arbitrage
Well-known member
I was able to borrow an R5 from a friend for a full 7 hours of shooting this past Saturday. Took 3000 shots. Subjects were a bit limited but I tried to get an impression of the good and the bad because I am considering adding one to my arsenal.
I posted 2 parts to my "review" on another forum so thought I'd share both parts here. By no means is this a definitive review as I couldn't test on everything I wanted to due to lack of subjects where I tested.
Here are my R5 vs Sony thoughts I jotted down after using the camera for 7 hrs yesterday. We did not have a lot of good subjects to really test everything but it is what it is. I'll get to play with it again in the future and hopefully try it on some other subjects. If you have questions I can try to answer them but this is very limited experience with the R5 so far.
Animal Eye-Detect (AED) is remarkable. I couldn’t believe how far away it would narrow down to a head square. I used it both in Auto and User Selected point. I wish I could have both of those options on a different back button but you can use C modes to switch quickly via the M-Fn C-mode toggle option.
The Sony Real-time Tracking (RTT) surely competes but the R5’s AED makes things even easier. I could literally look away from my flipped out LCD and check my email and trust the Auto AED to be tracking the birds head while I was shooting a Yellowlegs foraging, spinning in the water, head in and out. I think out of 200 shots maybe 4 had a slight focus shift. I’ve looked away from my Sony’s LCD also and you can sort of trust it but the RTT can drift and it then won’t recover. The AED is always making adjustments (some not good…see next) but it will get back on the head without any input or AF-ON pumping. The AED did show times off odd behaviour, jumping around too much when backgrounds got really close (like a rocky shore with specular highlights) and sometimes couldn’t “see” the tiny sandpipers at first. But that was in Auto…switch over to USSP and “bam” there it goes onto the head.
Where the R5 falls behind the A9 is when tracking BIF against complicated backgrounds. I saw this in a few different scenarios. First time I was tracking a mallard that flew against a row of houses. The AED kept pumping back onto the houses (dancing squares) and then back to the birds. When the birds got against sky it then nailed them. Another time I had an Oystercatcher take off from the ground over specular highlight rocky low-tide shore. The AED couldn’t see it with all the distractions, it came up high enough to be against sky and the AED grabbed it, a second later it came down lower and as soon as the background got complicated the AED lost it again. This is the biggest difference I found vs A9 RTT. With A9 RTT it does sometimes have difficulty picking it up against a background as the R5 AED did at first but if the A9 RTT gets the lock against the sky it will never let it go against a background. I’ve always said the A9’s stickiness is its greatest strength and one of its biggest weaknesses as if it gets what you want you have nailed the shot…but if it grabs something else you might as well put the camera down till the next flight pass. The R5 makes more decisions and jumps back and forth which means it will lose a subject as background changes. The R5 AED tracking doesn’t get distracted by the bird passing behind sticks and things (nor does the A9) so in that case both are excellent.
Ergonomics:
I had thought the R5 would be a much better camera to hold than the Sony. It isn’t any better. The grip size in the hand is essentially equal. The buttons on the A9II/A7RIV are better. The R5’s are like an A9/A7RIII/A7III…small and hard to tell if you are hitting the correct one and which one you are hitting (especially between * and focus option buttons). The feel of the wheels I found sort of similar or close enough I didn’t care one way or the other. The two ways the R5 grip is better than Sony A9II is there is more space between fingers and lenses and my pinky can just fit on the grip without the BG on. With the A9II my pinky is about 1/2 on and on the A9 it is only a sliver on. I would always use a BG on either camera and my fingers are skinny so I’ve never found an issue with tight space between Sony lenses. So for me the A9II wins for ergonomics but it won’t for everyone.
R5 Pros:
* AED which makes shooting everything other than the most challenging BIF easier, almost brain dead easy….
* Top LCD
* More space between grip/lens
* Longer grip to support pinky
* Three wheels where I can have ISO on top rear wheel without pushing a button every time I turn on the camera for My Dial
* MS sound
* MS frame insertion at 12FPS
* Faster card writing speeds with no issues as it writes even with the USH-II SD card (CFe is of course faster still but I was surprised that it didn’t seem a lot faster…you still could watch the red light for a few seconds after just a 30 shot burst with CFe)
R5 Cons:
* Can’t have AED USSP (User-selected Start Pt) and Auto recognized and therefore assigned to two different buttons (need to utilize C modes or my Menu)
* Can’t have ES/MS toggle assigned to a button (need to use C modes or My Menu)
* Gets confused with complicated backgrounds while tracking and shooting
* Can’t get AED out of Zone or any other AF mode (I had thought you could out of Zone but I guess only Human Head Face detect works as it never activated on the birds?). Eye-Detect is greyed out once in Zone AF but Human/Animal is still selected so I thought it would still see the bird as a subject or the head but it doesn’t.
