Pros & Cons
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- Fast, accurate autofocus with subject recognition
- 40fps drive with precapture option
- Fast-reading Stacked CMOS sensor with stabilization
- 6K60 Raw video capture
- 4K120 slow-motion recording
- All-day battery life
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- Eye Control focus doesn't work for everyone
- Competitors provide more resolution
- Expensive
Canon EOS R1 Specs
| Battery Type | Canon LP-E19 |
| Connectivity | 2.5Gbps Ethernet (RJ-45) |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth |
| Connectivity | HDMI |
| Connectivity | Headphone (3.5mm) |
| Connectivity | Microphone (3.5mm) |
| Connectivity | PC Sync |
| Connectivity | USB-C |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi |
| Dimensions | 5.9 by 6.2 by 3.4 inches |
| Display Resolution | 2.1 |
| Display Size | 3.2 inches |
| EVF Resolution | 9.44 |
| Flat Profile | |
| HDMI Output | 4:2:2 12-bit |
| Lens Mount | Canon RF |
| Maximum ISO | 409600 |
| Memory Card Format | CFexpress (Type B) |
| Memory Card Slots | 2 |
| Minimum ISO | 50 |
| Sensor Resolution | 24 |
| Sensor Size | Full-Frame |
| Sensor Type | Stacked CMOS |
| Stabilization | 5-Axis IBIS |
| Touch Screen | |
| Type | Mirrorless |
| Video Resolution | 6K |
| Viewfinder Magnification | 0.90x |
| Viewfinder Type | EVF |
| Weight | 2.5 |
The Canon EOS R1 ($6,299, body only) slots in as the company's biggest, fastest full-frame camera. Its dual-grip body balances well with the larger lenses used for sports photography, and leaves room for a battery that can power its way through the day. It's filled to the brim with features, including a fast-reading 24MP Stacked CMOS sensor with cross-type focus and 40fps drive, plus a viewfinder that includes sensors that let you set focus on a target just by looking at it. The R1's whiz-bang features are neat, and it gets the fundamentals right. Still, it's a very expensive camera, and likely excessive outside of its narrow target audience. Because of this, we continue to recommend the Nikon Z 8 ($3,999.95) as our Editors' Choice among high-speed, full-frame cameras because of its lower price, higher resolution sensor, and 20fps capture rate.
Design: Tough Construction With a Vertical Grip
The EOS R1 is oversized compared with most full-frame mirrorless cameras. Its dual grips—one for holding the camera in landscape orientation at the side and a second to hold it vertically for portraits at the bottom—make the EOS R1 (5.9 by 6.2 by 3.4 inches, 2.5 pounds) taller than cameras with one handgrip like the Sony a1 II (3.8 by 5.4 by 3.3 inches, 1.4 pounds).
(Credit: Jim Fisher)Big, dual-gripped cameras aren't news, especially for pros who are used to using a 1D-series SLR. Canon's SLRs have been out to pasture in favor of its EOS R mirrorless system, so the EOS R1 serves as the natural upgrade path from the most recent 1D SLR, the EOS-1D X Mark III. Cameras with dual handgrips are uncommon in the mirrorless era. To date, we've only seen a handful, including the full-frame Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z 9, and the Micro Four Thirds Olympus E-M1X.
Like the R3 and 1D X Mark III, the R1 uses a 24MP full-frame image sensor. Canon cites this decision as beneficial for the camera's target market—the sensor reads more quickly than Stacked CMOS chips with denser pixel counts, delivers lighter file sizes for snappier transfers over Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and manages to get publishable images at the high end of its ISO sensitivity range.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)Canon's competitors have moved to higher-pixel chips for their respective flagships—the Sony a1 II has a 50MP chip, and Nikon puts a 45MP sensor in its Z 9 and Z 8 cameras. The higher-pixel cameras provide more room to crop in and retain detail, and support 8K video (the R1 does 6K). If you use Canon lenses and prefer a higher pixel count, the EOS R5 Mark II shares a good deal of the R1's technology and works with an add-on vertical grip if you prefer a larger body. The R1 does have an in-camera upscaling feature, but it only works with JPGs, and its 96MP output doesn't show as much added detail as images processed using Adobe's similar Super Resolution feature.
