I Have an R5 MK II. AMA.

#61
Quarkcharmed said:
DR measurements from P2P (thanks to Bill Claff and to @Nrbelex):

0.4 stops worse than the R5 at ISO 100 and almost identical from ISO 800+, however it bakes in noise reduction at all ISOs, so the actual high ISO performance is worse.

The only advantage (from other tests) is that the R5II has much less hot pixels. That's probably the only advantage if we talk about landscape photography.

Overall, not a great upgrade option from R5 to R5II, especially considering the price. Pay more and get worse performance, except the hot pixels.
Click to expand...
What surprised me was that ES still had a lower DR than mechanical shutter with the R5II, with +/- no difference between the R5 II and R5, depending on ISO.

I thought moving to 14 bits with ES on the R5 II would result in ES and mechanical shutters having equal DR. Granted, the DR is still good, even with ES, but not the improvement I was looking for.
 
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#62
Quarkcharmed said:
... however it bakes in noise reduction at all ISOs, so the actual high ISO performance is worse.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much of that is to counteract the ISO pushing done in-camera? The R5 has a native base ISO of 55, the R3 is ISO 64 (those are from DxO's measurements; I have found those generally reliable though their 'scores' are useless, IMO). In both cases, even ISO 100 is being pushed in-camera. All of the ISOs are pushed (not by much, less than a stop) in-camera, e.g. on the R5, ISO 51200 is actually 30355.

Quarkcharmed said:
Overall, not a great upgrade option from R5 to R5II, especially considering the price. Pay more and get worse performance, except the hot pixels.
Click to expand...
As I've said before, the likely primary target market is not R5 owners, it's owners of 5- and 6-series DSLRs, and secondarily owners of the original R or RP looking to step up...and for them, it is a big step up.

You're also evaluating performance solely based on the limited metric of dynamic range. I had hoped we'd moved past that, but some people are stuck in the DRone Wars mentality. Even for R5 users, the R5II offers some meaningful performance improvements – less rolling shutter, faster frame rate (and maintaining that frame rate as battery charge drops), better AF, flash with electronic shutter, faster max shutter speed (useful for daytime wide aperture shooting), elimination of the 30 minute video recording limit, etc. All of those differences represent areas in which the performance is notably better. But if you want to judge a camera based on a single number metric, you go right ahead.
 
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#63
docsmith said:
What surprised me was that ES still had a lower DR than mechanical shutter with the R5II, with +/- no difference between the R5 II and R5, depending on ISO.

I thought moving to 14 bits with ES on the R5 II would result in ES and mechanical shutters having equal DR. Granted, the DR is still good, even with ES, but not the improvement I was looking for.
Click to expand...
Have a look at the R3, which loses 0.7 stops of DR at base ISO with ES vs mechanical. Given that, I did not expect the R5II to deliver the same DR across shutter modes. In fact, it is somewhat better than the R3 in that it only loses 0.5 stops with ES.

To me, the slight reduction in DR is more than worth it for the faster, silent shooting.
 
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#64
neuroanatomist said:
I wonder how much of that is to counteract the ISO pushing done in-camera? The R5 has a native base ISO of 55, the R3 is ISO 64 (those are from DxO's measurements; I have found those generally reliable though their 'scores' are useless, IMO). In both cases, even ISO 100 is being pushed in-camera. All of the ISOs are pushed (not by much, less than a stop) in-camera, e.g. on the R5, ISO 51200 is actually 30355. [...]
Click to expand...
Over on DPReview someone floated the theory that it could help with getting rid of hot pixels, Bill wasn't sure about that. Even after 4 years, no one will go on-record for what Canon intended for this type of filtering in the R5.

Someone else mentioned that the AA filter layout seems to have changed as well on the R5, I wonder if they (re)used R1 tech for that.
 
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#66
neuroanatomist said:
IEven for R5 users, the R5II offers some meaningful performance improvements – less rolling shutter, faster frame rate (and maintaining that frame rate as battery charge drops), better AF, flash with electronic shutter, faster max shutter speed (useful for daytime wide aperture shooting), elimination of the 30 minute video recording limit, etc. All of those differences represent areas in which the performance is notably better. But if you want to judge a camera based on a single number metric, you go right ahead.
Click to expand...
It's useful listing those because it helps existing R5 users to focus on whether their shooting style will benefit.
 
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#67
neuroanatomist said:
You're also evaluating performance solely based on the limited metric of dynamic range. I had hoped we'd moved past that, but some people are stuck in the DRone Wars mentality. Even for R5 users, the R5II offers some meaningful performance improvements – less rolling shutter, faster frame rate (and maintaining that frame rate as battery charge drops), better AF, flash with electronic shutter, faster max shutter speed (useful for daytime wide aperture shooting), elimination of the 30 minute video recording limit, etc. All of those differences represent areas in which the performance is notably better. But if you want to judge a camera based on a single number metric, you go right ahead.
Click to expand...
Even add in better control over ES fps, which is something I had wanted.

