Canon cameras have traditionally been somewhat lacking when it comes to sharpness/detail in video, but with the highly detailed oversampled 4K on the R7, R6 and R5 this has finally become a thing of the past. What's confusing though, is that there are big differences between which modes are oversampled on each camera. For example, the R6 has an oversampled 4K/60 mode whereas the R5 only oversamples 4K/60 in the APS-C crop mode (which in turn is line-skipped and upscaled on the R6). This becomes particularly confusing if you use multiple Canon cameras on your shoots. To clear things up, check out the quick-reference chart below:
If you're not familiar with the term, oversampling means you start with a large image and resize it to a smaller size (for example 8K to 4K) without throwing away the extra pixels. This method of resizing leads to a more detailed image with less noise. Other methods of resizing like line-skipping or pixel-binning don't have these benefits and actually lead to loss in image quality.
| Mode | Canon R5 | Canon R6 | Canon R7 |
| 4K | oversampled | oversampled | oversampled |
| 4K crop mode | oversampled | line-skipped | not available |
| 4K/60 | line-skipped | oversampled | line-skipped |
| 4K/60 crop mode | oversampled | line-skipped | 1 to 1 pixel readout |
Note that the crop mode on the R6 is actually upscaled to 4K from 3.4K (3408 x 1917 to be exact), which makes this mode a lot 'muddier' than the crop mode on the R5.
On the R7 you can choose between line-skipped or cropped 4K/60 modes. In the cropped mode you get a 1 to 1 pixel readout (which gives you slightly better quality than the line-skipped mode) but it adds a 1.8 times crop to the already cropped APS-C sensor (3x crop compared to full frame).
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