andrewluke
Member
just letting you know that your last pic is not a goose but a juvenile Shelduck
Canon R5m2 & R1 : First Impressions
- Thread starter David Berry
- Start date
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foxysport
Active member
Ha, thanks!!! Will correct that. Merlin gets really confused at times.
foxysport
Active member
DPP4 only, got rid of the Adobe stuff after their AI debacle. I have a DxO copy and hoping the latter will have a matching module at some point.
David Berry
🇦🇺 Australia 🦘
How do I set auto exposure for the priority subject when I'm shooting in pre-continuous, eye-detect, 30 frames per second, muted-but-not-silent electronic shutter, blah, blah, blah…?
Read the manual, bird brain!
Read the manual, bird brain!
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Grey Butcherbird : Cracticus torquatus
Butch finds the answer on page 332 (of 1225 pages.)
Butch finds the answer on page 332 (of 1225 pages.)
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foxysport
Active member
That would be wonderful, hope to try this tomorrow: today, a washout here.
A couple of further comparison points:
1. Canon R5m2 with RF 600mm f4 attached is significantly longer than their Nikon counterparts, even with the Z9 (not Z8) added to the 600 TC. The photo does not show it but the camera ends are aligned. This required extra care putting the Canon combo into my Shimoda 70L backback--they did fit safely though but I definitely prefer that extra inch of length that the Nikon combination offers. The big Canon hood also means there is just less overall space left for other things in the backpack camera compartment, also a consideration. Also, Nikon has a TC built in while a Canon RF 1.4x extender would not have fit safely. For Nikon, I can add an extra TC 1.4 and still fit the lot safely.
2. The much shorter Nikon hood may offer less sunlight and bright reflections protection than the Canon counterpart--it _may_ partially explain why performance when facing sunlight seemed to me better for Canon, and as a stretch idea, perhaps a longer Zemlin hood (have not checked if it exists) for the Nikon 600 TC may be of help?
3. Custom lens caps (they are completely the same size) I had purchased from eBay US work exactly for Nikon 600mm f4 FL, Nikon 600mm f4 TC Z, and Canon RF 600 f4--was a surprise to me.
4. In terms of handling, I have found so far that the smaller overall weight with Canon offsets that lens length disadvantage, plus the weight distribution is also quite nice for the Canon lens elements--meaning that the centre of gravity is perhaps not far from where the tripod foot (holding point) is located. Win for the Canon side in terms of handholding YMMV.
A couple of further comparison points:
1. Canon R5m2 with RF 600mm f4 attached is significantly longer than their Nikon counterparts, even with the Z9 (not Z8) added to the 600 TC. The photo does not show it but the camera ends are aligned. This required extra care putting the Canon combo into my Shimoda 70L backback--they did fit safely though but I definitely prefer that extra inch of length that the Nikon combination offers. The big Canon hood also means there is just less overall space left for other things in the backpack camera compartment, also a consideration. Also, Nikon has a TC built in while a Canon RF 1.4x extender would not have fit safely. For Nikon, I can add an extra TC 1.4 and still fit the lot safely.
2. The much shorter Nikon hood may offer less sunlight and bright reflections protection than the Canon counterpart--it _may_ partially explain why performance when facing sunlight seemed to me better for Canon, and as a stretch idea, perhaps a longer Zemlin hood (have not checked if it exists) for the Nikon 600 TC may be of help?
3. Custom lens caps (they are completely the same size) I had purchased from eBay US work exactly for Nikon 600mm f4 FL, Nikon 600mm f4 TC Z, and Canon RF 600 f4--was a surprise to me.
4. In terms of handling, I have found so far that the smaller overall weight with Canon offsets that lens length disadvantage, plus the weight distribution is also quite nice for the Canon lens elements--meaning that the centre of gravity is perhaps not far from where the tripod foot (holding point) is located. Win for the Canon side in terms of handholding YMMV.
