Canon EOS R5 Mark II - initial experience

You are currently viewing Canon EOS R5 Mark II - initial experience

As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, I ordered the new Canon EOS R5 Mark II on the day of its offi­cial pre­sen­ta­tion and received it with the first ship­ment. As promised at that time, here is my first expe­ri­ence report. I don’t want to go into the tech­ni­cal details of the R5 Mark II here, as I’m sure every­one read­ing this is already suf­fi­cient­ly famil­iar with them from oth­er test reports. You can also find all the camera’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions direct­ly from Canon here.

This is more about my per­son­al expe­ri­ences in the first few days with it. I’m cur­rent­ly still using it in par­al­lel with its pre­de­ces­sor, the Canon EOS R5, which I’ve been using exten­sive­ly for four years.

Why choose the Canon EOS R5 Mark II?

What moti­vat­ed me to upgrade? What are the advan­tages of the R5 Mark II over the R5?

Apart from the GAS (gear acqui­si­tion syn­drome), which I unfor­tu­nate­ly have to admit I suf­fer from 😉, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed by the fur­ther improved AF sys­tem and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “pre-con­ti­nous shoot­ing” on the EOS R5 Mark II.

I will grad­u­al­ly expand this arti­cle with time and more expe­ri­ence with the camera.

What’s new?

Pre-Continuous Shooting

With this func­tion, up to 15 images are saved to mem­o­ry while the shut­ter release but­ton is pressed halfway in con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing mode before the shut­ter release but­ton is pressed all the way down. At the high­est avail­able con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of the R5 Mark II of 30 frames per sec­ond, this means that 15 shots of the 1/2 sec­ond are avail­able before the actu­al shut­ter is released. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for cap­tur­ing birds tak­ing off or oth­er fast action sequences.

The lat­ter had already moti­vat­ed me to buy the Canon EOS R7 for our Cos­ta Rica vaca­tion. How­ev­er, due to the R7’s exten­sive rolling shut­ter and the cum­ber­some edit­ing of the pre-shot images, it did­n’t prove to be suit­able for this purpose.

AF speed

The AF sys­tem of the EOS R5 Mark II has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved and large­ly cor­re­sponds in scope and pro­fes­sion­al­ism to that of the new Canon EOS top mod­el, the Canon EOS R1, which was announced simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the R5 Mark II.

By using a BSI / stacked sen­sor, the read­out speed of the sen­sor has become sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster. This is not only reflect­ed in a faster con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of 30 frames per sec­ond. The AF speed has also increased, as the dis­tance mea­sure­ment via the Dual Pix­el AF is now much faster and more frequent.

Like the new R1, the R5 Mark II now also fea­tures a sep­a­rate AI coproces­sor that con­tin­u­ous­ly ana­lyzes the sen­sor data. As a result, peo­ple, ani­mals and eyes can be rec­og­nized much faster than with its pre­de­ces­sor, which was already very good in this respect. This results in an amaz­ing AF expe­ri­ence: some­times the AF finds the eyes of an ani­mal faster than I can even rec­og­nize it in the viewfinder!

The so-called rolling shut­ter effect has also been sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced, but in my expe­ri­ence it was already unprob­lem­at­ic with the pre­vi­ous model.

Electronic shutter

Anoth­er very pos­i­tive aspect is that the elec­tron­ic shut­ter has been extreme­ly improved thanks to the stacked / BSI sen­sor used. It can now be used across the entire shut­ter speed range and now even allows 1/32,000 sec­ond as the fastest shut­ter speed. This means that I can now also use my much appre­ci­at­ed Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L IS II dur­ing the day at open aper­ture with­out an ND fil­ter. The Mark II now also uses a full 14 bits per col­or chan­nel with the elec­tron­ic shut­ter, where­as its pre­de­ces­sor only used 12 bits, which result­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly poor­er dynam­ic range and noise performance.

In addi­tion, flash mode is now even pos­si­ble using the elec­tron­ic shut­ter. The EOS R5 can’t do this, and long expo­sures with the elec­tron­ic shut­ter are only pos­si­ble up to 1/2 sec­ond - this some­times annoyed me when doing focus stacking.

All in all, you can now actu­al­ly always use the elec­tron­ic shut­ter on the EOS R5 Mark II. A small dis­ad­van­tage of this pro­ce­dure, how­ev­er, is that the dynam­ic range of the Mark II is slight­ly reduced by approx. 1/2 f-stop up to ISO 800 (see here at Pho­tons to Pho­tos). How­ev­er, this is hard­ly ever actu­al­ly vis­i­ble; in the case of the R5, this dif­fer­ence was actu­al­ly 1 1/3 f-stops.

