The Canon EOS R1 is actually a PED for sports photography

Canon’s new flagship camera is finally available for purchase, four months after it was announced. And now that I have the camera back in my hands this week, my feelings are the same as that day in July when I first used it: the Canon EOS R1 is simply a photography cheat code.

The first time I shot the R1 was at BMW Park, home of the legendary Bayern Munich basketball team. I’d attended a presentation where Canon specialists told me how clever the camera’s autofocus was, light years ahead of the mighty Canon EOS R5.

I was told it was the R1 So smart that can predict when basketball players would perform an alley-oop – a play in which the ball handler throws the ball toward the basket while a teammate jumps and catches it in the air before throwing it into the hoop for a spectacular dunk. The R1, I was told, would track the ballhandler, detect that an alley was being set up and automatically shift focus to the receiving dunker.

This was nonsense. Cameras like the R5 could track the ball, or lock onto the player I told them to, of course. But without manual intervention, they wouldn’t know which player to prioritize – and they did damn sure wouldn’t be able to distinguish whether a player was throwing the ball to the basket or making one of the most elaborate setup plays in basketball.