The biggest potential benefit of moving from the R5 to R5 II, IMO, we still do not know much about, which is AF performance. I've seen some superlatives thrown around, but all that from people that had the camera for a few hrs at a Canon sponsored event. I will be interested in what people that have field tested the camera over several days to weeks have to say.

Also, I am wondering if using the LP-E6P in the R5 Mk I will help maintain the fps in mechanical mode. My experience is that the decrease has happened anywhere from 30-60% battery life remaining. I do not think it is a baked in value, but rather the camera adjusts based on the battery performance.

neuroanatomist said:
Have a look at the R3, which loses 0.7 stops of DR at base ISO with ES vs mechanical. Given that, I did not expect the R5II to deliver the same DR across shutter modes. In fact, it is somewhat better than the R3 in that it only loses 0.5 stops with ES.

To me, the slight reduction in DR is more than worth it for the faster, silent shooting.
Click to expand...
I just did. I hadn't noticed. Any thoughts on why ES affects DR...admittedly by a small margin?

And yes, I agree, when I first noticed the drop with H+ and ES mode with the R5, I looked at this, and they are in line with the 5DIV, which had excellent IQ in my opinion. So, a bit of a drop, but still very good.
 
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#68
docsmith said:
The biggest potential benefit of moving from the R5 to R5 II, IMO, we still do not know much about, which is AF performance. I've seen some superlatives thrown around, but all that from people that had the camera for a few hrs at a Canon sponsored event. I will be interested in what people that have field tested the camera over several days to weeks have to say.
Click to expand...
From just shy of a week of playing around with it, I can tell you that the AF seems to reliably attach, and typically stay attached, to the subject of interest for most of my types of shooting. (Keep in mind I'm coming from a 5D III.)

It loves to find and stay attached to human and animal eyes (even in statues and pictures). This has been a huge boon for street photography, where I sometimes don't even have time to bring the viewfinder to my eye before focusing and shooting. It also does a good job with both cars and trains. The R5 II has an auto mode that does not require you to pre-select the subject type of interest, which is essential for me. I believe that wasn't available in the R5, and that feature alone justifies this camera for me.

The system does not seem to find and follow most insects particularly well. It works well, though not perfectly, in very low light. As I've mentioned a couple times, eye control AF doesn't work for me. It rarely calibrates successfully, and even after it does, it doesn't actually follow my eye. If it works well for you, I can imagine that being a significant benefit.

Since the system isn't perfect, I have made one significant adjustment: I've made the * button a temporary spot AF (with subject tracking). That way, even if the camera guesses my intent incorrectly, I can quickly show it what I'm interested in, which it will typically follow effectively. I use back button auto focus via the AF On button, so having these two buttons next to each other is incredibly convenient. (Since I only shoot stills, I set the movie recording button to exposure lock.)

With that setup, there have only been a handful of cases where I needed to tweak the AF settings manually. I've also briefly played around with the manual focus assistance options, which are also very helpful and impressive.
 
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#69
docsmith said:
What surprised me was that ES still had a lower DR than mechanical shutter, with +/- (depending on ISO) no difference between the R5 II and R5.

I thought moving to 14 bits with ES would make ES and mechanical shutters equal. Granted, the DR is still good, even with ES, but not the improvement I was looking for.
Click to expand...
Faster readout (scanning of pixel rows during/after the exposure) creates more read noise apparently.
neuroanatomist said:
I wonder how much of that is to counteract the ISO pushing done in-camera?
Click to expand...
Bill Claff says the noise reduction in the R5II is milder than that in the R5, it's very mild. It's hard to tell how the R5 would compare to the R5II without any baked-in NR in either camera. Probably the difference will be slightly less than 0.4 stops of DR. It's not significant but disappointing nevertheless.

In terms of "pushing", by the way, the R5II seems to have two ISO-invariant ranges: 100-400 and 500+. So the second gain may be starting from ISO 500, not 800.
screenshot (8).png

That basically means users can arrange their workflow around ISO 100 and ISO 500. That's, of course, for those who use ISO-invariance

neuroanatomist said:
The R5 has a native base ISO of 55, the R3 is ISO 64 (those are from DxO's measurements; I have found those generally reliable though their 'scores' are useless, IMO). In both cases, even ISO 100 is being pushed in-camera. All of the ISOs are pushed (not by much, less than a stop) in-camera, e.g. on the R5, ISO 51200 is actually 30355.
Click to expand...
Tbh I'm not sure how to use those 'measured' ISOs from DxO. They don't seem to have a practical meaning.
neuroanatomist said:
As I've said before, the likely primary target market is not R5 owners, it's owners of 5- and 6-series DSLRs, and secondarily owners of the original R or RP looking to step up...and for them, it is a big step up.
Click to expand...
Why, I would consider an upgrade from the R5 to R5II. But because my primary focus is on landscapes, I don't see why I should pay $2-3k for no improvement. If I start shooting birds more, I'll consider the upgrade.

neuroanatomist said:
You're also evaluating performance solely based on the limited metric of dynamic range.
Click to expand...
I wasn't evaluating the performance of the whole camera - but DR is important in landscape photography. But If I were still with my old 5DIV, I'd be upgrading to the R5II of course, not the R5, despite this dynamic range downgrade.

