The Canon R5 Mk II - initial impressions

As some of you may know, the much anticipated successor to the Canon R5, the R5 Mk II, was announced in July and pre-orders started to be satisfied in late August, which is when mine arrived..

I thought others might be tempted by this new camera, and I am hence sharing my initial impressions of it, from only a couple of weeks of use. 

Put simply my first impressions are very favourable, as are those many who post YouTube videos. 

It is clear that this camera is a major advance on the original R5, not just a minor, incremental upgrade. All my frustrations with the R5 have been addressed and this new camera is a wonderful new toy to play with! 

The pre-capture (absent on the R5) is an amazing new feature, giving you 0.5 sec of images before you fully press the shutter button (i.e. 15 shots at 30 frames per second!). This is amazing for getting shots of birds that are either taking off or have just taken off, as had this Kingfisher. With luck the AF area will even follow the bird - but this doesn't always happen. Maybe I need to tweak the AF settings. 

Kingfisher in flight obtained using pre-capture on the Canon R5 Mk II © Stephen Burch

The R5 Mk II also shows a significant improvement in the already very good autofocus on the R5. This really helps for challenging subjects such as dragonflies in flight. 

Another notable feature is the inclusion of a stacked sensor, so that the weird rolling shutter effects that could sometimes been seen on the R5's images should be a thing of the past. This allows use of the much faster electronic shutter for nearly all wildlife photography, including dragonflies in flight. 

I think both the improved AF and the ability to shoot at 30 fps helped for this image of a brief encounter with a Southern Hawker in flight:

Southern Hawker in flight © Stephen Burch

Lastly (for the time being!), the lack of rolling shutter effects also helps with focus-stacking - something I regularly tried with the R5 for settled dragonflies, with varying success. 

For this focus-stacked R5 Mk II image of a Willow Emerald Damselfly, I wasn't able to fully support my arms given where the damselfly was located. With the R5 the series of images needed for focus stacking would have suffered from weird warping and wobbling effects caused by the interaction betweem the image stabilisation and shutter readout. Happily on the R5 Mk II, these effects have gone, and the image sequence was much more stable giving a greater chance of the focus stacking software working effectively.

Focus stacked image of a Willow Emerald Damselfly © Stephen Burch

For more on my initial thoughts on this new camera, see a page I have just uploaded to my website.

PS This post was not sponsored by Canon in any way! It was my unassisted purchase!