The Canon R3 is a hybrid camera,
but it's clearly aimed
at professional photography scenarios,
especially those leveraging its terrific drive speed
and outstanding autofocus.
But what I find most interesting
is that it's also Canon's least encumbered hybrid
when it comes to video functionality as well.
Usually Canon serves up a handful
of peculiar video limitations with their hybrid cameras,
encouraging you to look toward their cine line.
And there are still a couple of those limitations here,
but they're much less significant.
So today I want to celebrate all of the successes
Canon has achieved with this R3 when it comes to video
as a way to hopefully encourage seeing more of that
in future hybrids,
as well as discuss a few minor things
that I think could still use improvement.
Before that though, for disclosure,
this video is not sponsored by Canon.
In fact, I didn't even borrow this camera from them.
I borrowed it from Camera Canada, so thank you to them.
Big fan of that store.
They get my highest recommendation.
I didn't get paid by either of those parties
to make this video,
and this camera will be going back to Camera Canada
when I'm done with the video.
This video does have a sponsor though,
and that's Storyblocks.
Okay, so number one on my list
of five major improvements for video
is the removal of the internal record limits.
There's no 29 minute 59 second time limit.
And there's no thermal countdown
like you'd find on the R5.
This is huge.
I've been complaining for a long time
of why does Canon still have that 30 minute record limit?
And they also added Sony's
high temperature shutoff setting in the menu
that lets you record for longer
and it getting hotter if you use it on tripod or whatever.
Now keep in mind, I do live in Canada and it's winter,
so it's not that hot outside.
In fact, the warmest this camera's been exposed to
is room temperature plus the lights
heating up the environment.
So I don't know, 24 degrees Celsius.
But within that, I haven't been able to get it to overheat
no matter what I did.
In fact, it would either be the battery that would die
or the card would run out of space
before I would even get a heat warning.
So no issues there whatsoever, which is terrific.
And I wanted to sort of see if I can make it run longer
by using USB power to erase the battery life issue,
and that does work.
Note on that, by the way,
it seems like you can actively power it a little bit
while the camera's on.
When I was using my meter,
it was drawing 7.5 watts over USB-C power delivery,
and that's using a 100 watt charger,
but when I turned the camera off it went to zero watts,
so it doesn't seem like you can charge the battery
with the camera off,
but you can supply sort of additional trickle power
while the camera's on, and that does extend the runtime.
However, even with that USB powering
and with the removal of the time limit and the overheating,
there is still sort of a limit on the record duration,
which is my first in my list of five things
that I think need improvement,
which is that the relay recording on this camera
just doesn't really make a lot of sense.
So there is a feature in the menu
that lets you adjust what you do with the card slot.
So there's two different card slots here.
There's a CFexpress Type B and an SD card,
and I like that they have that variety.
You can't do everything on the SD card slot.
You can't do raw,
you can't do some of the All-Intra at high frame rates
and you can't do the 120p mode,
and that's fine, no big deal.
Record those with CFexpress Type B.
But in the menu, you'll see that there's an option
called auto switch when card full
and on Sony cameras and other cameras,
that means that when the card's full,
it switches to the other slot.
And in that you can even swap out
the first card then for an empty one
and it'll keep swapping back and forth.
Not on this camera.
That setting is so weird.
When you fill up the first card,
it switches to the second card,
but it still stops recording and says,
the first card's full.
So what the auto switch means is
then you can press record again,
and the camera intuitively knows to use the second card.
But I mean, that's not really that great,
That's not really auto switching.
It still stops and you have to start again,
but it starts again on the second card
and you can't even hot swap
because as soon as you open the door,
just like previous Canon cameras,
the camera sort of shuts off.
So you can't swap out cards for relay recording.
So there really is no true relay recording on this camera.
The closest they've got is that
you can press record a second time
when it fills up the first card
to then start recording on the second card.
But if you don't catch it,
you're gonna have a lapse in your recording there,
a blackout period.
So that's the hard limit.
The hard limit on this camera is not heat, which is great.
It's not time limit, which is great.
It's not even really power related.
It's how big of a card can you get
and how big of a card can you afford,
because CFexpress Type B isn't really cheap,
and if you want to record for a really long time,
you're gonna need to get like, you know, 512 gig,
which again, is gonna be expensive.
But I'd say the biggest way they can improve this
is honestly just getting rid of this weird car door
shuts off the camera thing,
because then we could always just swap out
another fresh card, but you can't do that with this camera.
