Canon EOS R1
24 MP Stabilized Full-Frame 12/40 FPS, 6K/60 & 4K/120
World's Best Sports & Action Camera
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
R1 R3 R5 II R5 R5C R6 III R6 II R6 R R8 RP R7 R10 R50 R50V R100
Bodies Compared RF Lenses EF Lenses Flash
Canon EOS R1 (39.3 oz./1,115g with battery and one CFexpress type B card, has two CFexpress type B slots, $6,799) and EF 50mm f/1.0L USM on an EF to RF adapter. bigger. I got mine at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
This 100% all-content, junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to my personally approved sources I've used myself for way over 100 combined years when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live — but I receive nothing for my efforts if you get it elsewhere. Canon does not seal its boxes in any way, so never buy at retail or any other source not on my personally approved list since you'll have no way of knowing if you're missing accessories, getting a defective, damaged, returned, dropped, incomplete, gray-market, store demo or used camera — and all of my personally approved sources allow for 100% cash-back returns for at least 30 days if you don't love your new R1. I've used many of these sources since the 1970s because I can try it in my own hands and return it if I don't love it, and because they ship from secure remote warehouses where no one gets to touch your new R1 before you do — and you know everyone wants to get their hands on this. Buy only from the approved sources I've used myself for decades for the best prices, service, return policies and selection.
December 2025 Better Pictures Canon Reviews Mirrorless RF Lenses EF Lenses Flash All Reviews
Sony vs. Nikon vs. Canon Full-Frame
Sample Images top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
These are just snapshots; my real work is in my Gallery.
These are all shot hand-held as Large Normal (
Dawn Patrol, Pacific Beach Pier, San Diego, California, 9:50 AM, Saturday, 04 October 2025. Slight crop from Canon EOS R1, RF 70-300mm at 300mm wide-open at f/5.6 at 1/2,000 at Auto ISO 200 (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo software to add light and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add deliberate vignetting. bigger or camera-original 6.5 MB © 24 MP JPG file.
Dawn Patrol, Pacific Beach Pier, San Diego, California, 10:08 AM, Saturday, 04 October 2025. Slight crop from Canon EOS R1, RF 70-300mm at 200mm at f/5.6 at 1/2,000 at Auto ISO 200 (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo software to add light and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add deliberate vignetting. bigger or camera-original 8.1 MB © 24 MP JPG file.
Red Jet Ski, Enchanted Cove, Fiesta Island, Mission Bay, San Diego, California, 12:40 PM, Saturday, 04 October 2025. Crop from Canon EOS R1, RF 70-300mm at 300mm at f/5.6 at 1/2,000 at Auto ISO 500 (LV 13.7), Radiant Photo software. bigger or camera-original uncropped 5.5 MB © 24 MP JPG file.
I'm impressed! These are shot with a bottom-dollar lens with a slow 1980s-era mechanical focus motor, and on my Canon EOS R1 gives amazing results shooting sports and action when the motion is relatively constant and linear.
The R1's AF system is impeccable. It automatically finds the subject, locks-on and never gives up. I got thousands of sharp, colorful images in just a few hours of shooting one morning as you see above. I was astonished, the R1 tracks magnificently and I can't recall any out-of focus images out of thousands!
Color! sample images top
Vivid Orange and Red Aspens at Crowley Lake in the Eastern Sierra, 4:29 P.M., Tuesday, 21 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 75-300mm at 200mm at f/8 at 1/250 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 14.0), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to fire it up. bigger.
Snow Atop the Sawtooth Range with Cattle in the Foreground as Seen from Bridgeport, California, 8:21 A.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, Hoya 67mm HRT Circular Polarizer held over the front of my RF 75-300mm at 140mm at f/8 at 1/125 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 13.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Snow Atop the Sawtooth Range with Colorful Aspens in the Foreground, Bridgeport, California, 10:05 A.M, Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, Hoya 67mm HRT Circular Polarizer held over the front of my RF 75-300mm at 255mm at f/8 at 1/250 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 14.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Approaching Storm Clouds over the Sawtooth Range, Bridgeport, California, 10:05 A.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025Canon EOS R1, RF 75-300mm at 75mm at f/8 at 1/1,000 at Auto ISO 100, +0.3 stops exposure compensation (LV 16.0), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Mono County Courthouse at Night, Bridgeport, California, 7:02 P.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 easily hand-held at 1/8 of a second at Auto ISO 200, +1.0 stop exposure compensation (LV 3.0), Radiant Photo software, perspective correction in Photoshop 2021. More tech details. bigger or full-resolution 24 MP 3 MB JPG (not perspective corrected).
Ken's Sporting Goods in the Rain at Night, Bridgeport, California, 7:02 P.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Cropped a little from Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 easily hand-held at 1/8 of a second at Auto ISO 400 (LV 2.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
The Bodie Hotel at Night, Bridgeport, California, 8:44 P.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 at 1/30 at Auto ISO 100. -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 6.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Sunrise over the White Mountains as Seen from Conway Summit, Lee Vining, California, 7:16 A.M., Thursday, 23 October 2025. Cropped somewhat from Canon EOS R1, RF 75-300mm at 300mm at f/8 at 1/500 at Auto ISO 100, -1.0 stop exposure compensation (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Red Maple, Whoa Nellie Deli, Lee Vining, California, California, 7:48 A.M., Thursday, 23 October 2025. Canon EOS R1 in square crop mode, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 27mm at f/8 at 1/250 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 14.0), as shot. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Tufa in Predawn Glow, Mono Lake, Lee Vining, California, 6:48 A.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 75-300mm at 75mm wide-open at f/4 hand-held at a quarter-of-a-second at Auto ISO 800 (LV 3.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Hand-held for a quarter-of-a-second at 75mm? Easy with my stabilized EOS R1! I left my Oben CT-2491 Carbon-Fibre Tripod and Oben GH3W-15 Geared Head in the car where they belong.
Aspens and Fall Color, June Lake Loop, California, 10:00 A.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 60mm at f/8 at 1/500 at Auto ISO 100, -1.0 stop exposure compensation (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or camera-original 24 MP © 15 MB JPG file.
I let my R1 make a 96 Megapixel interpolation of this image, which is a 45 megabyte JPG. It's so big I won't post it here, but you can see the relative sharpness compared to the source 24 MP file in my R1 review here.
Cathedral of Aspens, Lower Rush Creek Loop, June Lake, California, 10:12 A.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 24mm at f/11 at 1/125 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 14.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Got Wood, or Is It Brick? Bridgeport, California, 5:34 P.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 54mm at f/8 at 1/500 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 15.0), as shot. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
The Bridgeport Inn, Bridgeport, California, 5:42 P.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 24mm at f/8 at 1/500 at Auto ISO 100, -0.3 stops exposure compensation (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Glowing Clouds over the Sawtooth Range at Dawn, Looking South from Bridgeport, California, 7:09 A.M., Saturday, 25 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 50mm at f/5.6 at 1/30 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 10.0), Skylum Luminar Neo software to enhance it a bit. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Autofocuses Directly on Stars! sample images top
The Milky Way, Bridgeport, California, 9:26 P.M., Tuesday, 21 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 for 15 seconds at ISO 3,200 (LV minus 8.0!!!), curves adjustment layer masks in Photoshop 2021, casual use of my Oben CT-2491 Carbon-Fibre Tripod and Oben GH3W-15 Geared Head. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen, or camera-original 17 MB © 24 MP JPG.
I used Tungsten white balance to keep the night sky blue rather than icky orange.
As shot, both of these were murky (milky 😁) gray. Most of the color comes from my hijinx in editing.
Hand-Held In-Camera Focus Stacking! sample images top
Regular Photo (one frame)
Only the prancing horse logo on the steering wheel is in focus. The dashboard, floor mats, seats and center console are completely out of focus:
1997 Ferrari 355 F1 Spider, California, 9:46 AM, Saturday, 11 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, EF 28-135mm IS on EF to RF Ring Adapter at 35mm hand-held wide-open at f/3.5 at 1/30 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 8.6), Skylum Luminar Neo software to perk it up. bigger or full-resolution file.
Depth-Composited Image (automatically created from many images in-camera from a hand-held automated sequence!)
To do this all in one press of the shutter button, set MENU > Camera Page 5 > Focus Bracketing > Enable. I leave Number of Shots at its default of 100 and Focus Increment at its default of 4. I Enable Depth Composite so that multiple bracketed images are individually aligned because they were hand-held and then assembled into one completely in-focus image. Set this, and then one press of the shutter shoots a sequence, saves the source images, and in about a second, aligns and composites everything into one image as shown below.
