 I've had this camera, the Canon EOS RA, for over a year now, and it's been a journey, but I've learned a lot along the way, so I think it's finally time for my full review. And let's start with the elephant in the room. Last time I talked to you about this camera, I was having a number of issues with it. Well, I'm happy to say those have mostly been resolved. The issue where the screen froze up and it was impossible to film anything more was fixed by Canon. The service center tried their best to fix the issue with the red halos on bright stars. They actually replaced my entire CMOS assembly, but unfortunately the red halos were still there even after Canon's valiant efforts. So, luckily with the red halos, I did discover a workaround. Thanks to a commenter on my last video, I got a crucial clue that Tenman Guide, a popular astronome magazine in Japan, had identified that the red halos may be an issue in the extended infrared response of the camera. This led me to try out different filters to see if blocking the near infrared, basically any waves longer than 700 nanometers, would work. And I was so happy to find that the Astronomic L2 clip-in filter for EOS-R cameras works great at eliminating the red flares on bright stars, while still passing the HA and S2 emission lines at over 95% transmission. Here's a comparison without the L2 filter. And now with it. And notice how the flaming star nebula is just as bright and red in both, but the red flare on the bright star is very noticeable in this first one with just the stock array while the L2 clip-in filter basically completely eliminates it. Now, for a long time, I thought this filter worked equally well with all telescopes and lenses. But recently I discovered this is not the case. I found there are some lenses where the downsides of using the L2 clip-in completely outweigh the upsides, the red halo fix. One such lens identified as the Sigma 14 millimeter f1.8 art lens. And this has nothing to do with this particular filter. I think it's just that the lens design is very sensitive to any small change in back focus. So I know this is early on in the review, but this is a major con of this camera, the EOS-R A for me, which is that I found it work around for the red halo issue that Canon couldn't fix, which is this clip-in filter. But now I'm finding that this clip-in filter is causing other issues with certain lens combinations. So it's just a little bit complex. I want to stress that this is a recent discovery I've made, so I don't have all the answers yet. But I'm going to try to keep an up-to-date list of my test results in the text version of this review on my website. Now, let me wrap up this section by saying the red halos don't bother everyone. There are a number of reasons other Canon EOS-R A users may not see these red halos. For instance, they may be using a filter that blocks the IR, even if it's not called specifically an IR cut filter like this one. For example, I recently processed some data from Astro-Backyard, Trevor Jones, he was using a radian triad filter. The radian filter is a multi-bandpass filter that also blocks the IR. So as expected, when I looked at his data, I didn't see any red halos on bright stars. I'd say the red halos are most problematic if you're planning to use the camera for deep stacked images with wide-fast lenses. And you might ask, so why am I saying stacked images with wide-angle lenses? Well, I found that the red halo effect is typically not strong enough to be an issue in a single image. So if you're doing like single image Milky Way shooting, if that's your thing, I can still fully recommend the Canon EOS-R A to you. And I probably wouldn't even get the L2 clip-in filter in that case because I don't think you're going to see red halos in single images. But I still plan to do some wide-angle, tracked and stacked images with this camera. And in that case, if I'm using a lens that the L2 has a problem with, I'm probably just going to fix the red halos in Photoshop. It's actually not too bad to do most of the time. I just make a quick feathered selection and then bring down the saturation a little bit. That won't work every time, but it works a lot of the times. I also just want to put in a really quick note here to say I fully understand that artifacts on bright stars caused by the camera as opposed to the optics is not only an issue with the Canon EOS-R A. I've had various artifacts with various cameras, some of them quite similar to the RA artifacts, meaning red halos offset. But I'm not going to get into big comparisons here because there are just too many factors to consider when going down that rabbit hole. So to sum up on the red halos, my advice, if you're considering purchasing this camera is to think about your style of shooting and consider if this red halo issue will be a deal breaker for you or if it's something you're either willing to live with or deal with. For me, I found I can deal with it. For most optics that I use, that means using, again, this astronomical L2 clip-in just goes right into the camera body and works most of the time. For everything else, I can fix the red halos in Photoshop. Okay, let's now talk about the most misunderstood but also the most amazing feature of this camera, which is how it handles colors for daytime photography with a white-bound shift in the firmware of the camera. And to me, the most confusing thing about this feature is that it is unadvertised and undocumented. There is no special manual for the RA, it just comes with the manual for the EOS-R, and I can't find any documentation on the Canon