Continuous shooting speed

As already known, the EOS R5 Mark II can now take up to 30 images per sec­ond with the elec­tron­ic shut­ter. Its pre­de­ces­sor “only” man­aged 20 images per sec­ond. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was not pos­si­ble to reduce this speed. But you don’t always need the full speed, some­times 10 images or less per sec­ond are enough, which was only pos­si­ble with the mechan­i­cal shut­ter on the pre­vi­ous model.

With the R5 Mark II, the con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed with the elec­tron­ic shut­ter can now final­ly be fine­ly adjust­ed in the range from 30 down to 1 frame per second.

Video

The video modes are also much bet­ter. Par­tic­u­lar­ly worth men­tion­ing is the sup­port of C-Log 2, which great­ly increas­es the dynam­ic range and was pre­vi­ous­ly only found in Canon’s Cin­e­ma cam­eras. Since I pri­mar­i­ly use the cam­era for pho­tog­ra­phy, how­ev­er, I don’t want to go into this area any fur­ther here, as there are already some much more com­pe­tent reviews on the net.

Viewfinder & Eye control

I briefly test­ed the eye con­trol, which the R5 Mark II also offers, but found that it does­n’t work well for me as a per­son who wears glass­es. I’m there­fore not using it (yet?), but I may try it out again lat­er and report on it lat­er if nec­es­sary. The viewfind­er image itself has remained the same size and res­o­lu­tion as that of the R5. How­ev­er, it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly brighter in direct com­par­i­son, which is very pleas­ant, espe­cial­ly in bright sunlight.

Menu control and operation

Com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, the menu now has an addi­tion­al item for set­ting the con­trol ele­ments (), which pro­vides eas­i­er con­fig­u­ra­tion. On the EOS R5, some of these items were spread across sev­er­al sub­menus. The aut­o­fo­cus cas­es 1-4 of the pre­de­ces­sor have been omit­ted; the Mark II can select the appro­pri­ate set­tings auto­mat­i­cal­ly on request.

All in all, the hap­tics and con­trols have remained most­ly the same com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, which makes it easy to famil­iar­ize your­self with the new cam­era. One major change, how­ev­er, is the repo­si­tioned on/off switch:

This has now been moved to the right-hand side of the cam­era, direct­ly in front of the mode switch. Replac­ing the on/off switch of its pre­de­ces­sor is now a switch between video and pho­to mode. Any­one who, like me, was very famil­iar with the pre­vi­ous mod­el, will now intu­itive­ly repeat­ed­ly select video mode instead of switch­ing the cam­era off. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly irri­tat­ing if you use both cam­eras in parallel.

In prin­ci­ple, how­ev­er, I think the new posi­tion of the on/off switch on the right is bet­ter, as you can switch the cam­era on and off eas­i­ly with one hand. With the R5, I always need­ed both hands to do this.

Picture quality

The sen­sor of the EOS R5 Mark II offers the same res­o­lu­tion of 45 megapix­els as its pre­de­ces­sor. How­ev­er, accord­ing to the test results of Pho­tons to Pho­tos, the dynam­ic range with the new sen­sor decreased by approx. 1/3 f-stop com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor with the mechan­i­cal shut­ter (at ISO 100: R5 11.8, R5 Mark II 11.45). This is mea­sur­able, but not vis­i­ble. With the elec­tron­ic shut­ter, how­ev­er, the dynam­ic range of the R5 Mark II is bet­ter than that of the R5.

In order to be able to form my own opin­ion, I took two com­par­i­son shots with the R5 and the R5 Mark II. Both shots were tak­en in quick suc­ces­sion with the same lens (Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L II USM at 24mm), mechan­i­cal shut­ter and iden­ti­cal expo­sure val­ues (f/8, 1/80, ISO 100). I then devel­oped both with the same para­me­ters in Adobe Light­room Clas­sic 11.5.1. I maxed out the dynam­ic range with High­lights: -100 and Depths: +100. Here are my cor­re­spond­ing set­tings in Lightroom:

Here are the pic­tures for comparison:

In the full pic­ture, I don’t see any vis­i­ble dif­fer­ences with both cam­eras. What does it look like in more detail? I was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the noise behav­ior in the gray and dark areas. Here are some excerpts from the above images in the Light­room com­par­i­son at 400% magnification:

The left half of the pic­ture shows the shot with the R5 Mark II, the right half shows the one with the R5. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the Mark II is even slight­ly less noisy than its pre­de­ces­sor. All in all, how­ev­er, the dif­fer­ences are real­ly minimal.

Compatibility

Basi­cal­ly, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II offers the same com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with EF lens­es as its pre­de­ces­sor. As I already own many EF lens­es and occa­sion­al­ly want to con­tin­ue using my exist­ing Canon EOS 5DS R, I still use my EF lens­es with Canon’s mount adapters on the R5 Mark II, just as I did with the EOS R5. In my expe­ri­ence, all EF lens­es work at least as well on the new mir­ror­less R cam­eras as on the DSLR bod­ies and the cur­rent mod­els are not infe­ri­or to the RF lens­es in terms of opti­cal performance.

