Camera
DaVinci Resolve's latest version adds more than 100 new features
| Image: Blackmagic |
The NAB 2025 show is underway, with plenty of announcements related to broadcasting and filmmaking coming out. Among those was a lengthy livestream from Blackmagic Design that revealed multiple new products and software tools, including the latest version of its video editing platform. Blackmagic calls DaVinci Resolve 20 “a major new update which adds over 100 new features.” Unsurprisingly, many of those new features are AI-related and aimed at speeding up and simplifying the editing process.
The updates cover just about every step of the editing process and touch most aspects of the editing program. You can see all of the update details in the press release below, but there are some standout features worth mentioning. First, AI IntelliScript can automatically create timelines based on the original project script. This is done by first creating an automatic transcription of the video files and then uploading the original script text file. DaVinci Resolve chooses the best takes but provides alternative takes in additional tracks so that you can easily review those as well.
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| Image: Blackmagic |
The company says the IntelliScript doesn’t require an exact match to the original script, as similar wording is matched. You can also create a script after the fact by uploading the transcription of the master take and using that as the basis for the timeline. In a similar vein, AI Multicam SmartSwitch promises to automatically switch between multiple camera angles based on the active speaker in each scene.
Also coming to DaVinci Resolve 20 is a tool for animating subtitles. The AI Animated Subtitles feature uses the transcription tool to generate a subtitle track on a timeline, automatically animating them with highlighted text as things are spoken. AI Detect Music Beats will analyze “beat-driven music” and automatically place markers on each beat, making it easier to edit clips to the beat of the music.
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| Image: Blackmagic |
Blackmagic also announced AI Set Extender, which sounds similar to Adobe Premiere Pro’s Generative Extend. Blackmagic didn’t provide extensive information on the feature but says it “creates a scene extension to fill an entire frame based on a simple text prompt.”
While many of the standout features are AI-related, there are plenty of updates to hands-on tools as well. For example, Blackmagic Cloud support will now offer better collaboration tools. Blackmagic also changed the cut, edit and color pages when working with a vertical timeline or project, aimed at optimizing the vertical viewer without wasted space or needing to constantly zoom.
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| Image: Blackmagic |
The voiceover palette tool makes it easier to record voiceovers directly into the timeline, providing cue, record and stop controls. Plus, there’s quick access to voice isolation and dialogue leveling tools. Blackmagic also added a “full audio mixer with professional loudness metering” to the cut page, allowing users to mix and monitor audio while recording, editing and finishing their content.
“This is a massive update this year, with AI tools and new features that help to speed up every stage of our customer’s workflow” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “By automating tasks that take a long time manually or are tedious, with features such as keyframe editing, voice over palettes, live overwrite and multi-layer compositing tools, our customers are free to spend more time than ever being creative. The new processing code we’ve been rewriting over the last few years is an amazing base to be able to build these new features on. It’s exciting to see how we can provide tools with DaVinci Resolve to help our customers spend more time exploring their creativity.”
You can see a comprehensive list of all the features on the DaVinci Resolve 20 product page, or in the press release below. DaVinci Resolve 20 public beta is now available for download from the Blackmagic Design website. The standard version is free to download, however you’ll need DaVinci Resolve Studio 20 for $325 to unlock the advanced editing tools.
Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve 20
Massive update adds over 100 new features including DaVinci AI tools, keyframe editor, voice over palettes, multi-layer compositing tools plus chroma warp, Magic Mask 2 and more!
NAB 2025, Las Vegas, USA – Friday, April 4, 2025 – Blackmagic Design today announced DaVinci Resolve 20 a major new update which adds over 100 new features and AI tools such as AI IntelliScript, AI Animated Subtitles, AI Multicam SmartSwitch and AI Audio Assistant, as well as keyframe editing, voice over palettes, multi layer compositing tools, new optical flow vector tools and major updates to Magic Mask and depth map. DaVinci Resolve 20 public beta is available for download now from the Blackmagic Design web site.
The DaVinci Resolve 20 will be demonstrated on the Blackmagic Design NAB 2025 booth #SL216.
