It’s time to fill those memory cards. Canon releases firmware v1.8.1 for the Canon EOS R5. 400mp stills are now possible

[DWD]

Is worth noting that there’s no option to use any time delay when using the new IBIS High res feature. I agree it would make sense but both 2s and 10s are disabled.

REALLY!!! I would have thought that was the ONLY way to implement the feature. How can you push a button and not shift a 45 megapixel camera one pixel???

 

[Finn]

Who the hell wants to shoot “400” megapixel JPEGS with awful artifacts?

Awful, awful implementation of pixel shift. Almost worthless in my opinion. You process the RAWs in camera and spit out a RAW file with full RGB data for each pixel thus increasing bit depth color fidelity and resolution…that is if you WANT to do it correctly.

 

[el peso]

I’m curious what is the actual physical size of that rectangle? I mean, one shot is 36x24mm. How far it is from 44x33 of modern MF rectangle, of course taking into account the different aspect ratio.

 

[byjohnburns]

I am confused with this talk of diffraction and of resolving power of lenses not up to 400mp.
I thought each single shot is still 45mp and therefore a lens which is good for the R5 in standard mode should be fine for the R5 in "super high res" mode.
Am I missing something? (honest question)

This would be true if you were creating something like a 9-shot panorama, where you're shifting the field of view rather than shifting pixels to create a greater resolution. You would still gain resolution after compositing 9 images, but you wouldn't be able to zoom in any more than you can with a regular 45mpx image. I think that's the difference.

Sensor shift essentially emulates a temporary 400mpx sensor by recording 9 adjustments of the sensor; not the FOV. Even though it's an emulation of a larger sensor, the result should be the same. A 45mpx image is 48,600 pixels. A 400mpx image is 432,000 pixels. 48,600 x 9 = 437,400, or 400mpx. That's basically how it works; it's multiplying the number of pixels in a single capture. This being the case, lens performance should suffer at these resolutions, since the resolution of a single frame increases with sensor shift technology whereas it does not when simply stitching separate frames together.

I may be 100% wrong, but that's my reasoning

 

[byjohnburns]

REALLY!!! I would have thought that was the ONLY way to implement the feature. How can you push a button and not shift a 45 megapixel camera one pixel???

I have the camera in front of me, with IBIS High resolution turned on, and I am able to release the shutter with both a 2 and 10 second delay.

 

[entoman]

Everybody who owns a camera claims that their brand is slipping behind ;-)

Nah, Sony can do no wrong, Sony cameras are absolutely perfect in every possible way, everyone else is d00med

 

[DavidJoarnt@gmail.]

To do HDR or exposure bracketing at the same time as doing pixel-shift would need a minimum of 27 consecutive exposures (9 for the pixel-shift x 3 for the HDR or bracketing), so not very realistic if you want in-camera processing.

But I do agree that if the original 9 files are not saved, it greatly diminishes the usefulness of the feature, as it prevents being able to composite the files in post.

My biggest criticism though, is not about the pixel-shift, but about all the other much more useful (to the majority) features that could have so easily been added, but were omitted.

I have been doing hdr panorama shorts of 77 exposures for each photograph and was hoping that this would be a useful feature. Have been working on a hdr Gigapan panorama that would require 300-400 exposures for a photo so this update was just a dud

 

[BPP]

That's incorrect, I used 2 sec delay when testing today.

Really? When I tested the new 400MP feature earlier today (with a tripod) I thought it would be sensible to also use a time delay but the only option available was ‘single shot’. All other options were excluded.

 

[talicoa]

All that Hype for not a lot, JPEG and no movement compensation, I thought Canon being the last to implement this, would do it right.
At least save teh 9 frames in raw, so we could combien them with a more advanced software in post.

Where are all the rumored features, especially the pre-capture buffer ? are those still rumored ?

The only hope is that's a 1.8.1 and not a 2.0 version.

But still no new AF features from R3/R7/R6II, te face priority would have been nice

I just tried it with a still life. This is amazing. It really works great for additional resolution. It makes a big difference for me. Get a good tripod, a still subject, and understand your lens and you can get some good images. Don't forget to use the timer for releasing the shutter. No, your aren't going to be shooting sports with this, but for what it was developed for, it is working great for me. Significantly more useable resolution.

