Canon R5 Night Out With My R5 - Big Disappointment

[Dwardski]

Last weekend I took my R5 to a concert at a small local venue, a place I'd shot at many times before with my 5D Mk III. This time, the 5D was my backup body and, as it turned out, I was glad that it was there.

A bit of background: I shoot mainly music concerts, as well as landscape. Prior to COVID I was very busy shooting concerts, mostly unsigned bands in small venues and, although nothing has really come of it, I was combining my two main hobbies, photography and live music, and ended up giving unknown bands a bit of publicity. Since COVID there have been fewer opportunities to shoot live bands, with a lot of venues having closed their doors, and recent health issues have meant that I've been less able to get out and shoot landscapes. The bottom line is that, despite having had the R5 for nearly a year, I'm still not very familiar with it, so what follows may well be all down to me...

So, before going out I made a couple of changes to the camera setup, mainly concerning focusing. I changed ffrom back-button focusing to just using the shutter button, and engaged eye detection (obviously, a feature not needed on my previous landscape shoots!). At the venue I made a couple of test shots prior to the opening act, and set my ISO to 4000 as a starting point. As I was using my RF 24-70 f2.8 lens, I would be able to alter the ISO using the control ring whilst half-pressing the shutter; this is the standard setup, of course.

Also, so as not to disturb the rest of the audience, I went into the menu and selected "Screen Off" from the Shooting info. disp menu - all of the other items were ticked. That meant that I could use the Info button to turn off the screen when it wasn't needed - i.e. until the interval, when I could review the photos that I'd taken of the opening act.

On with the concert, and on with the shooting, and here's what happened:

Initially, I could only increase my ISO to 8000 using the control ring. Later attempts seemed to work fine, and I didn't change anything.

Occasionally, the ISO would reset itself to 1000. I eventually decided that this happened after the camera had resumed from sleep mode, although I didn't have time to test this theory.

Likewise, I found that pressing the Info button had stopped allowing me to turn off the screen, and when I went into the menu, the "Screen Off" option was unticked. Ticking it allowed me to turn off the screen but, like the ISO, it kept on un-setting itself. Not sure whether this was linked to the camera's sleep mode. I ended up turning the screen around - not an ideal solution!

Finally, auto-focusing. Eye detection worked really well, especially given the low-light conditions. Until I rotated the camera verftically, that is. Then the focus points seemed to be stuck in the bottom left corner of the screen, and I had to point the camera upwards unitl the focus point was somewhere near the artist's eye, when it would lock on. I suspect that this one is due to my not having set an option correctly.

Eventually, I gave up on the R5 and went back to the 5D. Boy, is that slow in comparison! But, at least I knew my way around it and could work with its limitations. It was asgood at concert photography as it's always been.

So, has anyone else experienced these problems? Or is it just me? I'd love to know!

Oh, and somewhat annoyingly, the photos that I got from the R5 were really good. Here's just one, taken at 10000 ISO, with very little noise. I was pleased with the startburst, considering that the lens was wide open at f2.8.

Just need to sort out these annoying little problems...

 

[Archibald]

Were you in one of the Custom Modes? Like C1 or C2...

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

Last weekend I took my R5 to a concert at a small local venue, a place I'd shot at many times before with my 5D Mk III. This time, the 5D was my backup body and, as it turned out, I was glad that it was there.

... The bottom line is that, despite having had the R5 for nearly a year, I'm still not very familiar with it, so what follows may well be all down to me...

It kinda is, but that's not a wrist slap

Likewise, I found that pressing the Info button had stopped allowing me to turn off the screen, and when I went into the menu, the "Screen Off" option was unticked. Ticking it allowed me to turn off the screen but, like the ISO, it kept on un-setting itself. Not sure whether this was linked to the camera's sleep mode. I ended up turning the screen around - not an ideal solution!

Coming to the R5 from Nikon there were all sorts of things that I wasn't used to, and the camera resetting itself in various situations was one of the most annoying (the most annoying was the camera changing which card got photos and which got video after a card was removed). I didn't think the R5 reset after sleeping, but I'm fairly certain you can set the camera to power off after sleeping for a certain period in the power saving modes, so you will want to check that as well (sorry I can't help you with menu items - my R5 isn't in front of me). I've also experienced times when I've checked or unchecked things, being certain that I had, only to have them not be checked because I exited the menu improperly, so some of this could be user error.

Finally, auto-focusing. Eye detection worked really well, especially given the low-light conditions. Until I rotated the camera verftically, that is. Then the focus points seemed to be stuck in the bottom left corner of the screen, and I had to point the camera upwards unitl the focus point was somewhere near the artist's eye, when it would lock on. I suspect that this one is due to my not having set an option correctly.

Another "feature" exploiting the photographer rather than the other way around. There are a couple settings that allow you to save focus point information on camera rotation, so it will either return to where it was or to a fixed point depending on how it's set. I suspect yours was set to start in the lower corner. I believe you should have been able to push the joystick control in to center it instead of having to move the camera, but yeah, you've got settings issues.

Chalk this one up to not knowing the equipment well enough and thinking it wouldn't matter. I'd been shooting the R5 almost exclusively for two years when I brought my R6 along to supplement the long lens and shoot some video for a falconry exhibition I was shooting for a friend (no, not RFKJr LOL). I forget precisely what the problem was but I needed to get the R6 to shoot video of something and it just wouldn't, no matter what I tried. Managed to figure it out in the nick of time, but when I got home I grabbed the camera and went through the menus exhaustively to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

 

[Dean Wilson]

Have you tried Fv mode with ISO set to AUTO?

