Canon R5 II Is Pre-Capture Going To Cost Me Money?!

[Jake Shoots Birds]

We've got a pair of nesting Bluebirds in the yard and their 3rd clutch is about ready to leave the box and the parents are on constant food delivery, which makes for a great opportunity to shoot - and test the R5II's pre-shot capture as they pause on a nearby tree before diving for the box.

Long post-short, I'm shooting with my 200-800mm at 800mm, wide open. As expected I'm getting great shot as they pose on the branches, and now with the 1/2 second of pre-capture I'm finally getting them leave the branch on the way to the nest. My first shots show that I'm way too slow on the shutter speed so I ramp it up to 1/3200s, then 1/4000, and higher. This shot is from the 1/3200s shots but the results ramping up are the same - the bird off the branch is not sharp.

You can see the branch is still in focus, so the question is am I shooting too slowly (remember, I got up to 1/5000s) or is the lens just not maintaining focus?

That's an open question for you all, but I'm thinking it's the latter, which has me asking a new question - at least to myself. When reading lens reviews I hear things about it being fast or slow focusing, and I've always taken that as the time it takes to obtain focus. But now I'm thinking it also speaks to the speed with which it maintains focus on a moving subject. And with that in mind, I'm starting to wonder if my great new camera body is too much for my current lens(es) (the 200-800mm and 100-500mm)?! If so, am I going to need a "faster" prime to get this?

I'll be testing this again today with the 100-500mm as well, hoping the sun is out so I can ramp up the shutter speeds. But if you have some insight it would be appreciated.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

To support my opinion I give you this shot (fully processed) taken a couple seconds before. Here the female went from facing away from me to facing me, and I managed to catch this mid-turn. Granted it's not leaping off a branch, but it's still spinning and 1/3200s was enough to freeze everything. So I'm thinking either my lens doesn't focus fast enough, or I've got something set incorrectly in the camera (which is entirely possible given that I'd only had it for 24 hours).

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 800.0 mm
• ƒ/9
• 1/1600 sec
• ISO 640

BTW, let me register one complaint that has to do with pre-capture: Give me a button that I can use to turn pre-capture on and off without having to go to a menu.

 

[Kamoshika]

To support my opinion I give you this shot (fully processed) taken a couple seconds before. Here the female went from facing away from me to facing me, and I managed to catch this mid-turn. Granted it's not leaping off a branch, but it's still spinning and 1/3200s was enough to freeze everything. So I'm thinking either my lens doesn't focus fast enough, or I've got something set incorrectly in the camera (which is entirely possible given that I'd only had it for 24 hours).

View attachment 30891

BTW, let me register one complaint that has to do with pre-capture: Give me a button that I can use to turn pre-capture on and off without having to go to a menu.

I think I heard someone in a video saying they put pre-cap in the quick menu to make it easier (yes, still a menu to go to, unfortunately).

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I think I heard someone in a video saying they put pre-cap in the quick menu to make it easier (yes, still a menu to go to, unfortunately).

My current solution, but not optimal to say the least given everything else I can use buttons for and don't.

 

[RedCobra]

To support my opinion I give you this shot (fully processed) taken a couple seconds before. Here the female went from facing away from me to facing me, and I managed to catch this mid-turn. Granted it's not leaping off a branch, but it's still spinning and 1/3200s was enough to freeze everything. So I'm thinking either my lens doesn't focus fast enough, or I've got something set incorrectly in the camera (which is entirely possible given that I'd only had it for 24 hours).

View attachment 30891

BTW, let me register one complaint that has to do with pre-capture: Give me a button that I can use to turn pre-capture on and off without having to go to a menu.

Set the M-fn button to cycle through C1-C3 and set one of those up for Pre-capture. me: C1 Tv, C2 Av, C3 Precap with the 4th press back to no Cs.

 

[jcass]

We've got a pair of nesting Bluebirds in the yard and their 3rd clutch is about ready to leave the box and the parents are on constant food delivery, which makes for a great opportunity to shoot - and test the R5II's pre-shot capture as they pause on a nearby tree before diving for the box.

Long post-short, I'm shooting with my 200-800mm at 800mm, wide open. As expected I'm getting great shot as they pose on the branches, and now with the 1/2 second of pre-capture I'm finally getting them leave the branch on the way to the nest. My first shots show that I'm way too slow on the shutter speed so I ramp it up to 1/3200s, then 1/4000, and higher. This shot is from the 1/3200s shots but the results ramping up are the same - the bird off the branch is not sharp.

