EOS RP first impressions

Reflector · Mar 9, 2019

Because I get to try one out for some time and because it seems to be a very hated camera that gets all the Youtube celebs and social media influencer types taking dumps onto it unless they're hardcore Canon guys who will support it no matter what.

First impressions:
Sensor: It looks large I guess? I am sure that there is some kind of selling point here I am completely missing right now but some market trends would cause some of the internet to salivate over.

"Shallow depth of field from the larger sensor": Means nothing to me given my lens collection and lens speed. If anything the lack of IBIS on this camera is more of a disadvantage in my case more than anything. See below regarding teleconverters to make APS-C lenses work if you own a bunch of EF-S or APS-C image circle lenses. Some EF-S lenses work fine with it.

Sensor cleaning: Happens at shut off which leads to another problem. See "lens retraction" and the delay it causes below.

Size and physical bits: The body definitely isn't huge. It feels like an ungripped E-M1II roughly.

The grip is well designed except the tripod hole moves with tightening wheel. Putting a gear mechanism to offset the screw in there would have increased the cost I assume? Requires removal of battery door which isn't bad. Makes reaching in for the battery and SD card (less so) a little more difficult. Camera becomes DSLR in size and handling is definitely improved for big lenses. The lack of vertical grip offerings in current 135 format mirrorless CaNikons is lame. Lock is done by a tab that is lifted and then rotated rather than the nail nick. Spring loaded door. The tab is mildly awkward to lift and raise - it is not spring loaded and does not return to a locked position - I would say thanks to the large wheel (double side accessible) wheel that actually spinning the grip off isn't too hard either if you found the tab as difficult and awkward to operate. It also stinks like crazy when it is new.

Body feels solid and nice. The plastic is polycarbonate, it feels like same stuff as is on the body cap: PC-GF30 (Polycarbonate with 30% glass fiber) which is marked on the lenscap.

LCD flips open with a top slot and a bottom groove. Out of instinct I always go for the middle section due to the E-M1II. I think if I were to open the LCD up often I would end up going for the button notch. I prefer flippy screens since I can face them inwards and never have them be exposed. There's a notch on the grip, you will want to use both thumb and index to pull the LCD when the grip is on.

The on/off switch should have been: The round dial is a bit annoying to positively flick as it has a firm detent and is dependent on your thumb being on the far left side as you will run into the small EVF hump. With some use it becomes less annoying. On the E-M1II I am used to just lightly pushing with my thumb to power it on.

Has a lock button for the rear wheel but I have to ask: "Why?" The space for it could have been given to another button that could be set to do something else more useful.

LED indicator turns green when charging over USB-C, red when writing to card.

Shutter sounds nice and unobtrusive.

Lens retraction: Happens AFTER sensor cleaning. Meaning any lenses that retract like the 24mm and 50mm pancakes will not retract until the camera shakes the sensor (for more than a second) and then they retract.

Mount: The strange body caps work on EF mount and on R mount. They are not actual "EF" spec bodycaps, they have smaller features on the bayonet that allow it to act as adapter caps on EF mount. EF mount will not mount on it do not try this.

No IBIS: I'm pushing my exposure speeds up by 4-5 stops at times when I don't have available light due to 1/FL for minimum (if not higher) acceptable shutter speed. At a minimum 1-3 stops indoors (ISO 400-3200 is the norm rather than Low (64) and 200). Even at 1/FL I am more hesitant in believing I will be free of motion blur. Definitely won't beat the E-M1II for low light photography and not with a focal reducer (shorter FL means another advantage for stability) since it'll be at most 1EV (Speedbooster Ultra) to 2/3EV (Speedbooster XL) less light against the E-M1II.

High ISO: 6400-12800 looks great in good light. I would say that functionally it has a 1EV advantage over the E-M1II at 12800 since the E-M1II's native range ends at 6400. 25600 looks like **** no matter how you look at it.

"Dynamic range": Bad below ISO 800. Good above ISO 800. I think it has a slight advantage (Less than 1EV, maybe even less than 2/3EV) over the E-M1II at around ISO 1600 and up. Otherwise the E-M1II beats it for daylight photography due to being able to bracket at 60fps and it beats it at low light photography as long as there's not too much motion in a scene and the E-M1II can remain at ISO 6400.

Silent shooting is in scene mode: No control over exposure settings. That's pretty rubbish. I guess Canon had to cripple it in that way or alternatively they just didn't care given this is a Mirrorless 135 format Rebel.

Battery:
Charges with USB-C but doesn't get powered by it.

Battery display is 4 bars. It would be nice if it had an exact percentage indicator like the E-M1II.