But for landscape shooters who own the R5, the upgrade seems to be highly debatable. Sony A7RV seems to be a better option for those who want to upgrade, it's much cheaper but provides more MPs and better IQ overall (yes I know people don't like talking about the Dark Sony Side here...)
 
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#70
Quarkcharmed said:
But for landscape shooters who own the R5, the upgrade seems to be highly debatable. Sony A7RV seems to be a better option for those who want to upgrade, it's much cheaper but provides more MPs and better IQ overall (yes I know people don't like talking about the Dark Sony Side here...)
Click to expand...
Makes sense. 12-ish years ago, I’d have advised landscape shooters to get the Nikon D800 and 14-24G.

Today, I’d recommend a Fuji GFX.
 
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#71
Quarkcharmed said:
In terms of "pushing", by the way, the R5II seems to have two ISO-invariant ranges: 100-400 and 500+. So the second gain may be starting from ISO 500, not 800.
Click to expand...

Copying over my post from elsewhere to benefit those here:

Yes, Bill indicated that the second gain mode seems to be starting at ISO 500. And for that reason, if I have to go over ISO 100, I've been aiming for 500.

Separately, I would note that ACR's AI noise reduction seems to do a much better job with the R5 MK II than it did with a 5D MK III (again, not used for the above shot).
 
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#72
neuroanatomist said:
Makes sense. 12-ish years ago, I’d have advised landscape shooters to get the Nikon D800 and 14-24G.

Today, I’d recommend a Fuji GFX.
Click to expand...
This is the only real answer. The idea that a Sony A7RV is going to offer something significant enough over an R5/II as it relates to landscapes for people with Canon lenses is... ridiculous; completely, and entirely ridiculous.

The only tool that offers something for landscape that really can't be matched by any modern high end full frame body is a medium format sensor.

If all I was concerned about is shooting landscapes I'd of sold all my Canon gear for Fuji years ago.
 
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#73
PGSanta said:
This is the only real answer. The idea that a Sony A7RV is going to offer something significant enough over an R5/II as it relates to landscapes for people with Canon lenses is... ridiculous; completely, and entirely ridiculous.

The only tool that offers something for landscape that really can't be matched by any modern high end full frame body is a medium format sensor.

If all I was concerned about is shooting landscapes I'd of sold all my Canon gear for Fuji years ago.
Click to expand...
Fuji lacks in long lenses. I shoot quite a bit of zoomed in landscapes, and a Fuji lens kit replacing my 16-500mm range would be expensive and very heavy.
 
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#75
Quarkcharmed said:
Fuji lacks in long lenses. I shoot quite a bit of zoomed in landscapes, and a Fuji lens kit replacing my 16-500mm range would be expensive and very heavy.
Click to expand...
That's why I hadn't made the switch to Fuji for landscapes. They have the 500mm prime lens now, but there's gaps in the range if you need a setup to go from very wide to pretty narrow fields of view in a reasonably small number of lenses, let alone the cost of transition. At the end of the day, I felt that I'd have more and better images with a setup where I can get from 15-500 without any meaningful gaps in the range or in quality in a 3 lens setup. For Fuji, you can do it with 4 lenses and a TC, but there's going to be gaps in the range, it's going to be very expensive, and because we're adding a couple pieces of equipment, the weight goes up. From my quick assessment, a RF kit can do this at almost 4 lbs less than Fuji can, and without gaps in the range, and for less money. It's a trade off to be sure.
 