View attachment 30890

You can see the branch is still in focus, so the question is am I shooting too slowly (remember, I got up to 1/5000s) or is the lens just not maintaining focus?

That's an open question for you all, but I'm thinking it's the latter, which has me asking a new question - at least to myself. When reading lens reviews I hear things about it being fast or slow focusing, and I've always taken that as the time it takes to obtain focus. But now I'm thinking it also speaks to the speed with which it maintains focus on a moving subject. And with that in mind, I'm starting to wonder if my great new camera body is too much for my current lens(es) (the 200-800mm and 100-500mm)?! If so, am I going to need a "faster" prime to get this?

I'll be testing this again today with the 100-500mm as well, hoping the sun is out so I can ramp up the shutter speeds. But if you have some insight it would be appreciated.

Good observation and theory. I'm looking forward to your results with the 100-500mm.

 

[Dean Wilson]

(remember, I got up to 1/5000s)

Actually the shutter speed can be as fast as 1/8000 for mechanical and electronic first-curtain, or 1/32,000 for electronic.

Have you watched the Rudy Winston video that describes Focusing with the R5? There would be better setting than those you are using.

Canon Auto Focus Explained with Canon Technical Advisor Rudy Winston

NOTE: This is not an official Canon USA show. This is a podcast first and foremost, and Canon was kind enough to allow my guest, Rudy Winston, to come speak ...

www.youtube.com

 

[David Berry]

Set the M-fn button to cycle through C1-C3 and set one of those up for Pre-capture. me: C1 Tv, C2 Av, C3 Precap with the 4th press back to no Cs.

Exactly!

I’ll add that the M-Fn button is the only button on both the R5i and the R5ii that can be assigned to cycle through C1—C2—C3. Choose “C” for the M-Fn button in the assign buttons menu.

Is there time for a quick impromptu rant? Why are we limited to three custom modes? Why no option for C4, C5… ? It’s not because “C1”, et cetera have to be engraved on a dial (as with most cameras).

… David

 

[tpatana]

Considering how well your second picture is focused, I'd guess some reason the first set is back-focusing. I don't know if that's due to body, lens or movement. Might try playing around with the different AF-modes, maybe one of them works better?

 

[jcass]

We've got a pair of nesting Bluebirds in the yard and their 3rd clutch is about ready to leave the box and the parents are on constant food delivery, which makes for a great opportunity to shoot - and test the R5II's pre-shot capture as they pause on a nearby tree before diving for the box.

Sorry, I don't have pics to support what I'm going to say... Looking at images on my camera, it does appear that per-capture is at a fixed focal length. In more specific terms, while you're holding the half-shutter button, the focus is fixed at the instant of initialization. During the "half-second" of prebuffer, the subject focus is fixes at initialization and does not move until the full shutter press completes the cycle and re-initializes focus actuation.

This is only my current impression, by no means definitive. I only spent 15 minutes using precapture in the back yard and saw the same loss of clarity when the bird changed relative distance. My tests were with a 100-500L.

I also wonder if "Jans settings" are a factor.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

Set the M-fn button to cycle through C1-C3 and set one of those up for Pre-capture. me: C1 Tv, C2 Av, C3 Precap with the 4th press back to no Cs.

Played with it yesterday and using C1-C3 is what I came up with as the stop gap. That said, I hate the M-fn button placement but might try other buttons to facilitate the change.

As for focus modes and other suggestions around that, let's just say that I've been shooting this type of stuff for 3 1/2 years with an R5, and outside the new modes that's the one part of this that I understood going in. And not for nothing, the R5II performs way better in each of them.

Moving on... After shooting with the 100-500mm yesterday and having far more success I'm convinced that what I'm seeing is due to a combination of the following:

• Light makes a huge difference
  • The more light the better it focuses, so faster glass will focus better, and the same glass will focus better in brighter light (duh)
• Shutter speed combined with focal length makes a huge difference
  • Outside the basic rules for focal length and shutter speed (shoot faster than 1/focal length), what I wasn't considering in the moment is that 1/4000s at 800mm doesn't freeze a 6 inch bird in the frame the same way it does at 500mm because the bird consumes more of the frame. Had I been shooting faster it would have helped, but not solved the issue because...
• L-series glass makes a huge difference
  • It's going to focus faster. The 200-800mm was maintaining focus but couldn't keep up with the speed of the bird. The 100-500mm kept up with the bird for at least 1/2 second after first movement, which is more than enough considering the size and speed of the bird, and the background I was shooting against.
  • It's going to be faster. The wider the aperture the more light and the faster you can shoot, which is what the first two bullets are all about.

