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A few days ago I found an offer for a demo 5DS R. In addi­tion there is a cash back of 300,-€ until the end of Jan­u­ary for the pur­chase of a 5D (Mark III, S, SR) replac­ing an old dig­i­tal cam­era. I have already sold my “old” 5D Mark III on eBay into good hands in Baden Baden.

At first I was scep­ti­cal whether I would be able to cope with the lim­it­ed high-ISO capa­bil­i­ties of the 5DS. As you might know, it is lim­it­ed to ISO 6.400, with the extend­ed range you get up to ISO 12.800. So I looked through my images in Light­room and found that none of them were tak­en at high­er ISO val­ues than 12.800. Fur­ther­more, for low light con­di­tions, I also have the Sony 7R, which is much bet­ter in this respect any­way (even than the 5D Mark III).

Now I have the new megapix­el mon­ster right here. On the out­side, very lit­tle has changed. Even the old­er bat­tery han­dle of the 5D Mk IIII fits per­fect­ly. The han­dling is com­plete­ly famil­iar from the 5D Mark III, so I was able to start imme­di­ate­ly after adjust­ing the menus to my usu­al pre­sets. After insert­ing my 128GB card, the dis­play showed 1440 remain­ing shots, pre­vi­ous­ly with the Mark III 3000-4000 were pos­si­ble with the same card, so that there was always the max­i­mum num­ber of 1999 displayed.

The menu was matched to that of the 7D Mark II. In par­tic­u­lar I find the new Auto-ISO set­ting very use­ful, where you can final­ly change the select­ed min­i­mum shut­ter speed in rela­tion to the 1/focal length rule, which is well known since ana­log times. Because of the high­er sen­sor res­o­lu­tion I have already shift­ed the lim­it by 1 f-stop on the 7D Mk II (¹/₂ x focal length). Since the pix­el den­si­ty is com­pa­ra­ble to the 7D Mk II, this is now also my default set­ting for the 5DSR.

The lack of an audio out­put com­pared to the Mk III does­n’t both­er me, since I hard­ly film at all. The low­er speed on the oth­er hand is quite notice­able. Due to the 2¹/₂ times larg­er image files (RAW ca 70MB), the pre­view on the dis­play is also notice­ably slower.

Con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing is also slow­er and after 13-14 con­tin­u­ous shots the cam­era paus­es for a while. But if it has to go fast, I still have the 7D Mk II. Also the pro­cess­ing of large RAW files in Light­room is much slow­er, but that was to be expect­ed. The image qual­i­ty on the oth­er hand is very impres­sive. The qual­i­ty leap is big­ger than when I switched from the Ur 5D to the Mark II. I’m very sat­is­fied with the camera’s high-ISO capa­bil­i­ty: even at ISO val­ues > 4000, the images are, after appro­pri­ate pro­cess­ing in Light­room, still usable. Even heavy crop enlarge­ments now still have more than 20 megapix­els and are suit­able for large for­mat print­ing. How­ev­er, an exact tech­nique is required. The focus must be accu­rate to the mil­lime­tre and shocks must be avoided.

So far I only had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try out the new cam­era in bad weath­er at the zoo, but the results were already very good. More info and pic­tures will fol­low if I could use it for more stuff. But so far, I am very sat­is­fied with the new acquisition.