website about how this feature works or even that it exists. I did know about this feature before I bought the camera in spring 2020 due to Alan Dyer's reports on the RA in Sky and Telescope magazine, which I read every month. Alan Dyer found that when you shoot in RAW, the Canon EOS RA automatically in all white balance modes shifts the white balance through firmware. What this means is if you shoot RAW, there's no need to set a custom white balance with a gray card or an original white balance filter, as you would have to with a third-party modified camera. Now, something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is the color correction doesn't apply the same way to JPEGs shot with the camera. And let me show you a quick comparison here. This is an auto white balance JPEG straight from a Canon ESR on the left and on the right is an auto white balance JPEG straight from the Canon EOS RA, all settings matched and using the exact same lens. As you can see, the color shift is pretty dramatic. Now, here is a comparison of the RAW files, same exact shots, but just the RAW files with nothing done to them other than opening them up in Adobe Camera RAW and saving them as JPEGs. And you can see the white balance shift to correct the colors in the RA works pretty well when you shoot RAW, but much less so with JPEG, where it's very saturated. I'll note that I had Maggie pick this sweatshirt in particular for this comparison, as I knew it was an example of clothing that really changed colors with the RA. And I'd say that black clothing in particular has a tendency for pretty dramatic color shifts with the RA. But other than dark black clothing, sunsets, some flowers, I found that when shooting in RAW, the daytime colors with the RA are pretty good matched to the RA. I did a number of comparisons. And in fact, let's play a little game. I mean, I put up two images with match settings, same lens in both cases. And I want you to guess, you can write this down, which came from the R and which came from the RA. Alright, let's see if you guessed right. Camera A was the RA and Camera B was the YASR. I do see some differences. The RA is slightly more vibrant. But when shooting JPEG straight from the camera, the color shift from the RA sensor definitely appears way more dramatic than it does in RAW. And I should also note that the JPEG representation is what you see on the screen. Even if you're shooting RAW, you get the JPEG look in playback mode, which does make sense. And I'm guessing this is why Canon doesn't talk about this feature anywhere. It may just be too confusing to explain exactly how it works. But in any case, most of the time, I have to say, I'm perfectly happy with the daytime color performance of the RA as a RAW shooter. I usually don't change the colors much. And remember, though, the key thing is that it's only when shooting RAW that I feel that RA's colors are somewhat accurate and not super accurate. With video performance, it's a different thing. You know, the default colors are closer to the super saturated JPEG style. But I've been using the RA to film almost all of my YouTube videos. I use it in 4K, which does do a one by one pixel crop of the center of the sensor. And in my opinion, that looks quite good and sharp. I don't mind the, you know, the crop. I do use a profile called log. And log is desaturated, it's very flat. And so I find that I can get a lot out of that and don't have any issue with color. Sometimes I will use my X-Rite color chart. But I've also shot videos without remembering to use this. And I think they came out just fine, at least for YouTube. I'm not super worried about getting things incredibly color accurate because I'm not a professional. But I don't think that a professional filmmaker or a photographer who does a lot of daytime shooting would necessarily gravitate towards this camera anyways. But for hobbyists like me, I think it's perfectly fine. If you are a JPEG-only shooter, you might not want to get this camera because I think the colors are a little bit too saturated in JPEG. And then if you're a filmmaker and the video, you want it to look perfect straight out of camera and you have no interest in using log or applying, you know, a basic color grade to your footage, again, this camera might not be for you. With all of that out of the way, let me just tell you why I think this is an amazing feature. I take a lot of photos and shoot a lot of video. I fully expected when I bought the RA that I would want to hold on to my Canon 5D Mark III, which to that point had been my main everyday camera for many years. But I found that a few months into owning the RA that my 5D Mark III was just sitting on the shelf because the switch to mirrorless was a lot of fun for me. It was so much faster and more responsive. And I did want to do one more final test. So I brought both cameras on a hike to see the fall colors in New Hampshire. And I found that looking at these pictures, even the image performance, when I looked at them side by side, every single time I picked the RA. And for video, it was no contest. The RA is a way better, more versatile video camera. So I sold my 5D Mark III and the RA is my daily driver camera these days. Would this have happened if I instead had bought a EOS R and had it modified for astrophotography? I'm pretty sure no. And the reason is, is because if I want to go take a snapshot of a person or a landscape or my cat or whatever, I don't want to worry about finding a special original white balance filter or a gray card to set a custom white balance. It just takes too long. It's