Canon 5DS Review

Accuracy
Very good accuracy from the optical viewfinder, excellent from the LCD in Live View mode.

We measured the Canon 5DS' optical viewfinder's coverage at just over 98% which is pretty close to Canon's 100% coverage specification. (Note that the 5DS R tested a little better at 99%, the difference likely just due to sample variation combined with test tolerances.) The resulting image was very slightly titled and shifted with respect to the sensor, which is unfortunately quite common with optical SLR viewfinders. Live View mode using the LCD monitor in record mode resulted in 100% coverage.

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Fairly typical saturation levels with excellent hue accuracy.

ISO Sensitivity
50	100	200
400	800	1600
3200	6400	12800
In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center. Mouse over the links above to compare ISOs, and click to load a larger version.

Saturation. The Canon 5DS produces images with fairly typical saturation levels. Reds, oranges, dark greens and dark blues are pushed a little, while aqua and yellow are slightly muted. The mean saturation of 112.3% (12.3% oversaturated) at base ISO of 100 is close to average, and it remains close to average across ISOs, dipping only slightly to a minimum of 109.5% at ISO 6400. We found the 5DS' colors pleasing and vibrant, without being too overdone. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The Canon 5DS produces nice, natural-looking Caucasian skin tones in our tests when using Manual white balance, though with a bit of an orange push. When using Auto white balance, skin tones were a little too cool. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. As we've come to expect from Canon, the 5DS' hue accuracy is excellent when manual white balance is used (as it always is for these results), and much better than average. There are the usual shifts in cyan toward blue (though actually quite small), red toward orange, orange toward yellow, and yellow toward green, but all are quite minor. Average "delta-C" color error at base ISO is only 3.67 which is excellent (smaller numbers are better). Delta-C color error increases with ISO, but remains better than average even at the highest ISOs. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Auto and Incandescent settings both struggled with household incandescent lighting, though Manual white balance worked well. Higher than average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under incandescent lighting, the Canon 5DS' Auto and Incandescent white balance settings struggled, producing very warm orange/yellow color casts. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon among cameras we've tested, but disappointing nonetheless especially for a pro model. The Canon 5DS does however have a White Priority option for Auto white balance that should result in more neutral color balance, however we did not test that mode in the lab. The Manual setting produced the most accurate results, though just slightly cool with a small nudge toward green. The Canon 5DS required +1.0 EV exposure compensation for this shot, which is higher than the +0.3 EV average among the cameras we've tested, though that could be because we use a third-party lens (Sigma 70mm f/2.8 Macro) for these shots. (Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.)

Outdoors, daylight
Great color, though a tendency towards slightly cool color balance with somewhat high contrast under harsh lighting. Average exposure accuracy.

Outdoors, the Canon 5DS tended toward a slightly cool color balance with Auto white balance, though overall color is generally very good. We preferred Manual white balance for our "Sunlit" portrait shot above left, and the Canon 5DS required +0.7 EV exposure compensation to keep the mannequin's face bright, which is about average. The Canon 5DS' default contrast is a little high, producing some washed-out highlights and dark shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of the shot above left, though the camera's Auto Lighting Optimizer and Highlight Tone Priority settings help with high contrast scenes like these. See below for examples of this. The Far-field shot (above right) is also a bit cool, and exposure is quite conservative, with the camera underexposing to avoid blowing highlights which resulted in some very dark shadows. Shadow detail is very good, though deep shadows are a bit noisy for a full-frame camera.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Over 4,000 lines of resolution.

Our laboratory resolution chart shows the Canon 5DS' JPEG images contain sharp, distinct line patterns past the limits of our chart both horizontally and vertically, though some aliasing in the form of luminance moiré can be seen starting at about 3,300 to 3,400 lines per pixel height. Still, the aliasing is fairly minor and all lines in the pattern can be clearly distinguished at the 4,000 line limit of our chart. An Adobe Camera Raw converted .CR2 file shows similar resolution, but with more false colors than the camera produced (although less than the 5DS R produced). Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Very good sharpness with excellent detail with a sharp lens. Minor detail loss due to noise reduction processing even at low ISOs.