DaVinci Resolve 20 introduces more than 100 new features including powerful AI tools designed to assist customers with all stages of their workflow. Use AI IntelliScript to create timelines based on a text script, AI Animated Subtitles to animate words as they are spoken, and AI Multicam SmartSwitch to assemble a timeline with camera angles based on speaker detection. The cut and edit pages introduce a dedicated keyframe editor and voiceover palettes, and AI Audio Assistant analyzes the timeline audio and intelligently creates a professional audio mix. In Fusion, explore advanced multi layer compositing workflows. The Color Warper now includes Chroma Warp, plus Magic Mask and Depth Map have huge updates.
New features in Blackmagic Cloud include Cloud folders, which lets customers easily share extra clips, images or graphics for a project with other collaborators. All cloud content appears as virtual clips and folders until used in a project, after which it is synced locally. Customers can access large amounts of media while keeping their media pool organized.
Customers can also now review projects in Presentations with clients who don’t have a Blackmagic Cloud account. To activate guest access simply generate a URL link of the Presentation customers want to review and share it with clients. Customers can review clips, make notes on the timeline using markers and even group chat.
Cloud storage has also been updated with an icon view that displays thumbnails of all clips so customers can visually identify them and manage their media. Hovering over thumbnails lets customers scrub through the content for quick media preview. The inspector panel displays camera and clip metadata, as well as production notes.
On the cut, edit and color pages, when a vertical timeline or project is loaded, the page layouts automatically rearrange to optimize working with a vertical viewer. Tools and palettes are moved to ensure that customers have maximum use of the screen without wasted space and without the need to constantly zoom.
The voiceover palette on the cut page records a voice over track during timeline playback. Customers get cue, record, and stop controls, plus quick access to voice isolation and dialogue leveling tools. A dedicated track is added automatically. Customers can load and work with a prompter script and a countdown.
A dedicated keyframe editor in the cut and edit pages allows for finer parameter animation. Use the keyframe curves and parameter modes to edit keyframes and customize animation shape with ease controls. Customers can also use the keyframe tray below the timeline to review and navigate timeline keyframes.
The Text+ tool has been updated to include the layout’s point, text box, circle or path styles giving customers more refined control over the layout of their text graphics. When working with PSD files on a timeline, customers can choose to split the PSD layers in place in order to work with each individual layer.
The MultiText tool creates multiple text layers in one place for greater flexibility. Customers can use the inspector tabs to set individual style parameters within each text layer, including appearance, layout, warping and keyframe animation. The text list lets customers navigate, rearrange, lock, and delete layers.
On the cut page, customers can now drag directly in the viewer to live overwrite a camera angle directly into the timeline. With the sync bin active, or when in multi source mode, customers can drag horizontally to live paint at the playhead, or drag down to turn the angle into a draggable clip.
The cut page now also has a safe trimming mode to prevent crucial edits from being accidentally overwritten. Customers can drag trim points to quickly fill gaps in the timeline. When they reach a cut point, DaVinci Resolve will pause. If they do want to overwrite the edit, just keep dragging to trim the adjacent clip.
A full audio mixer with professional loudness metering has also been added to the cut page. Each channel strip has a left-right pan slider, fader, solo, and mute buttons, plus professional panning, EQ, Dynamics, and FX controls. Now customers can mix and monitor audio while they record, edit and finish their show.
On the edit page, the voiceover tool lets customers record directly into the timeline. There are quick controls to set file name, audio input and destination track. With automatic track selection and customization options like countdown and input monitoring, creating a voice over has never been easier.
On the color page, new chroma warp lets customers intuitively adjust color and saturation with a single motion in the viewer. The stroke control moves colors in one direction, while the point to point mode isolates regions for more precise hue correction. Customers can add pin points to isolate regions customers do not want to affect.
When streaming remotely, customers can choose to display power windows and other overlays on the reference monitor. This is helpful for remote workflows where the grading system is in a separate location from the colorist, or their client, and their local monitor. Customers can also now stream H.265 4:2:2.