* Can't use anything other than 20FPS in ES...I had way too many shots to cull
* Batteries drain in parallel meaning you always have to charge two no matter how short your session.
* Leaning vertical lines in the background in ES and an always present risk of wing distortion in ES.
* Very hard to see the white outline that flashes while shooting in ES, no fake ES sound option. Unless I cram my eye socket onto the EVF I can’t visualize the outer white frame and I need to look towards it instead of at my subject.
A9II Pros:
* More sticky erratic/fast bird tracking
* Can set ES FPS to 5 or 10
* Can initiate RTT out of any AF mode from Single point (Small Flex Spot) all the way up to Wide (Full sensor Auto)
* Can assign a button to instantly change any regular AF mode into RTT (I use my lens button for this)
* Better buttons, especially the AF-ON
* Batteries in grip drain in sequence not in parallel
* ES, blackout free….the R5 ES is pretty darn good for not being a true live feed but the A9(II) experience is still better. More noticeable as subjects get faster and closer to the camera
* Four different choices of how shooting in ES is displayed and option for fake ES sound. For those with an A9 I’d recommend the blue option #2 which flashes a blue box over whatever shape your AF point is. Even when in Wide it is easier to see the flash around the outside of the frame compared to the R5’s white frame flash.
A9II Cons:
* Doesn’t have AED
* Shorter grip, grip tighter to lens (not for me personally but it is a thing)
* MS uses Live feed with real shutter blackout which I think is more difficult to track than the frame insertion of the R5 (but who would use MS on an A9?)
* Card writing speeds (really this is more an A7RIV con as the A9 it never affects me but for sure the R5 writes faster)
* No top LCD (personal preference)
If you own all Sony: Stick with Sony
If you own all Canon: Buy an R5 or R6
If you shoot Sony but kept a lot of Canon lenses OR if you are starting from scratch: A9II if you want to have the world’s best AF Tracking for fast/erratic subjects in ES. R5 for pretty much everything else. R5 for the best AF tracking if not having to erratically pan/track a fast BIF. If you are wanting higher MP I’d choose R5 over A7RIV (I think the R5 does basically everything better than the RIV). If you want lower MPs I’d choose A9II over R6 (of course those are vastly different price points) but only if you are really after challenging flight stuff otherwise R6 should be a great value if 20MP is enough.
R5 Part 2:
I sort of rushed out my first opinions as I was getting a lot of PMs asking about the R5.
Here are some more thoughts that didn’t make it into yesterday’s post….
The R5 continues the MILC trend which I’ve found in all my MILCs (Z50, Z7, A9, A9II, A7RIV) where it can’t “see” a very close OOF perch when it is already focused way out at or near infinity.
We setup a test early morning while standing around waiting for a Pygmy Owl to show up where we focused the R5 and the 1DXIII out to infinity on the distant forest and then tried to get the AF to drive back to a near perch. The R5 would never even attempt to drive back to the perch. The 1DXIII in All point mode (via the OVF PDAF sensor) did drive back. But even the 1DXIII with a single point/expansion would not “see” and drive to the perch. This situation was pretty extreme so I would have liked to have tested in a know scenario like my backyard where I have a good idea when the other cameras tend to fail to drive into my perches. I didn’t really expect the R5 to be any different but I thought maybe the DPAF would behave a little differently than the other systems.
The drive speed of the AF seemed a little quicker than Sony….I didn’t find it too different but another Sony shooter who was there that day tried it for a minute and thought it definitely was quicker going to and from different focus targets at varying distances.
The EVF looked a little nicer than the A9II but it wasn’t a night and day difference. To be honest I rarely notice the difference in the EVF when I switch between the A9II and A7RIV where as others say they notice a big difference so maybe others would notice more of one.