Sharpness. The Canon 5DS' 50.6-megapixel sensor captures excellent image detail when coupled with a good lens, though images are just a bit softer than the 5DS R's, due to the inclusion of an optical low-pass filter. As is usually the case with Canons, the 5DS' default sharpening settings generate obvious sharpening halos around high-contrast edges. But the 5DS allows much more control over sharpening than previous EOS models, so we've shot most of our lab shots with the new Fine Detail Picture Style preset, which, as you can see above left, produces very good sharpness with much fewer sharpening artifacts than the default Standard Picture Style. See below for a comparison between the two presets. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows some minor detail loss due to noise suppression in darker areas and in areas with low contrast, perhaps just a little more than we're accustomed to seeing from a full-frame digital SLR at base ISO. Still, a very good performance for a 50.6-megapixel model, with very low chroma noise. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

Fewer Aliasing Artifacts. As mentioned previously the Canon 5DS captures sharp, detailed images that are just a touch softer than its OLPF-less 5DS R brother.

As you can see in our Still Life shots, far more obvious moiré patterns can be seen in the Samuel Smith bottle label taken with the 5DS R (at right) than with the 5DS (left), and you can see more moiré in some other shots as well, such as in the window shades of our Far Field shots. Is the extra sharpness offered by the 5DS R worth the risk of increased aliasing? Only you can decide, as that depends a lot on the subject matter you typically shoot. Most natural subjects won't produce many aliasing artifacts due to their more random or irregular shapes. If on the other hand you shoot a lot of man-made subjects like buildings and clothing, you'll likely appreciate the 5DS' better resistance to aliasing.

In-Camera JPEGs: Standard vs Fine Detail Picture Style setting
As mentioned, the Canon 5DS and 5DS R offer a new Picture Style preset called Fine Detail. Below is a comparison with the Standard, default Picture Style.

Base ISO (100)
Camera JPEG, defaults	Camera JPEG, Fine Detail

In the table above, we compare the Canon 5DS' default Standard Picture Style setting to its new Fine Detail preset at base ISO. The 5DS offers users much more flexibility in sharpening than prior EOS models, allowing you to adjust not only the "Strength" (from 0 to 7) but also the "Fineness" (1 to 5) and "Threshold" (1 to 5) operators. We believe these parameters correlate to unsharp mask options for strength, radius and threshold available in photo editing software such as Photoshop, although we don't know what the equivalent units might be.

The Fine Detail Picture Style preset boosts the Sharpness Strength operator one notch (to 4 out of 7) while dialing down the Fineness (1/5) and Threshold (1/5) operators to their minimum compared to Standard which defaults to Sharpness 3/7, Fineness 4/5 and Threshold 4/5. The result is significantly improved rendering of fine detail along with less obvious sharpening halos than the default Standard setting, however noise is more visible as well. There also appear to be minor differences in color and contrast, even though those settings are identical between these two Picture Styles presets.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above the Canon 5DS produces sharp JPEG images with phenomenal detail, especially when using the Fine Detail Picture Style preset. Let's see how Adobe Camera Raw compares:

Base ISO (100)
Camera JPEG, Fine Detail Picture Style	RAW via Adobe Camera Raw

In the table above, we compare a best quality in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO using default noise reduction and the Fine Detail Picture Style preset (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 9.1 using default noise reduction with some moderate but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop (250%, radius of 0.3 pixels, and a threshold of 0).

Looking closely at the images, we can see the camera's Fine Detail Picture Style comes pretty close to matching the amount of detail offered by Adobe Camera Raw using its default noise reduction, though the Adobe Camera Raw conversion does still manage to eke out slightly better detail, likely due to more sophisticated demosaicing and higher default contrast. The conversion does however show higher noise in the shadows and flat areas, so overall the camera does a more balanced job. All in all, really excellent results, so much so that we're not sure why Canon doesn't make Fine Detail Picture Style the default, other than to remain consistent with other EOS models.

ISO & Noise Performance
Excellent noise versus detail tradeoff up to ISO 1600.