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Alistair
Well-known member
I got to play with the new 5ii today along with an RF600/4 and RF100-500. I shot it alongside my Z9 and 800pf. I am very familiar with the Z9 but have not shot a Canon since the 1dsiii days so 2 left hands and today I only shot a little over 1,000 images on it. That said; I loved it, I think its a great camera. (I also think the Nikon and Sony competing offerings are great too!). I feel the area the 5ii has moved slightly ahead of the competition is BIF, finding and tracking the eye. It's not night and day, but it has moved the game on I feel. It still fell in and out of focus for short periods on long pulls and it did have problems with long necked swans as do all brands. I really liked the 100-500; if I were to add a Canon body to my kit, it would be because of this lens. I personally feel it is the best zoom for my needs of the Canon/Sony/Nikon offerings. I preferred the VF to the Sony but I felt it did not quite achieve the brightness and fluidity of the Nikon but it did seem nice and sharp. IQ seems very close to the Z9 (perhaps a tad noisier but most likely down to my post processing) - these two images (one z9 and one 5ii) are both ISO1000 with no noise reduction and same small amount of sharpening and same WB settings in LR. Nikon on 800pf and Canon on RF600/4. Totally unscientific gut impression.
Congrats to Canon users - a great addition to the system and AF for the others to try and beat!
Congrats to Canon users - a great addition to the system and AF for the others to try and beat!
arbitrage
Well-known member
You know what they say about the best laid plans....
I was supposed to have the morning yesterday to shoot my friends R5II. I was hoping for some Barn Swallows. There were some Barn Swallows but there also was cloudy, intermittent showers and the swallows disappeared when the light actually improved for a brief time.
Therefore my full BIF conclusions will have to wait till hopefully next weekend where my friend may lend me the camera for a full day and forecast is much better.
But what I did solidify my thoughts on is that Canon for non-BIF, bird detection (body, head, eye) is well beyond the other two systems now. Caveat that with I already felt the original R5 and the R3 (I haven't shot the other newer Canon bodies) had the best subject detect for static subjects. But the R5II was simply shocking what it could pick out and at crazy distances with no good contrast or obvious shape. A couple examples....there was a female mallard in the water, nibbling at some shoreline grass. The grass and her just sort of merged into one shape. R5II in just full frame Eye AF (no directed single pt) found her right away and put a rectangle on her. That was with f/7.1 glass in terrible light at condsiderable distance (she may have taken up 5% of the frame). Then just to compare I pulled out the A1 with f/2.8 glass for over 4x the light gathering and it didn't identify her as a subject. I aimed the R5II at a beaver way out on the lake just the head slowly swimming by and immediately it put a rectangle over the head....cloudy, dreary light...just a mix of grey water and brown head with little contrast. Then a spotted sandpiper on a log, way to far away for a good shot...bam...right on it.
None of those thoughts should have any weight towards whether the R5II has improved enough to match or beat the A1 for BIF against complicated backgrounds. That will have to wait. But for perched or swimming birds it is hands down the leader IMHO right now.
I was supposed to have the morning yesterday to shoot my friends R5II. I was hoping for some Barn Swallows. There were some Barn Swallows but there also was cloudy, intermittent showers and the swallows disappeared when the light actually improved for a brief time.
Therefore my full BIF conclusions will have to wait till hopefully next weekend where my friend may lend me the camera for a full day and forecast is much better.
But what I did solidify my thoughts on is that Canon for non-BIF, bird detection (body, head, eye) is well beyond the other two systems now. Caveat that with I already felt the original R5 and the R3 (I haven't shot the other newer Canon bodies) had the best subject detect for static subjects. But the R5II was simply shocking what it could pick out and at crazy distances with no good contrast or obvious shape. A couple examples....there was a female mallard in the water, nibbling at some shoreline grass. The grass and her just sort of merged into one shape. R5II in just full frame Eye AF (no directed single pt) found her right away and put a rectangle on her. That was with f/7.1 glass in terrible light at condsiderable distance (she may have taken up 5% of the frame). Then just to compare I pulled out the A1 with f/2.8 glass for over 4x the light gathering and it didn't identify her as a subject. I aimed the R5II at a beaver way out on the lake just the head slowly swimming by and immediately it put a rectangle over the head....cloudy, dreary light...just a mix of grey water and brown head with little contrast. Then a spotted sandpiper on a log, way to far away for a good shot...bam...right on it.
None of those thoughts should have any weight towards whether the R5II has improved enough to match or beat the A1 for BIF against complicated backgrounds. That will have to wait. But for perched or swimming birds it is hands down the leader IMHO right now.
I used a friend's gripped 5ii with an RF85/1.2 in the studio. What a pleasure to hold and shoot! The images, as expected, are as good as it gets. Love the Canon colors (always have).
foxysport
Active member
One big problem with Canon: no Steve Perry books!
foxysport
Active member
Another one from yesterday: from DPP4 only with JPEG quality reduction to fit here. About 20 yards out, tightly cropped. From memory, the colours are very true to life with no PP messing about.