I doubt battery life is horrific as it sounds. Most mirrorless cameras are "time spent on" dependent. Turn power savings on and have a spare. Lack of USB-C power is lame. You'll probably want one of those USB chargers and a spare battery as a backup to keep in the bag if you own a RP.

EVF: It is "okay" but it doesn't have that much magnification (I think it's about .7x? I'm spoiled my magnifying my E-M1II to .9x). It has an atrocious "sweet spot" effect and poor eye relief. I have more eye relief from my E-M1II with a magnifier and I can move my eye around. It is only a bit better than my E-M5 and with a magnifier it becomes uncompetitive for another reason: The EVF will have a blurry effect/distorting when you move off center. You are looking at the optics of the EVF.

Doesn't "black out" when you take a shot. I am pretty sure it just displays the last image. Silent shutter mode (see below about how it isn't good) just puts white rectangle around the image briefly so you get some feedback.

There is no Style 3 EVF display where the image fully takes up the EVF. As far as I can tell this is because the EVF is taller than 3:2, so it can use the empty portion at the bottom as the display bar for exposure information.

EVF does not turn off immediately (even with eco mode) even when the screen is rotated inwards and the proximity sensor isn't triggered. This won't help battery life at all as it means the sensor is still being used for live view when you don't need it. However if the camera goes into a shallow sleep state (timer to shut display off in the menus, eco mode makes this happen in like 5+ seconds but that's 4 seconds too many to shut the EVF off for a power saving mode) and you bring it up to your eye it will turn on from the proximity sensor. Seems like a wasted opportunity for more battery life... Or Canon just wants to sell more batteries.

Menu and interface: I've always disliked Canon menus and the RP doesn't change my opinion. Olympus has a menu system similar to older Nikons and the letters are logically organized. I must be one of the few people who have the opinion that Olympus menus are good which means an internet lynch mob will demand that I get flamed for saying this. I also miss the color found in the menu of the E-M5 since Olympus removed the color from the E-M1II.

Histogram can be set as a single or triple (each channel of RGB) displayed separately. Nice feature even if it takes up a lot of the display.

Button customization exists but it is buried deeply inside of the menus but I assume Canon users will be familiar with this. Some restrictions on assigning what buttons do what (ex: aperture preview)

Does the typical Canon thing where it is unhappy when you open the door the card is behind (the battery door). Display goes dark (and it most likely doesn't write the image in the buffer out). Also stops charging.

Changing ISO does not show your shutter speed if done from the multifunction button for aperture priority. It will update the exposure in manual mode.

Magnify is effectively in the same button is AF area selection: Hit info after AF area selection. That saves a button from being used for it as a function.

A message telling you to wait is displayed if you try to review an image immediately while it writes to the card before it displays the image.

Aperture preview: Must hold button down, no Olympus style setting of toggling the aperture down by setting it in the menus. Fortunately can be assigned to something like the record button.

APS-C lenses: I found out some of my lenses work (̶d̶e̶b̶a̶f̶f̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶r̶e̶d̶u̶c̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶f̶f̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶u̶s̶p̶e̶c̶t̶)̶ ̶E̶F̶-̶S̶ ̶l̶e̶n̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶3̶5̶m̶m̶ ̶f̶/̶2̶.̶8̶ ̶S̶T̶M̶ ̶M̶a̶c̶r̶o̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶2̶4̶m̶m̶ ̶f̶/̶2̶.̶8̶ ̶P̶a̶n̶c̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶n̶s̶e̶s̶.̶

Edit: Does not work with EF-S lenses: 10 megapixel crop is automatically applied - image circle covers APS-H and then some but not the corners. Will have to look to see if there is a way to recover the image from the RAW file because it is definitely there.

1.4x teleconverter makes APS-C image circles work perfectly fine. I found out my Kenko Pro 300 teleconverter (has no protrusive element) makes my Tokina 11-20mm f/2.8 and other lenses work perfectly. Surprisingly the 11-20mm f/2.8 worked better at f/8 (f/11 after the TC) than it did on the E-M1II. I suspect that the lens wasn't really that much of a high resolution lens and putting it on the TC already challenged it with the pixel density on the E-M1II.

The 14-20mm f/2.0 works at 20mm without a teleconverter but with a caveat: UV filters cause vignetting. Teleconverter makes everything play nicely.

The Tamron 60mm f/2 becomes a 84mm f/2.8 - surprisingly similar to a 90mm f/2.8. Yes, doesn't have a large enough image circle.

I suspect if you own a lot of APS-C lenses this actually isn't a bad camera option. I still firmly believe high performance APS-C bodies with a focal reducer is a better option than sticking a teleconverter in front of a plain tube. The TC is relatively inexpensive at $160 and makes hopping over from APS-C painless.

