Canon has finally announced its first new cameras of 2024 – and the new flagship Canon EOS R1 and Canon EOS R5 Mark II are speedy beasts that appear to have been worth the wait.
The Canon EOS R1 is a new flagship sports camera that's designed to take on the Sony A9 III and Nikon Z9. To do this, it pairs a stacked 24.2MP full-frame sensor with a new Digic Accelerator processor, which works alongside the existing Digic X processor to help it hit 40fps burst shooting speeds with the electronic shutter with full autofocus tracking.
While the EOS R1 is very much designed for pro sports photographers, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II is a smaller and more affordable all-rounder that is a more realistic buy for most of us. Our hands-on Canon EOS R5 II review calls it a “polished upgrade” on its predecessor and “seriously impressive”.
Like the EOS R1, the R5 Mark II has that second Digic Accelerator processor for improved burst shooting and video record modes. Combined with its stacked 45MP full-frame sensor – which Canon claims has the fastest readout speed around – this means the R5 Mark II can hit 30fps burst shooting speeds.
Both cameras also have Canon's next-gen autofocus system, called Dual Pixel Intelligent AF. Naturally, there's a hint of AI in that name and Canon says it'll be its best autofocus system, but in reality its an incremental upgrade that lets you track subjects more accurately and also register specific faces, so you can prioritize them in a crowd. The sensor also has cross-type pixels to improve AF performance when you're shooting vertically.
One difference between the EOS R1 and R5 Mark II are their respective electronic viewfinders. The R1 has a 9.44-million dot OLED display with 0.9x magnification, which promises to give sports and wildlife shooters a great view of the action. The R5 Mark II, meanwhile, has to 'settle' for a 5.76m-dot OLED, which is now standard on high-end mirrorless cameras.
Other treats on both cameras include 8.5 stops of image stabilization plus some serious video shooting chops. Due to its lower-resolution sensor, the EOS R1 tops out at 6K video resolution (with the R5 Mark II hitting 8K/60p), but both can shoot 4K/120p slo-mo footage and 12-bit internal raw recording.
When can you buy them?
Naturally, both of these cameras come with pretty painful price tags. The Canon EOS R1's body-only price is $6,299 / £6,999 / AU$10,999, while the Canon EOS R5 II has launched with a body-only price of $4,499 / £4,499 / AU$6,699 (which is around a 10% bump on the EOS R5 from four years ago).
You can also get the EOS R5 II with a 24-105mm f/4L lens for $5,699 / £5,799.99 / AU$8,549 and it'll be available to buy from August 2024. The wait for an EOS R1 will be a little longer, as the camera won't be available to buy until at least November –but expect to see some in the wild at the Paris Olympics soon.
This is a breaking story – we'll be updating it with more details as they become available…
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