a lot since
I got it back and this date time battery isn't working so just another little
annoyance but I wasn't planning to send it back immediately just for that
because it's sort of just a little hiccup and maybe eventually I'd get it
fixed and I really wanted to take more pictures with this cool camera but then
right as I was planning to go do my next shoot with the RA I noticed a thread on
the cloudy nights forum which is mostly a US forum for discussing everything to
do with astronomy including Astro photography and on the DSLR forum on
cloudy nights I noticed this thread about reflection issues with bright
stars that people were saying were specific to the Canon RA and so I
haven't noticed this I looked into the thread though and it seemed all credible
got me really looking back at my images and that I'd taken and sure enough I
could find these reflections on bright stars too I think the reason that I
hadn't noticed before was because my first test shot was of Orion and Orion
has a lot of nebulosity around it so the the red halos effect that that's the the
problem that people were finding they were sort of obscured by all the
nebulosity going on but looking back on my jellyfish test shot especially
looking back before I heavily processed it I could clearly see these red rings
on bright stars so here's one this halo you can see is a bright star in the
center of the frame and the halo is fairly centered but if you look at a
bright star off-center then it gets quite distracting because the the the
halo is really offset from the star and the the more the closer the bright star
is to the edge of the full frame of the Canon RA the more that halo becomes
offset and people on this thread were finding this effect with all kinds of
different optics telescopes and lenses I had only tested the RA so far with
telescopes so anyways I asked the canon service centre about this and they
suggested i tried to replicate the issue with a canon lens rather than a
telescope which they probably hadn't tested for when they built the canon ra
so that makes sense so that night i that same night that i got the message it
happened to be clear and i went out with this lens this is my canon 200
millimeter f 2.8 l lens and i shot wide open and i took some photos of Vega
which is a bright star both with my RA and my Canon 5d Mark 3 which I'm
shooting with right now and here are the results so you can see with the RA you
have that really dramatic red halo only on one side because I offset Vega and
with 5d mark 3 no red halo and so it really is a shame as I was really hoping
to use this camera mostly actually with lenses especially Canon lenses at fast
focal ratios and I think this halo is emphasized when you get too fast focal
ratios so really it's just a game breaker for me or a deal breaker I
should say in any case my next step is tomorrow I'm gonna send my canon RA the
Canon lens and my sample RAW files all to the Canon Service Center
and see if they can fix this camera yet again
however the consensus opinion on cloudy nights is that this is a design issue
with the internal filters inside the RA that would affect everyone's RA not just
some but we'll see we'll see where this all goes I I love many things about this
camera I love how light it is I love the flippy screen I love the filter drawer
system so there's a lot of things I do like still but so far it hasn't lived up
to the high price point due to the issues I've been having and these issues
have been requiring me to send it back for service what I'd rather be using it
so I guess the big risk in buying a camera that's brand new to the market
and relatively untested is you don't know what kind of issues are going to
spring up with it I anyways I'll keep everyone updated as to what's happening
with my Canon RA journey but for now based on my own experiences with the
camera and what I'm seeing with pretty widespread evidence of this red halo
issue across many people's pictures I can't recommend purchasing the Canon EOS
RA but hopefully they can fix it and then maybe my recommendation will change
until next time clear skies everyone this is Nico Carver, nebulaphotos.com