Since I'm hand-holding, I Enable Crop depth comp. so that there are no black borders from natural hand motion not covering the same parts of the subject in every frame. Set all this, and voilà, we get a marvelously detailed, automatically stacked image in about one-second:
In-Camera Composited Image (same data as above). bigger or full-resolution file.
Our eyes work the same way. While we look all over anything like the the cockpit of a Ferrari, our eyes continuously adjust focus as we look around. Our brains composite all these glances into the one broad perception we have of the complete cockpit.
Introduction top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
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The EOS R1 is the world's best action and sports camera due to its superior autofocus, which magically finds subjects, focuses and tracks them accurately with a minimum of fuss and gives me almost 100% in-focus real-world results.
It has a HUGE, brilliant finder, which makes it a pleasure to shoot all day. It's bigger than anything else from Canon or anything from Nikon, Fuji, HASSELBLAD or LEICA. Bravo! The R1's finder can get so bright that it was actually blinding — just like an optical finder — as I shot the disk of the sun rising over distant mountains!
While other brands may run at 40 FPS, they often require more fiddling to find the subject, and even if their AF boxes seem to be happily tracking the subject, my sequences from Nikons often have plenty of out-of-focus frames — while they're all in perfect focus with my R1. I made about 4,000 shots the other day at 19 FPS (H) with my R1 (I don't need 40 FPS H+), and even with my bargain-basement RF 75-300mm lens ($239!) and its slow autofocus, I can't recall any shots that were out of focus! I was astonished.
It runs at 19 FPS or more all day for long surfing rides, and easily throws it all onto you cards to sort out later. It's lighter than the 1DX III and so much more composed at speed because there's no mirror flapping all over.
The R1's AF system is impeccable. It automatically finds the subject, locks-on and never gives up. I got thousands of sharp, colorful images in just a few hours of shooting one morning as you see above. I was astonished, the R1 tracks magnificently and I can't recall any out-of focus images out of thousands!
The R1's electronic shutter is superb, with no rolling shutter effects, and it works great with flash.
The good is the enemy of the great. The R1 is superb, but honestly I don't see much difference in the other superb Canon mirrorless cameras, which also run at similar or the exact same frame rates with equally superb autofocus, like the old R6 II. The main difference is that the less expensive cameras have rolling shutters which can distort moving objects. (The R3 has a non-rolling shutter just like the R1). They all have superb autofocus and take the same pictures.
Even my R50 does a great job of finding and tracking focus. What you get with the R1 is even better and more consistent results if you're a full-time pro for whom missing a few shots out of a thousand could lose you the cover shot.
Set the R1 to Servo (continuous) AF and it just goes. I use All-Area AF, and it magically finds the correct AF areas all by itself. I don't have to select AF areas manually which is a huge help. If I do want to select AF areas manually, the R1 has two magic finger-reading touch controls to move the sensor around exactly as I glide my finger back and forth. I don't have to move anything; the sensor feels the motion of my finger similar to an optical mouse.
No buffering, no choking and I don't even have to select focus points. Simply set to All-Area AF and SERVO AF my R1 magically finds the correct part of the subject, grabs focus and never lets go. It's a huge step up from anything from Nikon; even my Z8 and Z9 from Nikon can't find the subject automatically and get every shot in focus as they move around anywhere near as well as pretty much any of my Canons do.
I pity the Nikon shooters who have to suffer through an "acceptable" percentage of out-of-focus action shots. You really need to go shoot all these cameras as I do to see the real differences. Marketing claims have nothing to do with real-world performance. Even my R10 just puts those little blue boxes over surfer heads 400 feet away like it's easy, and then just keeps them in focus. As I say in my R10 review, it has better action autofocus than my Z9! Bravo! (Aren't you glad I'm not on the take from any of the camera companies so I can just say it like it is? I sure am!)
The FOCUS STACKING mode lets me get limitless depth-of-field hand held, and even with my ancient EF 28-135mm IS (1998-2016) on my EF to RF adapter. I can snap away handheld and get perfectly composited and focus stacked results, completely created in-camera. Without this in-camera feature I could never get everything in focus for automotive interior shots unless I resorted to time wasted in a computer later; my R1 saves salable complete, composited images right onto my card — and it does it fast! Some brands still can't create focus-stacked composites in camera, and I have no time for computer piddling when I need saleable images right away.
The Canon EOS R1, largely identical R3 and R5 Mk II have mind-controlled autofocus that reads our thoughts and clairvoyantly controls the AF system all by itself. Here's a graphic showing how it reads our thoughts:
EOS R1 and R3 Mind-Reading AF System. bigger.
It's a mind-reading autofocus system just like 1998's EOS-3. While Canon calls it "eye control," their marketing people shortchanged themselves and didn't realize that you don't have to think about it; your eyes always just go wherever you're concentrating, and thus AF areas are magically selected all by themselves as you think: mind-controlled AF. It works well for some, and not for others. You'll have to try it yourself and see. Be sure to calibrate it many times in different conditions, all to the same calibration number, for optimum results.
The regular face- and eye-recognition auto-area AF modes are best for most shooting. I find the eye-controlled autofocus mode most useful for landscape and interior photography where I want to focus in the middle of a deep subject or landscape that the camera wouldn't find on its own. Most auto-area AF and eye recognition modes choose the closest thing on which to focus, so eye control makes it trivially easy to focus in the middle of a subject's depth for the maximum depth-of-field.
Also what make this R1 and the R3 stand above all other cameras are their life-changing fingerprint-reading sensors in both AF-ON buttons. Each allows us to move AF sensors and scroll around magnified images by gliding a finger over the sensor, working like an optical mouse in reverse. The camera responds instantly, linearly and directly as if the magnified image was right in our hands.
Not that we need to move AF areas manually since we have mind-controlled AF, but the difference in everything else between direct, smooth linear control and having to click a controller a zillion times to move things around is like finally having a computer mouse rather than only up/down/left/right keys back in the 1970s. It's about time!
If you're a full-time pro, of course the new features and improvements are worth the update from the R3, but if not, it depends on how much you'll enjoy what's new and how much money you have. See also Is It Worth It.
Here's what's new in the R1 compared to the R3; otherwise the basics are very similar. B&H is has the older R3 for $4,399; you may want to ask if what's new is worth $2,400 to you. If you shoot full-time, of course it is (you're going to love the finder), but if not, also realize that when you go to sell either of these in a few years that the R1 will still be worth much more.
Once you get your R1 and start shooting, its ergonomic élan means you'll never settle for Nikon or, God forbid, Sony or Fuji, again.
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
New since the EOS R3 intro top
40 FPS, up from 30 FPS, but still at 24MP. It's now got the same resolution and speed as the R6 Mk II, albeit with much less rolling shutter distortion.
Precapture of a half-second before you press the shutter to help catch motion you almost missed.
9.44 M-Dot super-bright EVF with 0.9× (big!) magnification. Honestly if I'm shooting all day for a living, this alone could make it worth the upgrade from the R3. Critical is that the magnification is 18% bigger in each dimension, or that the image subtends 40% more area than the finder in the R3 or most other cameras.
4-channel 24-bit PCM audio recorder with up to 5 seconds prerecording (only with video). I have no idea how you connect to all four channels.
Rear LCD drops to 2.1 MegaDots from 4.15 M-Dots in the R3. I guess Canon had to get the extra finder dots from somewhere.
Adds a WB button to the top.
Adds a second (vertical) INFO button and an M-Fn3 button to the back. The RATE button moves to below the rear LCD.
Two CFexpress type B slots, no longer just one CFexpress type B with a second SD UHS-II slot.
Buffer claims at least 1,000 shots, up from hundreds.
Cross-type AF across the entire image, first ever from Canon. Previously we all had to make due with detecting vertical lines, only.
"Action Priority" AF mode identifies and locks-on to action.
Ability to preregister up to ten people as "priority" AF subjects. Who has the time to do this? The original R1 autofocuses clairvoyantly without having to stop and put people's headshots into memory.
Flash shoe adds the newest 21-pin "multifunction" contacts for use with the EL-5 and EL-10 flashes. The R1 also has usual 5-pin contacts.
Same basic ISO 100 ~ ISO 102,400 range, but now can be pushed a stop further into grainyland to ISO 409,600 (H2).
