More thoughts on the Canon EOS R1 and EOS R5 Mark II from Paris

[tiggy@mac.com]

I want to see reviews by photographers in their use cases. I'm qualified to speak on basketball & wildlife. I've never considered myself a birder, but I seem to have a lot of good bird shots, so maybe that too.... I'm not qualified to speak on weddings, event, astro, landscape and other stuff.

It's funny to see about the power switch, that is going to annoy me for a bit. What a strange thing to change. Maybe there were some situations in which the power switch is an issue with the R3 that I haven't experienced.

On that power switch: one of the few things I did not like about the R5 Mark I was that they moved the power switch opposite the grip. I liked to be able to turn the camera on with my gripping hand with the earlier Canon DSLRs, powering it instantly as I raised it to my eye. Moving it back to that grip side, to me, is just correcting an earlier mistake.

I just got my Mark II yesterday and was able to shoot it a bit. The switch is placed deliberately for quick powering, using the pointer finger to drag it toward the palm to its maximum setting, which gives the surest positional feedback. All good.

Jeff is THE quintessential Canon sports tog, so I thought it very notable that he preferred the R5 II over the R1 due to the resolution difference once he was able to confirm the 5-series had roughly as good AF as the 1-series. You can see his most recent comments on it at his blog in the "How did they REALLY do?" post. The two revelations here: R5 AF may not be much distinguished from the R1 ("I found that the focus was comparable to that of the R1"); and salting a gripped body with extra FPS may not be adequate to make the flagship the preferred body for Canon's most well-known sports pro.

The other thing of note is the perception of pupil focus tracking performance relative to the R3. It's been so long since I've owned an R3 that I borrowed one this week from Canon to directly compare to the R5. My thoughts:
1) The R3 pupil tracking has improved through firmware significantly since I first tried it at launch. It surprised me how much better it is now. Usable for me where it wasn't so much earlier.
2) The R5 II's pupil tracking is as good as the R3's, as was expected.
3) But, surprisingly, Jeff Cable - unlike Canon marketing - seems to indicate that the suite of AF systems is about as good between the R5 II and the R1. This is interesting. It is going to take more data. Not cancelling my R1 pre-order. I can definitively say that the AF on the R5II is much stickier than the R5 with comparable settings. This was the R5's main AF weakness in my opinion, especially with small or distant subjects.

Looking forward to finding out more re: the R5 II. It's nighthawk season here in Vermont, which is as challenging a test as any.

 

[snapshot]

That would never happen. Canon has shown off 100+ MP sensors, the only question is there a market for such a camera. I believe there is, but they pay people a lot of money to answer those questions

The question really is what feature/design trade-offs will enable a 100 MPish camera and if there is a market for what ever that might end up being.

 

[Bob Howland]

The question really is what feature/design trade-offs will enable a 100 MPish camera and if there is a market for what ever that might end up being.

Absolutely! FWIW, the R7 sensor has the same pixel size as an 83MP FF sensor. I set the max auto ISO on my R7 at 3200 while my R6-2 max is set at 12800.

 

[macrunning]

I've got my fireproof suit on. But having gone from an R6 to an R5, just shooting maybe 10k frames in a weekend while covering a tournament, the data size and transfer/processing time is NOTICABLY longer on the R5. CRAW helps. Time taken for noise reduction which has to be applied at lower ISO levels than the R6 makes it longer too. And for most images, they end up on a phone screen or maybe as a webforum post or instagram. No value at all in the extra megapixels in most cases. I have found some value in grabbing a play across the field, and cropping it. But it has to be in an open field with no players in the foreground, and a guy like Cable isn't going to have the time to sort through, find and crop that stuff. Plus he can afford or borrow whatever glass he wants. For me, I do see there being an inflection point in MP - 45 too much, 20-24 just enough. Something in the the middle would be perfect.

I got the R3 from the rental house yesterday. Tournament this weekend. I'm excited to try it. I still have my R6 body, and used to used the upgrade cost of selling the R6 to buy an R3 is similar to selling my R5 to buy a new R5mk2. So we'll see if its worth doing either. I do like the feel of the R3 body, and have always wanted that pro style body. But will try and make the decision on performance.

You’ll have a good time using it. Let us know how it goes and what you decide. Curious if you’ll love it as much as I did after using it.