The Kenko does not report the modified focal length or aperture on non Canon lenses but otherwise plays fine. Do not use the Kenko with any lenses that have protrusive elements like EF-S lenses or you will have elements contacting.

Autofocus: Seems to be reliable and sufficiently fast with adapted lenses. Some of the lenses that I have trouble with I already have a little trouble with when adapted on my E-M1II with Metabones Speedboosters (Ultra, XL). It seems to love Canon lenses (who would have guessed!) when it comes to autofocus. In some cases it has a slight advantage over my E-M1II with my Metabones adapters but that mostly goes to Canon lenses and in some rare cases the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 (non OS, non DG) that I have.

Doesn't drive my Tamron 60mm f/2 Macro very reliably but that lens always misbehaved.

Drives a Canon 70-300II NanoUSM at f/8 after it is on the teleconverter and it does it pretty well.

ExpoSim: Canon's exposure preview feature... Leave it on if you set it to M otherwise you will not see how over/underexposed an image is.

Servo AF/C-AF: If enabled you will hear some lenses go back and forth for the AF when pointing it at a static target like it was doing CDAF. Barely audible but it is there on the 24-105L.

AF illuminator: Yes.

Overall immediate impression: "Not my camera."

It does have some nice design decisions like having magnify in the AF area selection menu and good ergonomics. My own complaints about the orientation of the front command dial (don't like Canon's orientation of it - yes that means I don't like the same orientation on Panasonics too) aside, I think it is an otherwise functionally competent camera that will make some Canon users very happy. It reminds me of what I remember from Canon XTis in regards to the menus and quirks. I guess that part of camera companies doesn't really change. Canon will have Canon menus and Canon ergonomics as much as Sony has Sony (horrible, in my opinion) menus and Sony (horrible, in my opinion) ergonomics.

I suspect Canon will sell these like hotcakes to Canon users who like Canon ergonomics, Canon menus, Canon interfaces and own a lot of Canon lenses already. I also suspect it can be one of the actual first sub-$1k (when on sale/discounted/refurbed) 135 format bodies because it is so feature stripped (No IBIS meaning one less cost and barely anything in it) and most likely production optimized like crazy.

Would I keep it with my first impressions?
If I wasn't paying more than $1000 for it... maybe yes if I didn't own the E-M1II already. I consider the E-M1II a better camera (and more flexible camera) by far. There is only a very specific niche that the RP will beat the E-M1II at and that is driving the autofocus of native Canon lenses in low light conditions where stabilization can't help at all/that much at around ISO 12800-ish and maybe a bit higher.

If I was given it with the contingency of "cannot be sold"? Yes. If you have an unloved camera (E-M1X, A7II, A9, A6500, X-H1, old well worn D3, etc...) please let me know. I will take it off of your hands and give it a home.

If it was $700? Maybe as a curiosity if I had the money to spend on it (rather than more lenses or for an used E-M1X fund...) but I am very happy with my EF mount lenses on Micro Four Thirds.

In some crazy future where a used up one sells on eBay for $400? I'd think about taking it for the native lens AF performance probably and the ability to use the full FoV of my 50mm and 85mm lenses...

Reflector · Mar 9, 2019

Updated my original post with some more remarks. Here are further remarks about the controls and items of note.

Physical feeling of the buttons/dials/bits:
Shutter: Like a weaker spring with slightly more wobble when compared to the E-M1II. No clicks/detents
M-Fn: Clicky
Rest of buttons: That mushroom dome-y feeling if you depress it far enough. Somewhat short throw. Otherwise it just feels like a button on a spring if you push it with the pad of your thumb.
Mode dial: Firm, but not as firm as the E-M1II. Clicky.
Command dials: A little stiff, not that clicky. Not remotely as clicky as Olympus dials. Diamond pattern which is nice. Front command dial is too raised and also too close to the shutter release. See my comment about disliking it.
Power: Clicky, stiff detent. I dislike this and believe that as it is already recessed it could have a weaker detent or be a lever feature instead.
Lock lever: Clicky. I feel this is still a waste and could be better assigned as a button for the space it used. Or perhaps actually serve as the real power lever to allow for buttons to take up space on the left (like the E-M1II and more or less most mid level DSLR arrangements)

Delete button: Lower in height than the review button. Awkward to remember and I find myself hitting the review button (out of habit from the E-M1II as the placement is reversed). Awkward because it is on the outside (right) meaning I have to rotate my hand further (and lose some of my grip over the body) to hit delete or alternatively use the joint of my thumb to hit it. I feel the E-M1II's order is more reasonable as you are more likely to hit review and delete a bunch afterwards but that's my own logic.