The same LP-E19 battery is now rated for 510 shots in normal 120 FPS finder mode (700 in power-saving finder mode), up from 440 or 620 shots in the R3.
No longer works with the older LP-E4N battery, with which the R3 did.
3.5 oz. (99g) heavier.
Now rated to work at up to 45º C (113º F), up from 40º C (104º F).
Flash sync with the fully electronic shutter increases to 1/320 from 1/180.
2× linear offline interpolation to 96 MP. It actually works pretty well if you have a few seconds to wait for it to process. It really does make the image sharper and is even smart enough to remove oversharpening halos ad works from JPGs as well. This is very smart interpolation, not pixel-shift scanning as in my OM SYSTEM OM-1 Mark II.
Deckplate rather then hexadot patterns on grips.
Can capture stills (in video resolution) as you're rolling video.
Full-Size HDMI-A connector (R3 has Micro-D), Neither is CEC compatible.
Adds 6 GHz WiFi.
Bluetooth 5.3, up from 5.0. So?
"D!GiC Accelerator," which is more processing power. Canon says much of it is used to make autofocus tracking even better at staying locked-on to your subject, and from what I've seen, AF is awesome and everything the camera has to process works lickety-split. Bravo!
D!GiC Accelerator. faster.
Good intro top
Huge finder, bigger than anything else from Canon or anything from Nikon, Fuji, HASSELBLAD or LEICA, and a joy to shoot all day.
Loads of computing power to make things like multi-frame focus stacking compositing and 96 megapixel interpolations just go.
40 FPS with auto exposure, auto ISO, full lens corrections and tracking autofocus!!!
Just blazes away silently at 40 FPS with no lags or hiccups or waiting for buffers to clear, much better than Sony's pathetic progress bars in Sony's finders. There's no waiting for playback either; I can see all I've shot right after I've shot it without having to wait for it to copy to the card as I do on Sony's cameras. In this case, Canon does a proper job of buffering everything so nothing gets in the way.
I can't see any rolling shutter effect, fantastic! R3 was just as good.
Flash works with the electronic shutter at 1/320 flash sync , and at 1/250 with electronic first curtain and 1/200 with regular mechanical shutter.
Easy to use while wearing gloves .
Has its own GPS receiver, no app required.
Superbly brilliant autofocus.
Autofocus so sensitive that I have no problem focusing directly on the stars in the night sky.
Light metering so sensitive that it, and Auto ISO, worked fine for shooting the Milky Way even at LV minus 8! (I set exposure manually for the shot above).
Some buttons lit at night:
Canon EOS R1 Button Illumination. Nothing on the top lights other than the bluish LCD backlight, and none of the other buttons light. The dim red dots are the invisible infra-red emitters in the eyecup and the two thumb motion sensors. murkier.
Thumbprint-reading sensors in both AF-ON buttons allow us to move AF sensors and scroll around magnified images simply by sliding our finger in any directly; it's like having your hand on what you're controlling, decades more advanced then clicking a multicontroller (which works, too).
Canon claims the same dust- and weather-resistance as the rest of the EOS-1 line, for which a friend of mine brags that he can run around getting soaked in torrential southeast Asian downpours and just keep on shooting, and another friend was relieved that her beloved 1DX Mk II and EF 100-400mm L IS USM II have always worked great ever since she dropped them underwater in the surf!
Color histograms while shooting (other brands only show a useless B&W histogram while shooting and reserve color histograms for playback when it's too late).
Big battery with great life.
Charges or operates via USB-C PD power (you need a battery installed in both cases).
Same battery and charger as R3, 1DX Mk III and 1DX Mk II.
C1, C2 and C3 custom camera setting memories.
When using a second card as a backup as I do, deleting files only deletes them from the primary card, not the backup, so the system is stupid-proof.
Bulb timer for timed exposures of any length.
The remaining shots indicator is smart enough to predict based on ISO; higher ISOs are noisier so JPG files are larger and thus you get fewer shots per card.
Saves and loads settings to and from a card.
"Erase Scene Including Image" deletion option gives the ability to delete whole bursts at a time.
"AWB - WHITE" Auto White Balance option lets the camera render scenes more neutrally, for instance, under tungsten light.
1/64,000 top electronic shutter speed!
No-blackout finder.
AF rated down to LV -7.5, which is three times darker than full moonlight.
"Multi Shoe" with direct connections for audio and more, as well as conventional hot-shoe contacts.
Video clips finally can run for takes as long as six hours, not just a foolish 30 minutes. In high speed video modes it can run an hour and a half per take, rather than the 7.5 minute limit of the R5.
Even the mechanical shutter is pretty quiet.
Sensor protected by shutter blades with power off. You can set this to remain open if you prefer.
Wi-Fi.
Built-in GPS, no app, phone or external module needed.
Bluetooth.
100% U.S.A.-based high-quality technical support at (800) OK-CANON.
Bad intro top
It has NO mode dial, making it take many more steps and clicks to change modes compared to a dedicated MODE dial. There is a mode button in the middle of the top rear control dial, which when hit lets us scroll around a menu of modes, but it has a slight delay in response and requires we stare at a display while we twiddle it; we can't just flick a dedicated dial a click or two by instinct to change mode while our attention remains on our subject. I much prefer the controls of the less expensive models which have an extra dedicated mode dial.
Power management isn't very smart. Regardless of how I set the power conservation (shut-off) timers, the finder/LCD switching system sees my body close to the finder anytime my R1 is around my neck, thinks my eye is on the finder and stays awake. This runs down the battery quickly. Sadly I need to remember to turn my R1 on and off manually before and after each shot if I expect to be able to get a day's shooting walking around.
Like most cameras, the Live View image displayed in the high-resolution finder is actually a lower-resolution video feed, not an image that takes advantage of the extreme resolution of the screen itself as playback images do. Therefore you can't necessarily focus manually just looking for sharpness as you could in an optical finder.
Unlike every iPhone, it will not rotate the playback images as you rotate the camera while viewing them. If you rotate the camera during playback, the images will not flip as they do on an iPhone. It flags vertical images so verticals are vertical, but it's not smart enough to flip them as you rotate the camera on playback. Arrgh.
Still uses the old menu conventions that require us to select an item, rotate the selection back and forth between ENABLE or DISABLE, and hit OK to toggle a setting back and forth. Modern menu systems just let us toggle these in one tap instead of several.
Great autofocus and ultra high frame rates, but except for the lack of a rolling shutter, not noticeably better than 2022's superb R6 II and other less expensive models.
Almost exactly the same as the R3, which sells for $2,400 less as of November 2025. If you earn your living with this than any advantage over the other guys is worth it, but for hobbyists makes little financial sense.
Big.
Heavy.
Missing intro top
Automatic sensor-rotation leveling for video (in Video mode: MENU > CAMERA page 7 > Auto Level > Enable), but oddly none for stills as the R7 does.
No AUTO setting for the subject recognition. If you set the subject recognition to Animals, Vehicles or People it will find heads, faces or eyes; while if you leave that selection at NONE it will just draw a box around the entire object without looking for the most relevant details. I assign this setting to a button for easy selection.
The top 1/64,000 electronic shutter speed is only available in Manual or Tv exposure modes. 1/8,000 is the maximum in Fv, P or Av exposure modes.
It has all three modern shutter types (mechanical, electronic and first-curtain electronic), but it's not smart enough to have an AUTO mode that selects them based on other settings (like defaulting to mechanical and going to electronic at the fastest frame rates or highest shutter speeds).
The thumb motion sensors are great for rolling around a zoomed image, but gone is the ability to use the LCD as a huge touch pad to select AF areas while looking through the finder as we used to be able to do in other cameras.
Maybe I've been missing something since the Fv Mode came out in 2018, but it still doesn't work completely with Auto ISO. It won't go below about 1/60 regardless of if we've chosen a slower minimum shutter speed.
Built-in mic is only mono, not stereo, but be serious, people shooting movies with this aren't using the built-in mic. The built-in mic is for voice notes.
No built-in flash.
No automatic brightness control for rear LCD.
No directly-set manual exposures longer than 30 seconds. Instead there is a complex Bulb timer for timed exposures of any length.
Not threaded to use a standard threaded cable release.
Specifications top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
See also Canon's detailed specifications.
Lens Compatibility specifications top
Canon EF and EF-s lenses with an EF to RF adapter.
