Canon EOS R8 Review

Canon did something unusual here. Instead of detuning the sensor to protect the model above it, the company shipped the R6 Mark II's twenty-four megapixel chip and its autofocus system unchanged, then removed everything around them until the price reached fifteen hundred dollars. So you get full-frame image quality, subject detection that identifies people, animals and vehicles as well as any Canon does, forty frames a second electronic, and uncropped oversampled 4K60, in a body weighing four hundred and sixty grams.

What is missing is not trivial. There is no in-body stabilisation, so handheld video needs a stabilised lens or a gimbal and low-light stills need shutter-speed discipline. There is one UHS-II slot, which rules it out of weddings for anyone who takes backup seriously. The battery is the small LP-E17, rated for around a hundred and fifty shots, so you will carry four and charge them nightly.

There is no joystick and no top display. None of that changes what comes off the card, which is why it earns its grade: the cheapest route to genuinely current full-frame results, provided you already understand what you gave up.