I would still prefer a flip screen that is in line with the lens but it still worked fine for my usual ground level shooting technique where a rest the battery grip on the toe of my left shoe, hold the far end of the lens hood with my left hand and AF/shoot with my right hand. In some ways it actually put the screen in a less obstructed viewing angle, just takes an extra second to deploy it as you have to flip out and then spin it towards you. I guess if I kept it turned in towards the camera when not using it it would only take one move to get it ready.
I noticed that in MS if I got carried away and just kept bursting while trying to follow a fairly fast BIF that the tracking would lose the subject and was throwing random sized rectangle boxes over the sky. This happens to me on the A7RIV also in MS where if I burst for too long it just stops dancing the dots on the subject. I think with both cameras the entire system just gets overwhelmed with all the data coming in OR because of the frame insertion I just get too far behind my subject with my panning and don’t realize it until I see the next frames with the AF points way off the subject.
I mentioned this as a brief line item in the R5 pluses but I need to mention it again….the sound of the MS is so nice. I thought the sound of the A7RIV/A9II MS was really good but this R5 is even quieter.
The EVF wake up is better than Sony for sure. Or going out of menu/playback and up to shooting seems faster. Just less lag before all the overlay and focus point shows up after you raise the camera to your eye or get out of the menu/playback. We had the camera setup so that the Illumination button toggled between the EVF/LCD. So the LCD was always off unless you toggled over to it. The EVF went off after a couple seconds away from your eye.
Battery life. I shot 3000 shots over about 7hrs. A fair bit of chipping although not excessive and a lot of fiddling with menus, setting up C modes, going back and forth to change MS/ES and Start point for AED etc. The batteries were at about 25% each at the end of the day. So 1.5 batteries for that full day. No issues with that. Sony would last longer but not by a huge margin. The CIPA rating isn’t very relevant to real world use.
My feature requests for Canon for FW would be:
1. Lower FPS options in ES
2. More customization options for some of the buttons like an ES/MS toggle
3. Having Auto and User-selected Start point for Face/Eye Detect be recognized as two different AF modes
4. Have an EVF/LCD option like Nikon where it acts like a DSLR. EVF all the time (activated by the eye sensor) but if you push Play or Menu and don’t have the EVF eye sensor triggered it then will use the LCD. But it won’t go to LCD unless you push Menu or Play. You could still have the toggle button setup for when you want to do LCD flip screen shooting.
5. Drain the battery grip batteries one at a time
I posted 2 parts to my "review" on another forum so thought I'd share both parts here. By no means is this a definitive review as I couldn't test on everything I wanted to due to lack of subjects where I tested.
Here are my R5 vs Sony thoughts I jotted down after using the camera for 7 hrs yesterday. We did not have a lot of good subjects to really test everything but it is what it is. I'll get to play with it again in the future and hopefully try it on some other subjects. If you have questions I can try to answer them but this is very limited experience with the R5 so far.
Animal Eye-Detect (AED) is remarkable. I couldn’t believe how far away it would narrow down to a head square. I used it both in Auto and User Selected point. I wish I could have both of those options on a different back button but you can use C modes to switch quickly via the M-Fn C-mode toggle option.
The Sony Real-time Tracking (RTT) surely competes but the R5’s AED makes things even easier. I could literally look away from my flipped out LCD and check my email and trust the Auto AED to be tracking the birds head while I was shooting a Yellowlegs foraging, spinning in the water, head in and out. I think out of 200 shots maybe 4 had a slight focus shift. I’ve looked away from my Sony’s LCD also and you can sort of trust it but the RTT can drift and it then won’t recover. The AED is always making adjustments (some not good…see next) but it will get back on the head without any input or AF-ON pumping. The AED did show times off odd behaviour, jumping around too much when backgrounds got really close (like a rocky shore with specular highlights) and sometimes couldn’t “see” the tiny sandpipers at first. But that was in Auto…switch over to USSP and “bam” there it goes onto the head.