Image Sensor specifications top
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24 MP (6,000 × 4,000 pixels).
24 × 36 mm BSI stacked CMOS.
6 µm pixel pitch.
3:2 aspect ratio.
1.0 × crop factor.
Ultrasonic cleaner.
Stabilization specifications top
Moving Sensor.
ISO specifications top
Sets in full or third stops, including all pushes and pulls:
Stills
ISO 100 ~ 102,400; also pulls to ISO 50 (L) and pushes ISO 409,600 (H2).
The usual programmable Auto ISO options.
Video
Regular Video Modes: ISO 100 ~ 32,000, also pushes to ISO 204,800.
HDR: ISO 800 ~ 12,800.
Canon 709/PQ/HLG: ISO 400 ~ 32,000, also pulls down as far as ISO 100 or pushes as far as ISO 204,800.
Canon Log 2/Canon Log 3: ISO 800 ~ 32,000, also pulls down as far as ISO 100 or pushes as far as ISO 51,200.
BT.709: ISO 160 ~ 32,000, also pulls down as far as ISO 100 or pushes as far as ISO 204,800.
With Highlight Tone Priority ON the lowest ISO is 200 and there are no pushes or pulls.
Pushes and pulls aren't available in HDR PQ or raw.
With High Frame Rate set, pushed ISOs are limited to ISO 102,400.
Image Sizes specifications top
6,000 × 4,000 pixels native (Large, 24 MP).
3,984 × 2,656 pixels (Medium, 10.6 MP).
2,976 × 1,984 pixels (Small 1, 5.9 MP).
2,400 × 1,600 pixels (Small 2, 3.8 MP).
Cropped Aspect Ratios
Crops these shapes from the above full-frame sizes:
4:3.
1:1 Square.
16:9.
1.6× APS-C.
Still Formats specifications top
JPG (8-bit gamma-corrected), HEIF (10-bit gamma-corrected) and/or CR3 raw or c-raw (14-bit linear).
Files saved as .JPG, .HIF or .CR3.
sRGB and Adobe RGB.
Video Formats specifications top
Up to 6K DCI / 59.94p RAW or 4K DCI / 119.88p.
More details, specifics and particulars at Canon's detailed specifications.
Storage Formats
RAW stored in .CRM files.
XF-HEVC S YCC 4:2:2 10-bit, stored in .MP4 files.
XF-HEVC S YCC 4:2:0 10-bit, stored in .MP4 files.
XF-AVC S YCC 4:2:2 10-bit, stored in .MP4 files.
XF-AVC S YCC 4:2:0 8-bit, stored in .MP4 files.
News ML-G2 Metadata, stored in .XML files. (with MP4 videos with "CP File Addition" set to ON, you get an extra CPF file).
File Extensions
.CRM, .MP4 or XML.
.MP4 (HEVC & H.264).
.CPF if you set CP File Addition to ON for news metadata.
Resolutions & Rates
6K DCI (6,000 × 3,164) at 23.976, 24.00, 24.975, 25, 29.97, 50 or 59.94 FPS.
4K DCI (4,069 × 2,160) at 23.976, 25, 29.97, 50, 59.94, 100 or 119.88 FPS.
4K (3,840 × 2,160) at 23.976, 25, 29.97, 50, 59.94, 100 or 119.88 FPS.
2K DCI (2,048 × 1,080) at 23.976, 25, 29.97, 50, 59.94, 100, 119.88, 200 or 239.76 FPS.
HD (1,920 × 1,080) at 23.976, 25, 29.97, 50, 59.94, 100, 119.88, 200 or 239.76 FPS.
Longest Take Lengths
These are the longest possible, but only if you have enough power and don't overheat:
6 hours at up to 60 FPS.
2 hours at 100 FPS or more.
1.5 hours in "High Frame Rate" at 100 or 119.88 FPS.
45 minutes in "High Frame Rate" at 200 or 239.76 FPS.
Audio specifications top
Mono internal mic.
Recorded along with video, also recorded as voice notes.
S - t - e - r - e - O 3.5mm Mic-in jack with plug-in power overrides built-in mic.
S - t - e - r - e - O 3.5mm Headphone jack.
Autofocus specifications top
Mind Controlled Autofocus
The R1 sees into your mind. It looks at your eyeball, sees where you're looking, and moves the AF point there.
Since our eyes move automatically without conscious thought, this is how the R1 reads our minds and just focuses wherever we're paying attention.
This feature was in 1998's EOS 3, and it was mind-blowing in how it knows where to focus all by itself, regardless of the subject or lighting.
This is one of the best features ever in a digital camera. Until you've tried it, you won't believe how insanely great it is to have the camera figure out where to focus all by itself (hands-free), regardless of how complex or hidden is your subject.
Subject Prioritization
You can set the R1 to prioritize focussing on People, on Animals (dogs, cats, birds, etc.), or on Vehicles (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, etc.) or let it look for things on its own.
Stills
1,053 zones (39 × 27).
Rated to work from LV -7.5 ~ +21 with an f/1.2 (non-DS) lens. That means LV -5 ~ +20 with an f/2.8 lens.
Video
975 zones (39 × 25, 16 × 9 crops the top and bottom of the sensor).
Rated to work from LV -5.5 ~ +21 with an f/1.2 (non-DS) lens. That means LV -2 ~ +20 with an f/2.8 lens, all at 29.97 FPS.
Light Meter specifications top
6,144 (96 × 64) zone evaluative, 5.9% partial, 3.0% spot or center-weighted averaging.
LV -3 ~ +20.
Finder specifications top
9.44 MegaDots.
1/2" (12mm) OLED.
Up to 120 FPS refresh rate.
0.9× magnification with 50mm lens.
41.4º apparent angle.
-4 ~ +2 diopters.
25 mm eyepoint.
Shutters specifications top
It has all three modern modes, but oddly no ability to auto-select among them based on settings and conditions.
Electronic First-Curtain Shutter
30 ~ 1/8,000 second, bulb.
1/250 flash sync speed.
Silent Electronic Shutter
30 ~ 1/64,000 and bulb, Tv and M modes.
30 ~ 1/8,000 and Bulb in P, Fv and Av modes.
1/320 flash sync speed.
High-speed near-instantaneous readout banishes the rolling shutter effect and allows the use of flash.
Mechanical Shutter
30 ~ 1/8,000 second.
1/200 flash sync speed.
Remote Release via Bluetooth
Remote control via Bluetooth and free app.
BR-E1 Wireless Bluetooth Remote Control.
Remote Release via N3 Terminal
N3 remote terminal on the front for N3 releases, among them:
TC-80N3 Wired Timer Remote Controller.
Maximum Still Frame Rates specifications top
There's Low, High and High+, but no Medium. Go figure:
Electronic Shutter |
Electronic First Curtain |
Mechanical Shutter |
|
High + |
40 FPS |
12 FPS |
12 FPS |
High |
25 FPS |
7.5 FPS |
5.8 FPS |
Low |
5 FPS |
3 FPS |
3 FPS |
Works with flash? |
Yes, 1/320 sync |
Yes, 1/250 sync |
Yes, 1/200 sync |
Of course slow shutter speeds and asking the AF system to track focus on fast-moving things can slow these down.
Buffer (Burst) Sizes specifications top
With a CFexpress Type B, 325 GB card:
JPG L |
at least 1,000 shots |
JPG M |
at least 1,000 shots |
JPG S1 |
at least 1,000 shots |
JPG S2 |
at least 1,000 shots |
HEIF L |
at least 1,000 shots |
HEIF M |
at least 1,000 shots |
HEIF S1 |
at least 1,000 shots |
HEIF S2 |
at least 1,000 shots |
at least 1,000 shots |
|
at least 1,000 shots |
|
JPG L + raw |
at least 1,000 shots |
JPG L + c-raw |
at least 1,000 shots |
HEIF L + raw |
260 shots |
HEIF L + c-raw |
560 shots |
Flash specifications top
Has both traditional five-pin contacts, as well as the new multi-pin digital connector to work with traditional EX- and the newest EL- Canon Flashes:
E-TTL II exposure system.
Settable for Ambient, Standard or Flash priorities.
Flash Sync Speeds
1/250 with first-curtain electronic shutter.
1/200 with mechanical shutter.
1/320 with electronic shutter.
Built-in Flash
None.
External Flash
Dedicated hot shoe with both traditional 5-pin and the newest 21-pin "multi function" connections.
Standard PC (Prontor-Compur) flash sync terminal.