One way is to have C1 set for Fv with Shutter, Aperture set manually and ISO to AUTO. Park it on Exposure Compensation and use that for a quick change of the ISO.

Better than AUTO and faster than MANUAL.

 

[Dwardski]

Were you in one of the Custom Modes? Like C1 or C2...

Indeed I was - and that was the problem!

 

[Dwardski]

Have you tried Fv mode with ISO set to AUTO?

One way is to have C1 set for Fv with Shutter, Aperture set manually and ISO to AUTO. Park it on Exposure Compensation and use that for a quick change of the ISO.

Better than AUTO and faster than MANUAL.

TBH I haven't so far. With my 5D I used to shoot concerts in AV mode, keeping an eye on the shutter speed and altering the ISO as necessary. The 5D tended to be a bit noisy at relatively low ISOs, so I would never have relied on auto ISO. Having said that, recent improvements in the noise reduction capabilities of Lightroom / Photoshop (as well as a recent purchase of Luminar Neo) have given me a bit more hope. I recently tried the new/updated programs on some older concert photos and was really impressed with the results. Despite that, and given that, until Friday, I didn't really know how the R5 would perform under concert conditions, I applied the "5D Approach" and kept the ISO as low as I could. Now that I'm more confident about the R5's low-light performance, I'll give your suggestions a try - thanks!

 

[Dwardski]

Coming to the R5 from Nikon there were all sorts of things that I wasn't used to, and the camera resetting itself in various situations was one of the most annoying (the most annoying was the camera changing which card got photos and which got video after a card was removed). I didn't think the R5 reset after sleeping, but I'm fairly certain you can set the camera to power off after sleeping for a certain period in the power saving modes, so you will want to check that as well (sorry I can't help you with menu items - my R5 isn't in front of me). I've also experienced times when I've checked or unchecked things, being certain that I had, only to have them not be checked because I exited the menu improperly, so some of this could be user error.

Another "feature" exploiting the photographer rather than the other way around. There are a couple settings that allow you to save focus point information on camera rotation, so it will either return to where it was or to a fixed point depending on how it's set. I suspect yours was set to start in the lower corner. I believe you should have been able to push the joystick control in to center it instead of having to move the camera, but yeah, you've got settings issues.

Chalk this one up to not knowing the equipment well enough and thinking it wouldn't matter. I'd been shooting the R5 almost exclusively for two years when I brought my R6 along to supplement the long lens and shoot some video for a falconry exhibition I was shooting for a friend (no, not RFKJr LOL). I forget precisely what the problem was but I needed to get the R6 to shoot video of something and it just wouldn't, no matter what I tried. Managed to figure it out in the nick of time, but when I got home I grabbed the camera and went through the menus exhaustively to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

So, a bit of playing with the R5 today has revealed that, indeed, the resetting was happening after the camera either went into standby, or was turned off. I was running in C1 mode and it would seem that after a sleep or power-off, the initial C1 settings were being re-loaded, thus the ISO and screen settings that I'd chaged "on the fly" were being lost. Enabling the "Auto Update Set" option has cured that - and "on the fly" changes are now saved, so that they are re-read after a sleep or power cycle. So, that takes care of the ISO and "screen off" settings...

Regarding the problem with the auto-focus behaving strangely when shooting in portrait mode, I also tried that again today, and it worked just fine, without me having to change anything. On the night I did try to use the joystick to move the focus point but that doesn't appear to work when using eye-tracking. Anyway, as I said, it's working now - let's hope that it continues that way!

Many thanks for your reply - you're right, I just didn't know the camera well enough for the task at hand. I guess a few more practice sessions are in order...

 

[Archibald]

So, a bit of playing with the R5 today has revealed that, indeed, the resetting was happening after the camera either went into standby, or was turned off. I was running in C1 mode and it would seem that after a sleep or power-off, the initial C1 settings were being re-loaded, thus the ISO and screen settings that I'd chaged "on the fly" were being lost. Enabling the "Auto Update Set" option has cured that - and "on the fly" changes are now saved, so that they are re-read after a sleep or power cycle. So, that takes care of the ISO and "screen off" settings...

I use the Custom Modes all the time but find them to be poorly implemented. If you disable Auto Update, it reverts to the original settings without telling you after it goes to sleep, which by default is a short time (minute?). So you can end up shooting with wrong settings. But if you enable Auto Update, then those stored settings change all the time and you never know for sure what the settings are after picking up the camera after a few days.

For me, the most important thing is that I know the Custom Mode settings when I turn the camera on. Therefore I have disabled Auto Update. To improve the chances of my settings staying the way I want during a shoot, I have set the sleep time to 10 minutes. Usually that is long enough, so when I change a setting, it will stay long enough for me.

I could image a much better way to implement the custom modes (for me). The camera has a Custom Mode button. Push it and a menu appears, letting you choose from many modes (not just 3) - Landscapes, Studio with flash, Macro, Natural light portraits, Astro, Sports, and so on. Select the mode you want and those settings are transferred from camera memory. Simple. Any changes you make stay, until you go back into the Custom Mode to retrieve the stored settings.

So that is what I'm wishing for for my Canon R7 II.