Fusion now offers deep image compositing tools, so customers can access the depth data found in deep image EXR files. A range of new nodes allows customers to merge, transform, resize, crop, recolor, and generate holdouts. Render from Fusion’s 3D environment and export deep EXR’s with the Fusion saver node.
Support has also been added for multi-layer images across all nodes. Fusion can read multi-layer EXRs or photoshop files, preview the layers in the viewer, and access and manipulate any layer in any node. Now artists have seamless layer interaction without needing independent renders of a source file.
Vector warp, vector transform, and vector denoise are new optical flow vector tools integrated within Fusion. These tools enable intricate temporal effects by leveraging motion vectors. Utilizing a clip’s natural movement for warping and denoising presents a powerful time saving solution for artists.
Fusion’s PanoMap, spherical stabilizer, LatLong patcher, 3D VR camera and the 3D viewers have been updated to support 180-degree angle of view to allow production of immersive content. Customers can also render 3D scenes to VR180 using a spherical camera and Renderer3D for a simplified production process.
The enhanced Dome light is a 3D tool that simulates natural ambient lighting in a 3D scene. It allows the integration of 360 HDRI images for accurate reflections and global illumination. Now customers can create more realistic environments, ensuring their 3D models respond convincingly to light conditions.
Customers can now preview color page clip grades directly in the Fusion page viewer through the MediaOut node. This will give customers a better representation of their final composition and save customers time by not requiring customers to leave the Fusion page every time customers need to review the final look of a clip.
Clip EQ now features 6 bands on the cut, edit and Fairlight pages. This allows for more tonal control at the clip level, and matches the track EQ in the mixer. So now customers can easily copy and paste settings between the clip, track and EQ plug-in for more consistent, flexible and precise control.
Fairlight has two new clip processing options that lets customers adjust a target clip’s audio to match a reference clip’s level or tonal spectrum. EQ match is dynamic and is automatically automated across their clip to maintain a tonal match. Level Matcher lets customers seamlessly intercut clip sections without manual changes.
If customers have a favorite group of plugins that they need to apply together, customers can now build a Chain FX to include them, each with customized settings and saved as presets. Customers can have up to six effects within a chain and also combine Chain FX plugins for longer chains in the channel effects slots.
Fairlight now features per-channel automation mode selection allowing for more flexibility and creative control when mixing their projects. In a single pass customers can now dynamically adjust multiple individual tracks and have some channel automation settings in Snap, some in Latch, and others in Trim.
The AI Set Extender creates a scene extension to fill an entire frame based on a simple text prompt. Highlight the area customers want to extend, and missing regions caused by limited clip angles, blanking and cropping will be auto generated. Customers can even create new backgrounds behind foreground objects.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 20 also introduces powerful new features for Apple Immersive Video on Apple Vision Pro. Filmmakers can effortlessly edit, color grade, mix Spatial Audio, and deliver Apple Immersive Video captured using the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera, which is starting to roll out to an initial set of customers. Customers can pre-order URSA Cine Immersive here.
Customers can use AI IntelliScript to automatically generate timelines based on the original project script. AI IntelliScript will match the transcribed audio in media clips to the script and construct a timeline of the best selected takes, with any alternative takes placed on additional tracks for editor review.
AI Dialogue Matcher is a powerful tool that automatically matches the tone, level, and room environment of dialogue. Customers can match audio from two totally different clips for audio consistency. Match dialogue recorded in different environments, on different devices, or on shoots spanning several days.
Automatically adjust a music track’s length to fit a video using AI Music Extender. The audio clip is analyzed and a music edit is extended or shortened to match. Customers get four versions to chose from, visual edit indicators, and the ability to decompose sections. It’s a fast, flexible way to tailor music to visuals.
Keep a viewer’s attention in videos with subtitles that are animated as words are spoken using AI Animated Subtitles. Use the transcription tool to generate a subtitle track on their timeline and then drag the animated Fusion title templates onto the track header to change the appearance and animation style of the text.