Okay, back to the good stuff.
My number two video success is the rolling shutter,
or rather the lack of it.
This camera has absolutely fantastic
rolling shutter performance.
And I think this is pretty significant
because if you think about it,
there's not a lot of other hybrid cameras out there
that offer a 6K oversampled full frame readout
with the frame rates and codec options that this camera has
and doesn't have a rolling shutter problem.
It might be the only non cine camera that does that.
Because if you think about it,
the A7S3 doesn't have those issues,
but it doesn't oversample from 6K.
The A74 oversamples from 6K,
it's got terrible rolling shutter and it crops in 4K60,
Panasonics crop and 4K60.
The A1 doesn't crop in anything,
but it doesn't oversample in those modes.
So I don't know if there's another camera
that does it all,
that up to 4k60 oversamples from 6K
and doesn't have rolling shutter problems.
Bravo, Canon, that's terrific.
But for my complaint number two,
I still don't love the IBIS.
Now I'd rather have great rolling shutter and bad IBIS
than good IBIS and terrible rolling shutter
because we've seen that makes a big difference,
but I wouldn't say that it's bad.
It just feels a lot like the R5.
So if you liked the R5's IBIS,
then I think you're fine over here.
Just it still has those wobble issues
with wide angle lenses.
And there's still some stuff where,
even with not wide angles,
where it just feels like it kind of drifts
weirdly or like moves.
I was doing a shot where I was walking with the camera
and kinda doing a little bit of like a parallax
while walking in slow motion,
and at one point you can even tell that I was walking,
which is weird because I didn't want to see the motion.
It was like it locked off the frame.
And then when I stopped walking,
it like shot the frame back.
It reminds me of the enhanced modes that some IBIS have
where you're supposed to use it like a human tripod,
and it does that extremely well.
But when you want to have some kind of fluid motion,
it doesn't really let you fine tune that,
which is sort of another complaint
is that when you have a lens on it
that has image stabilization in the lens,
all the control just defaults to the switch on the lens.
And I think more refinement in the menu
that lets you go I'd rather have dual,
I'd rather have single,
I'd rather have just the body, just the lens,
I think that would make a big difference,
especially if you want to use it in different applications.
But you're kind of stuck with it all on or all off.
There's that electronic add-on thing,
which does actually make a difference,
but if we're talking about sort of organic movement,
I don't find that this is the best IBIS for that,
but it does work great for just human tripod
or for stills mode.
So do with that what you want.
And moving on to the number three best feature
about this camera for video
is the ability to download stock footage
from a terrific library.
Wait a minute, that's not about the camera.
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Okay, now for my real number three
best feature about this camera,
the improved dynamic range.
In the past, Canon's photo cameras
have had somewhat unimpressive dynamic range in video,
likely limited by their second tier log gammas they provide
versus what you'd see in their cine cameras,
which end up reducing their scores
to somewhere between 10.5 to 11 stops in Imatest.
Well, I busted out the Xyla 21 again,
and the R3, when shooting C-Log3,
scores much closer to 12 stops.
It doesn't seem to matter if you shoot raw or IPB,
whether you jump up to 60 frames per second, et cetera.
All instances were getting between 11.7 to 12 stops
of dynamic range with a signal noise ratio of two.
This still isn't the best in the hybrid mirrorless world,
but it's a full stop more than what we were getting before
in the R5 and 56,
and that makes a noticeable difference.
And I think the limiting factor here
is probably still the C-Log3.
I wish Canon would give a C-Log2 as an option.
I think that this camera can handle it,
and all the recording modes are 10-bit 4:2:2,
and I think there's more room to play in the sensor.
I'll show you some push pull tests maybe
while I'm talking over this
so you can see what I'm talking about,
but the fact that it didn't really matter
how I change things,
it seemed limited more by the log gamma
than it did by the sensor itself.
So I think C-Log2 would make a difference,
but I also wanna let you guys know
not to fall into that trap.
I've seen a lot of YouTube videos that say,
well, if you shoot raw on Canon,
you can go into say, the DaVinci Resolve raw panel
and switch it to C-Log2.
You cannot.
If you switch it to C-Log2,
you're getting C-Log, not C-Log3, just C-Log.
And you can tell this by just looking at a waveform
and switching between C-Log, C-Log2 and C-Log3.
See, the C-Log2 looks exactly the same as C-Log
and it should look flatter and more dynamic rangy.
It doesn't.