The R1 is built as tough as cameras come. Its internal frame is magnesium alloy, and the body is fully weather-sealed. Some nice touches include locks for both the battery and memory card door, backlit control buttons, and the option to record and attach a voice memo to any image.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)The camera works with RF mount mirrorless lenses natively, and can also use EF SLR lenses with an adapter. I tried the R1 with both RF and EF lenses during my review with successful results. If you're moving on from a 1D camera, the $99 EF-EOS R adapter is a smart addition. Otherwise, there are ample high-end L series lenses in RF mount covering focal lengths from 10 through 1,200mm.
Controls: Configurable, Backlit Buttons
The R1's big body is a good match for the larger zooms and bright primes used in sports, events, and documentary photography. Since there's plenty of room, nearly every button is duplicated in two locations so you can find it by touch regardless of camera orientation. The layout isn't exactly the same as the 1D X Mark III or EOS R3, but it's familiar enough that longtime system owners should feel right at home.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)Canon does a good job of positioning buttons so they are naturally under your finger, too. The shutter release sits at a comfortable angle, and it's easy to tap the nearby M-Fn button to quickly adjust a setting and then go back to photography. It includes some useful defaults for its buttons, but almost every one is reconfigurable via the camera menu. You can configure the R1's controls to match your needs.
Camera size and ergonomics are often a matter of personal preference, but creators who generally prefer a large, dual-grip body should find the R1 comfortable to hold. I usually prefer using smaller cameras, but even though the R1 is big, I don't think the Canon is too big. I wear size medium gloves and am able to reach all the buttons comfortably. If you prefer a larger camera, the Nikon Z 9 is the best alternative; it's a little bigger than the R1 all around and should be more comfortable for photogs with extra-large hands.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)The R1 has plenty of buttons and dials, but they aren't the only way to interface with the camera. It has an on-screen overlay menu (launched using the Q button) and a lengthy multi-page menu system. The Q menu lets you change options like file format, focus mode, and drive speed. The full menu is where you'll go to format a memory card, fine-tune autofocus and tracking settings, and remap buttons.
Viewfinder: A Large OLED With Eye Control Focus
The R1's eye-level viewfinder is a treat. The OLED EVF shows a large image (0.9x) with 9.4 million dots of resolution and an HDR color gamut. The latter is a nice feature as it makes the R1's optical viewfinder simulation (OVF View Assist) feature more useful. In standard mode, the EVF shows a preview of your exposure, complete with profile and exposure adjustments. While in OVF VA, it shows a bright image with lightened shadow details and reigned-in highlights, closer to what your eye would see through an optical viewfinder. The EVF's wide color gamut and smooth 120fps refresh rate work together to show a natural, lifelike picture.
The EVF also houses one of the R1's whiz-bang features, its eye-controlled autofocus system. Optical sensors are placed near the finder to read the position of your eye. This lets you focus on a subject just by looking at it. A small reticle tracks your eye movements, and the focus point follows them. Eye Control takes a little effort to set up—you need to run through multiple calibrations to tune it to your eye—and doesn't work well for everyone. I speak from experience, despite running through a dozen calibration sessions, the reticle is just too jumpy to use with my eyes, and I have trouble getting it to go to certain parts of the frame. I've spoken to others for whom the system works perfectly, however. The R1 also provides physical surfaces to set focus, including the standard eight-way joystick and a touchpad on the top of the AF-ON button, so you have options if Eye Control doesn't work well for you.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)In addition to the EVF, the R1 has a 3.2-inch touch LCD that works as a monitor. The display is the swing-out, vari-angle style, the type that Canon uses in most of its EOS R cameras. It's a handy option for getting images or video of players and coaches in an after-game situation—you'll frequently see groups of photographers with cameras held up high trying to get a photo of the star player right after they come off the field. Nikon takes a slightly different approach with its Z 9, as its screen tilts up and down, and moves slightly to the side, but doesn't swing out from the camera body. Sony puts a more complex screen with hinges that support both straight up and down tilt and swing-out articulation in its a1 II and a9 III.
Power and Connectivity: Enough Battery to Power Through Events
The EOS R1 has the best battery life of any Canon mirrorless camera. Its LP-E19 battery is rated for around 700 (EVF)/1,300 (LCD) exposures per charge using CIPA's standard testing methodology. The CIPA test is quite conservative, and in typical use cases with continuous drive capture enabled, you can expect to get thousands of exposures per charge, even if using the viewfinder full time. The R1 is on par with the Nikon Z 9 (770 EVF), and provides twice the longevity as the EOS R5 Mark II (340 EVF/630 LCD).