In the edit page, AI Multicam SmartSwitch automatically switches multi-cam angles based on the active speaker in a scene. After creating a multi-cam clip, click SmartSwitch in the multi-cam viewer. SmartSwitch analyzes and automatically selects clip angles based on audio, and lip movement in the video.
The revolutionary AI Voice Convert tool applies a pre-generated voice model to an existing voice recording, retaining its inflections, pitch variation, and emotion. Improve their own voice if recorded in a noisy environment, or create perfect ADR using the original actor’s own voice.
DaVinci Resolve’s SuperScale now features 3x and 4x enhanced upscaling, ensuring the highest visual quality of all media in a project, regardless of source resolution. Perfect for working with archival material or stock footage that needs to be matched to the deliverable resolution.
AI Magic Mask has been updated for even more accurate tracking within a single mode. Use points to select people, objects and regions, and paint tools to refine the selection faster than ever. Magic Mask intuitively tracks the motion of a selected area, even around obstructions and in low quality clips.
The AI Depth Map effect has been updated for faster scene analysis and more practical mattes. Quickly isolate foreground characters to make them pop against their environment or apply lens blur to the background of a shot. Customers can refine the resulting matte and isolate specific depths for grading.
AI IntelliCut provides powerful clip-based audio processing, automating time consuming tasks in seconds. Remove silence removes low level or silent areas for a cleaner audio track. Customers can split dialogue into a separate track per speaker for individual mixing and create an ADR list to replace dialogue.
When a timeline has audio elements that are not mixed or balanced, AI Audio Assistant can automatically create a professional audio mix. Audio Assistant organizes tracks, evens out dialogue levels, adjusts sound effects and music to the dialogue track, and automatically creates a mastered final mix.
When editing to the beat, customers can use the AI Detect Music Beats function to analyze audio clips containing beat-driven music and automatically place markers to indicate beats. Customers can use these as visual indicators for cut points, or drag to snap clips to the beat’s markers at the nearest frame.
“This is a massive update this year, with AI tools and new features hat help to speed up every stage of our customer’s workflow” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “By automating tasks that take a long time manually or are tedious, with features such as keyframe editing, voice over palettes, live overwrite and multi-layer compositing tools, our customers are free to spend more time than ever being creative. The new processing code we’ve been rewriting over the last few years is an amazing base to be able to build these new features on. It’s exciting to see how we can provide tools with DaVinci Resolve to help our customers spend more time exploring their creativity”
DaVinci Resolve 20 Features
- Import Blackmagic Cloud Shared folders to media pool.
- New optimized UI layouts option for vertical videos on cut, edit and color pages.
- Voiceover palette with cue, voice tools and teleprompter.
- Improved keyframing with dedicated curve view and timeline drawer.
- Text+ paragraph, line wrapping and bounding tools.
- MultiText tool with layers and easy transform, clip and wrap controls.
- Live overwrite now supports edit keys and search dial.
- Mouse drag to live overwrite multi source and sync bin.
- Trim with safe edit avoids overwriting adjacent clips.
- Full featured audio mixer added to cut page.
- Voiceover tool with record and monitor options in edit page.
- Chroma Color Warper grading.
- Display viewer overlays for remote monitoring.
- Stream and monitor H.265 4:2:2 on supported hardware.
- Deep image compositing toolset.
- Multi layer pipelining for OpenEXR, PSD and stereoscopic 3D.
- Vector warping toolset for image patching and cleanup.
- Fusion support for 180 VR.
- 3D Scene Dome Light.
- View color page grade in media out node on Fusion page.
- Clip EQ now features 6 bands.
- EQ and Level Matcher processes match tone and clip levels.
- EQ and Gain now also available as Fairlight FX plugins.
- Fairlight Chain FX to create and restore frequently chained plugins.
- Resolve FX AI Set Extender.
- AI IntelliScript creates timelines with a user provided script.
- AI Dialogue Matcher matches clip tone, level and reverberance.
- AI Music Editor automatically edits music to desired length.
- AI animated subtitles highlights or animates spoken words.
- AI Multicam SmartSwitch for automatic angle switching.