too much of a hassle. And it would make me feel like the camera is too much of a chore to use as a daily driver. I have modified DSLRs and I only use them for astrophotography or infrared photography. Because I don't, you know, when you just take a photo and you don't set a custom white balance, it's completely hard to edit because it comes out all pink. So if I'd bought an R and modified it, I would have saved about $400 off the cost of the RA. However, because the RA is so versatile, I was able to sell my 5D Mark III for $800, which I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing with a modified R. So anyways, in the end, this undocumented white balance shift feature of the RA when shooting RAW photos and the log mode and video also looks nice is what makes the camera's price actually pretty reasonable for me as a Canon shooter who wanted to jump to a mirrorless camera. Sticking to the price of the camera for a minute, another question I often get is if one is only planning to use the RA for astrophotography, is it still worth $2,500 or is there a better camera option? If you want to be able to use the new RF lenses, I'd suggest save about $400, get a modified R. If you don't care about daytime shooting, the only thing you're going losing by not getting the RA is the 30-time zoom feature, which I'll talk about later, but I don't think the 30-time zoom alone is worth $400, even though I do really actually love the 30-time zoom feature. If you don't care about compatibility with RF lenses and you also don't mind using a computer in the field, in that case, I'd suggest a QHY 268C. And I know that's not a fully fair comparison since the 268 is a crop sensor and these other cameras I'm talking about are full frame, but honestly, if it's just for astrophotography, especially if it's on a telescope, a cool dedicated CMOS astro camera with one of these incredible Sony sensors that are back illuminated will beat a modded Canon R or RA hands down just in terms of raw image performance. Because these astro cameras calibrate really well, they're much lower noise, but again, that's a crop sensor camera. If you did want a full frame astro camera, they do make those two, but not for under $2,500. So to finish off this little section about competitors, if only buying for astrophotography, other Canon R cameras, the R6 I don't think is a good value for astrophotography. The modified R is definitely a better contender, I'd say. The modified RP could also be good, but the sensor is substantially noisier, but that makes sense with the price they're selling it at. If you're into Nikon or Sony, there are of course a bunch more choices in full frame mirrorless, you could mod it around the same price point as the Canon R, like the Nikon Z6 or the Sony a7 III. I don't own any Nikon or Sony cameras since I have so much Canon glass and accessories, it really doesn't make sense for me to own a different brand or to switch brands. So I can't tell you much about these cameras other than if you aren't locked into a brand like I am with Canon, then you maybe should consider Sony or Nikon. Okay, the next thing I want to talk about is the lens mount, adapters, and lens selection. This is a mirrorless camera with Canon's RF mount, which is their new mirrorless mount, and by getting rid of the flip-up mirror, they were able to shorten the flange focal distance from 44 millimeters, which is what their EF mount uses, to just 20 millimeters in the RF mount. And by moving the lens elements closer to the sensor, it opens up new lens designs, and although I haven't purchased any RF glass yet, I did rent Canon's RF 85 millimeter f1.2, and wow, that is a very impressive lens. Here's a single JPEG image taken with it and the RA, and that's really a match made in Astro Heaven, the RA and the RF 85. I just wish the RF 85 weren't so expensive or I'd really get one in a second. One element for me of thinking of getting the RA was I was interested in RF lenses, and now I'm even more interested that I've tried that 85 millimeter because it's I think it's the best 85 millimeter I've ever used. Another element though was I already had this large collection of EF lenses, and that extra 24 millimeters introduced by not having the mirror opens up some interesting possibilities. For instance, Canon has already released a drop in filter that goes in between EF lenses and any Canon R body. And what this means is that I can use much smaller, less expensive filters that go in between the lens and the camera body. HuTec is offering a wide range of IDAS filters that work with the official Canon adapter. For instance, I have their Nebula Booster 2 filter as well as their Clear Glass filter. And the Clear Glass filter is a must because you can't leave this adapter empty. It's shorter than the standard EF filter to account for the back focus shift from using a glass filter in the light path. So if you try to use the adapter empty and just tape over the hole, you'll find that you won't come to infinity focus with many lenses is what I found. Another thing I'd like to point out is that you can actually adapt standard two inch astronomical filters to this drop in system. You will need a spanner wrench, and then you can order 3D printed parts from Pierre in Canada, who sells them. I'll put his website link in the description. And Pierre also sells handy 3D printed holders for keeping all of your drop in filters organized like this. Now in addition to all these drop in filter adapter options, you can also still use clip in filters, one of which I've already mentioned. You know, I'm using