Just a couple of weeks ago, Canon officially took the wraps of its budget full-frame camera — the EOS RP — and it hasn’t taken Canon long to launch it in India. With sales starting from February 27, the Canon EOS RP can now be purchased in India for Rs. 1,10,495 for only the body or you can get it with the RF24-105mm f/4 IS USM lens for Rs. 1,99,490. This camera competes for a spot with some of the premium APS-C cameras such as the Sony A6500, Fujifilm X-T3 and even some of the older Sony Alpha full-frame cameras such as the A7 II, which can still be found in the market.
The Canon EOS RP is based on the company’s new RF mount, which first debuted its the Canon EOS R last year. The new EOS RP model is meant for advanced amateurs, who wish to step-up from cropped sensor cameras but necessarily have the budget to go all-out for something like the EOS R. With that in mind, the EOS RP has slightly scaled-down specifications such as a 26.2-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor and is powered by the same DIGIC 8 image processor as its bigger sibling. It’s also slimmer and lighter, weighing roughly 485 grams.
Other specifications include 4,779 selectable autofocus (AF) points, a native ISO range of 100-40,000, 5fps burst shooting with One Shot AF mode (around 4fps with Servo AF), Dual Pixel AF, 4K video recording at 24fps, a fully articulating touchscreen display and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The camera also has EyeAF which is said to work even in Servo AF mode and there’s a silent shooting mode too. The Canon EOS RP also boasts of an electronic viewfinder (EVF) with a 2.36 million dot resolution and the display can be used as a touchpad for touch-and-drag AF. Just like the EOS R, the EOS RP can also be charged through the USB Type-C port, but you’ll need the optional PD-E1 adapter.
Canon may have entered the full-frame mirrorless segment late but it’s the first to bring such a camera at this low a price point. The only trouble though is the cost of the new RF lenses, which don’t come cheap, at least for now. If you’re an existing Canon user then you can adapt your current EF and EF-S lenses to the new RF mount, using the optional adapter. If you just look at the body-body-one pricing, Canon has some stiff competition from the premium mirrorless segment. Sure, those cameras offer cropped sensors, but nearly all of them have a more extensive set of features when it comes to video or burst shooting. It’s interesting to see how the new Canon EOS RP stacks up against them when we test it.