- AI Voice Convert with built-in and user trainable models.
- AI SuperScale now includes 3x and 4x enhanced upscaling.
- AI Magic Mask v2 with paint brush.
- AI Resolve FX Depth Map v2.
- AI IntelliCut to remove silences.
- AI IntelliCut to checkerboard dialogue by speaker.
- AI IntelliCut to generate ADR Cues using transcription speaker info.
- AI Audio Assistant automatically creates a finished mix.
- AI Detect Music Beats displays and allows beat snapping.
Availability and Price
DaVinci Resolve 20 public beta is available now for download from the Blackmagic Design web site.
Nikon’s been on a roll this week. Following firmware updates for the Z9 and Z50II, the company released version 2.3.0 of NX Tether, its free tethered shooting software. NX Tether allows photographers and videographers to connect their Nikon camera directly to a computer for real-time control over focus, exposure, white balance and more, all while using a larger screen for improved precision.
Users can download and enhance photos on their computers, as NX Tether is compatible with Nikon’s NX Studio and third-party tools, including Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. This latest update enhances compatibility and introduces new features that streamline studio and on-location workflows. Let’s take a look at some of the updates:
- Expanded Camera Support: NX Tether 2.3.0 makes tethered shooting available for Nikon Z5II users.
- Live View Accessibility: Live view functionality is now available when connected to a Nikon Zf.
- Framing Guide Display: The addition of a framing guide in the live view window helps with precise composition, which is especially beneficial for video shoots and detailed product photography.
- Power Zoom Position Memory: Users can save and load power zoom positions on compatible models like the Z9, Z8, and Zf, for consistent framing across sessions.
- Pixel Shift Photography: Enhanced support for pixel shift photography is available on the Z8 and Zf, enabling higher-resolution imagery.
- Slow-motion Video Recording: The Zf now supports slow-motion video recording.
- Birds Detection Feature: The Zf now supports the “Birds” detection feature, which improves autofocus performance when photographing avian subjects.
NX Tether’s interface mirrors the controls found on Nikon cameras. The application is compatible with macOS versions Sequoia 15, Sonoma 14, and Ventura 13, as well as Microsoft’s Windows 10 and 11 software. Full details on camera compatibility can be found on Nikon’s website.
Nikon’s NX Tether 2.3.0 offers updates that enhance the tethered shooting experience, especially for users of the Z5II and Zf models. It’s a valuable and free tool for photographers and videographers looking for efficient, real-time control over their cameras.
For a visual overview of NX Tether’s capabilities, you may find this demonstration from Nikon’s YouTube page, recorded last year, helpful:
World Press Photo has announced its 2025 Photo of the Year, along with two finalists, highlighting some of the most impactful photojournalism of the past year. 3,778 photographers submitted 59,320 photographs, and DPReview recently covered the category winners. This year’s top honor, revealed last night, was bestowed upon Samar Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photojournalist based in Doha, for The New York Times.
Her winning image is a portrait of Mahmoud Ajjour, a young boy wounded while fleeing an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in March 2024. The boy had turned his back to urge his family to move faster when an explosion tore through the street, severing one of his arms and damaging the other. It’s a stark depiction of the toll ongoing violence has taken on the denizens of the region.
Elouf was evacuated from Gaza in late 2023. She shares an apartment complex with Ajjor, the double amputee subject of her image. In recent months, she has continued to document the lives of a small number of severely-wounded Gazans who, like Mahmoud, were able to leave for medical treatment.
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Mahmoud Ajjor has a modest goal: to receive prosthetic limbs and live like other children. By the end of 2024, the United Nations estimated that Gaza had the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Copyright: © Samar Abu Elouf, for The New York Times |
Two other finalists were selected as runners-up: John Moore for Night Crossing, depicting Chinese migrants warming themselves at the US-Mexico border at night. Musuk Nolte was also recognized for Droughts in the Amazon, capturing a young man bringing food to his mother in the drought-ridden village of Manacapuru.
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Moore’s image of Chinese migrants warming themselves after a rainstorm, at the US-Mexico border, captures a moment of vulnerability that contrasts with how migration is depicted in mainstream talking points.