Lens release: Stiff. The button isn't very protrusive and is somewhat difficult to reach.

EF to RF adapter: Stiff on both the lens side (when compared to my Metabones adapters) and moderately stiff on the body side (when compared to what I typically am used to. I lubricate my lens mounts with Boeshield or SuperLube because some of them are stiff and it makes the process use less force). The red line on the body side is not raised and lacks tacticle features. There is no front mark on the outside. It is engraved/recessed into the lens mount side of the adapter. The white square for EF-S and normal red dot exist.

Grip wheel: Awesome for spinning off and back on. I would actually say that because of how huge, oversized and accessible it is with the aggressive diamond knurling that they could have just deleted the battery door on this thing.

Grip battery door: Somewhat awkward to raise the tab and twist it. No spring to bring it back into the locked position means you need to twist it back and flatten the tab. I feel like this was somewhat of a wasted opportunity to make it nicer and the huge grip wheel itself would have sufficed in making this a solid grip at some level (SD card access aside) and the USB-C charging helps a bit.

Port sealing flaps: Thin. Soft material. Rotate out of the way to clear ports and stay flat to body unlike the E-M1II. Has small notches on the rotating feature and stops every 45 degrees. Nice feature I guess.

Battery catch: Stiff, awkward to reach with grip. Battery pops into finger. You want to grab it from the side the SD card is on where it isn't as deeply recessed (due to how the door is made so it pulls away the side on the SD card). May take some wiggling or prodding to get it a bit further out for a pinch/grab if it runs into your finger.

Battery ejection spring: Pretty aggressive. Practically flies out. Without the grip in the way it ejects the battery if it isn't orientated straight up.

994 · Mar 9, 2019

Whew—

I confess not reading it all, but some great stuff in there. I handled an R in Best Buy and hated the on/off switch.

I toyed with the idea of trying one of these out but thanks for your posting. You convinced me to pass on it. At least for now.

Reflector · Mar 9, 2019

WT21 said:
Whew—

I confess not reading it all, but some great stuff in there. I handled an R in Best Buy and hated the on/off switch.

I toyed with the idea of trying one of these out but thanks for your posting. You convinced me to pass on it. At least for now.

I am sure someone who loves Canon for being Canon would love the RP for what it does for the price. However I am not part of that market but I'm also not paying for this camera - I'm merely just evaluating it while it is with me for a brief period of time. I believe that it has a good balance of ergonomics, usability and the "plain" feature set. I will keep posting in regards to how I feel about the camera over time. I did warm up to a little but I am very uninspired to buy one myself - just as much as I am uninspired by the A7II.

Mike Wingate · Mar 9, 2019

I have a great manual razor. Stylish, ergonomic, tactile, solid feel, buttons work well, solid push and click on engagement. Available in a few colours. But the blades are so expensive.

Reflector · Mar 9, 2019

I just realized I posted this in the subwrong forum. Saw other and I thought it was other systems in the morning. Stupid mistake... Could a moderator move it to other systems?

Drdave944 · Mar 9, 2019

Reflector said:
Updated my original post with some more remarks. Here are further remarks about the controls and items of note.

Physical feeling of the buttons/dials/bits:
Shutter: Like a weaker spring with slightly more wobble when compared to the E-M1II. No clicks/detents
M-Fn: Clicky
.

Incredible amount of effort put in to make these observations. To be honest ,I let a lot of this type of stuff slide when I get a camera,or anything else,for that matter.

Lupin 3rd · Mar 9, 2019

I can’t help but think that the main purpose of the RP is to keep current or potential Canon shooters from getting an A7ii or something similar.

Reflector · Mar 9, 2019

Drdave944 said:
Incredible amount of effort put in to make these observations. To be honest ,I let a lot of this type of stuff slide when I get a camera,or anything else,for that matter.

I know there are people who are very opinionated about the buttons. Supposedly the E-M5 feels mushy but the biggest thing that bothered me was the shutter release detent for AF to shutter release. The rest of it wasn't too bad.

Just reporting my finds. The RP isn't suboptimal when it comes to the physical side of being a camera. The specs certainly are mediocre for sure... IBIS means I get a lot out of the E-M1II that the RP doesn't make up for. It was the reason I didn't go for 135 format mirrorless early on: Mediocre IBIS and older generation sensors not providing much of an advantage over the potential computational imaging capabilities of the E-M1II with the 60fps electronic shutter....

