As a small, independent production company, we are always looking to provide the best service we can and create the best looking images we can. With that in mind, we are always listening to what our clients keep asking us for and always looking for the best way to deliver what they need. A lot of times what defines "best" in our world is best quality image and the quickest way to capture that best quality image. That is what led us to acquiring the Canon R5c mirrorless cinema camera.
We have been in the Canon Cinema camera ecosystem for sometime now and find that their ability to capture great images quickly and the versatility of the cameras are always things we have loved about them. Really, for us, the Canon C300 MKIII has been a great workhorse for us; being able to be built out big with cinema lenses and capturing 12-bit RAW internally or a stripped down build shooting compressed to be as light and quick as possible. So it made sense that we would add a new element of all the things we loved about Canon to our gear room.
So, you may ask, "what were you hearing from your clients that prompted you to add something new if you loved the C300 so much?" Good question. Time after time, clients wanted footage shot on a gimbal without sacrificing any time or quality in the process. After owning larger gimbals for larger payloads and continually struggling with them, bring extra support, hire extra people, we found that smaller is better. Not to mention that the ability to capture great images in smaller and smaller packages these days keeps changing the game.
Small, quick and light, the Canon R5c packs quite a punch, being able to capture 8K 12-bit RAW internally at 60 frames per second is, quite honestly overkill for what we do. But what I do love is that it has a large full frame sensor that you can downsample to get a very robust 4K image. Not to mention lighter than my C300 on a gimbal by a long shot. It has a native RF lens mount which seems to be the wave of the future, which can be adapted to EF mount for Canon L-series photography glass or PL mount for a larger cinema lens. It shares a lot of similarities with the very popular RED Komodo, but plays nice with our existing cameras in the Canon Cinema Ecosystem.
Also, in addition to it's great video capabilites, the Canon r5c takes 45 megapixel photos. Such a versitile little camera, I brought it on my recent trip to Europe. Here are a few of the photos I was able to capture with this camera! Enjoy!