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The Canon EOS R8 Mark II sells for $1,899, which puts it $250 above the original R8 and $400 below the larger EOS R6 Mark II. That narrow spread makes choosing between Canon's compact full frame bodies harder than it has been in years, especially if one camera has to handle both your stills and your video.
Josh Sattin tests the Canon EOS R8 Mark II against the Canon EOS R8 he already knows well, and the headline change is the one R8 owners have wanted from the start: in-body stabilization. He shot his street footage handheld on a Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM, with IBIS and lens stabilization working together and no electronic or post-production stabilization, and his static shots hold steady. The sensor is unchanged. It's the same 24.2 MP chip used in the R8 and the Canon EOS R6 Mark II, recording 4K at up to 60 fps oversampled from 6K. Footage in C-Log 3 grades quickly with a color space transform in DaVinci Resolve, and his wildlife clips from the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM show the same clean, easy color.
Battery life is where the small body shows its size. Both R8 models use the compact Canon LP-E17 battery, and Sattin ran them side by side in a studio at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, recording 4K at 24p with autofocus on. The Mark II stopped at 1 hour and 5 minutes. The original lasted 1 hour and 7 minutes, close enough that battery age likely explains the gap. His earlier test of the R6 Mark II, with its larger battery, ran 2 hours and 17 minutes before the battery died. Neither R8 overheated in this test, although he has pushed the Mark II into overheating on longer indoor runs, and the Mark II raises the 4K recording limit from two hours to six.
Canon is following a path Sony has used for years with its compact twins. The Sony a7C II shares its 33 MP sensor with the Sony a7 IV, and the Sony a7CR carries the same 61 MP sensor as the Sony a7R V. In each pairing, image quality is close to identical, and the differences live in the parts you touch: viewfinder size, card slots, and grip depth. Sony kept the same battery across its pairs, while Canon's compact line still runs on the smaller LP-E17, so the tradeoff here leans harder on power. A useful way to shop any compact twin is to list what you handle on every shoot, such as how long you record, whether you need backup recording to a second card, and how much time you spend at the viewfinder. Then weigh those against how much the smaller body will actually travel with you. A camera that stays in a jacket pocket or a small sling bag gets used in places a bigger body never reaches.
The Mark II also picks up video tools from Canon's newer bodies. Slow and Fast mode lets you set a capture rate and a playback rate separately, so 60 fps recorded into a 24p file gives 2.5x slow motion straight out of the camera, while one frame per second at 24p produces a 24x time-lapse. Recording now offers XF-HEVC S and XF-AVC S in Long GOP, and you can load custom LUTs to bake into the footage or send over HDMI for live streaming. Registered people priority lets autofocus favor faces you've saved, which could help at events. Both cameras offer false color, but the original R8 won't show it while View Assist is on in log, even on current firmware.
Physically, Canon moved to a sharper, more angular design and added a tally light, a rear joystick, and a card slot on the side, where it stays reachable with a tripod plate attached. The photo/video switch now sits on the power switch, so you can change modes with your right hand while your left supports a long lens. Burst shooting still tops out at 40 fps, but the buffer grows from 56 to 73 raw frames and from 120 to 190 JPEGs. The body still uses micro HDMI and two control dials, with no rear dial for a third exposure setting.
Sattin's pick between the R8 Mark II and the R6 Mark II is in the video above.
English (US) ·