 

[Canon Rumors]

On that power switch: one of the few things I did not like about the R5 Mark I was that they moved the power switch opposite the grip. I liked to be able to turn the camera on with my gripping hand with the earlier Canon DSLRs, powering it instantly as I raised it to my eye. Moving it back to that grip side, to me, is just correcting an earlier mistake.

I just got my Mark II yesterday and was able to shoot it a bit. The switch is placed deliberately for quick powering, using the pointer finger to drag it toward the palm to its maximum setting, which gives the surest positional feedback. All good.

Jeff is THE quintessential Canon sports tog, so I thought it very notable that he preferred the R5 II over the R1 due to the resolution difference once he was able to confirm the 5-series had roughly as good AF as the 1-series. You can see his most recent comments on it at his blog in the "How did they REALLY do?" post. The two revelations here: R5 AF may not be much distinguished from the R1 ("I found that the focus was comparable to that of the R1"); and salting a gripped body with extra FPS may not be adequate to make the flagship the preferred body for Canon's most well-known sports pro.

The other thing of note is the perception of pupil focus tracking performance relative to the R3. It's been so long since I've owned an R3 that I borrowed one this week from Canon to directly compare to the R5. My thoughts:
1) The R3 pupil tracking has improved through firmware significantly since I first tried it at launch. It surprised me how much better it is now. Usable for me where it wasn't so much earlier.
2) The R5 II's pupil tracking is as good as the R3's, as was expected.
3) But, surprisingly, Jeff Cable - unlike Canon marketing - seems to indicate that the suite of AF systems is about as good between the R5 II and the R1. This is interesting. It is going to take more data. Not cancelling my R1 pre-order. I can definitively say that the AF on the R5II is much stickier than the R5 with comparable settings. This was the R5's main AF weakness in my opinion, especially with small or distant subjects.

Looking forward to finding out more re: the R5 II. It's nighthawk season here in Vermont, which is as challenging a test as any.

I've dug into rolling shutter between the two and it's pretty close... The R1 is noticeably faster on the golf swings. I still haven't seen some American football comparisons, that ball whipped out hard is a good test. I think both are at the point of it not being a noticeable issue, but I'll reserve judgement. The NFL season starts soon, so there should be a lot of input then.

I won't be getting an R52, it looks like the ergonomics would still annoy me. It is great to see the cameras getting nearly matching AF though, the cripple hammer is no more. Maybe they could have had the same EVF, but I think that segmentation is ok.

 

[mpmark]

You're absolutely correct, that's why 0-day reviews by people that don't shoot drive me bonkers. They miss everything.

These people are revenue driven to release content and profit from, nothing more. You're always going to have your "this cameras a bummer" youtubers out there that have yet to own the equipment and or never will. They just stir up people to watch.

 

[Del Paso]

You're absolutely correct, that's why 0-day reviews by people that don't shoot drive me bonkers. They miss everything.

So many reviews by self-declared experts who probably have never really used what they are reviewing. So much crap from internet "reviewers"...
That's why I do appreciate the Jeff Cable post! He does know what he is talking about.

 

[tiggy@mac.com]

I won't be getting an R52, it looks like the ergonomics would still annoy me. It is great to see the cameras getting nearly matching AF though, the cripple hammer is no more. Maybe they could have had the same EVF, but I think that segmentation is ok.

I'll say again that the R3 is my favorite form factor. It's the goldilocks size. The R5 is a tiny bit cramped. The 1 series is a little bit larger than optimal. It's fun having one around again, though I have to send this one back to Canon tomorrow.

 

[byjohnburns]

Canon sent me a loaner of the R5II for a week and I've really thoroughly enjoyed shooting events with it. The photo image quality seems to be a bit noisier than the R5, but I haven't done side-by-side so who knows. Whatever difference is negligible and the noise is more like grain except in severe cases and cleans up nicely, so it's a nonissue. That aside, everything across the board has received minor but meaningful improvements and refinements—including the joystick!

For me, the big takeaway is that THIS is the camera a lot of R5C owners were hoping for when they wanted a camera that they can quickly shoot some high-quality video with while prioritizing photos. I shot an event yesterday and did just that, and after 2 hours the battery was only half-depleted, which was a major sigh of relief.

