CANON EOS R10

£899/$979 Small but fast and powerful, this affordable EOS camera rewrites the APS-C format mirrorless rule book

Smaller and lighter than the EOS 850D, the EOS R10 is particularly travel-friendly and can take on pretty much any shooting scenario along the way. It’s based around a new 24.2MP APS-C format image sensor that really bumps up data output speeds. The result is superfast drive rates of 15fps, rising to 23fps in electronic shutter mode. The latter boosts the maximum shutter speed from 1/4000 sec to 1/16,000 sec, too.

Better still, the budget-friendly R10 inherits the same Dual Pixel CMOS AF II autofocus system that’s featured in the R3, R5 and R6, with deep-learned AI tracking for people, animals and vehicles. The camera can also capture 4K movie footage, although 60p comes with a crop mode.

Not much bigger than some of Canon’s EOS M system mirrorless cameras, the R10 nevertheless manages to pack a microphone socket, vari-angle touchscreen and even a pop-up flash. However, unlike the EOS R7, there’s no in-body image stabilizer nor any weather-seals.

The viewfinder gives a 0.95x magnification factor and the typical 100 per cent frame coverage of mirrorless cameras, along with a well-detailed 2.36million-dot display. One downside of the downsized design is that the relatively small LP-E17 battery only has enough stamina for 260 viewfinder-based shots, although a more generous 430 shots is available for screen-based shooting.

Performance

Speed and accuracy in terms of drive rate and autofocus are simply incredible for a camera aimed at the beginner and intermediate sector of the market. Image quality is excellent in all respects, not least because the RF mount gives access to Canon’s full range of superb RF lenses.