Copyright: © John Moore, United States, Getty Images |
“I remain endlessly grateful for the photographers who, despite the personal risks and emotional costs, record these stories to give all of us the opportunity to understand, empathise, and be inspired to action,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo’s Executive Director.
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A young man carries food to his mother in Manacapuru, a village in the Amazon that was once accessible by boat. Now, the river has dried up due to drought, and he walks several kilometers across the cracked riverbed. A harsh reality: the world’s largest rainforest increasingly resembles a desert.
Copyright: © Musuk Nolte, Peru/Mexico, Panos Pictures, Bertha Foundation |
The awarded stories will be shown to millions as part of the World Press Photo annual traveling exhibition in over 60 locations worldwide. These locations include the premiere in Amsterdam and then move on to other significant metropolises, including London, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest. More information about the images and photographers can be found on the World Press Photo site.
| Canon EOS R1 | RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z | 200mm | F4 | 1/1000 sec | ISO 3200 Photo: Mitchell Clark |
Canon’s EOS R1 is the company’s first ‘1 series’ flagship camera to be mirrorless and is specifically aimed at sports and action photographers. Given its narrow focus, we wanted to test it out at a professional sports game – preferably one supported by its Action Priority autofocus mode, which Canon says will recognize when players are performing a specific action and automatically focus on them.
Thankfully, we were able to get a media pass to photograph a Spokane Velocity FC game, which was the perfect opportunity to put the EOS R1 to the test. A caveat before we start: I am by no means a professional sports photographer, nor am I a football expert. However, part of the pitch for Action Priority autofocus is that it’s able to react to what’s happening in the game automatically, which made this an especially interesting test of its abilities, even though most people looking likely to buy an R1 are fully capable of shooting a game without it.
So how’d it do? Quite well, I found. It made shooting feel natural; I would move the camera along with the action, and most of the time, it just handled subject selection, making sure the player in control of the ball was the one in focus. However, it clearly wasn’t a magical replacement for talent, either. There were a few times it decided to track a player who wasn’t involved in the action, though it was relatively easy to correct it by manually putting the AF tracking point over the player.
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| RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z | 200mm | F2.8 | 1/1000 sec | ISO 1600 Photo: Mitchell Clark |
Despite its occasional missteps, upon reviewing my shots, I found that Action Priority mode got me far better results than the combination of my football-tracking skills and standard subject recognition did. The EOS R1 was very tenacious at tracking people and excelled at keeping them in focus – which is great if you have the skill and knowledge necessary to know who to track and when to start tracking someone else.
I actually got the chance to talk to someone with those skills. One of the professional photographers at the game asked what I was shooting with, then said they also use an EOS R1; previously, they’d used an EOS R3. When I asked what they thought of the Action Priority mode, they said they didn’t think it made much of a difference. Given that they’d essentially trained themselves to do what it does, it’s not surprising that they didn’t find it as useful as I – someone without that training – did. However, they did find the EOS R1’s standard subject detection to be stickier than the EOS R3’s, especially when players were passing in front of and behind each other.
They were very fond of the camera’s Eye Control autofocus, where the camera automatically places the focus point on whatever you’re looking at. Despite having calibrated it a few times, I couldn’t get it to work reliably enough for me to be an asset rather than a liability. I tried it for a little bit at the game but ended up turning it off. However, it’s easy to see how it could improve the shooting experience if it does work for you – rather than relying on the camera to figure out what player is important, you can just follow the action with your eye.
Getting back to Action Priority mode, I did bump up against a few limitations with the system. It’s only available when using the electronic shutter and can’t be used with the EOS R1’s anti-flicker feature. While the camera’s readout is jaw-droppingly quick – I didn’t notice any rolling shutter artifacts on soccer balls in mid-flight – you will still see banding on electronic screens and under some LED lights.
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You can eliminate banding by switching to the mechanical shutter, but doing so means giving up some of the EOS R1’s features and capabilities.