C-log2 also renders beautifully with this sensor, so in terms of video IQ, that's a big improvement.

As an R5C owner who primarily leaves that camera fully rigged out for video, here are a couple things I'd like in firmware before I'll be convinced to buy an R5II:

• We need shutter angle in video mode, or at least 1/48th, 1/120th, etc shutter speeds — it's a minor update, but meaningful, which would fit the trend of this camera
• The high-speed slow motion mode desperately needs to be ditched with S&F mode, and S&F mode needs to be programable to a button (like the R5C). It simply takes too much time to go through the menus if you go back and forth between regular speed and slow-motion, and I HATE that the only pre-resolved slow-motion option is 120fps. I want to be able to instantly go back and forth between 24fps regular speed and 60fps S&F.

If both of these are implemented it will be an easy sale for me.

Also, for anyone curious, the aperture ring on the newer hybrid lenses works in photo mode on the R5II—yay!

 

[neuroanatomist]

Also, for anyone curious, the aperture ring on the newer hybrid lenses works in photo mode on the R5II—yay!

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

Does it change the increments as determined by the photo increment setting (1/3-stop default, optionally 1/2-stop steps), or the finer gradations available for video (I don't recall if it's 1/8-stop, 1/10-stop or 1/32-stop increments)? I would guess the former.

 

[mwaichman]

my five cents on this thread

I've 23 days in Paris for Olympics 2024, usually using R5 MI and 1Dx MII. Canon gave me an R5 MII for 3.5 days to make tests, Shooting Field Hockey, Tennis, Artistic Swimming, Volleyball and Fencing.
My experience was very good in terms of AF (amazing finding eyes and body trough the NET in tennis), using Volleyball specific AF Mode and the face + ball detection were amazing. Huge difference with R5 MI i've bought in Tokyo for those Olympics.
The complicated points were CR3 format incompatible with other CR3 models, i were shooting Field Hockey for FIH with direct upload trough Ethernet to my editor in India, and he star complaining because we can't open my raws arriving the FTP. probably some old version of Camera Raw.. he updated and the work continue. When i've tried to edit by myself in Capture One was not possible and i had to make CR passing to go to Capture one, I hope C1 release a version within a week to test processing directly.
Talking about FPS is a really big difference with R5 MI, probably pre-release shooting capture a lot of unnecessary pictures (if could be configurable how many pictures to take on this mode should be useful). Rolling Shutter has a big reduction using electronic shutter.
The worst part of the test were the batteries, i had 7 batteries from my 5D and R5, all charged for a full day shooting in Paris.. when one of the new batteries stop providing Energy to the grip (on R5 MII the grip with two batteries work as a single one different of R5 MI which you have WFT battery and Camera Battery) i've tried to mix batteries and the camera shows a big black screen talking about all the functions i'll loose, Conclusion you need specific batteries for this camera.
About temperature.. i've shooting 4 field hockey matches with 42 degree Celcius, camera report 1 line of temperature and never goes up to stop working, very well update comparing with R5 MI.
Conclusion, I have no doubt to make the change to the new release of R5 MII, hope to have on my hands soon.
PROS : Image Quality, Speed, AF improvement, Reduced Rolling Shutter, Low noise on high ISO
CONS : Specific Battery

 

[BostonPaul]

My R5ii came yesterday. I still have to get through all the menus and set up my modes the way I like it, but the headline is that the eye tracking is just terrible for me. I don\'t wear glasses but do wear contacts, no idea if that\'s what\'s screwing it up.

It\'s fine, it\'ll still be an upgrade from the R5 on the other autofocus improvements alone, but I was really hyped up for the eye tracking and it\'s just not remotely there yet.

Hi: I had the same experience getting eye control to work at first. It would work, but it was consistently off by 10 degrees or more.

I then tried calibrating with both eyes open as I shoot this way pretty often. My left eye was focused on a small object six feet away. I then moved the camera until the calibration dot I saw with my right eye lined up with the object I saw with my left eye. Since your eyes work in unison, they focus on the same object, which feels more natural than looking at the dot alone.

It now works pretty well. I need more practice to decide whether this is more of a gimmick than a great feature.

I saw a comment in the article saying the R1 joystick was better than the R3's. The same is true for the R52 vs. R5. They look almost exactly the same, but the texture is softer and has a much better feel to it.