Reflector · Mar 12, 2019

A stupid limitation I just found out about after finally getting Canon DPP to look at the RAWs versus the JPEGs: The EOS RP most likely does not save the uncropped image circle of the RAW file if shooting with Canon EF-S lenses that are fully mounted. Sigma, Tokina, Tamron? Yes. It will save the entire sensor - I was fooled by this and did not check to find that it locked the RAW output to 10mp. There is a technical workaround: Dismount the lens partially (depress, rotate) until the aperture disappears in the display (short turn will do it, the lens or adapter is secure in the mount still) and have shutter release without a lens enabled. Must aperture preview first before dismounting to set any aperture except for being wide open. The image circle on EF-S lenses is enough to cover APS-H.

I've edited my original post to note this. A very lame limitation.

I will have to do direct comparisons with the EF 40mm f/2.8 pancake against my Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake instead which is a fairly close matchup.

drd1135 · Mar 12, 2019

Thanks for making the effort to write all that up

Reflector · Mar 15, 2019

Highlight warnings (or the lack of):
There is no highlight warning in LiveView. You only can review those in camera unless I'm missing something in the menus. The histograms will change once you go above ISO 12800 and below ISO 200-400 which does give you an idea about how much headroom you have. Unfortunately it looks like Canon took the same route as Nikon unless someone with a Z6/Z7 found out how to turn on highlight/shadow warnings in still imaging. It does show the exposure compensation preview. Unfortunately the histograms are somewhat small (lack of EVF magnification really not helping) and it means you end up barely seeing that it peaks out on the right.

Live View AF Sensitivity Change:
It looks like the sensor is lower sensitivity than the E-M1II. When I tried to autofocus on a black object inside the liveview will become very, very bright (like when the E-M1II tries to focus in darkness) as it autofocuses. It goes off into that high sensitivity mode on a f/2.8 lens faster than the E-M1II does on a f/4 lens...

Manual Focus without IBIS:
No IBIS makes magnified manual focus a not very enjoyable experience. I don't consider focus peaking a sufficiently accurate feature unless you have a huge EVF and only if you're shooting with smaller apertures. Trying to do that with a 50mm f/1.2? No thanks - good way to miss the focus plane.

Bracketing (Wow! The biggest feature in the RP to me):
Bracketing is actually a joy to use on the RP: You can define the exposure difference between each shot easily and by 1/3 EV steps. Unfortunately it doesn't do it with a fast shutter nor does it do it with an electronic shutter nor does it have IBIS to hold it steady while handheld - meaning a 1.1x crop in practice. I would love seeing the ability to define the bracketing steps (3 shots, -2, 0, 2 EV) on my E-M1II. Setting the camera to manual to set shutter speed and aperture then allowing for the ISO to slide it seems to produce really good results.

I think this is probably the strongest area of this camera and I think in a way it negates the "Canon has crappy dynamic range" when the scenes are sufficiently static. Slow, slow shutter aside being able to punch off a -3, 0, +3 bracket and then merge the shadows, midtones and highlights in an optimally exposed manner is a powerful, powerful tool. Each part of the image is exposed to maximize detail from the shadows and highlights and you get a free lift in the shadows while preserving highlights.

Wished this was on Olympus and implemented in this manner. I think I saw something about the order that it brackets images in too somewhere in the menus. I will have t play with the EOS RP does.

26 megapixels:
Barely noticed this. 20 to 26mp is a tiny hop realistically. I was pretty comfortable at 16mp anyways.

1/4000 shutter:
ISO 100 doesn't help. Need a 1/16000 to 1/32000 capability even if it comes from the electronic shutter, f/2.8 in daylight under difficult situations? Too bright! Shooting any fast lenses like f/1.2s in those conditions? CPL, ND or a VND.

"Dynamic Range"(the thing that the influencers on the internet loves to scream about by doing a -5EV exposure and then a +10EV exposure pull and determining the worth of cameras on):
See what I mentioned about bracketing. Here it is up against the E-M1II with the wonders of the 60fps electronic shutter which is mostly applicable to Olympus lenses and adapted lenses that are partially dismounted as the aperture doesn't close down and open up in continuous high with the electronic shutter.

Shot less for photographic merit and more of "let me find a very difficult situation to shoot straight into" and "it was convenient to just drive by and take this shot since I was already driving by with the cameras with me." Processing is terrible and I can make it more terrible by giving it a +50 shadow boost for that fake HDR look that seems to be all the rage these days but I won't do that.

Also motion artifacts are much more apparent in the RP shot to show what the slow shutter speeds mean - not what you can do by just masking a duplicate layer and using only the overexposed or properly exposed frame. Not as apparent until you look at the foreground or do a 100% on certain details.

Both handheld, continuous high shutters (electronic on E-M1II).

EOS RP: