Canon R50 trigger test for bullet-time / photogrammetry
TL;DR: it’s amazing, but needs to be tested in real life with 12+ cameras
Well, good news! The R50 is the most accurate mirrorless camera we’ve ever tested (USB-triggering)
Mechanical shutter: ~5ms
Electronic shutter: ~1ms (excellent!)
We had the chance to work directly with Canon over the past months by providing our trigger precision benchmark test device and it looks like it paid off. As a quick recap, we know that any Canon DSLRs is just as precise no matter if it is triggered by USB or Analog (using the remote jack). But that is not the case with mirrorless cameras. The R50 is the first of its kind where we know we can get enough precision for a bullet-time shot using constant light (electronic shutter). The precision is not as good when using the mechanical shutter, but we can overcome this by using strobes (mostly for a photogrammetry multi-camera kit). It’s important to note that we do these tests with two units only, and that real-life configuration might give slightly different results.
There’s no analog trigger port on this model, meaning we could only test with USB triggering.
Just after we finished testing this one, Canon announced the R100 which might change everything. The R100 appears to be the logical successor to the SL3 (my favorite one ever for any multi-camera work). Canon brought back the trigger port on the R100, meaning that we could potentially shave a few microseconds for better precision by using our XangleBoards.
To be continued… ;)