Default High ISO Noise Reduction
ISO 50	ISO 100	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 6400	ISO 12,800

Images are quite clean at ISOs 50 through 200, with just a tiny amount of luminance noise seen in the shadows, and very little chroma noise. Some minor blurring of fine low-contrast detail is already visible at base ISO, though, as mentioned previously. Noise "grain" is slightly more evident at ISO 400 in the shadows, but detail remains very strong despite some minor blurring due to noise reduction. ISO 800 and 1600 are of course a little noisier, but fine detail is still very good with a noise grain that's quite fine and chroma noise well under control. At ISO 3200 the image becomes noticeably grainier resulting in a more evident drop in image quality, though fine detail is still very good and chroma noise remains well-controlled. ISO 6400 is quite grainy with minor chroma noise, but there is still quite a bit of fine detail left because the noise grain is still quite tight and film-like. Noise and the effects of noise reduction working hard to keep it under control become more apparent at ISO 12,800 with heavier luminance noise, stronger blurring and some obvious chroma blotching. Still, detail is not too bad at this sensitivity.

Overall, high ISO performance is not bad considering the resolution. The camera does not however offer ISOs any higher than 12,800 equivalent, which is a stop or more lower than some competing models.

See the Print Quality section below (when available) for our evaluation of maximum print sizes at each ISO setting.

A note about focus for this shot: We used to shoot this image at f/4, however depth of field became so shallow with larger, high-resolution sensors that it was difficult to keep important areas of this shot in focus, so we have since started shooting at f/8, the best compromise between depth of field and sharpness.

Extremes: Sunlit, dynamic range and low light tests
Extremely high resolution with strong overall detail, but somewhat high default contrast and unremarkable dynamic range. HTP and ALO options do a great job of dealing with tough lighting. Very good low-light performance.

The Canon 5DS produced moderately high contrast with some washed-out highlights and deep shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of the test above. The mannequin's face was too dim at the default and +0.3 EV settings and too many highlights were blown with +1.0 EV, so we preferred the image with +0.7 EV exposure compensation overall. This resulted in some clipped highlights in the shirt and flowers, a bit more than we're used to seeing from a full-frame sensor lately, indicating mediocre dynamic range compared to the best of recent competitors. Shadow detail was however pretty good, though very deep shadows have moderately high amounts of both chroma and luma noise. Bottom line: while dynamic range isn't bad, the Canon 5DS didn't do as well with this difficult shot compared to most recent state-of-the-art full-frame cameras, though its higher resolution should help to offset noise in the shadows when producing prints of equal size.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here. In actual shooting conditions, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown here; it's better to shoot in open shade whenever possible.)

Highlight Tone Priority
The Canon 5DS' Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) option did an excellent job of preserving highlight detail, though deep shadows were also affected, as shown below. (Mouse over the Off and On links to load the corresponding thumbnail, histogram and crops.)

Highlight Tone Priority (+0.3EV)
HTP Setting: Off On
Highlights
Shadows (Levels boosted to reveal noise.)
Histogram

Both shots above were captured at the same exposure, the only difference being that HTP was enabled for the second shot which necessarily increases the ISO to 200; part of how HTP works. The result is evident in the crops, histograms and thumbnails above, clearly showing the superior highlight preservation when HTP is enabled, though shadow brightness is also affected somewhat.

If you look closely at shadows (the levels in shadow crops above are heavily boosted to reveal noise that would be difficult to see otherwise), you'll notice an increase in noise is the price you pay when ISO is boosted from 100 to 200. Except in the very deepest shadows, though, overall noise is low enough at ISO 200 that this is really a negligible trade-off for all but the most critical applications.

Automatic Lighting Optimization
Like previous Canon EOS models, the 5DS offers three selectable levels of Automatic Lighting Optimization (ALO), plus Off. In fully automatic mode (Scene Intelligent Auto) ALO is automatically enabled and it's available in P, Tv, Av, M and B exposure modes. Mouse over the links below to load the associated thumbnail and histogram, and click on the links to load full resolution images.

