The Buyers guide to...Best Canon camera for professional photography

Although its position was technically usurped by the Canon EOS R3, the Canon EOS R5 is Canon’s flagship mirrorless camera and it was the most exciting camera announced in 2020.

Its 8K video capability stole most of the headlines when it was revealed, but the Canon R5 is at heart a 45Mp stills camera with an incredible autofocus system. This Dual Pixel CMOS AF II system has 5,940 selectable AF points and superb eye detection AF for humans, animals and birds that works in both video and stills mode.

Like the Canon EOS R6 announced at the same time, the EOS R5 has 5-axis in-body image stabilisation. In the R5 it enables shutter speed compensation of up to 8EV.

Canon pitches the R5 at around the same level as the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, which means it’s designed for use by experienced enthusiast and professional photographers. It combines a healthy collection of button and dial controls with an excellent touch-control interface on the 3.15-inch 2.1-million dot vari-angle screen.

While 8K video is of limited appeal, the R5 is capable of producing superb results with the 4K HQ (High Quality) mode especially impressing. The still image quality is also excellent all the way up to around ISO 25,600.

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Read our Canon EOS R5 Review

While Canon says that the EOS R3 sits below the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III in the company’s line-up, there can be little doubt that the new 24.1MP full-frame mirrorless camera will attract the attention of many of the flagship DSLR’s users. It’s aimed at the same pro sports and news photographer audience and has a fabulous feature set to keep them happy.

Canon used a full-frame backside-illuminated stacked CMOS sensor inside the Canon EOS R3 and paired it with the Digic X processing engine to deliver quick data readout and minimise rolling shutter. It offers an excellent blend of resolution, noise control and file size with blistering AF performance.

What’s more, the R3 can shoot raw or Jpeg files at up to 30fps with full exposure metering and autofocus (AF) tracking when the electronic shutter is selected. It’s a great choice of camera for sport, action and news photography.

The R5 and R6 were significant introductions for Canon when they launched in 2020. They gave significant depth to the EOS R system. But the addition of the EOS R3 takes things up a notch with its ability to shoot at 30fps, Eye Control AF and a high-resolution vari-angle touchscreen. It’s also the first double-gripped mirrorless camera, and while Canon says that it sits below the EOS-1D X Mark III, the R3 looks set to poach a few flagship DSLR sales and convert more professional photographers to mirrorless technology.

Canon has shown us a vision of the future for mirrorless cameras and while the R3 is beyond the budget of many photographers, the AI that it employs will trickle down to more affordable cameras.

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Read our Canon EOS R3 Review

The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III is Canon’s flagship DSLR and its the best professional DSLR currently available.

Its AF system, which is designed with pro sports photographers in mind, is superb and the 1D X Mark III can shoot at up to 20fps to capture once in a lifetime moments.

Thanks to its 20.1Mp full-frame (36x24mm) CMOS sensor, which has a new High Detail Low-Pass Filter, and the Digic X (8) processing engine, the 1D X Mark II controls noise very well up to around ISO 51,200.

The EOS-1D X Mark III is also Canon’s most advanced interchangeable lens video camera outside the Cinema EOS series. It can shoot 4K 12-bit video with raw internal recording. It can even record raw and MP4 video simultaneously to two separate memory cards.

In addition, 4K video can be video can be oversampled at 5.5K (5472×2886) and recorded as 12-bit CRM files highly-detailed footage.

As a twin-gripped camera, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III is big and heavy but it’s also very robust.

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Read our Canon EOS-1D X Mark III Review

Canon’s EOS 5D range of DSLRs has been popular with advanced enthusiasts and professionals looking for something which can cope well with a range of different subjects. The most recent in the line, the Mark IV, has a collection of useful features that make it well suited to demanding photographers.

While the 5D Mark III offered 22.3 million effective pixels, the Mark IV has 30.4 million, marking a significant jump up in resolution.

However, the inclusion of Digic 6+ processing technology enabled Canon to push the Mark IV’s native sensitivity range up from ISO 100-25,600 to ISO 100-32,000, with expansion settings taking this to ISO 50-102,400 – the same as the 5D Mark III. In video mode sensitivity can be set in the range ISO 100-102,400.

Interestingly, the Canon EOS 5D IV has dual processors, as the Digic 6+ unit is accompanied by a Digic 6 processor. The Digic 6 processor takes care of the exposure metering while the Digic 6+ engine takes care of image capture and processing.

It enables a maximum continuous shooting rate of 7fps (frames per second) with continuous autofocus and metering for up to 21 raw files or an unlimited number of jpegs. In live view mode the camera can shoot at up to 4.3fps.

Canon hasn’t given the 5D Mark IV more autofocus points than the 5D Mark III, but the 61 points are spread further up and down the frame. Also as before, there are 41 cross-type points; however, 21 of them are cross-type down to f/8 (rather than f/4).

There are also 5 dual cross-type points that are sensitive down to f/8 (with the 5D Mark III these are dual cross-type at f/2.8). The system also operates down to -3EV, 1EV darker conditions than the 5D Mark III’s system. This all adds up to make the Canon 5D Mark IV’s autofocus system more sensitive and better able to detect a subject.

Videographers have long enjoyed using the 5D range, and to that end, the Mark IV is capable of recording 4K video and has a range of useful video functions.

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Read our Canon 5D Mark III review

It may not have a class-leading resolution but the Canon EOS R6 is a phenomenally good stills camera. Its autofocus system is fantastic and it can keep track of fast subjects moving in random directions with ease, while shooting at 20 frames per second. In addition, the build quality and handling is extremely good, making it a delight to use.

Although it doesn’t have the class-leading video resolution of the Canon R5, the Canon EOS R6 is no slouch when it comes to video credentials.

It can record 4K (3840 x 2160) video at up to 59.94fps, however, there is a slight crop (1.07x) as only 94% of the horizontal area of the sensor is used. This 4K video is produced by oversampling from 5.1K for better quality.

At nearly half the price of its sibling, the EOS R5, the EOS R6 is a superb option for professionals in terms of its everyday capability and affordability. Buying an R6 would allow one to put some of that cost savings from an R5 towards one of the growing number of RF lenses.

Read our Canon EOS R6 Review