 

[David - Sydney]

Haha, well apparently it's very good as a smartwatch. However, It just might be the ugliest watch ever conceived. I can't believe anyone buys those Hermes straps for it. I gave up smartwatches (Samsung and Garmin) and just roll with a few G-Shocks...

Who wears watches??
My phone has the most accurate time you can get.
I was tempted by the Apple Ultra as it can be used as a dive computer but it doesn't support a wireless air pressure transmitter.
I can't wear one when doing martial arts so wear a chest heart rate monitor although some others choose to use it for target practice

 

[David - Sydney]

I posted a reply on that thread. This was my R5 when shooting in Alaska in -40F weather. Not sure what happened to his camera. View attachment 219348

I haven't shot in really cold weather but should a cold camera be taken into a warm car without a plastic sealed bag around it?
Wouldn't you have condensation issues?

 

[EvilTed]

If anything I think it proves the point. 85,000 shots. That’s an average of 4000+ per day if he shot for 21-22 days. Sounds like a lot of data flow and editing either in-camera or later on a computer. If he’s a stringer then he’s having to do that on the fly and send his selects to an editor or client right away. If someone else sends good or better pix sooner than another photographer he/she is not going to sell his images or might not get hired again. 4000 shots per day is a LOT to chimp (edit as you go) or review later on the camera or laptop. Twice as much storage needed for larger sensors (cards and hard drives). And uploading even a fourth of those is still a ton of images, data, time. Think about it: if it took 10 seconds each to look through and narrow it down to 1000 shots ( that’s 10,000 seconds. 166 minutes. That’s 2.75 hours each day JUST spent editing them down and not including retouching or transmitting them anywhere. File size, camera processing speed, computer processing speed, etc are all important factors.

 

[sanj]

I still get high megapixel claims, so I do feel it's coming in an R5 body. It'll have to be at least double 45mp to make sense.

Why do you need more mpx for landscape photos?

 

[john1970]

The fact that the R5 Mk2 AF performance was almost as good as the R1 and that JC was using it more towards the end tells us about how good the performance of the R5 Mk2 really is. If the R1 buffer depth in 40 fps ES mode is only 230 frames I might have to reconsider the strategic purpose of the R1 vs. the R5 Mk2 which I now own. For me one of the main advantages of the R1 is the sub 3 ms readout in ES mode and I would have anticipated Canon providing a deeper buffer at 40 fps.

 

[koenkooi]

The fact that the R5 Mk2 AF performance was almost as good as the R1 and that JC was using it more towards the end tells us about how good the performance of the R5 Mk2 really is. If the R1 buffer depth in 40 fps ES mode is only 230 frames I might have to reconsider the strategic purpose of the R1 vs. the R5 Mk2 which I now own. For me one of the main advantages of the R1 is the sub 3 ms readout in ES mode and I would have anticipated Canon providing a deeper buffer at 40 fps.

Is that 230 frames RAW or cRAW?

 

[EOS 4 Life]

The fact that the R5 Mk2 AF performance was almost as good as the R1 and that JC was using it more towards the end tells us about how good the performance of the R5 Mk2 really is. If the R1 buffer depth in 40 fps ES mode is only 230 frames I might have to reconsider the strategic purpose of the R1 vs. the R5 Mk2 which I now own. For me one of the main advantages of the R1 is the sub 3 ms readout in ES mode and I would have anticipated Canon providing a deeper buffer at 40 fps.

I am not sure what you mean.

 

[john1970]

I am not sure what you mean.

I think the chart you reference is for mechanical only. Canon Europe provides some additional specifications given below.

R1 Specs from Canon Europe

Continuous Shooting

Max. Approx. 12 fps. with Mechanical shutter/1st curtain electronic speed maintained for 1000+ JPEG or 1000+ RAW images or 40 FPS with electronic shutter speed maintained for 500 JPEG or 230 RAW images20.
Custom Continuous shooting speed with Electronic shutter selectable options 40 / 30 / 20 / 15 / 12 / 10 / 7.5 / 5 / 3 / 2 / 1 FPS depending on the drive mode.
Pre-Continuous shooting is possible from 20 shots before the shutter button is fully pressed when the AF is on for 20 shots or more.


Personally, I hope the information at 40 fps is incorrect.