My view: Canon R-5ii

[Tom Reynolds]

My current view is that the best bird photography combination currently available is now the Canon R-5ii combined with a 100-500 zoom, eclipsing the Nikon Z-8/600pf combination which was my previous recommendation.

The reason: pre-capture in CRAW.

I watched an R-5ii video from Jan Wegener. Jan figured out what OM-1 mk 2shooters, and few other photographers know, shoot in pre-capture all the time. You will obtain great action shots you will otherwise likely miss. If you watch his video, you will see all the shots that he captured that you will probably miss without pre-capture.

I have a simple selection process. Either purchase a 45+MP sensor camera or shoot an OM-1. Don't bother me with 24mp cameras, FF or APS because the lone drawback of the OM-1 is the small image size. With a 45mp image you gain crop-ability and that is the reason for the heavier, more expensive camera.

The flip side to this view is that pre-capture in RAW at, at least, 20 f/s simply wasn't available before the R-5ii.

Now it is. Nikon and Sony take note.

Tom

 

[arbitrage]

The best would be if we had R5II with a 600PF. I'm not a big fan of that 100-500 lens. 100mm less and 1/3 stop less...doesn't bode well as you always have to crop more for any given shot and that makes noise worse on top of the 1/3 stop higher ISO. Want to shoot at 600mm? Well then you are 600 f/9 on the 100-500. 1 stop difference.

If I couldn't choose Sony I'd either go Z8/600PF (or consider Z400/4.5 with 1.4TC as needed) OR Canon R5II with RF 100-300/2.8 and both TCs. But I'd always choose Sony over either of those two because I can use the 300GM and TCs which IMO is better than any of those other lenses. Now with A1 I won't have precapture but A1II will solve that next year and then there will be no dispute unless one throws a price cap on things.

I do love precapture after having it on A9III but I don't want 24MP FF. I also found just leaving it on all the time was the best idea.

 

[Lee R]

My current view is that the best bird photography combination currently available is now the Canon R-5ii combined with a 100-500 zoom, eclipsing the Nikon Z-8/600pf combination which was my previous recommendation.

The reason: pre-capture in CRAW.

I watched an R-5ii video from Jan Wegener. Jan figured out what OM-1 mk 2shooters, and few other photographers know, shoot in pre-capture all the time. You will obtain great action shots you will otherwise likely miss. If you watch his video, you will see all the shots that he captured that you will probably miss without pre-capture.

I have a simple selection process. Either purchase a 45+MP sensor camera or shoot an OM-1. Don't bother me with 24mp cameras, FF or APS because the lone drawback of the OM-1 is the small image size. With a 45mp image you gain crop-ability and that is the reason for the heavier, more expensive camera.

The flip side to this view is that pre-capture in RAW at, at least, 20 f/s simply wasn't available before the R-5ii.

Now it is. Nikon and Sony take note.

Tom

With basically unlimited buffer on the Z8 in RAW HE can't you just keep shooting and achieve the same? Culling is basically like scanning back and forth through video like that. I typically don't even import I just go to back screen and scroll like a movie until I get the pose, hit an upload key I bound and it's networked to my Mac and goes strait into a folder for Lightroom. I don't even bother importing cards anymore. Then I just delete the 5000 shots or whatever was on the card.

I can see precapture for being more concise for shots, but I just started staying in 20 FPS RAW on the Z8 after messing with JPEG precapture and not seeing much difference in the lower framerate mode of 30.

If Canon added 60/120 precapture RAW that would be a much larger difference. For now it's .5 seconds and 15 frames vs .5 and 10 on the Z8.

I guess I'm just not seeing it as that cut and dry other than the card shot count to scroll through afterwards. It would be great if Nikon added it in firmware as that's basically the only feature on the R5ii that I would want. Not enough to switch to it though.

If someone does have a Z8/Z9 I recommend pulling a RAW of a shot you got on the subject you like and bringing it into NX Studio and editing it as best you can. Make note of the edit settings you made that match in camera settings and add those to your notes to make a custom profile in camera that matches. That way you have a JPEG profile that will max out your end output as close as possible to how you like. You can then do a few light edits on the JPEG and get pretty close to the Lightroom version of the RAW.

