GEAR TESTS: Canon EOS R5C Mirrorless CINEMA Underwater Camera Review
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CRISTIAN DIMITRIUS Professional Filmmaker  |
I have been using the Canon R5C underwater for a year and this camera still surprises me.
Being a Netflix approved camera, it motivates me to use it even more, and capture images that can be used in future nature documentaries. It has great stock footage value, especially with the ability to shoot Canon Cinema RAW (professional 12-bit RAW footage up to 2.6Gbps). The camera is also great for stills and has a separate menu for that.
As I do more video, having the traditional Canon Cinema Line menu makes everything easier. Monitoring with a small HD monitor was easy, as the cinema menu includes false color, LUTs, waveform monitor and some more cinema features. The Canon R5C can shoot up to 120fps in 4K and 60p in 8k. This was perfect to film the sting ray's movement on the white sands of Little Cayman and other great behavior. I was always shooting in the maximum resolution and frame rate, trying to make the camera work at its limit, and never had a single overheating problem.
The Nauticam NA-R5C Housing for the Canon R5C makes everything better. As with all Nauticam housings, it is very ergonomic, I can easily access all camera features with the amazingly engineered button system, that can also be customized in the camera menu. It has one fantastic feature that solves the short battery duration problem, that on land is not as big of a deal, but UW would be a big problem. It has room for a power bank that can easily feed the camera for morning and afternoon dives. This extra battery is also what allows us to shoot 8K RAW, a feature that only works when the camera is connected to an external power source.
As a Canon shooter and cinematographer working for big productions, this is certainly still the best choice in the mirrorless world, and also my personal camera, and housing, for my diving trips.
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