Announcing the EOS R5 Mark II

Announced alongside the EOS R1, the EOS R5 Mark II is a robust update to the highly praised EOS R5 mirrorless full frame camera. Hybrid professionals shooting both stills and video could do far worse than this one.

Read on for specifics, but be sure to stop in at a Mike’s Camera near you or click the link below to pre-order yours today. We’ve had a ton of interest in this camera even before its announcement and the first models are expected late next month (August 2024)—don’t get stuck in the waiting-for-stock crowd when, instead, you could be out creating like you never have before.

The marquee feature of the Mark II is the brand new, Canon-designed full-frame back-side illuminated 45 MP CMOS sensor. The new sensor is optimized for lightning-quick operation, capturing full-resolution stills at up to 30 fps and blasting sensor read-outs at unbelievable rates, virtually eliminating all rolling shutter distortion. When the shutter is half-pressed, the sensor is fully activated, and the previous half-second of images can also be written to the card upon full depression.

Need even more resolution? The DIGIC Accelerator front-engine processor is capable of in-camera upscaling informed by deep learning. You can save a 179 MP copy of any of your images, no computer necessary. As you might guess, there are numerous features enabled by this increased processing power. Others include Neural Network Noise Reduction, eye-control focus, Action Priority mode (in which a scene is analyzed and the main subject determined), and more, not to mention the speed gains recognized by allowing the DIGIC X processor to be totally dedicated to image processing.

Eye Control on the EOS R5 Mark II—an incredible feature, regardless—has been further refined from that introduced in the EOS R3. Canon rates the improvement at a full 2x, in fact! Just look where you want to focus, press the AF activation button, and you’re done. It even works if you wear glasses! Plus, the EOS R5 Mark II is capable of holding focus on a moving subject even when the subject is briefly obscured (walking behind a column, for example). People Priority Shooting allows the registration of 10 people to be prioritized by the AF system—neat!

One area in which the EOS R5 Mark II might appeal over the EOS R1 is video. Recording an astounding 8K 60p video (4K 120 fps with sound, Full HD 240p) internally, this is a camera for pros in motion. 4K can be recorded in S-RAW, and RAW video is now upgraded to a bit depth of 14. Cinema EOS feature highlights include Canon Log2, C-Log3, False Color, Waveform Monitor, 4-channel audio with 24-bit LPCM, and up to 5 seconds of pre-recording. Menu terminology has been changed to match Cinema EOS. The camera body even features a full-size HDMI port!

Monitoring is comfortable on the same 5.7 million dot EVF as found in the EOS R3, and there’s an anti-flicker mode to capture LED and fluorescent lighting more effectively. Images and videos are saved in a user-configurable way using one CFexpress Type B slot and one UHS-II SDXC slot. A new, higher-amperage battery is required, the LP-E6P, which will be backward-compatible with other Canon interchangeable-lens cameras after a firmware update as a nice bonus feature. The body, of course, is dust- and weather-resistant to the same extent as the EOS R5.

The EOS R5 Mark II will be available as a standalone body or in a kit with the RF 24–105mm f/4 L IS USM.