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Wondering which picture style/profile you chose in dpp4 for that one?
foxysport
Active member
Right, it was Standard, I did not change it in DPP, it is as set in the camera for that particular settings set (and probably, all of them at this time). As you know possibly, there is much debate about Z8/Z9 what to use to help auto-focus and my Z cameras are set for Flat, there are some arguments for that. Short story, I don't know what we should choose, either Canon or Nikon to be honest.
foxysport
Active member
I'd add colours right out of the box, all the way through the full processing pipeline to Canon printers. Sharp photos that look unrealistic/true to life have something very important missing.
Not trying to sell anything: at this point, I'm leaning towards keeping both systems--if anything, to just be able to draw upon their strengths when appropriate.
By the way, have not actually tried pre-capture yet in anger. I have one settings set including that, so I can cycle to it quickly using M-fn. I've got triple BBAF so I can focus and then half-pressing the shutter seems to be activating the pre-capture.
Not trying to sell anything: at this point, I'm leaning towards keeping both systems--if anything, to just be able to draw upon their strengths when appropriate.
By the way, have not actually tried pre-capture yet in anger. I have one settings set including that, so I can cycle to it quickly using M-fn. I've got triple BBAF so I can focus and then half-pressing the shutter seems to be activating the pre-capture.
I don't put much weight on colors by brand of camera. To me there is no such thing as canon colors, it is just a matter of choosing the right profile and sliders whatever brand of camera.
foxysport
Active member
I am not going to dispute this strongly but one fun fact: the grebes in the sea are resident here apart from summer when they go nest in the North somewhere, so I have a _lot_ of Nikon photos with them, and getting the right colour balance was hard and I had to spend a lot of time to get things right, so good colour right out of the box saves me a lot of time.
If I were one of you with the Z9/8 and an R5ii I would probably start figuring out autocapture and get effective with that. I’d set it up and shoot with the R5ii while waiting on results. Autocapture has the potential to get really close which is going to make all the difference in results. I’d be trying anchored floats for waterbirds and all kinds of things with that.
For colors I’m just the opposite and think Canon’s too warm, seems to be all over the place for what people prefer. It is true if you prefer one cameras colors those presets being carried into lightroom, and with matching profiles now, makes editing RAW’s a lot faster. Or if you like to use JPEG’s for a lot of everyday shots (I shoot RAW and JPEG and only edit some of the RAWs) that makes life a lot easier.
Getting in closer with blinds, predawn setup, floats, whatever just like hunting waterfowl will make all the difference in quality of images and autocapture has a ton of potential to do that so you can remove yourself as a scare factor for the wildlife.
For colors I’m just the opposite and think Canon’s too warm, seems to be all over the place for what people prefer. It is true if you prefer one cameras colors those presets being carried into lightroom, and with matching profiles now, makes editing RAW’s a lot faster. Or if you like to use JPEG’s for a lot of everyday shots (I shoot RAW and JPEG and only edit some of the RAWs) that makes life a lot easier.
Getting in closer with blinds, predawn setup, floats, whatever just like hunting waterfowl will make all the difference in quality of images and autocapture has a ton of potential to do that so you can remove yourself as a scare factor for the wildlife.
David Berry
🇦🇺 Australia 🦘
Agreed (on all four counts)!
beano
Active member
My view on pre-capture from the perspective on an OM-1 mk 2 user.
1-Even 25 f/s (focus every shot) is not necessarily enough. My walk around lens on my Om-1 is limited to 25 f/s. To get to F/S I need to mount a heavier PRO lens like my 300f4. It does make a big difference as @ 25 f/s you only get a couple of pre-capture shots.
2-20mp (the m43 sensor) is often not enough. You need to give the bird room to spread its wings, fly and move in the frame so a frame filling composition won't give you the shot you want.
3-You need a deep buffer. The 100-frame buffer of the OM-1 mark 1 was limiting such that you tended to use pre-capture only intentionally. With the 250-frame buffer of the OM-1 mk 2, I shoot in pre-capture all the time because one never knows when something interesting might happen.
3a-This is important. I rarely shoot anything like a 200-frame burst but I do take multiple bursts that add up to 200 frames. With the OM-1 mk 2 I can keep taking bursts and not have the camera stop and write the files to the card until I have filled the buffer. Even at 50 f/s 250 frames (5 sec) is almost always enough.