Rear LCD Monitor specifications top
3.2" diagonal.
Are they kidding? A 3.2" flippy screen? I'd much rather have a fixed 4" (100mm) screen flush with the back. You lose a lot of screen size allowing for the swiveling frame.
2.1 MegaDots.
3:2 aspect ratio.
Touch screen.
Anti-smudge coating.
No anti-reflection coating.
No auto brightness control.
Top LCD performance top
There is a small black & white LCD on the top. As a B&W LCD it's very visible indoors and in direct sunlight — if you have good eyes.
It has a feeble bluish-white illuminator at night if you press the 
hanging bulb icon button for a moment. Tap that button to swap between two different views.
With the power off you can see the exposure mode but not the battery state, so who cares?
Connectors specifications top
On the Front (Lower Right of Lens Mount)
N3 Remote Terminal is behind the rubber cover for use with N3 remote releases:
On Side, From Top Left to Bottom Right:
3.5mm S - t - e - r - e - O mic input.
3.5mm S - t - e - r - e - O headphone output.
Standard PC (Prontor-Compur) flash sync terminal.
UCB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 10 Gbps (charges and operates via USB-C PD power).
Full-size HDMI-A connector (R3 has Micro-D), Neither is CEC compatible.
RJ-45 2.5G Ethernet:
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Wi-Fi specifications top
IEEE 802.11b/g/n/a/ac/ax.
2.412 - 2.462 GHz, Channels 1 - 11.
5.180 - 5.825 GHz, Channels 36 - 165.
5.955 - 7.095 GHz, Channels: 1 - 229.
OFDM modulation (OFDMA, IEEE 802.11ax/ax 2×2 MIMO)
OFDM modulation (CSMA/CA, IEEE 802.11ax/ax 2×2 MIMO/ac/ac 2×2 MIMO/n/n 2×2 MIMO/a/g/b)
DSSS modulation (IEEE 802.11b)
NFC specifications top
None.
Bluetooth specifications top
5.3.
GPS specifications top
Yes, GLONASS and QZSS, too.
Storage specifications top
Two CFexpress type B clots.
Cfexpress2.0 and VPG400.
Up to 2TB. Cards bigger than 2TB should work, but only appear as 2TB total.
XQD cards fit mechanically, but ARE NOT COMPATIBLE. You'll get messages warning about a bad card and asking you to format it, but it won't work. I tried so you don't have to.
Power & Battery specifications top
Charges or operates via USB-C PD power. (Can't charge while operating.)
Also works with its included:
LP-E19 battery specifications top
Rated 510 shots in normal 120 FPS finder shooting mode (700 in power-saving finder mode) at 73º F (23ºC).
I can't imagine anyone shooting many stills using the rear LCD, but of you do you save some power and it's rated 1,130 shots in normal mode or 1,330 in power-saving mode, at 73º F (23ºC).
~ or ~
5 hours of 1,920 × 1,080 video, or
2 hours and 20 minutes of 4K.
Canon LP-E19 battery. bigger.
Bottom, Canon LP-E19 battery. bigger.
The R1 no longer works with the older LP-E4N or discontinued LP-E4. The R3 did work with the older LP-E4N but not the discontinued LP-E4.
Clock Battery
Small internal rechargeable that charges in 8 hours from the main battery, and then can run the clock for a month with no other battery in the camera.
LC-E19 charger specifications top
Canon LC-E19 charger for two LP-E19 batteries. bigger.
Bottom, Canon LC-E19 charger. bigger.
LC-E19 dual battery charger included.
The LC-E19 also charges older LP-E4N batteries but it doesn't meet the new IEC 62368-1 safety standards with them.
Size specifications top
5.89 × 6.20 × 3.44 inches HWD.
149.5 × 157.6 × 87.3 millimeters HWD.
Weight specifications top
Rated 39.3 oz. (1,115 g) with battery and CFexpress type B card, or 32.4 oz. (920 g) stripped.
Operating Environment specifications top
0º ～ 45º C (32º ～ 113º F).
0 to 85% RH.
Quality specifications top
Made in Japan.
Canon's Model Numbers specifications top
6577C002 (6577C001 in Japan).
JAN code: 4549292-230116.
Included specifications top
EOS R1 Camera Body.
RF-5 body cap.
LP-E19 battery pack with Battery Pack Cover.
LC-E19 dual battery charger and power cord.
IFC-100U $35 USB-C cable.
Announced specifications top
Formally announced Wednesday, 17 July 2024 at 6 AM NYC time.
Development of an "R1" was announced earlier on 16 May 2024. There were no specifications, complete photos, features, price or availability mentioned, just a "watch this space" for something called an "R1" in the future.
Promised for specifications top
November, 2024.
Price, U. S. A. specifications top
18 November 2025 ($500 more than at introduction)
$6,799 at B&H, at Crutchfield, at Adorama and at Amazon.
About $5,025 used if you know How to Win at eBay.
15 October 2025 ($500 more than at introduction)
$6,799 at B&H, at Crutchfield, at Adorama and at Amazon.
About $5,275 used if you know How to Win at eBay.
16 August 2024
$6,299 at B&H, at Crutchfield and at Adorama.
17 July 2024 (introduction)
$6,299 at B&H or at Adorama.
Optional Accessories top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
NEW: Canon ER-I Eyecup, also at Adorama.
NEW: Canon ER-IE Eyeshade, also at Adorama.
NEW: Canon ER-SC3 Shoe Cover, also at Adorama.
NEW: Canon ERC-R5L Rain Cover, large, also at Adorama.
NEW: Canon ERC-R5S Rain Cover, small, also at Adorama.
Canon RF Lenses
Canon EF and EF-s Lenses (use with EF to RF adapter)
Canon Flash
LC-E19 dual battery charger included, also sold at Crutchfield. The LC-E19 charges the LP-E19, LP-E4 and older LP-E4N batteries. It doesn't meet the new IEC 62368-1 safety standards with the LP-E4N.
Free app for Bluetooth Remote Control.
RS-80N3 Wired Remote Switch.
TC-80N3 Wired Timer Remote Controller.
BR-E1 Wireless Bluetooth Remote Control.
OC-E3 Flash Shoe Extension Cord.
Canon DM-E1D Stereo Mic: $299.
Canon DM-E1D Stereo Mic — Fur Included!
Self-powered and self-connecting when slipped your camera's "Multi-Function" hot shoe.
Canon ST-E10 Speedlite Transmitter: $119.
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Self-powered and self-connecting when slipped your camera's "Multi-Function" hot shoe.
This is a wireless radio transmitter used to trigger Canon flash with radio triggers.
Canon AD-P1 Android Data Transmitter Adapter: $69.
This phone-holding gizmo slips in the R1's Multi Function shoe and allows you to transmit whatever you just shot on your R1 directly to wherever it needs to go.
Self-powered and self-connecting when slipped your camera's "Multi-Function" 21-pin hot shoe.
Canon AD-E1 Weather-Sealing Adapter: $40.
This is simply to ensure weather sealing with the new dedicated shoe and some older flashes. Every EX- and EL- flash works on the R1, but you won't have full weather sealing unless you use this adapter with the EL-1 flash, 580 EX, 580 EX II, 600 EX, 600EX RT, 600EX II-RT, ST-ET-R3, or ST-E3-RT V3.
Canon DM-E1 Corded Programmable Microphone
Mono shotgun, 90º or 120º stereo settings.
Windscreen included.
Canon DM-E100 Corded Stereo Microphone
Only one stereo pattern.
Windscreen included.
Performance top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
Overall Autofocus Focus Stacking Auto ISO
Buffer Clearing Color Rendition Crop Modes
Ergonomics Exposure Finder GPS HDR High ISOs
96 MP High Resolution Interpolation Long Exposures
Mechanics Rolling Shutter Stabilization
Weather Sealing Top LCD Rear LCD Playback
Voice Notes Data Power & Battery Clock Accuracy
As of firmware 1.0.1:
Overall performance top
The R1 is smaller than old pro DSLR cameras like the 1DX III, and runs far faster and better for sports and action.
The R1 is magnificent it how, even without using the Eye Control feature, it finds and stays locked on to our subjects, letting me get thousands of perfectly in-focus shots without even trying.
Everything else blasts super fast, for instance, focus stacking just goes, and even the nutty 96 MP interpolation/upsampling mode works reasonably quickly.