the Astronomic L2 clip in filter and Astronomic offers their full line of astronomical filters for the Canon EOSR bodies. So you have a lot of filter choices with this camera. The next thing I want to talk about is using the camera itself. I've like the usability. I've used Canon touch screens a number of times in the past with like the modern rebel line. And I've always found them very responsive. The UI makes sense to me. The screen is fully articulating, which is great for astrophotography because you're often pointed up at the sky in general between the flip out screen, which is very responsive, very fast, and this little setting screen up here at the top of the camera and all the normal buttons and tiles. I find this camera very easy to use once I got used to where everything was located and got that into my muscle memory. There is one thing that's sort of a miss, which is this little multifunction bar to the right of the viewfinder here. That didn't work for me because I found my thumb was too big and I was constantly just accidentally touching it. So I turned that off completely, which I'm glad you can do in the menus. And in fact, you can do a lot of customizations of how all of the camera buttons and dials work through the menu system. That said, I think overall the menu design is just okay for Canon. I think Canon really missed the mark by not adding in the additional menu features or options for the RA over the R. For example, there is no internal interval timer. It would make so much sense for the RA to have an internal interval timer that would have no limit on exposure length. The RA does have an internal bulb timer, but it can only be used to take one photo at a time. So what I need as a deep sky astrophotographer is a way to program a sequence of long exposures. The only way to do that with the RA is to use a tethered computer and software over a USB 3 cable or even more often what I do is use an external intervalometer. It's just sort of like a remote where you can put in a sequence of exposures. Of course, the problem with a tethered computer or an intervalometer is that they're a single point of failure like if you ran out of battery or it just ended up not working and then your night is over. Canon could have avoided that by just including an intervalometer in their menu as another option. Another missed opportunity is there's a buried option in the custom function menu five called release shutter without lens. When you buy the RA, this function is turned off, meaning you can't take a photo unless connected to a lens that's providing electronic communication to the camera. And this is really stupid for an astro camera. They should have turned this setting on by default so the new user of this camera doesn't connect to a telescope and think their RA is broken because it won't take a picture. One cool thing Canon did add to the RA firmware is a 30x zoom in live view and this can be really handy for zooming way in and focusing on the stars even with very wide angle lenses. And I've now been out several nights with the R which I'm filming with right now and the RA side by side with wide angle lenses and it's much easier to focus on the RA as I can actually see the stars when I'm focusing zoomed in. The R goes five times and then 10 times zoom the RA goes five times and 30 times. There is no option on the RA to ever get 10 times zoom goes five times 30 times all the time. This does make it more difficult to focus manually on landscape features or things that are closer to the camera and I've talked to landscape astrophotographers who want desperately for it to go five times 10 times then 30 times and that would make a lot of sense or at least have that as an option you can enable. While I'm on the subject of focus another interesting aspect is auto focusing on the stars with fast lenses at dark sites. This is not something I don't think that's unique to the RA but it was new to me and I was pretty amazed to find you can just tap on a bright star on the screen and then any fast lens seems to do a good job now of quickly finding autofocus if there's enough contrast with the the night sky. I've done this several times now I tap a bright star with the autofocus on the camera focuses and then immediately takes a photo I then check the photo in playback mode and if it looks good I just carefully switch the lens with the manual switch back to manual focus and it will retain that focus position from the autofocus and this is a really easy way to focus when it works it's not a foolproof method because I have had it occasionally not work but between the tap autofocus and a 30 time zoom I've had a better time focusing with wide angle lenses than I ever have which is a big deal for me because wide angle lenses don't work very well with a bottom-up mask since the stars are so small it's very hard if not impossible to see the diffraction pattern from a mask. Last thing about the usability of this camera is Canon has continued to update their LPE6 style battery which I have many of the newer ones are the LPE6N and the only difference is the old ones have an 1800 milliamp hour and the new ones have 1865 milliamp hour. Astrophotography is interesting in terms of battery life and battery conversations because so much of the time when doing astrophotography we're shooting long exposures and the screen turns off when taking an exposure and so this can dramatically increase battery life as the always-on screen is a major drain with mirrorless cameras but if you're most of the time you're taking exposures the screen is off that saves a lot