4- 1/2 second pre-capture is too much. At 25 f/s I have my OM-1 set to 10 frames (.4 sec) but many will find that .3 is sufficient.
5-The camera needs to record while zooming. The Om-1 mk 1 does not do this, the mk 2 does. For example, take an Osprey catching a fish. You want to zoom out, so you catch the entire scene of the bird hitting the water and grabbing the fish but zoom in to capture a frame filling shot of the Osprey carrying the fish. And of course, you want to zoom back out in case the Eagle comes to steal the fish.
So bottom line is that I want a 45mp FF camera with at least 200 shots of buffer that can be set to from .25 to .4 seconds of pre-capture in RAW and that camera is not out yet.
Tom
1-Even 25 f/s (focus every shot) is not necessarily enough. My walk around lens on my Om-1 is limited to 25 f/s. To get to F/S I need to mount a heavier PRO lens like my 300f4. It does make a big difference as @ 25 f/s you only get a couple of pre-capture shots.
2-20mp (the m43 sensor) is often not enough. You need to give the bird room to spread its wings, fly and move in the frame so a frame filling composition won't give you the shot you want.
3-You need a deep buffer. The 100-frame buffer of the OM-1 mark 1 was limiting such that you tended to use pre-capture only intentionally. With the 250-frame buffer of the OM-1 mk 2, I shoot in pre-capture all the time because one never knows when something interesting might happen.
3a-This is important. I rarely shoot anything like a 200-frame burst but I do take multiple bursts that add up to 200 frames. With the OM-1 mk 2 I can keep taking bursts and not have the camera stop and write the files to the card until I have filled the buffer. Even at 50 f/s 250 frames (5 sec) is almost always enough.
4- 1/2 second pre-capture is too much. At 25 f/s I have my OM-1 set to 10 frames (.4 sec) but many will find that .3 is sufficient.
5-The camera needs to record while zooming. The Om-1 mk 1 does not do this, the mk 2 does. For example, take an Osprey catching a fish. You want to zoom out, so you catch the entire scene of the bird hitting the water and grabbing the fish but zoom in to capture a frame filling shot of the Osprey carrying the fish. And of course, you want to zoom back out in case the Eagle comes to steal the fish.
So bottom line is that I want a 45mp FF camera with at least 200 shots of buffer that can be set to from .25 to .4 seconds of pre-capture in RAW and that camera is not out yet.
Tom
ajrmd
Well-known member
Foxy, again with all due respect, these images hardly demonstrate the capabilities of the lens/body. You're using way too low of a Tv for a swimming duck (especially for a 600mm), the head is turned away, and the eye is out of the light (and doesn't appear in focus).
foxysport
Active member
I _really_ appreciate what you are saying, but perhaps you are mistaking me slightly. I am not trying to sell the Canon kit at all. I am not trying to present publishable, well-composed, well-lit photos either. In the South of England, wildlife is sparse, birds are always frightened, there are few good hides with appropriate facilities for large lenses especially. I use my kit to capture what I can, when I can, in whatever the eye orientation might be, outside of artificially built hides, because quite simply, I use my camera as a detailed observation tool of the birds behaviour. If the picture is great, it is a welcome bonus, of course.
The point of the experiment was: I am here right now and the bird is there: take the photo right now or the bird starts swimming out to sea or flies away. The bird in the last picture is a great crested grebe, it is not a duck. The camera had the setting ON to meter off the animal subject in focus, it is in Evaluative metering but with subject in focus used. The eye of the grebe was fully steadily in focus with a small rectangle and this was the result--I am simply showing what the camera was capable of _given this specific orientation, lighting, subject etc_.
ajrmd
Well-known member
True that, Grebes aren't ducks and that's my bad for saying so. I stand behind my other comments and appreciate the challenges of capturing wildlife given that I live in the Midwest where Dorito bags are typically more plentiful than varied wildlife. Then again, we do have Sandhill cranes, warblers, some osprey, bald eagles, etc. Anyhow, you've asserted in the past the 600 TC is somehow less than capable and suggested that it was inferior to a zoom. All of the images that you've posted are hardly representative of what these systems, be they Canon, Nikon, etc. are capable of delivering.
FWIW I shot Canon bodies since the late 1980's and recently switched to Nikon. Although there are some distinctions, both systems are highly capable and can deliver excellent results. Canon's lack of high quality, lightweight, mid-priced lenses other than the 100-500 is the reason I moved to the dark side.
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