(Credit: Jim Fisher)The LP-E19 has enjoyed long service; it debuted with the EOS-1D X Mark II, and continued in the Mark III and EOS R3. So if you're upgrading from an older camera, you may have a few on hand. The R1 ships with one battery and an external charger that can replenish two LP-E19 batteries simultaneously. In-camera charging via USB-C also works.
The R1 has a full set of connection ports on its left side. These include the USB-C, a full-size HDMI connector, 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks, a PC Sync flash socket, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port. The R1 supports FTP network transfers to a server, and also works with the Canon CameraConnect app (available for Android and iOS) for wireless transfer to a smartphone or tablet. The R1 has dual CFexpress (Type B) card slots.
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(Credit: Jim Fisher)There's no built-in flash, but the EOS R1 can sync with external strobes at 1/320-second using its fully electronic shutter, at 1/250-second using a first curtain electronic shutter (with the mechanical shutter providing the rear curtain), and at 1/200-second. It's a little surprising that Canon opted to include a mechanical shutter at all, as it's clear from the sync speeds that the fully electronic shutter scans more quickly than a mechanical focal plane shutter. Nikon took a different route; it was so confident that 1/200-second sync was fast enough that it left a mechanical out of the Z 9.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)One note on flash use: The R1 uses a new style of protective cover for its hot shoe. The camera ships with the cover attached, and it is a royal pain to remove. I struggled for several minutes to remove it, which I attribute to a small plastic locking post. The cover has a little button that's supposed to disengage the lock, but it doesn't work well. If I were buying an R1 for myself, I'd either skip using the shoe or file it down to eliminate the lock entirely.
Autofocus: Cross-Type Sensors Consistently Nail It
If you're looking for something that the EOS R1 does better than its peers, it is autofocus and burst capture imaging. The 24MP sensor isn't the most pixel-rich in the class, but it fires off images at up to 40fps in full Raw quality, versus 20fps for the 45MP Nikon Z 9 and 30fps for the 50MP Sony a1 II. The only camera that is significantly faster is the Sony a9 III, which uses a 24MP Stacked CMOS imager with an even faster, global readout for tracking at up to 120fps.
Make no mistake about it, all of these cameras are fast, but sometimes the extra frames come in handy. For instance, I was recently photographing a northern rough-winged swallow foraging for nest materials on a rocky shore with the Nikon Z 8, and even at 20fps I only managed three or four frames of action before the bird took off to return to the nest. I ended up with a few keepers, but would have more options on pose and lighting to choose from with a faster burst rate.
Of course, the R1 isn't just speedy. Its focus system is also accurate. The sensor uses Canon's tried-and-true Dual Pixel AF focus system, a type of phase detection that splits each pixel into two sections and sets focus based on the differences it sees between the halves. This provides smooth, fast, and properly focused images for high-speed photography.
Other Canon R cameras, including the largely similar EOS R3, also employ Dual Pixel AF focus, but the R1 is to date the only one that employs cross-type detection (which checks focus on both horizontal and vertical axes). Cross-type sensors are more accurate by nature, though to be fair Canon's other cameras focus quickly and accurately without them.
It's difficult to point out scenes where the R1 will find focus where the EOS R5 Mark II or EOS R3 would miss, but I can say that the R1 delivers the goods at 40fps for the action scenes I captured, including some college baseball, birds in flight, and my house cat doing house cat things. The R1 also includes a pre-capture buffer mode that continuously buffers a half-second of action during focus, and saves it to memory once you press the shutter all the way. This is a common feature in high-speed cameras, but it's worth noting that the EOS R1 is able to use its Raw format for pre-capture, while the Nikon Z 8 and Z 9 are restricted to JPGs.
The R1's autofocus system is quite configurable. The camera lets you tune tracking sensitivity (or how likely the focus is to stick with one subject, versus jumping to another), plus includes subject recognition modes for people, pets and wildlife, and vehicles. It also includes Action Priority Focus, a mode that recognizes common plays and motions in a few ball sports (basketball, soccer, and volleyball). I didn't get a chance to try the EOS R1 for any of these, but you can read about how Action Priority performs for soccer in my EOS R5 Mark II review.