Where the R5 falls behind the A9 is when tracking BIF against complicated backgrounds. I saw this in a few different scenarios. First time I was tracking a mallard that flew against a row of houses. The AED kept pumping back onto the houses (dancing squares) and then back to the birds. When the birds got against sky it then nailed them. Another time I had an Oystercatcher take off from the ground over specular highlight rocky low-tide shore. The AED couldn’t see it with all the distractions, it came up high enough to be against sky and the AED grabbed it, a second later it came down lower and as soon as the background got complicated the AED lost it again. This is the biggest difference I found vs A9 RTT. With A9 RTT it does sometimes have difficulty picking it up against a background as the R5 AED did at first but if the A9 RTT gets the lock against the sky it will never let it go against a background. I’ve always said the A9’s stickiness is its greatest strength and one of its biggest weaknesses as if it gets what you want you have nailed the shot…but if it grabs something else you might as well put the camera down till the next flight pass. The R5 makes more decisions and jumps back and forth which means it will lose a subject as background changes. The R5 AED tracking doesn’t get distracted by the bird passing behind sticks and things (nor does the A9) so in that case both are excellent.
Ergonomics:
I had thought the R5 would be a much better camera to hold than the Sony. It isn’t any better. The grip size in the hand is essentially equal. The buttons on the A9II/A7RIV are better. The R5’s are like an A9/A7RIII/A7III…small and hard to tell if you are hitting the correct one and which one you are hitting (especially between * and focus option buttons). The feel of the wheels I found sort of similar or close enough I didn’t care one way or the other. The two ways the R5 grip is better than Sony A9II is there is more space between fingers and lenses and my pinky can just fit on the grip without the BG on. With the A9II my pinky is about 1/2 on and on the A9 it is only a sliver on. I would always use a BG on either camera and my fingers are skinny so I’ve never found an issue with tight space between Sony lenses. So for me the A9II wins for ergonomics but it won’t for everyone.
R5 Pros:
* AED which makes shooting everything other than the most challenging BIF easier, almost brain dead easy….
* Top LCD
* More space between grip/lens
* Longer grip to support pinky
* Three wheels where I can have ISO on top rear wheel without pushing a button every time I turn on the camera for My Dial
* MS sound
* MS frame insertion at 12FPS
* Faster card writing speeds with no issues as it writes even with the USH-II SD card (CFe is of course faster still but I was surprised that it didn’t seem a lot faster…you still could watch the red light for a few seconds after just a 30 shot burst with CFe)
R5 Cons:
* Can’t have AED USSP (User-selected Start Pt) and Auto recognized and therefore assigned to two different buttons (need to utilize C modes or my Menu)
* Can’t have ES/MS toggle assigned to a button (need to use C modes or My Menu)
* Gets confused with complicated backgrounds while tracking and shooting
* Can’t get AED out of Zone or any other AF mode (I had thought you could out of Zone but I guess only Human Head Face detect works as it never activated on the birds?). Eye-Detect is greyed out once in Zone AF but Human/Animal is still selected so I thought it would still see the bird as a subject or the head but it doesn’t.
* Can't use anything other than 20FPS in ES...I had way too many shots to cull
* Batteries drain in parallel meaning you always have to charge two no matter how short your session.
* Leaning vertical lines in the background in ES and an always present risk of wing distortion in ES.
* Very hard to see the white outline that flashes while shooting in ES, no fake ES sound option. Unless I cram my eye socket onto the EVF I can’t visualize the outer white frame and I need to look towards it instead of at my subject.
A9II Pros:
* More sticky erratic/fast bird tracking
* Can set ES FPS to 5 or 10
* Can initiate RTT out of any AF mode from Single point (Small Flex Spot) all the way up to Wide (Full sensor Auto)
* Can assign a button to instantly change any regular AF mode into RTT (I use my lens button for this)
* Better buttons, especially the AF-ON
* Batteries in grip drain in sequence not in parallel
* ES, blackout free….the R5 ES is pretty darn good for not being a true live feed but the A9(II) experience is still better. More noticeable as subjects get faster and closer to the camera
* Four different choices of how shooting in ES is displayed and option for fake ES sound. For those with an A9 I’d recommend the blue option #2 which flashes a blue box over whatever shape your AF point is. Even when in Wide it is easier to see the flash around the outside of the frame compared to the R5’s white frame flash.
A9II Cons:
* Doesn’t have AED
* Shorter grip, grip tighter to lens (not for me personally but it is a thing)
* MS uses Live feed with real shutter blackout which I think is more difficult to track than the frame insertion of the R5 (but who would use MS on an A9?)