of battery. Another thing I do is I turn screen brightness down all the way and that's in the menus too. With those two things combined turning screen brightness down and taking longer exposures I find that if I start the night with a fully charged battery I'll still have a little bit left at the end of a good six to seven hours of shooting. Another thing worth mentioning quickly is the performance of the sensor inside the Canon EOS RA in regards to noise at different ISO values. The sensor is basically the same sensor it looks like that Canon used in the Canon 5D Mark IV in terms of specs but of course the RA has a different filter stack in front of that sensor. Canon has always laid behind Sony and Nikon in terms of ISO invariance which is the measure of how much the noise changes at different ISO values. Read noise will almost always go down as we increase the ISO but invariance is a question of how much does it go down. Is it dropping more dramatically which is a camera that's very variant or does it basically stay the same which is an invariant camera. The reason this is important is it's always better to use the lowest ISO we can get away with because at lower ISOs we have a larger full well capacity which can then translate to a wider range of brightness values that the camera can record. We can look at ISO invariance by plotting the read noise and electrons of various camera models on Bill Clapp's excellent website Photon to Photos and if we compare the Canon R to the RA you can see the RA does very slightly better I'm not sure exactly how to account for that but I did send Bill Clapp some data from my personal RA to check and he said it was consistent with the other RA he tested which you can see has slightly better noise performance than the R. Another comparison on here I think it's worth making to is the Nikon D810a which is Nikon's last astrophotography camera and the last full-frame astro interchangeable lens camera before the RA. It's still considered a legendary camera for what it's capable of and as you can see the RA is besting it in terms of just read noise figures from ISO 400 onwards and if we look at a more modern Nikon camera like a mirrorless like the Z6 you can see the RA is not quite as good but it's holding its own if we go to their top of the line the Nikon Z7 that's definitely a very low noise camera. I should also say this does not tell you the whole picture of how these cameras perform for astrophotography because fixed pattern noise, unadvertised raw noise reduction and banding can be issues with many cameras including all of the ones I'm comparing. A lot of times the best question is how well does any fixed pattern noise and banding calibrate out when using bias darks and flats and I can say with the RA calibration does a pretty good job but I have noticed increased banding at lower ISOs so I typically use the RA at a minimum of ISO 800 if I don't dither and I'm subtracting heavy light pollution from an image the fixed pattern noise can definitely be bad even at high ISO but that's true of any camera I've tested from a dark site with a reasonable amount of signal I think the Canon RA really shines and banding shouldn't be that big an issue at least not anymore than any other modern Canon camera. Okay I've been sprinkling images I've taken with the camera in here and there in the review but I'd just like to take a moment to share a number of images I've taken with the camera over the past year and I'll just quickly share the details of their capture. Unfortunately I still haven't found time to do a really long integration like you know at least 10 hours with the RA so all my photos so far with it range from about one to four total hours here's this is my first light with the camera this is the very first night I had it this is just under an hour of 90 second exposures with an 86 millimeter refractor from a portal five site here's my first test using the IDAS nebula booster to drop in filter with the camera this is a faint supernova remnant called the jellyfish nebula here's my first dusty region image with the RA something I'm really into showing that you can bring up really faint stuff with the camera and again this was a fairly limited integration just three and a half hours for this one I used the Rokinon 135 telephoto lens on a sky watcher star adventurer with that exact same gear I later did another region of very faint nebulosity this is the integrated flux nebula or IFN around Polaris and one of my personal favorites I did this with an 8 millimeter circular fisheye lens and a mix of the nebula booster to filter and the IDAS clear filter and I think that came out really nice another pretty limited just 1.3 hours and here's about one hour of 30 second exposures of their Ryan constellation with my Canon 200 prime lens and then this last one I'll show this is untracked so just the Canon RA and the Canon RF 85 millimeter at f 1.2 on a fixed tripod 568 exposures at just two seconds each for 20 minutes total and for considering those specs I find this picture pretty amazing how much nebulosity would come out with two second untracked exposures well there's actually plenty more to say I could like go on about this camera for hours but I need to stop and get this review out I plan on keeping my RA for a long time so maybe there will be more videos to come probably I can say after getting past that early rough patch I've come to really enjoy the camera and if you enjoyed this review please consider subscribing to the channel or supporting me on patreon till next time this has been Nico Carver, Clear Skies