It's safe to say that the EOS R1's focus system is the best yet from Canon. It uses the latest tracking algorithms (the same as in the EOS R5 Mark II), plus is unique in its support for cross-type sensors. Still, there is a law of diminishing returns at play; the EOS R3 is nearly as fast (30fps) and is reduced to around $4,000 at the time of this publication. Meanwhile, the Nikon Z 9 and Z 8 top out at 20fps in Raw, but can go 30fps for JPGs at full resolution. The Sony a1 II hits 30fps in Raw, and the Sony a9 III is the fastest in this class at 120fps in Raw format.
Image Quality: A Stabilized, Fast Reading Sensor
The EOS R1 uses a 24MP Stacked CMOS sensor with very fast readout, a wide sensitivity range (ISO 50-409600), and a scan rate that freezes motion more effectively than most mechanical shutters. It's not quite as fast as they come, as the Sony a9 III's Stacked chip supports a global readout, which means that there's no chance of motion distortion caused by a rolling shutter. That said, the a9 III has a narrower sensitivity range (ISO 125-51200) and, as a consequence, less dynamic range and more shadow noise than you'd expect from a full-frame camera. The a9 III is unique in its ability to capture every pixel, and photographers who shoot scenes that would benefit will find the trade-offs in dynamic range to be worthwhile.
As mentioned, Canon opted for 24MP resolution for the EOS R1, a figure that sticks out when weighed against alternatives with more pixels. Practically speaking, the Raw 24MP files show an incredible amount of malleability. An analysis by Photons to Photos shows the R1's dynamic range charts within about a half-stop versus the a1 II and Z 9. All three provide photographers with ample room to edit color and exposure images; the a1 II and Z 9 simply provide more room to crop.
The R1's sensor is stabilized on a 5-axis gyro. Most of Canon's RF zoom lenses include optical stabilization, too, and in those instances, the systems work in tandem. It's an effective platform for scenes where you want to use a longer exposure and don't have a tripod handy. I managed clear exposures at as long as 1/8-second when using the RF 50mm F1.4 L VCM to photograph a test target at a close focus distance. Canon never developed stabilized sensor tech for its SLRs, so creators upgrading from a 1D-X body will benefit.
The EOS R1 supports a few different file formats. It can record 8-bit JPG or 10-bit HEIF images, along with 14-bit Raw files in uncompressed or compressed (CRaw) formats. Photographers covering major events are likely to lean on the JPG engine. The R1 includes the typical array of picture profiles (Faithful, Fine Detail, Landscape, Monochrome, Neutral, Portrait, and Standard), plus three custom slots. Each profile supports configurable color tone, contrast, and sharpening, so you have some room to give images a finished, toned look right out of the camera.
Video: Pro Grade 6K60 With Raw Encoding
I can't help but think of the EOS R1 as a photo-first camera because of its high-speed drive and oversized form factor, but it's full-featured for video too. It records 6K at up to 60fps using the full width of the sensor in 12-bit Raw format at full quality (2,600Mbps) or at a lower bit rate (1,800Mbps). It also records with 10-bit HEVC or AVC compression (both with your choice of 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 color sampling) for high-quality oversampled 4K60, plus 4K120 with subsampling. Oversampling downsizes the full 6K sensor resolution for sharper results, while subsampling skips lines to reduce resolution to achieve faster frame rates, at the cost of some detail.
The video engine supports all of the same color profiles as for stills, plus has some log profiles (C-Log2 and C-Log3) and HDR HLG. The C-Log options record footage with a low saturation and a flat, neutral exposure so you have room to apply a creative color look-up table (LUT) and fine-tune color to taste. This takes some expertise to use properly, but it provides more flexibility in determining how your final product looks. Meanwhile, HDR HLG is meant to deliver good-looking footage for display on HDR televisions without the need to color correct.
The R1's nearest competitors are similarly capable for video, however, so Canon does not enjoy a huge leg up versus other systems. For comparison, the Nikon Z 8 and Z 9 also record in Raw format internally, just with a higher pixel count (8K60), and match the R1 at 4K120, while the Sony a1 II supports 8K30 and 4K120 in a 10-bit compressed format.