Automatic Lighting Optimization (+0.3 EV)
ALO Setting: Off Low Standard (default) High

As you can see above, ALO has the effect of shifting shadows and mid-tones in the histograms to the right, brightening shadows and darker midtones without shifting the highlights as much. ISO sensitivity is not boosted for ALO so increased noise is not an issue, though it may be slightly more visible in shadows that have been boosted significantly.

High Dynamic Range
The Canon 5DS' in-camera HDR feature takes three continuous shots at different exposures and merges them together to create an image with wider tonal range than would be possible with a single exposure. There are three strength settings available (+/-1EV, +/-2EV,+/-3EV), plus Auto. And there are 5 possible Effect settings: Natural (default), Art Standard, Art Vivid, Art Bold and Art Embossed. The source images captured are not saved, and RAW mode is not supported. (Mouse over the links below to load the corresponding thumbnail.)

Far-field High Dynamic Range
Off	Auto	+/-1EV	+/-2EV	+/-3EV

As you can see, the HDR shots above (Natural effect) have improved dynamic range with preserved highlights and shadows that have been opened up with lower noise, with the Auto setting producing results very similar to +/2 EV. Do however note that a significant part of the image has been cropped away in the alignment process, and that the resulting images aren't quite as detailed overall, because the cropped image is resampled to full 50-megapixel image size. Also be aware that ghosting can occur when elements of the scene move during the sequence capture, as can be seen with the moving flag and greenery in some of these shots.

Dynamic Range Analysis (RAW mode)
While we once performed our own dynamic range measurements based on in-camera JPEGs as well as converted RAW images (when the camera was supported by Adobe Camera Raw), we've switched to using DxO Labs' results from their DxOMark website. As technology advanced, the dynamic range of modern high-end cameras in some cases exceeded the range of the Stouffer T4110 density scale that we used for our own measurements. DxO's approach based on RAW data before demosaicing is also more revealing, because it measures the fundamental dynamic range of the sensor, irrespective of whatever processing is applied to JPEGs, or to RAW data by off-the-shelf conversion software.

In the following, we use DxO's "Print" dynamic range results, which are scaled based on camera resolution. As the name suggests, this scaling corresponds to the situation in which you print at a given size, regardless of how many megapixels the camera might have. (In other words, if you've decided to make a 13x19 inch print, that's the size you're printing, whether the camera's resolution is 16 or 300 megapixels.) For the technically-minded, you can find a discussion of the reasoning behind this here on the DxOMark website. Also note that DxO Labs uses a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold of 1 when defining the lower boundary of acceptable luminance noise in their dynamic range measurements, which corresponds to the "Low Quality" threshold of the Imatest software we used to use for this measurement.

Here, we decided to compare the Canon 5DS' dynamic range to the Sony A7R II's and also to Nikon's top DSLR at time of writing, the D810. Note that the 5DS and 5DS R have identical dynamic range results, and you can always compare other models on DxOMark.com.

As you can see from the above graph (click for a larger version), the Canon 5DS' normalized dynamic range is significantly lower than both the A7R II and D810 at low ISO, with a peak range of about 12.4 EV versus 13.9 EV for the Sony and a whopping 14.8 EV for the Nikon at base ISO.

Interestingly, the 5DS' normalized dynamic range matches the D810 at ISO 800 and above, but the A7R II does significantly better than both, offering roughly a 3/4 to 1-1/2 stop advantage over the 5DS at most ISOs. Click here to visit the DxOMark page for the Canon 5DS for more of their test results and additional comparisons.

	1 fc 11 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16 fc No NR
ISO 100	2s, f2.8	30s, f2.8	30s, f2.8
ISO 3200	1/15s, f2.8	1s, f2.8	1s, f2.8
ISO 12800	1/64s, f2.8	1/4s, f2.8	1/4s, f2.8

Low Light. The Canon 5DS performed well in our low-light tests, capturing bright images at the lowest light level (1/16 foot-candle), even at base ISO (100). As expected, noise increases as ISO goes up and light levels go down, but noise is very fine-grained at ISO 3200. As you'd expect, noise is a little high at the maximum ISO of 12,800, particularly when noise reduction is minimized (extreme right column in the table above), however it's still quite fine-grained with a fairly ow chroma component (with default noise reduction enabled), leaving good detail for the sensitivity.

