Beyond the line: pushing the boundaries of adventure sports filmmaking with the EOS R5 C

When DoP Keith Ladzinski set out on a shoot in the US state of Utah with the EOS camera that's ready for anything, there was one thing he wasn't prepared for: the cold. "That's the difficulty with location shooting, obviously you are at the mercy of nature," he acknowledges. "Once you were in the shade, there was probably a 30° difference, and it limited our shoot time during the days."

Keith lives for adventure, though. One of Canon USA's Explorers of Light, he is a contributing photographer at National Geographic and an Emmy-nominated director, and his brand-rich client list includes Red Bull, Discovery, The North Face and National Geographic TV.

With its lightweight and robust design, fast frame rates and reliable Dual Pixel CMOS AF, the EOS R5 C is perfect for action and adventure filmmaking. Keith initially set out to 'stress test' the smallest Cinema EOS camera in a number of builds and situations. "I really wanted to see how it handled long roll times, for example, and to treat it like a dedicated cinema camera by building it out and putting the big boys' toys onto it," he says.

"We did some builds where we put it on a larger handheld 3-axis camera gimbal with a monitor and FIZ (Focus, Iris, Zoom) system, so that I could utilise Canon's Cine lenses and try pulling focus as a one-man cinematography team.

"But then I also wanted to shoot it small and light, stripped down with just a single RF lens so that it could be handheld and really mobile. This approach was especially important when shooting up in the air with the paragliders. In that situation, you really don't want to be doing a whole load of lens changes."

Keith's day-to-day kitbag includes a Canon EOS R5 and EOS R3, along with the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM, Canon RF 28-70mm F2L USM, Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM and Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM lenses. For this shoot though, he had access to a full range of RF lenses and Canon EF mount Cine lenses.

"I shot with a CN-E135mm T2.2 L F quite a bit," explains Keith. "I love its look and feel. Pulling focus could be a challenge with the mountain biking though, because it happens so quickly.

"Some of the things the athletes were doing for us, they could only do once or twice. That always brings in a little bit more pressure to make sure that you're getting a sharp shot every time. There's nothing worse than being the weak link on a shoot, especially if you've got people who are doing things that are considerably dangerous if it all goes wrong."

For some of the more demanding mountain biking sequences, Keith switched to the RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM in order to benefit from the EOS R5 C's advanced subject tracking autofocus. "There were shots where they'd just drop in and be coming more or less straight at me," he recalls. "Compression focus in those situations can be a challenge, so I wanted to see how the focus tracking performed. Thankfully, it was great, just as it is on the EOS R5."

Another opportunity that the EOS R5 C's size and weight advantage opened up was the ability to mount the camera on an FPV (first person view) drone. "We were using the Canon RF 16mm F2.8 STM pancake lens, and the whole kit was so light," enthuses Keith. "Being able to fly at these crazy speeds and actually chase things in a more intimate way than with a standard drone opened up so many incredible possibilities."

Shooting 8K Cinema RAW Light from the air gave Keith the flexibility to crop and stabilise clips in post-production before outputting in 4K.

"The FPV has its own independent camera that the operator uses to fly the drone, but the optic is different to the one that you're filming with. So there were a few times where we'd have a really nice shot, but the subject was a little more pushed down in a corner than we would have liked. In those cases, we were able to crop in and appropriately frame it in post."

To create the velvet-smooth slow-motion sequences of the mountain bikers, Keith switched to 4K 120p. He says, "When they were going on the bigger tabletop or hip jumps [jumping and turning] and getting pushed quite high, they were actually moving relatively slowly. But when they were setting up and bombing down the run, or turning onto a banked corner really hard and throwing up the dirt, that's when 120p was a great frame rate to work with."

The EOS R5 C clocks up rapid speeds in 45MP photo mode too, delivering continuous bursts at up to 20fps with the electronic shutter engaged. Keith took advantage of this on the shoot, as well as switching to the 12fps mechanical shutter when lighting up his stars with six strobe lights.

"If I need to go in light on a shoot, I know that I can now work in a hybrid space and still use two very high-quality files," says Keith. "That, to me, is the dream, because in the past I'd have to carry multiple setups with me to accommodate whatever the delivery is. So the EOS R5 C is a big stride in terms of me purging a lot of my weight.

Looking to the future, Keith concludes: "A lot of the places I work in are pretty remote, where you're responsible for backpacking in quite a bit of your own gear. As someone who uses a camera for a living, the last thing you want to be doing is carting around a ton of stuff, so this thing is going to be fantastic."