* Card writing speeds (really this is more an A7RIV con as the A9 it never affects me but for sure the R5 writes faster)
* No top LCD (personal preference)
If you own all Sony: Stick with Sony
If you own all Canon: Buy an R5 or R6
If you shoot Sony but kept a lot of Canon lenses OR if you are starting from scratch: A9II if you want to have the world’s best AF Tracking for fast/erratic subjects in ES. R5 for pretty much everything else. R5 for the best AF tracking if not having to erratically pan/track a fast BIF. If you are wanting higher MP I’d choose R5 over A7RIV (I think the R5 does basically everything better than the RIV). If you want lower MPs I’d choose A9II over R6 (of course those are vastly different price points) but only if you are really after challenging flight stuff otherwise R6 should be a great value if 20MP is enough.
R5 Part 2:
I sort of rushed out my first opinions as I was getting a lot of PMs asking about the R5.
Here are some more thoughts that didn’t make it into yesterday’s post….
The R5 continues the MILC trend which I’ve found in all my MILCs (Z50, Z7, A9, A9II, A7RIV) where it can’t “see” a very close OOF perch when it is already focused way out at or near infinity.
We setup a test early morning while standing around waiting for a Pygmy Owl to show up where we focused the R5 and the 1DXIII out to infinity on the distant forest and then tried to get the AF to drive back to a near perch. The R5 would never even attempt to drive back to the perch. The 1DXIII in All point mode (via the OVF PDAF sensor) did drive back. But even the 1DXIII with a single point/expansion would not “see” and drive to the perch. This situation was pretty extreme so I would have liked to have tested in a know scenario like my backyard where I have a good idea when the other cameras tend to fail to drive into my perches. I didn’t really expect the R5 to be any different but I thought maybe the DPAF would behave a little differently than the other systems.
The drive speed of the AF seemed a little quicker than Sony….I didn’t find it too different but another Sony shooter who was there that day tried it for a minute and thought it definitely was quicker going to and from different focus targets at varying distances.
The EVF looked a little nicer than the A9II but it wasn’t a night and day difference. To be honest I rarely notice the difference in the EVF when I switch between the A9II and A7RIV where as others say they notice a big difference so maybe others would notice more of one.
I would still prefer a flip screen that is in line with the lens but it still worked fine for my usual ground level shooting technique where a rest the battery grip on the toe of my left shoe, hold the far end of the lens hood with my left hand and AF/shoot with my right hand. In some ways it actually put the screen in a less obstructed viewing angle, just takes an extra second to deploy it as you have to flip out and then spin it towards you. I guess if I kept it turned in towards the camera when not using it it would only take one move to get it ready.
I noticed that in MS if I got carried away and just kept bursting while trying to follow a fairly fast BIF that the tracking would lose the subject and was throwing random sized rectangle boxes over the sky. This happens to me on the A7RIV also in MS where if I burst for too long it just stops dancing the dots on the subject. I think with both cameras the entire system just gets overwhelmed with all the data coming in OR because of the frame insertion I just get too far behind my subject with my panning and don’t realize it until I see the next frames with the AF points way off the subject.
I mentioned this as a brief line item in the R5 pluses but I need to mention it again….the sound of the MS is so nice. I thought the sound of the A7RIV/A9II MS was really good but this R5 is even quieter.
The EVF wake up is better than Sony for sure. Or going out of menu/playback and up to shooting seems faster. Just less lag before all the overlay and focus point shows up after you raise the camera to your eye or get out of the menu/playback. We had the camera setup so that the Illumination button toggled between the EVF/LCD. So the LCD was always off unless you toggled over to it. The EVF went off after a couple seconds away from your eye.
Battery life. I shot 3000 shots over about 7hrs. A fair bit of chipping although not excessive and a lot of fiddling with menus, setting up C modes, going back and forth to change MS/ES and Start point for AED etc. The batteries were at about 25% each at the end of the day. So 1.5 batteries for that full day. No issues with that. Sony would last longer but not by a huge margin. The CIPA rating isn’t very relevant to real world use.
My feature requests for Canon for FW would be:
1. Lower FPS options in ES
2. More customization options for some of the buttons like an ES/MS toggle
3. Having Auto and User-selected Start point for Face/Eye Detect be recognized as two different AF modes
4. Have an EVF/LCD option like Nikon where it acts like a DSLR. EVF all the time (activated by the eye sensor) but if you push Play or Menu and don’t have the EVF eye sensor triggered it then will use the LCD. But it won’t go to LCD unless you push Menu or Play. You could still have the toggle button setup for when you want to do LCD flip screen shooting.
5. Drain the battery grip batteries one at a time