We noticed a few hot pixels here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. We didn't see any signs of heat blooming though some minor horizontal banding (fixed pattern noise) appears in very deep shadows.

Color balance was once again a bit cool with the Canon's 5DS' Auto white balance setting, though white balance warmed up at lower light levels.

When using the optical viewfinder and phase-detect AF, the Canon 5DS' autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to below our 1/16 foot-candle limit unassisted with an f/2.8 lens, which is excellent. And it was able to focus in complete darkness with AF assist enabled. In Live View mode, the Canon 5DS was able to focus down to just above the 1/16 foot-candle light level, which is also excellent for a DSLR in Live View mode.

As always, keep in mind that the longer shutter speeds here demand the use of a tripod to prevent any blurring from camera movement. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Digital SLRs like the Canon 5DS do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Print Quality

We haven't printed images from the Canon 5DS because image quality is so similar to the 5DS R that print sizes should be identical, just not quite as crisp but with fewer aliasing artifacts. See our Canon 5DS R Print Quality Analysis for recommended print sizes at each ISO.

Mixed performance for a prosumer DSLR.

Powering on and taking a shot was fairly quick for a DSLR, at about 0.5 second. Switching from Play to Record mode and taking a shot was slightly faster, at about 0.3 second.

In terms of the Canon 5DS' ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times using the optical viewfinder with our Sigma 70mm f/2.8 lens, its full autofocus shutter response was a little slow for a pro DSLR. We measured 0.268 second for full AF lag using single point (center) AF, which is closer to consumer DSLR AF speed.

Shutter lag using manual focus was fair at 0.189 second, also a little on the slow side. However, "Prefocusing" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure was quite fast at only 0.057 second.

The Canon 5DS' prefocused shutter lag time in Live View mode was 0.092 second, which is very fast for a DSLR. Note that we no longer test full AF lag in Live View mode for DSLRs, because the lens used makes such a huge difference that comparing is pointless. We'll try to comment on real-world Live View AF performance in our shooter's reports.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Single-shot cycle times were so fast that they were difficult to accurately measure as they depend on the tester's nimbleness and ability to maintain an optimum rhythm. (Note that we no longer test single-shot mode with just RAW files, as the results are usually somewhere in between JPEG and RAW+JPEG modes.)

Full-resolution continuous high mode speeds were decent for a full-frame DSLR with such high resolution, though the 5DS' burst speed certainly won't compete with sports-orientated DSLRs. We measured about 4.8 frames-per-second when shooting best quality JPEGs, and closer to 4.9 fps for RAW and RAW+JPEG files. That's pretty close to Canon's 5.0 fps spec. The 5DS also has low-speed and silent continuous shooting modes which are both rated by Canon at 3.0 fps, however we did not test those modes in the lab.

Buffer depth for best quality JPEGs was good at 28 frames before the camera started slowing down. When shooting RAW files, buffer depths dropped to 15 RAW frames and 11 RAW+JPEG frames.

Buffer clearing times were good considering the resolution, ranging from 6 seconds after 28 best quality JPEGs, to 14 seconds after a burst of 11 RAW+JPEG frames with a fast UDMA 7 CompactFlash card.

Bottom line, the Canon 5DS offers mixed performance, ranging from mediocre autofocus and burst speeds to very fast prefocused shutter lag. Still, decent performance overall for its intended market.

Battery Life
Below average battery life for pro DSLR.

The Canon 5DS uses a custom LP-E6 rechargeable lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with a dedicated battery charger. Battery life is below average for a professional DSLR using the optical viewfinder, CIPA-rated at 700 shots per charge (and keep in mind the 5DS has no built-in flash, which is normally enabled for 50% of shots during CIPA battery life testing). And of course Live View mode draws more power reducing battery life considerably. We recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand, or consider purchasing the BG-E11 battery grip which doubles battery life with a second battery installed.

The table above shows the number of shots the Canon 5DS is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))