Electronic shutter | RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z | 200mm | F2.8 | 1/1000 sec | Edited to taste in ACR |
The former was definitely an issue at the Spokane One stadium, and I found myself having to choose between giving myself a better chance of capturing the game with Action Priority and not having some quite distracting artifacts in the background. With that said the mechanical shutter on the EOS R1 can only shoot at 12fps instead of 40, which helped make the decision a bit easier.
I also found myself wishing that the pre-burst capture feature was configurable. The amount it buffers is based on your shooting speed: Canon’s manual says that in the 40 shots per second mode, it’ll buffer around half a second, but there’s no setting to control for how long or how many shots you’d like it to buffer.
Because my shooting style involves starting focus tracking with a half-press of the shutter button well before actually taking the photo, I wound up filling almost a third of my storage in the first half-hour of the game since every shot I took saved the 20 shots before it. Rather than trying to get myself used to back-button focusing, which doesn’t start pre-capture*, in the middle of the game, I just turned it off, but I feel like I could’ve gotten a few more good shots if I could’ve used the pre-burst capture, but set to only save five or ten photos from before the shutter press.
* And, in fact, cannot be set to start pre-capture, something that irked the pro I talked to.
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It took me a while to get a header shot, which I strongly suspect would’ve been easier with pre-capture.
RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z + RF 1.4x Teleconvertor 150mm | F4 | 1/100 | ISO 320 |
Also, Canon, while I have your attention, why can’t I set one of my custom buttons to turn pre-burst capture on and off? To get around this, I followed Brian Worley’s trick of setting up a custom mode that’s exactly the same as my manual shooting mode, except with pre-capture off, but even that’s a bad solution. For one, there’s only one button you can assign to switch between modes, but also, if I made any changes while I was shooting pre-capture, those wouldn’t be carried over when I switched modes to turn it off.
While I’ve picked a lot of nits here, there were, unsurprisingly, a lot of things the EOS R1 did right. Its buffer felt endless – during the game, the camera only ever stopped shooting when I took my finger off the shutter, and never because it had to stop and write the photos to the card. At home, I let it run at 40fps for around 20 seconds and still didn’t reach the bottom of the buffer.
The battery had a similar amount of stamina. Over the course of the 90-ish minute game I shot mostly using the viewfinder and took around 9000 photos. (If you’re not confident that you can capture the decisive moment, you might as well capture every moment.) At the end of the day, I still had three out of four bars of battery and would’ve felt quite comfortable shooting for another 90 minutes. I couldn’t have, of course, but the camera could.
That’s probably the moral of the story. It’s no shock that using the EOS R1 didn’t immediately make me a pro sports photographer. Action Priority mode did, however, let me capture moments that only pro sports photographers could’ve not so long ago, and I suspect that Eye Control could’ve done the same if I could get it to work reliably for me.
It’s easy to imagine that sort of thing being really exciting as it makes its way into more accessible models – there’s always been something of a Catch-22 where entry-level cameras aimed at beginners come with the autofocus systems that offer the least assistance. Something like Action Priority mode or Eye Control could help parents capture their children’s sporting achievements without requiring them to become pro photographers or buy high-end cameras that cost thousands of dollars.
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| RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z | 200mm | F4 | 1/1000 | ISO 1250 Photo: Mitchell Clark |
That future may be a ways off, though, and it doesn’t really help tell the story of the EOS R1, a camera almost exclusively for pros. That’s not to say that they won’t use those features, just that they’ll have different considerations when doing so; is Action Priority worth narrowing your shooting options and giving up some manual control so you can fully focus on composition and understanding the state of play, and can you rely on Eye Control when everything’s on the line?
Realistically, I’m not the person to answer those questions. However, it’s interesting that Canon added so many features designed to make a camera that’ll likely only ever be used by professionals easier to use. It’s like getting into an F1 car and discovering that, alongside all the manual controls, it actually has a quite capable self-driving system. The surprising part isn’t that the EOS R1 was up to the task of shooting the game – it’s essentially designed from the ground up to do that – but I wasn’t expecting it to also help me out so much along the way.
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