I've practiced this and get 90% of the way there vs my Lightroom edits. The main downside is no ai denoise.

But that's what I have in camera now for the 60/120 JPEG higher speed modes for when I use them to get max quality out of those being there's no RAW. It gets me a pretty close end result if you get the JPEG shot setting right in the first place.

 

[Lee R]

The best would be if we had R5II with a 600PF. I'm not a big fan of that 100-500 lens. 100mm less and 1/3 stop less...doesn't bode well as you always have to crop more for any given shot and that makes noise worse on top of the 1/3 stop higher ISO. Want to shoot at 600mm? Well then you are 600 f/9 on the 100-500. 1 stop difference.

If I couldn't choose Sony I'd either go Z8/600PF (or consider Z400/4.5 with 1.4TC as needed) OR Canon R5II with RF 100-300/2.8 and both TCs. But I'd always choose Sony over either of those two because I can use the 300GM and TCs which IMO is better than any of those other lenses. Now with A1 I won't have precapture but A1II will solve that next year and then there will be no dispute unless one throws a price cap on things.

I do love precapture after having it on A9III but I don't want 24MP FF. I also found just leaving it on all the time was the best idea.

Is the buffer significantly longer or unlimited on the A1 if you use the other RAW compressed files? I honestly cannot see much difference in the Z8 using uncompressed or the HE versions. It makes all the difference for the cameras buffer limits, basically then being limited by the card overheating or running out of space.

 

[Tom Reynolds]

In waited for a perched bird to do something you often need to wait several minutes. On the OM-1 you can only wait a minute before releasing and re-engaging pre-capture. I find that I may need to do this several times before the action starts. I wish that the OM-1 or R-5ii would have the AF-ON button start pre-capture because maintaining a half-press for that long is irritating but neither camera does so.

You need sufficient buffer to always shoot in pre-capture because there are always images in the buffer you may or may not want. The Canon R-7's buffer is insufficient to always shoot in pre-capture, and the OM-1 mk 1's buffer is problematical to shoot with this method. Jan reports that the R-5 buffer is acceptable, but some might find it insufficient. The Om-1 mk had about a 100-frame buffer which I considered problematical, in particular at 50 f/s but the OM-2's buffer is 250 images which is essentially unlimited for me.

In pre-capture, more frames per second is better because you get more poses to choose from. If I mount my 300f4 on the OM-1 mk2 I get 50 f/s and want .33sec pre-capture or 17 frames in the buffer. However, the 100-400, which is my go-to lens because of weight is limited to 25 f/s.

I would always shoot a R-5ii at 30 frames per second and will have 15 frames (1/2 sec.) in the buffer.

I also find a zoom preferrable because when action happens you need to zoom in or out while still collected images.

 

[arbitrage]

Is the buffer significantly longer or unlimited on the A1 if you use the other RAW compressed files? I honestly cannot see much difference in the Z8 using uncompressed or the HE versions. It makes all the difference for the cameras buffer limits, basically then being limited by the card overheating or running out of space.

I use Compressed Raw on the A1 because that is the only way to get 30FPS. I also used HE* on the Z9/Z8 and use CRAW on Canon cameras. I've never been bothered with whatever image degradation occurs compared to a Lossless RAW or Uncompressed RAW format as I can't really see a meaningful difference in my type of bird shots.

The A1 buffer is better in Compressed Raw than other formats. 30FPS gets ~155 shots, 20FPS ~238 shots. It does not go unlimited unless you turn down the FPS. If you turn it down to 15FPS it can go for a long time. At 10FPS it is unlimited. Also if you use crop mode it can go much longer than those numbers for full frame shots.
It is nice that unlike Canon that just freezes you from shooting as the buffer clears, the A1 will chug along at 10-12FPS without stopping when the buffer is full.

 

[Tom Reynolds]

arbitrage-

I have found that how the buffer clears is critical. On the OM-1 mk 2 as the buffer clears you can take more shots. For example at 50 f/s on ProCap (pre-capture) say I shoot for 2 seconds. I now have 120 shots (20 in the buffer and 50 f/s for 2 sec). About 130 shots are left in the buffer.

If I stop the capture, the buffer starts to clear and when I start again I have more than 130 shots available depending on how long I waited. This is critical because who knows when something else happens.

Tom