For actual shooting, this beast just gets out of the way and handles like a dream. If you shoot every day for a living, you deserve the R1.
Autofocus performance top
Autofocus is fast and sure. In SERVO (continuous) AF mode the little blue AF boxes just find the subject and fly around tracking it. Most importantly, my photos are perfectly in focus; it's more than just an in-finder light show as in some other brands.
If you set the subject recognition to Animals, Vehicles or People it will find heads, faces or eyes; while if you leave that selection at NONE it will just draw a box around the entire object without looking for the most relevant details.
Sadly there is no AUTO setting for the subject to recognize. I assign this setting to a button for easy selection.
Regardless of how you set it, it is brilliant. Even if I have an empty sea in front of me with one far-away surfer looking in the other direction, it will find and lock on to the back of his head all by itself.
Focus Bracketing, Stacking & Compositing performance top
It works great, even hand-held, even with old EF lenses and it processes all the donor images in-camera into final results in a jiffy.
I can wander around, snap away hand-held, and get super results easy-peasy as I showed at the top.
Auto ISO performance top
Auto ISO is the usual, which is super-flexible
It offers ± 3 stops of shift from the auto-selected minimum shutter speeds.
The only odd part is that if I assign my rear dial to select ISO, that often it won't let me click all the way past 100 or 50 to get back to AUTO, which I then have to do in menus, and once I've invoked the ISO menu, perplexedly the AUTO option reappears when selecting via the rear dial. Weird, so weird that I gave up and reset my rear dial to select White Balance instead.
Buffer Clearing performance top
Thank goodness even at 19 FPS in JPG the buffers just empty themselves into my cards and I never even noticed they were working.
The R1 makes long sequences of action shots easy.
Color & Tonal Rendition performance top
It's the usual from Canon, which I LOVE. No news here is good news.
Color rendition is how pictures look in the real world. Real-world color rendition has nothing to do with color accuracy measured in a lab. Color rendition is dependant on how a maker programs all the color matrices, curves, and look-up tables to generate color from the data read from the sensor, and varies widely between makers once you set a camera away from its defaults. I never shoot at defaults.
If you shoot raw then your colors and tones aren't created until you process the raw data later in software, and your choice of software will have as much effect on your images as the camera itself.
It's like pianos: anyone can talk forever about how pianos are made, but to most ordinary players the subtle variations between different samples of a Steinway Model D are eclipsed by their own limitations in playing, but when you're a virtuoso even subtle differences become obvious to the seasoned master. That's why when you buy, or choose a Steinway for your tour as a Steinway Artist, you go to Steinway's Astoria factory and pick from among several samples of the same model which suits your style best. To a master, the subtle details are everything, just like subtle differences in color rendition between different brands of camera. Art is not the duplication of reality; art is the expression of imagination.
I'm a seasoned working artist, not some online tweaker, YouTuber or tech blogger. COLOR is my life and work. I'm pickier about color than almost anyone; I see things most people don't.
This is just me; your preferences and results will vary. This is art.
Crop Modes performance top
Not only does it have all the usual 4:3, square, 1.6× APS-C crop and 16:9 options from its 3:2 sensor; it has two different ways to select them that we can assign to other controls.
One way gives us all the options with a dial, while the other lets us tap a button to swap among just the 3:2, 1.6× APS-C and square options.
Ergonomics performance top
It has NO mode dial, making it take many more steps and clicks to change modes:
Instead there is a mode button in the middle of the top rear control dial, which when hit lets us scroll around a menu of modes, but it has a slight delay in response and requires we stare at a display while we twiddle it; we can't just flick a dedicated dial al click or two by instinct to change mode while our attention remains on our subject.
The tiny top LCD is a mistake, costing us our dedicated mode dial in exchange for a tiny screen too small to read. It's not at all like the top LCD of a DSLR like a 5D Mk IV.
Its easy to shoot while wearing gloves.
There's a slight delay from moving a control to seeing it mirrored in the finder. While sitting at a desk you'll think it negligible, but it's significant when shooting live. It's about the same as many other cameras. It's not zero as it often was with DSLRs.
You have to love its nearly complete duplicate set of vertical controls:
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There is no duplicate vertical Q button, but my long thumb can reach the usual one.
The power switch is weird, and that's not good. We have to flip it down or counter-clockwise to turn it on, which is definitely un-American.
We can reprogram many buttons to many things, but like all other cameras our options are limited. After using the completely programmable Tourbox Elite+ for my Mac, it makes me realize how limited cameras are in what few buttons are programmable and how few options each offers.
We can't reprogram the top compensation button.
We can save all our settings to a card and as C1, C2 and C3 camera-state memories, however we have to set each of these separately for our controls. That's good if you want different controls for different shooting situations, but make you have to be clever and copy them from one preset to the other if you want all your controls doing the same things in every situation.
With the rear dial set to ISO, it often offers no auto position, so we have to go to menus to get back to Auto ISO. Oddly if you open the ISO menu then the rear dial will be able to get to Auto ISO. I gave up and now set my rear dial to White Balance instead, setting ISO in the menus.
Some buttons illuminate (good) but only some of the time (bad). What's weird is that they'll usually illuminate on playback, but turn off when you tap the shutter to try to shoot! To get them on while shooting you have to find and hold the (unilluminated!) hanging bulb icon button next to the top LCD.
They are very dim so they won't wreck your night vision. Here's a rough idea of what little lights up:
Canon EOS R1 Button Illumination. murkier.
Nothing on the top lights other than the bluish LCD backlight, and none of the other buttons light. The dim red dots are the invisible infra-red emitters in the eyecup and the two thumb motion sensors.
The LCD is tiny compared to a phone, like all cameras, so we have to be slow and meticulous to enter text on it for copyrights.
We can have only six items per My Menu tab, but it's easy to make more pages of My Menus.
The card door is not marked for what kinds of card to use:
Exposure performance top
Nothing new here. It's common to need -0.7 stops compensation outdoors in contrasty light to keep vivid colors from overloading. It's been this way for 20 years with Canon when you crank Saturation to +4 as I do.
Finder performance top
The finder is big, bright and beautiful. It's a joy to use all day.
It's tough to unlock and set the finder diopter, and once set, it doesn't move.
The histogram shows the effects of peripheral illumination correction live.
The right-side vertical bar graph gets in the way of my image and is redundant (the usual one is at the bottom), so I don't use that display.
If your subject is mostly black, you can't see its border in the black-bordered finder.
I observe it to be life size at a 57mm zoom setting, which calculates to 0.88× with a 50mm lens. It's rated 0.9× which seems reasonable, especially as most 50mm lenses are really 52mm.
GPS performance top
It has a built-in GPS receiver, but don't expect it to just work as well as we take for granted with iPhones. I don't see much improvement from the GPS I had in the Canon PowerShot S100 of 2012, which is that it only works outdoors and takes its sweet time to lock-on and figure out where it is — even in Mode 1 which leaves the GPS receiver on all the time.
For all I know you'd get better results using the app to connect it to you your phone.
I didn't play with this much; good luck.
HDR performance top
The R1 can record HDR images with single shots for HDR display.
This is completely different from the old multiframe HDR capture, compositing and tone-mapping of yesteryear. Today we can capture HDR images as single shots to display on HDR monitors — but only if you have the right hardware and software to see them. I have samples posted at iPhone 17 Pro Max HDR Image Samples, and the only place they glow as HDR is on a recent iPhone with at least iOS 26 in Safari on iPhone.
I haven't spent the time to figure out how to format results from my Canons to display on a web browser in HDR.
This technology and its standards are in still their infancy, meaning that the standards are varied and not particularly universal or standardized, so good luck making use of them. HDR formats and displays are like color management in the late 1990s: all over the map.
Set this mode at MENU > CAMERA page 3 > HDR shooting (PQ) > 
High ISO Performance performance top
There's no mystery to comparing cameras; I shoot this same test at all the ISOs in every other camera I review so you can compare for yourself. Caveat: I repainted these walls white from their previous tan as of the beginning of 2023, so the background wall won't match in older reviews, and this set is lit by natural light which is different every day.
Complete Images High ISOs details dark detail performance top
As seen at normal image sizes below, the R1 pretty much makes the same images from ISO 50 (L) to ISO 25,600.
ISO 51,200 gets a little softer and blotchier (noisier). ISO 102,800 becomes more blotchy and grainier, but still often usable.
ISO 204,800 (H1) is getting pretty bad, and ISO 409,600 (H2) is almost useless for anything.