So the best you're gonna get on this camera
is C-Log3 for now until Canon unlocks it,
and if they do, I think we might see
even more dynamic range out of cameras like this.
So I wish that they would do that
instead of reserving it just for the cine line.
But now, for my number three complaint,
this camera has micro HDMI.
This is a huge body.
Ergonomics are great, it feels great in the hand,
there's nice textures,
tons of customizable buttons and dials.
There's a flip screen and all the ports you need,
but micro HTMI?
Come on.
My number four best feature, however,
is the ISO range integrity.
Cycling through the ISO range on this camera is a dream.
It maintains color quality and white balance
throughout the range,
the noise increases in logical steps
and there's no weird exposure jumps
that require additional correction in post.
I did notice the noise clean up
when switching from ISO 2,500 to 3,200,
so I think your two natives are gonna be
800 and 3200 when shooting log,
but ISO 12,800 also cleans up a tad
and makes it look similar to 6,400.
And this was even in raw,
so I don't think it's just increasing noise reduction
or something like that.
And speaking of that color, the color accuracy is great,
and the process is a breeze
just like it is on the cine line.
The support page for the R3
has the official Canon LUTs available for download,
and in there you can use the C-Log3 Cinema Gamut
to Rec 709 Wide LUT for a one-step process
to a great looking image with accurate, vibrant color.
But my number four complaint
is still about the custom white balance tool.
I was excited when I heard that the R3
and now I think the R5 with the firmware update
has a live-view, easy custom white balance tool
to finally catch up to all the other manufacturers
in this regard.
But then I found out it's only available in stills mode.
If anything, I'd argue this function is more important
for video than stills.
Canon, please port this over to video, we need it.
Right now in its current state,
the only way to set a custom white balance for video
is you have to take a photo
of a gray thing or a white thing,
and then load that photo up, and it's ridiculous.
Every other camera has a reticle
you just like move onto a thing and go,
"That's my target," and that sets the white balance.
And the auto white balance engine is great
in these Canon cameras,
there's just no way to target it specifically in video,
but I think we need that.
So I tested out the new live function in the photo,
works great, just make it available for video.
Okay, my last and number five best thing
about the R3 for video is just the general 4K experience.
It's such a relief and allows for focusing
on the parts of a shoot that matter
when your camera just works without a lot of fuss,
and the Canon R3 just works when it comes to 4K video.
It doesn't matter what frame rate you choose.
It's always a sharp over-sampled image with 10-bit color
and a full frame readout.
No crops, no sampling changes,
no color compromises in certain modes.
It's just the same great image all the time
with a 24p or 60p.
Now, as a note, there is a crop mode
if you want to engage that by choice,
but you're not forced to crop
and it doesn't crop automatically for you
when you change frame rates.
So it's seamless and you can just
get the shot you need in a hurry
and not have to worry about it.
And the interface for choosing that
is also probably the best in the business,
and I wish other manufacturers
would copy what Canon is doing here.
You don't need multiple menus,
just one intuitive touch screen.
Choose your resolution and your aspect ratio.
Kudos, by the way, for offering DCI.
Then choose your frame rate.
Again, kudos for true 24p
and then choose your compression
and kudos for including All-Intra.
It's that easy.
Tap three things and you're rolling with no worries
about how that affected your image negatively
and how to compensate for it.
My only complaint about that
and my number five complaint in general
would be that the 120p mode has a 30p base.
Unless I'm completely missing something,
it appears that when you enable 120p high frame rate mode,
it automatically defaults to a 30p base frame rate,
meaning it slows your footage down in camera to 25% speed
and results in a 29.97 frames per second clip.
I find it weird that I can't choose the sub rate here.
Why not give the option to choose 20% down to 24p
or 50% down to 60p?
There's also no audio in the 120p mode,
but I'm used to that, and that's not a big issue.
What is great though, is that the quality
doesn't drop that much in the 120p mode,
as it's still 4K and looks much better
than the 1080p, 120 that we've seen
on previous Canon cameras.
All right, that's it, that's my list.
Overall, I think this camera represents
a huge step forward for Canon
when it comes to hybrid video functionality.
We need to keep in mind, however,
that this is an expensive body,
and I think it's better served for action photographers
who also need reliable video functionality.
But I'm not sure that it's the best use of money
if you only plan to shoot video.
But I'm hoping this is a sign of things to come for Canon
and that more affordable bodies of the future
will be as video friendly as this R3 is.
All right, I'm done.