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- Jake From
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I took the day off and headed to Allen's Camera to pick up my R5II and a couple batteries. It was a beautiful day so I was looking forward to a chance to test it out. Two things got in the way of that.
First, man, the menus have changed. I went side-by-side with my R5 as I walked through the settings and it took a while to get things set. Additionally, my internet was down, so I didn't have access to the user manual, which like most is now online/downloadable only, so there were a bunch of new focus point options and metering options that I wasn't 100% on. At least I had some time to kill as the batteries charged.
The other issue is that this beautiful day was windy as heck, so the flying things I love to shoot weren't behaving in a way that was conducive to shooting.
That said, there's this butterfly bush outside my garage, and there was activity there, so I headed over with the 100-500mm attached. There were 3 or 4 Skippers on it, these tiny butterflies less than an inch across. I've shot them before with the R5 but I needed to use single point focus to grab them because animal eye detection had no shot against the busy flower groups the plant has. And on a windy day? Forget about it!! So when the R5II not only immediately locked on the first Skipper I aimed it at, but stayed locked as the plant blew back and forth across the viewfinder I was dumbfounded. As Ben Kenobi might say, this is the focus system you've been looking for!!
I posted about this elsewhere, but I shot Raw and JPEG because I wasn't sure if yesterday's Adobe updates would include updates to profiles. So I was happy to find that outside of some lens corrections (which I had turned off for JPEGs in camera) the colors are pretty darn close (I'm sure someone will do additional, more scientific testing). DxO Pure Raw still needs an update, but I can invoke my old pal DeNoise AI so I've got that covered when I need it.
Gonna be a busy week, so I'm not going to have a lot of time before the weekend to shoot (but who knows?!), but I wanted to at least answer the question that was asked about whether R5 shooters felt the upgrade is worth it? It's not an insignificant cost outlay, but it's also not an insignificant upgrade. I can't give the full argument to support my claim, but I would say that if you've ever been frustrated with the R5 not focusing on the regular, then you need to consider upgrading. I've not truly tested it at this point, just aimed and shot, but for sure I'm shooting a lot more quickly after aiming with the Mk II.
I'll post more over time, and now that I have 3 fully charged batteries I'll be able to test everything. And for the curious, I did stick a 3rd party battery in and the camera powered up, giving the same message it does with an old Canon battery saying that certain functions are unavailable, but once that message is dismissed I got a battery error message. I expect that there will be 3rd party batteries coming for the R5II, but wanted to let you know what I saw.
And for the curious, this is a Skipper. Not a great shot, but it was the first shot, taken about a second after I aimed at one for the first time.
First, man, the menus have changed. I went side-by-side with my R5 as I walked through the settings and it took a while to get things set. Additionally, my internet was down, so I didn't have access to the user manual, which like most is now online/downloadable only, so there were a bunch of new focus point options and metering options that I wasn't 100% on. At least I had some time to kill as the batteries charged.
The other issue is that this beautiful day was windy as heck, so the flying things I love to shoot weren't behaving in a way that was conducive to shooting.
That said, there's this butterfly bush outside my garage, and there was activity there, so I headed over with the 100-500mm attached. There were 3 or 4 Skippers on it, these tiny butterflies less than an inch across. I've shot them before with the R5 but I needed to use single point focus to grab them because animal eye detection had no shot against the busy flower groups the plant has. And on a windy day? Forget about it!! So when the R5II not only immediately locked on the first Skipper I aimed it at, but stayed locked as the plant blew back and forth across the viewfinder I was dumbfounded. As Ben Kenobi might say, this is the focus system you've been looking for!!
I posted about this elsewhere, but I shot Raw and JPEG because I wasn't sure if yesterday's Adobe updates would include updates to profiles. So I was happy to find that outside of some lens corrections (which I had turned off for JPEGs in camera) the colors are pretty darn close (I'm sure someone will do additional, more scientific testing). DxO Pure Raw still needs an update, but I can invoke my old pal DeNoise AI so I've got that covered when I need it.
Gonna be a busy week, so I'm not going to have a lot of time before the weekend to shoot (but who knows?!), but I wanted to at least answer the question that was asked about whether R5 shooters felt the upgrade is worth it? It's not an insignificant cost outlay, but it's also not an insignificant upgrade. I can't give the full argument to support my claim, but I would say that if you've ever been frustrated with the R5 not focusing on the regular, then you need to consider upgrading. I've not truly tested it at this point, just aimed and shot, but for sure I'm shooting a lot more quickly after aiming with the Mk II.
I'll post more over time, and now that I have 3 fully charged batteries I'll be able to test everything. And for the curious, I did stick a 3rd party battery in and the camera powered up, giving the same message it does with an old Canon battery saying that certain functions are unavailable, but once that message is dismissed I got a battery error message. I expect that there will be 3rd party batteries coming for the R5II, but wanted to let you know what I saw.
And for the curious, this is a Skipper. Not a great shot, but it was the first shot, taken about a second after I aimed at one for the first time.
- Canon EOS R5m2
- 500.0 mm
- ƒ/7.1
- 1/800 sec
- ISO 400
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