 

[BPP]

Sorry

Really? When I tested the new 400MP feature earlier today (with a tripod) I thought it would be sensible to also use a time delay but the only option available was ‘single shot’. All other options were excluded

 

[tiggy@mac.com]

Is worth noting that there’s no option to use any time delay when using the new IBIS High res feature. I agree it would make sense but both 2s and 10s are disabled.

I see that some people are finding their shutter modes limited when it comes to the delayed options. Mine is not. I've been tooling around with the new feature with a 2 second delay. I wonder if it's how you go about enabling the delay. Just in case this is helpful to you and others, I just used the Q menu and tapped the 2 sec delay option. Let us know if that worked for you all.

As for the results:
1) Was disappointed to see that handheld really wasn't going to work. I have a relatively steady hand and regularly shoot at 1/10th of a second in woodcock season at 200mm, but I couldn't physically come close to getting it nailed for this feature without the zippidots showing up.
2) But putting it on a tripod totally eliminated the artifacts.
3) Of course, we're all shooting the other side of our living rooms, so this isn't the sort of subject that's going to reveal the utility of the extra resolution. I can say that photographing stuff on the other side of my office gave me the "feel" of it being about 2x the resolution.

I look forward to trying it out in a real-world situation, like a still landscape.

 

[BPP]

I’m sorry, I got it wrong. I’ve just checked and you’re right that the 2s and 10s time delay options are available with IBIS high res. Apologies for causing any confusion.

 

[digigal]

Won't be bothering to download this update unless something useful shows up in the bug fixes. Will wait for what comes next--hopefully.
Catherine

 

[EOS 4 Life]

I guess as an R3 owner (of which I am not) you might be even more bummed out

I am an R3 owner.
While I do get jealous of cheaper Canon cameras getting features I do not feel entitled to any of them.
If I was not happy with what the R3 had at the time that I bought it then I would not have bought it.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Did anyone else\'s camera freeze up after installing?

Finally stopped showing the post-update screen with no responsiveness to any control, and now black with no response to any control.

That happens a lot.
Remove the battery, put it back in, and then restart the camera.

 

[HawktheHusky123]

My opinion is that if it can only shoot jpeg in hires mode, then it's pretty much useless for landscapes (which is what you would use this feature mainly for!) since in landscapes you almost always have to raise the shadows and lower the highlights, which is where jpeg is terrible.
Disappointing, That's for sure!!!!

 

[neuroanatomist]

I am an R3 owner.
While I do get jealous of cheaper Canon cameras getting features I do not feel entitled to any of them.
If I was not happy with what the R3 had at the time that I bought it then I would not have bought it.

I generally agree, although I will admit I would be rather miffed if they didn’t provide compatibility with the EL-5 flash.

 

[HawktheHusky123]

That happens a lot.
Remove the battery, put it back in, and then restart the camera.

The r5 has that problem a lot. As you said, remove the battery etc..

 

[EOS 4 Life]

I hear you man. I haven't worked in camera software but I've worked for software companies and there's usually a pretty good reason why they don't do the obvious thing, generally either a technical reason or a business reason. The technical reasons tend to be things like bus speeds, buffer sizes, and so on. The business reasons could be the dreaded "cripple hammer" (a company purposely not updating something, to get you to buy something else) but often there's a better explanation. Maybe they don't want to devote even a little manpower to porting that code to the R5 because they're working on something significantly better. (I'd like focus stacking to actually look at the image and figure out for itself how many exposures and what aperture, rather than requiring that these be manually guessed at. If some such were being worked on, working on anything else would be kind of wasted effort. And it's pretty common for something simple and achievable to be pushed to the side while the deluxe version seems to take longer and longer and longer.

In other words, we have no way of knowing but it is always easy to say "cripple hammer".

 

[HawktheHusky123]

I generally agree, although I will admit I would be rather miffed if they didn’t provide compatibility with the EL-5 flash.

This is the same type of 'cripple hammer' tactic BS that Sony does with their cameras, especially with, for example, the a1 and a7siii, where they are much more expensive than cheaper models but have less features.