The 200-800mm is a really, really great lens for something that costs less than $2000. But when you're shooting at 800mm and f9 you can only shoot so fast before you max out your ISO when the light isn't perfect (something I was very cognizant of given that I don't have Pure Raw updates for this camera yet). This particular situation would have been fine if I could either shoot faster, or the bird moved slower. If I want to do this at 800mm then I'd have to drop a lot more coin (not happening).

It's weird, but I hear YouTubers saying that they'd love to have less than 1/2 second of pre-capture. But I tell you what, when birds move this fast a half second isn't a lot. LOL

 

[jcass]

For the short time that I experimented with it yesterday, I need the full 1/2 second, at least. I haven't tried lower fps to see if it will go longer than 1/2 second vs always 15 frames, or what happens if I haven't held half-shutter for a 1/2 second before actuating full shutter.

I also saw similar results to the test shots in your original post, leading me to also question the tracking behavior in pre-capture just like you did. It looks like the focus remained on the perch during the pre-capture photos, not tracking the bird. Like I said above, this is nowhere near definitive and my current AF settings may be the reason.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

My company gives us 1/2 day Fridays during the summer, so after doing a couple Honey-Do's, I spent the rest of a perfect afternoon watching the bluebirds bring in the food for their babies (probably the last day). The sun was bright all day, and in the afternoon it was directly behind me and provided perfect lighting.

I shot both lenses in the morning with good, but not perfect, light, and the 100-500mm performed fine. The 200-800mm didn't, and it wasn't so much gaining focus as it was obtaining focus. I was in front of the birdhouse, and there are a number of screws in the face around the hole, and while the 100-500mm would find the bird's eye consistently, the 200-800mm seemed to have the camera grab one of the screws and stick with that. I'll be sending examples to my Canon person once I can confirm the focus point on the RAW file and they're done with their road trip (ends after the US Open Tennis).

In the afternoon, shooting at 1/6400-1/8000s, I got great results with both lenses. I did find that the 200-800mm performed a little more consistently when I zoomed out to between 600-700mm. I don't know if this has to do with a little additional light getting in, but one of the strange things I haven't spoken about yet is that my 200-800mm will go from f9 to f10 when fully extended, even when my aperture setting is at a minimum. This means I'm not getting the stated minimum of f9 (I'll post more about this separately).

With good light and faster shutter speeds I was able to maintain focus on the 100-500mm until the bird flew out of the frame (5-7 frames at 20fps), even as it went behind branches in the tree it was originally perched in. With the 200-800mm I'd get 3 and at most 4 frames before focus got soft, which to me confirms that it simply does not focus as fast. For birds this size moving as quickly as they do it's a condition I find acceptable for the price of the lens, and I would expect it to perform better with a larger, slightly slower moving bird in the same situation.

I've got strings of photos in series that I may share here, but for now I'll share some of yesterday's results.

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/7.1
• 1/5000 sec
• ISO 3200

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 707.0 mm
• ƒ/9
• 1/5000 sec
• ISO 3200

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 600.0 mm
• ƒ/8
• 1/8000 sec
• ISO 2000

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 800.0 mm
• ƒ/9
• 1/8000 sec
• ISO 4000

• Canon EOS R5m2
• 539.0 mm
• ƒ/8
• 1/8000 sec
• ISO 2500

 

[MikeZ]

Fantastic images !

 

[ctitanic]

Yeap, I love the images. In my opinion this feature requires very fast focusing lenses. In another words, it will not work well in all lenses.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

Yeap, I love the images. In my opinion this feature requires very fast focusing lenses. In another words, it will not work well in all lenses.

I'm finding it works with the 200-800mm, but a lot depends on the shutter speed and the directional movement. Flying at you the 200-800 gets maybe 2 images where the 100-500mm will get 5 or 6, but still isn't fast focusing enough to stay locked (nor am I fast framing enough to make it matter LOL). It has me wanting to see if a prime improves the situation, but my wallet (and wife) are telling me I don't want to know. That said, if I can find a 500mm f4 EF works and I can find one at the right price...