Hobbiest photographer upgrading from R8

[Josh]

I'm a hobbiest photographer who mainly shoots rec sports (outdoor football, outdoor baseball both mostly daytime) and events for friends and family. I've been shooting with an R8 (upgraded from a T6i) for the past year and change. I've found a few things that annoyed with me with the R8.

First of which was the battery life. I have 3 batteries and I can go through them like water sometimes not even lasting an hour.

Another gripe I have is I just can't get used to using the touch screen to adjust my focus point on the fly. I feel like a joystick would make my life so much easier.

Some smaller but still anooying things are that the R8 has a pretty small buffer, rolling shutter is terrible, and when I'm out in the sun I've had it overheat a few times even without recording video or taking that many photos.

All that being said I've really enjoyed shooting on it and I can definitely improve on technique but as a hobby where I just want to not worry about all those things listed above and just shoot, I'm interested in upgrading to either a used R3(been seeing some around the 3-3.3k range) or possibly a used R5( cheapest I've seen is 3.5k) money isn't the biggest issue but I want to make sure I get the best (for me) and renting would be too expensive to smtest out both.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Edited: I totally meant to write r5mk2 but I appreciate all of the feedback and definitely still helpful

 

[koenkooi]

The rolling shutter on the R5 is slighly worse than the R8 and its AF system is at least a generation behind. If you are used to the R8 feature like tracking in zones and using eye detect on far away subjects, the R5 will feel annoying.
It will fix your other complaints, battery life is a bit better, it won’t overheat as much and the buffer is much, much larger.

The AF is the R3 is similar to the R8 and it addresses pretty much all of the things you mentioned, but I personally haven’t used one.

 

[neuroanatomist]

I agree with @koenkooi that the R3 would address your concerns, and then some. I have an R8, and I had an R3 from the day it first started shipping (until the R1). I had a longer journey there, since I started with a T1i.

Battery life is excellent, as you would expect given the much larger battery.

For AF point selection, a joystick is good but in my experience, there is nothing better than the Smart Controller on the R3/R1. Eye Control AF doesn’t work for everyone, but I found it quite useful to switch between players on a field, for example.

The buffer is plenty deep, 150 RAW images. I typically used 30 FPS for birds and 15 FPS for sports, and it’s rare that I would hold down the shutter for the solid 5 to 10 seconds needed to fill the buffer.

Never had the R3 overheat or even come close.

The integrated grip will probably be the biggest change you will feel. You’d be going from Canon‘s smallest full frame camera to their (now barely) second largest. For my primary camera I far prefer the integrated grip (I had a 1D X before the R3, and that replaced a 7D and 5DII that I used with battery grips). It’s more comfortable for me to hold during a full day of shooting, and it offers better balance for the heavy lenses I tend to use. But ergonomics are very personal.

The R8 is my FF travel camera, for that use my subjects are typically static and my shooting is slow paced, so I haven’t run into the challenges you have with that camera. It did show a few bars of the warning thermometer on a very hot day in Rome (but one of my kids overheated far worse than the camera that day).

I’ve never used an R5, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the R3.

 

[Josh]

I totally meant to write r5mk2 but I guess I posted too late at night. That aside Ive been leaning towards the r3 because it just seems to fit the bill better for what I need.

 

[koenkooi]

I totally meant to write r5mk2 but I guess I posted too late at night. That aside Ive been leaning towards the r3 because it just seems to fit the bill better for what I need.

The R5II has a much better AF than the original R5 and a much improved sensor readout. I can switch between the R5II and R8 without issues, switching between the R8 and R5 was much harder due to the differences.

 

[becceric]

All the above is good advice. In case you haven't signed up yet, you can get alerts from Canon Price Watch, https://www.cpricewatch.com/
Occasionally Canon has great sales on refurbished cameras with the same warranty as new. I have purchased several refurbs from Canon and their condition has been great. CPW's refurbished tracker and alerts can help keep you on top of things.

 

[dcm]

Two somewhat different use cases.

1. For sports, the R3 will give you Olympics level capabilities as we saw in previous posts. It will be up to you to learn how to make the best of it. The limitation will be you for a while. The R5 and R6 may sufficient, depending the on the situation.
2. For family or other less demanding events, the R5 and R6 should handle them. You shouldn't find too many limitations in this case. The R3 might be overkill.

I find a R6m2 handles both pretty well for my current situation, coming from a 6Dm2/1DXm2 combo. I recently used an R6m2 w/ RF28-70 f2.8 and R8 w/ RF 85 f2 to shoot my granddaughter's middle school play. They were setup identically and were pretty much interchangeable for this purpose. I also shoot department events with this combo that get published in the university electronic and print media. My images consistently get some of the highest numbers of likes on social media. I used the R6m2 with EF 135 f2 or EF 70-200 f2.8 m2 to shoot her volleyball matches for the past few years with pretty good results, replacing my 1DXm2 for my current sports, bird, and wildlife shooting. I haven't tried an R5 yet.