This is typical performance in 2025; all cameras work just fine for online image sizes at insanely high ISOs. Honestly I never use anything above ISO 10,000. If you have to use five-digit ISOs you're doing something wrong, and no one needs six-digit ISOs other than for fooling around. Photography is all about light and lighting, so if you have no light, you should be working on improving that light rather than worrying about which camera makes the least awful photos in bad situations.
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
Fine Details: 600 × 450 Pixel Crops (10× magnification) High ISOs details dark detail performance top
Here are crops from the same images as above, showing the clock on the right.
What we see at the high magnifications below is that fine details go away as the ISO increases. This happens with all cameras (and our own eyes) and is an artifact of the noise reduction working harder as the ISO increases.
In the EOS R1, the most detail is at ISO 50 (L), and becomes softer at every higher ISO. This is normal and how noise reduction works in every camera.
ISO 50 (L) is a "pull" ISO, and therefore has more highlight contrast. This usually increases perceived highlight detail, and can lead to clipped highlights if you have too much subject contrast, as in the case of the window reflection in the glass of the clock face.
By ISO 12,800 much of the detailed scrollwork between the clock numbers is gone, and it's completely gone at ISO 51,200.
By ISO 102,400 the minute marks are mostly gone.
By ISO 204,800 (H1) all the detail is gone from the clock face, leaving only the numbers.
At ISO 409,600 (H2) the numbers and hands are almost gone!
It's normal for details to go away at higher ISOs in all digital cameras.
These are 600 × 450 pixel (10× magnification) crops which vary in size to fit your browser window.
If these are about 3" (7.5cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 20 × 30" (50 × 75 cm) at this same high magnification.
If these are about 6" (15cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 40 × 60" (1 × 1.5 meters) at this same extreme magnification.
If these are about 12" (30cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 80 × 120" (2 × 3 meters) at this same insanely high magnification.
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
Dark-Area 600 × 450 Pixel Crops (10× magnification) High ISOs details dark detail performance top
Here are different crops from the same images as above, now showing the dark grillwork of the fireplace.
ISO 50 (L) is a "pull" ISO, and throws much more light into the shadows and thus gives the most shadow detail.
Higher ISOs greatly reduce the details in the shadows, as we expect.
Note how the most detail in the fine screen is at ISO 50 (L), and even at ISO 100 the screen is softer.
The bricks behind the grill are half gone at ISO 800, and completely gone at ISO 6,400.
At ISO 51,200 the iron bars are half gone, and mostly gone at ISO 102,400.
At ISO 204,800 (H1) and ISO 409,600 (H2) there's nothing in the shadows but noise!
These are 600 × 450 pixel (10× magnification) crops which vary in size to fit your browser window.
If these are about 3" (7.5cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 20 × 30" (50 × 75 cm) at this same high magnification.
If these are about 6" (15cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 40 × 60" (1 × 1.5 meters) at this same extreme magnification.
If these are about 12" (30cm) wide on your screen, the complete images would print at 80 × 120" (2 × 3 meters) at this same insanely high magnification.
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
Click any for the camera-original © Large 24 MP Normal (
96 MP Interpolation to 12,000 × 8,000 pixels performance top
This only works offline after you've shot images; you can't set the camera to shoot this way.
The good news is you can upsample JPGs as I shoot, as well as I suppose raw images and HEIC, and it works great!
It even removes bad sharpening artifacts from JPG images and really does give clearer pictures.
Here's a complete image:
Aspens and Fall Color, June Lake Loop, California, 10:00 A.M., 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 24-105mm IS STM at 60mm at f/8 at 1/500 at Auto ISO 100, -1.0 stop exposure compensation (LV 15.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or camera-original 24 MP © 15 MB JPG file.
Here's a 10× crop from a small area towards the top right of the camera-original 24 MP © 15 MB JPG file:
And here's the same area cropped from the 96 MP image at the same size (1,200 × 900 pixels):
Make all the fun you want of AI, vectorization and false resolution, but as you can see, this 96 MP mode really does give a clearer image if you're printing 10 feet (3 meters) wide.
I haven't shared the complete 96 MP (12,000 × 8,000 pixel) image because it's a 45 megapixel file!
These are the differences you'll see if you enlarge both images to the same huge sizes.
I pulled the 10× crop from the original image by first resampling it from 6,000 × 4,000 pixels to the same 12,000 × 8,000 pixels as Canon interpolated it by simply resizing it in Photoshop (bicubic convolution) and taking the same 1,200 × 900 pixel crop from it.
In other words, we're comparing the benefits of Canon's extra-fancy interpolation to the plain-old Photoshop resamplng that we've had since the 1990s.
If these 1,200 × 900 pixel crops are about 3" (7.5cm) wide on your phone, then the complete images printed at this same large magnification would be about 20 × 30" (50 × 75cm).
If these 1,200 × 900 pixel crops are about 6" (15cm) wide on your iPad, then the complete images printed at this same extreme magnification would be about 40 × 60" (1 × 1.5 meters).
If these 1,200 × 900 pixel crops are about 12" (30cm) wide on your computer, then the complete images printed at this same insanely high magnification would be about 80 × 120" (6⅔ × 10 feet or 2 × 3 meters)!!!
Porsches, San Diego, California, 9:44 AM (I should have been there 33 minutes earlier), Saturday, 13 September 2025. Slight crop from Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM at f/5.6 at 1/250 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 13.0), Radiant Photo software to add light. bigger or camera-original 8.2 MB © 24 MP JPG file or in-camera interpolated © 96 MP, 24.2 MB JPG image.
Long Exposures performance top
Bulb Timers, invented by Canon, are brilliant as we can program them to our desired speed and walk away. Use the self-timer and there's no need for a remote release or a stop watch; set and go.
Ideally I'd prefer that all cameras simply provide a complete range of manual shutter speeds out to 18 hours or so rather than forcing us to piddle in menus, but as of 2025 Bulb timers are state of the art.
To use the bulb timer, set the top exposure mode dial to B, then set MENU > CAMERA 6 > Bulb timer > Enable, and set your time. Now when you press the shutter in B, it will expose for that time, up to 100 hours.
Mechanical Quality performance top
It's a big camera with a mix of plastic and metal. It is not all metal as pro cameras of the past often were:
Metal
Strap lugs, left and right top covers, hot shoe, lens mount, card door pivots, back cover, rear of LCD back cover, battery latch pin and strike plate, bottom laser-engraved serial number insert and tripod socket.
Plastic
Top center fake prism hump, finder eyecup shaft, every dial, every knob, every button, every lever, card door, LCD frame and hinge, battery cover and bottom plate.
Rubberized
Grips, eyecup and connector cover flaps.
Glass
Finder optics and rear LCD cover.
Serial Number
Laser-engraved in silver-on-black on bottom of camera:
Date Code
The serial number contains a date code.
My serial number starts with 149, which means it was made in January 2025.
Noises When Shaken
Awake: Just about no sound.
Power Off: Mild to moderate clunking, presumably from the uncaged sensor flopping around.
Made in
Made in Japan.
Rolling Electronic Shutter: No Problem! performance top
There's no problem with rolling shutters: fast motion remains undistorted:
SDPD Helicopter, Pacific Beach, California, 10:37 AM, Saturday, 04 October 2025. Mild crop from Canon EOS R1 in APS-C crop mode, RF 75-300mm at 300mm at f/5.6 at 1/2,000 at Auto ISO 400 (LV 14.0), Radiant Photo software. Doe you like it? bigger.
Don't do this: fast shutter speeds stop the blades and make it look like it's about to fall out of the sky!
Image Stabilization performance top
In-camera sensor-shift Image Stabilization (OIS, IS or VR (Vibration Reduction)) works great, and of course it works even better with lenses with optical stabilization.
Here are some samples again, shot hand-held in the dark with unstabilized lenses:
Tufa in Predawn Glow, Mono Lake, Lee Vining, California, 6:48 A.M., Friday, 24 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 75-300mm at 75mm wide-open at f/4 hand-held at a quarter-of-a-second at Auto ISO 800 (LV 3.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Hand-held for a quarter-of-a-second at 75mm? Easy with my stabilized EOS R1!
Mono County Courthouse at Night, Bridgeport, California, 7:02 P.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 easily hand-held at 1/8 of a second at Auto ISO 200, +1.0 stop exposure compensation (LV 3.0), Radiant Photo software, perspective correction in Photoshop 2021. More tech details. bigger or full-resolution 24 MP 3 MB JPG (not perspective corrected).
