5 years with the Canon EOS R5: this is the camera I will NEVER sell

For most people, July 2020 is a tough time to remember. That's because it was the middle of COVID lockdown – that bizarre haze of days, weeks and months that all blur into one another. But I remember it very clearly, because this was when I got my Canon EOS R5 – one of only two cameras I've preordered to receive at launch.

Not everyone was so lucky. Due to COVID shutting the planet down, there were enormous production and shipping delays to just about everything. So while the R5 technically launched on July 09 2025, it would be months before most customers would get their hands on their cameras.

Truthfully, though, I'd already been using the R5 for quite some time before that. Even COVID couldn't stop camera reviewers, and I'd been lucky enough to play with it extensively ahead of launch – and it was that playtime that convinced me to put down four grand of my hard-earned cash on this camera. It really was – and still is – that good.

I wrote about how the Canon EOS R5 is a cheat code for wildlife photography, thanks to its ungodly good autofocus. Even today, five years later, there aren't many cameras that can beat this one when it comes to AF performance.

The R5 took a lot of flak for "overheating issues", in that deliriously innocent time before most folks realized that pretty much all cameras overheat when you record 4K in its highest quality – let alone 8K. And remember, the EOS R5 was the first consumer camera that could capture 8K.

But while I found 8K video interesting, far more fascinating was Canon's 8K Frame Grab. Using this, the R5 could essentially take screenshots from its videos that were better than other cameras' "proper" photos – crisp, clean 35MP shots that offered a great hack for getting fantastic stills with minimal skills.

Obviously the fantastic 45MP sensor rewards those who do have the skills to squeeze the most out of its mammoth resolution – now officially the highest resolution of any Canon camera (since the demise of the 50MP EOS 5DS/R DSLRs). But if 45MP somehow wasn't enough for you, Canon firmwared in the ability to shoot 400MP photos on the R5.

The in-body image stabilization was also absolutely stellar. Canon had never dipped its toe into the world of IBIS – not in the DSLR days, not during its first crack at mirrorless with the EOS M system, and not with its first EOS R cameras. But when it finally did it… boy, it did it. Truly rock-solid stability, putting other full-frame manufacturers to shame.

My life has changed a lot in the half-decade of the EOS R5's existence. In the five years I've owned this camera, I've written off two cars, been in a life-changing car wreck, ended two relationships and got engaged. In some ways, the R5 has been the most consistent thing in my life.

I've taken it on countless shoots: mostly portraiture, a lot of wildlife, a little bit of sports, and a boatload of odds-and-sods shots for this website. Indoors, outdoors, rain, shine, hot, cold, stills, video – it has never once let me down. It's the most dependable body I've ever used, helped in no small part by relying on CFexpress Type B as its primary storage format – which is as robust as it comes.

Through it all, quality and consistency have been the calling cards of the Canon EOS R5. The autofocus is so good that you really can't miss, and the file fidelity is so good that you really can't complain – Canon's color science is renowned for a reason, the 45MP sensor delivers delicious results, and the glass… oh, the glass.

I've been lucky enough to use every lens for the EOS R system, but the best Canon RF lenses really are the best of the best. I can't tell you how many nights I lost sleep, trying to decide whether to buy the RF 85mm f/1.2 or the bokehlicious RF 85mm f/1.2 DS (Defocus Smoothing) version. And I can't tell you how close I came to just buying them both.

But that's how good the glass for this system is. And on the R5, the best glass is almost impossibly good. Though that hasn't stopped me slapping on vintage Helios lenses as well as my older DSLR glass – and I still got fantastic results from them.

It's been an incredible five years with this camera, but of course there's an elephant standing in the room: it has been superseded by the Canon EOS R5 Mark II. Which, I'll be the first to admit, is a superior camera. So why, then, am I not abandoning the OG?

Because the original R5 was ridiculously overpowered when it launched back in July 2020 – so ridiculously overpowered, in fact, that it's still better than 90% of cameras in July 2025.

There are times when I'll reach for the Mark II – sports photography, basically, or the rare occasions where I need pro video. But for everything else, the OG R5 still does everything I want and need it to.

That's why I'm still going to own this camera in another five years. And five years after that. The original Canon EOS R5 is so good that I don't really need to buy a new camera ever again.

And while, as my colleagues will tell you, the likelihood of me never buying another camera is precisely zero (I literally bought a new one last week!), I can safely say that I will never sell this one.

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Take a look at the best lenses for the Canon EOS R5, as well as the best Canon RF lenses in general.