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#77
A few final thoughts before everyone starts receiving their bodies:
  • The blur detection feature hasn't been super effective for me. I tried using the "standard" and "high" detection levels, but I the camera didn't seem to detect much blur, even when it was certainly there. I'm still experimenting here.
  • In playback of images, I have the magnification set to show the actual size from the focus point, but in many cases it doesn't seem to zoom into the focus point. Unclear if this is a bug or if the camera thinks a different focus point was used than it seemed.
  • The 30 fps shooting mode seems to work with the EF 24-70 f/2.8L (v1). This should be good news for those hoping to adapt old EF glass.
  • The deletion menu (when hitting the trash can button during playback) has an option to "Erase scene including image" to erase the images captured as part of a drive burst. It looks like this was in prior Canon cameras (at least the R3), but it's a huge help in avoiding coming home with way too many rejects.
  • Canon Camera Connect on Android doesn't work yet, so I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
  • I tried using the Action Priority mode for volleyball, but I was at the rear of the action, using a pretty wide lens, and it was pretty dark, so it didn't work very well. Looking forward to more experimenting. Even at ISO 12800, the images are decent after going through ACR's AI denoise (which takes much longer with the R5 MKII files than 5D MKIII files). Here's an example:
Volleyball Small.jpg​
  • There's a message I can't quite figure out when entering image playback mode:
Playback.jpg​
​
Any thoughts on what that's supposed to mean? Pressing "Mode" doesn't seem to do anything.​
​
Hope everyone gets their orders soon!​
 
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#78
Nrbelex said:
A few final thoughts before everyone starts receiving their bodies:
  • The blur detection feature hasn't been super effective for me. I tried using the "standard" and "high" detection levels, but I the camera didn't seem to detect much blur, even when it was certainly there. I'm still experimenting here.
  • In playback of images, I have the magnification set to show the actual size from the focus point, but in many cases it doesn't seem to zoom into the focus point. Unclear if this is a bug or if the camera thinks a different focus point was used than it seemed.
  • The 30 fps shooting mode seems to work with the EF 24-70 f/2.8L (v1). This should be good news for those hoping to adapt old EF glass.
  • The deletion menu (when hitting the trash can button during playback) has an option to "Erase scene including image" to erase the images captured as part of a drive burst. It looks like this was in prior Canon cameras (at least the R3), but it's a huge help in avoiding coming home with way too many rejects.
  • Canon Camera Connect on Android doesn't work yet, so I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
  • I tried using the Action Priority mode for volleyball, but I was at the rear of the action, using a pretty wide lens, and it was pretty dark, so it didn't work very well. Looking forward to more experimenting. Even at ISO 12800, the images are decent after going through ACR's AI denoise (which takes much longer with the R5 MKII files than 5D MKIII files). Here's an example:
  • There's a message I can't quite figure out when entering image playback mode:
​
Any thoughts on what that's supposed to mean? Pressing "Mode" doesn't seem to do anything.​
​
Hope everyone gets their orders soon!​
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing ! The zoom into actual size on AF-point is a must function for me that I used A LOT, so hopefully that will be sorted quickly… I think the mkII have separate folders for stills and video, so if you have a video file it’s not on the stills-playback reel? So you can switch to see just videos or just stills? Just guessing..
 
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#79
Nrbelex said:
A few final thoughts before everyone starts receiving their bodies:
  • The blur detection feature hasn't been super effective for me. I tried using the "standard" and "high" detection levels, but I the camera didn't seem to detect much blur, even when it was certainly there. I'm still experimenting here.
  • In playback of images, I have the magnification set to show the actual size from the focus point, but in many cases it doesn't seem to zoom into the focus point. Unclear if this is a bug or if the camera thinks a different focus point was used than it seemed.
  • The 30 fps shooting mode seems to work with the EF 24-70 f/2.8L (v1). This should be good news for those hoping to adapt old EF glass.
  • The deletion menu (when hitting the trash can button during playback) has an option to "Erase scene including image" to erase the images captured as part of a drive burst. It looks like this was in prior Canon cameras (at least the R3), but it's a huge help in avoiding coming home with way too many rejects.
  • Canon Camera Connect on Android doesn't work yet, so I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
  • I tried using the Action Priority mode for volleyball, but I was at the rear of the action, using a pretty wide lens, and it was pretty dark, so it didn't work very well. Looking forward to more experimenting. Even at ISO 12800, the images are decent after going through ACR's AI denoise (which takes much longer with the R5 MKII files than 5D MKIII files). Here's an example:
​
Click to expand...
I just wanted to say thanks for the early impressions and that I hope you enjoy the R5 II!
 
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#80
Quarkcharmed said:
...

But for landscape shooters who own the R5, the upgrade seems to be highly debatable. Sony A7RV seems to be a better option for those who want to upgrade, it's much cheaper but provides more MPs and better IQ overall (yes I know people don't like talking about the Dark Sony Side here...)
Click to expand...
I have absolutely no idea why one would consider the Sony A7RV to be an upgrade over the R5. The MP difference is negligible in real world shooting, the DR is virtually identical. Since photography is really about lenses, I see nothing in the Sony lineup that Canon does not offer for landscape shooters. If you are a Canon shooter, and like Canon color science, then you will probably not like Sony's as much. Seems to be a total sideways switch, not an upgrade in any meaningful may, and probably a negative for a Canon shooter.
 
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