Ken's Sporting Goods in the Rain at Night, Bridgeport, California, 7:02 P.M., Wednesday, 22 October 2025. Cropped a little from Canon EOS R1, RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM wide-open at f/1.4 easily hand-held at 1/8 of a second at Auto ISO 400 (LV 2.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
"Percent Perfectly Sharp Shots" are the percentage of hand-held, free-standing with no support or bracing, frames with 100% perfect tripod-equivalent sharpness as viewed at 300%. Hand tremor is a random occurrence, so at marginal speeds some frames will be perfectly sharp while others will be in various stages of blur — all at the same shutter speed.
This rates what percentage of shots are perfectly sharp, not how sharp are all the frames:
With an unstabilized RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM
| % Perfectly Sharp Shots | 4s |
2s |
1s |
1/2 |
1/4 |
1/8 |
1/15 |
1/30 |
1/60 |
| Stabilization ON | 5 |
30 |
40 |
90 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Stabilization OFF | 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
40 |
100 |
I see FIVE stops of real-world improvement, which is extraordinary. I can get perfectly sharp shots at a couple of full seconds if I expose enough frames to catch a sharp one!
With an unstabilized RF 75-300mm at 75mm
% Perfectly Sharp Shots |
2s |
1s |
1/2 |
1/4 |
1/8 |
1/15 |
1/30 |
1/60 |
1/125 |
1/250 |
| Stabilization ON | 0 |
20 |
0 |
70 |
70 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Stabilization OFF | 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
70 |
100 |
I see FIVE stops of real-world improvement, which is extraordinary.
With an unstabilized RF 75-300mm at 150mm
| % Perfectly Sharp Shots | 1/2 |
1/4 |
1/8 |
1/15 |
1/30 |
1/60 |
1/125 |
1/250 |
1/500 |
1/1,000 |
| Stabilization ON | 0 |
0 |
15 |
50 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Stabilization OFF | 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
20 |
60 |
90 |
100 |
I see a 4 stop real-world improvement.
With an unstabilized RF 75-300mm at 300mm
% Perfectly Sharp Shots |
1/2 |
1/4 |
1/8 |
1/15 |
1/30 |
1/60 |
1/125 |
1/250 |
1/500 |
1/1,000 |
| Stabilization ON | 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
10 |
47 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| Stabilization OFF | 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
27½ |
82 |
100 |
I see a 1½ stop real-world improvement.
Weather Sealing performance top
It claims weather sealing and I had no problems shooting it in moderate rainfall, but so what? People have worried way too much about this ever since camera companies started FUD campaigns to make us think that our gear will melt unless it has weather sealing. How do you think we shot in the rain for the first 200 years of photography?
Canon EOS R1 in the rain with RF 24-105mm IS STM. bigger.
Top LCD performance top
The tiny top LCD is a mistake, costing us our dedicated mode dial in exchange for a tiny screen too small to read. It's not at all like the legible top LCD of a DSLR like a 5D Mk IV.
I consider top LCDs a throwback to 35mm film days, and prefer cameras without these vestiges of days gone by.
The LCD has a dim bluish LED backlight if you hold the hanging bulb icon button next to the top LCD. I don't find it legible and would gladly swap it for the dedicated mode dials of the less expensive models.
Rear LCD Monitor performance top
It's the same tiny little LCD from ten years ago, nowhere close to every iPhone today with bigger, brighter and more accurate OLED screens.
Playback performance top
It's the usual, made much better with the thumbstroke readers which let us glide around a zoomed image much better than the old ways of using clickers and nubbins.
It's dumb, with no ability to rotate the playback image as the camera is rotated during playback as every iPhone does.
Voice Notes performance top
Set it, and you can tap a button while playing a still image and record a voice note for future reference.
It's super handy for recording who, what or where is in a picture.
Data performance top
JPG files are tagged as 350 DPI, which is 17.1 × 11.4" or 435 × 290 mm.
Power & Battery performance top
Battery information after a sports session, Canon EOS R1. bigger.
After shooting a few thousand sports shots one afternoon, I'd only used 20% of my battery charge. If I get 3,869 shots for 20%, that predicts I'll get 19,345 shots on the charge if I kept shooting the same way.
This is typical for modern mirrorless cameras, which even more so than a car's fuel economy, depends mostly on how you use it.
Like most mirrorless, battery life tends to be a constant number hours of operation rather than how many snaps you take. You get so much time regardless of what you do, so the more pictures you take in that time rather than playing back or setting things, the more pictures you'll get per charge.
If all I did was take single shots and play each one and fiddle, most cameras will only give a few hundred shots as specified, and if all I did was shoot long continuous bursts with the electronic shutter with no playback or fiddling, I'd probably get close to 20,000 shots per charge.
The bad news is that finder/LCD switching isn't very smart. Regardless of how I set the power timers, it sees my body close to the finder anytime my R1 is around my neck, it thinks my eye is on the finder and stays awake. This runs down the battery quickly. Sadly I need to remember to turn my R1 on and off manually before and after each shot if I expect to be able to get a day's shooting out of it if I'm just walking around.
It draws 14W charging via USB-C (5V at 2.8A).
Clock Accuracy performance top
Every sample is different, but mine is among the most accurate cameras I've ever owned. Over the first two months I've owned it, it's never varied more than a half second! Most cameras gain or lose about 10 seconds every month. Bravo!
This matters when you shoot multiple cameras (or this camera and an iPhone) and then sort all the images based on capture time to compare the similar views of each scene. The more accurate a camera's internal clock, the less often you need to reset it.
I'm very impressed, and I have my GPS mode set to DISABLE and auto time setting set to DISABLE!
User's Guide top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
See my separate plain-English Canon EOS R1 User's Guide.
Recommendations top
Sample Images Intro New Good Bad Missing
Specifications Accessories Performance
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
The EOS R1 is for full-time shooters who shoot sports, news and action all day, every day. The R1 is for things that move, and move fast.
For things that hold still, nature, architecture, astronomy and anything shot from a tripod, the EOS R5 Mark II has more resolution and costs and weighs much less, and even the 2022's R6 II has exactly the same resolution and frame rates as this R1. Even though they lack the magic finger controllers, the EOS R5 Mark II also has mind-controlled AF if you like that and a one-touch voice recorder. The EOS R5 Mark II shoots and tracks even animal eyes at 30 FPS all day long, and 30 FPS is certainly enough for me.
Unless you shoot full time, the R6 Mark II goes just as fast as the R1's 40 FPS, and has the same resolution. The only drawback is that the R6 Mark II may have more rolling-shutter distortion, but it's never bothered me.
The real reason to get the R1 over others is the R1's HUGE finder, physical durability and monster grip — and magic thumb controllers.
Be careful if you shoot HEIF; only the very newest software can read these so be sure you and your clients can read these files before you shoot a job in it! If you do need to convert to JPG later, you can do this in your Mac Finder by selecting all the HEIC images, right click > Quick Actions > Convert Image. Select Format: JPEG and Image Size: Actual Size, check PRESERVE METADATA, click Convert to JPG, and bingo, it takes a minute or so and the whole job are now JPGs in that same folder. After the conversion, the JPGs are now selected (suffixed .jpeg), so KEEP ALL THE jpegs SELECTED and drag them to wherever you need them.
If you mess-up the selections after conversion, CMD+Z erases what you done and you can convert again. Delete the HEIC if you like.
I got my EOS R1 at B&H. I'd also get it at Crutchfield, at Adorama or at Amazon, or get it used if you know How to Win at eBay, or get it used at KEH.
This 100% all-content, junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to my personally approved sources I've used myself for way over 100 combined years when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live — but I receive nothing for my efforts if you get it elsewhere. Canon does not seal its boxes in any way, so never buy at retail or any other source not on my personally approved list since you'll have no way of knowing if you're missing accessories, getting a defective, damaged, returned, dropped, incomplete, gray-market, store demo or used camera — and all of my personally approved sources allow for 100% cash-back returns for at least 30 days if you don't love your new R1. I've used many of these sources since the 1970s because I can try it in my own hands and return it if I don't love it, and because they ship from secure remote warehouses where no one gets to touch your new R1 before you do — and you know everyone wants to get their hands on this. Buy only from the approved sources I've used myself for decades for the best prices, service, return policies and selection.
Thanks for helping me help you!
Ken.
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