Why the incredible Canon EOS R5 Mark II took Nikon to our Camera of the Year award

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Us TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 This year’s winners include some very strong cameras, several of which were in the running for our coveted Camera of the Year award. Honorable mentions go to the Nikon Z6 III and extremely popular Fujifilm X100VIbut if there is one camera that rises above all, it is the Canon EOS R5 Mark II.

Simply put, the EOS R5 Mark II is Canon’s most versatile camera everand by far the camera giant’s most exciting launch of 2024. In fact, it made TechRadar’s Managing Editor seriously regret switching from Canon to the Nikon Z8.

The EOS R5 Mark II has upgraded the already excellent full-frame EOS R5which delivers all-round faster performance, smart autofocus features, better video, plus a few AI tricks thrown in for good measure. This is a very capable camera for any professional photographer or filmmaker.

We got hands-on with the EOS R5 Mark II before launch and did an in-depth review, but we still felt like we were just scratching the surface of what it can do. It’s really one of the best professional cameras that we have ever used.

The Canon camera that does it all

The EOS R5 Mark II takes super sharp 45MP photos, especially when paired with one of Canon’s professional L-series lenses, but the sensor is now of the stacked type, with a faster readout that minimizes rolling shutter effects, meaning this also is a great camera for fast photography and for video in general.

There’s also a second processing engine that delivers incredibly fast performance, including 30fps burst shooting with a respectable buffer memory. This was not entirely the case during our testing Sustain sequences for as long as the EOS R1 couldbut for a high-resolution camera, the EOS R5 Mark II is super impressive.

This faster performance is backed up by near-flawless autofocus and subject tracking features. For example, the Action or People priority modes let you choose from a number of sports for optimized autofocus, and select a specific person using face detection so the camera can focus. like a player in a sports match or the bride at a wedding. Our hit rate of sharp focus on a specific player on a basketball court was ridiculously high.

Autofocus with eye control also impresses. The viewfinder has internal cameras that can detect where you are looking in the frame, using your eyes as a guide to the focus point, in combination with subject tracking. Simply put, in this mode the autofocus steals your attention. It doesn’t completely replace the best autofocus systems, but eye-controlled AF made us feel more at one with the EOS R5 Mark II.

We also tested the new AI-powered editing features in the camera, including a Upscale feature that increases the size of your photos by 400%. It uses Canon’s neural network and is optimized for the EOS R5 Mark II: you select one of your photos on the memory card and the resolution is increased by 4x to 170 MP for incredible detail.

The potential for Canon’s luxury technology is enormous. Instead of high-resolution shooting modes in most other cameras, which essentially combine multiple images and can’t handle scenes with motion, the EOS R5 Mark II’s upscale feature works on a photo you’ve already taken, and the results are extremely impressive. For us, the greater ability to crop in your 170 MP photos is especially useful.

All in all, the EOS R5 Mark II is Canon’s most versatile professional camera yet. If you don’t succeed once you’ve mastered the pro functions, especially the complex autofocus system, you should probably consider another career.