Until now, I’ve only bought one native RF lens, the RF 24-105 f/4L, which I use when I’m trav­el­ing with “small kit”, i.e. just a cam­era and a lens.

I even bought EF lens­es after I bought the R5, as they are cur­rent­ly avail­able on the sec­ond-hand mar­ket at very good prices. So I have now acquired an EF 24-70 f/2.8L II and the excel­lent EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM for around €1000 each. The cor­re­spond­ing coun­ter­parts in the RF mount would have cost a good three times as much.

I cur­rent­ly own a total of 12 lens­es with a Canon EF mount in the focal length range from 14 to 600mm, which with var­i­ous orig­i­nal Canon adapters (sim­ple, with Drop-In fil­ter, with con­trol ring) also work per­fect­ly on the R5 Mark II with­out any restric­tions. This also applies to my two third-par­ty lens­es (Sig­ma 60-600mm, Samyang 14mm).

And the best is yet to come: the sen­sor-based image sta­bi­liz­er (IBIS) of the R5 Mark II is also avail­able for all Canon EF lens­es. For lens­es with­out a built-in sta­bi­liz­er (such as my EF 85mm f/1.2L II or the TS-E 17mm f/4L), the sen­sor now sta­bi­lizes all axes. Even EF lens­es with a built-in opti­cal sta­bi­liz­er ben­e­fit from the IBIS: In addi­tion to the axes sta­bi­lized by the opti­cal sta­bi­liz­er, the sen­sor also takes care of X/Y and roll movements.

Quelle: www.canon-europe.com

Lens­es with­out IS can have the IBIS switched on or off in the menu; lens­es with IS have the cor­re­spond­ing switch on the lens.

My EF 85 f1.2L II USM is a lot bet­ter on the mir­ror­less R-mod­els because, in addi­tion to the sta­bi­liza­tion pro­vid­ed by the IBIS, the focus is now final­ly right on the eyes for all por­traits. With the DSLR I always had more than 50% miss­es at open aper­ture because the phase con­trast AF was often not pre­cise enough.

The 17mm f/4L TS-E Tilt/Shift lens can real­ly shine on mir­ror­less cam­eras, as the result of the tilt/shift adjust­ment can now be viewed pre­cise­ly through the elec­tron­ic viewfind­er. With DSLR bod­ies, strong vignetting quick­ly appeared in the opti­cal viewfind­er when adjust­ing the lens axes; only the mon­i­tor in Live­view was usable, but incon­ve­nient and not very comfortable.

Very use­ful with the TS-E (and all oth­er man­u­al lens­es) is also the fan­tas­tic focus aid of the R5 Mark II, which can be dis­played in the viewfind­er. It reminds me to the crop indi­ca­tors from ancient ana­log times.

Configuration

What did I change?

As with its pre­de­ces­sor, I first con­fig­ured the new Mark II in the menu to suit my needs. I again chose a but­ton assign­ment sim­i­lar to that of the R5. This has worked very well for me over the past few years. As before, I use BBF - Back But­ton Focus­ing, where I have sep­a­rat­ed the aut­o­fo­cus from the shut­ter release. As with the R5, I use three thumb but­tons with dif­fer­ent set­tings. My cur­rent menu set­tings are list­ed below:

Camera menu

Image quality/size (1/9)

I always shoot in RAW for­mat, so I have only select­ed RAW as the image qual­i­ty in the menu. In RAW for­mat, all the infor­ma­tion from the image sen­sor is record­ed, which allows exten­sive post-pro­cess­ing of the images in the high­est pos­si­ble qual­i­ty on the com­put­er at home.

My stan­dard pro­gram for edit­ing and orga­niz­ing my images is Adobe Light­room Clas­sic*, which I have been using for many years (actu­al­ly since ver­sion 1.0). In my arti­cle Using Light­room Clas­sic on sev­er­al com­put­ers, I pre­sent­ed my usu­al edit­ing method in detail.

I have not yet had any major expe­ri­ence with the com­pressed and much more space-sav­ing cRAW for­mat also offered with the EOS R5 Mark II, and I did not use it with its pre­de­ces­sor either. The Canon RAW for­mat was always com­pressed before, but with­out any loss of image information.

The cRAW for­mat accepts a small loss of infor­ma­tion. At first glance, how­ev­er, the image qual­i­ty hard­ly seems to suf­fer and the files become approx. 40% small­er, which also increas­es the num­ber of pos­si­ble con­tin­u­ous shots until the buffer is filled and the con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed drops.

Accord­ing to the dis­play in the viewfind­er, the cam­era can take at least 62 pic­tures in RAW for­mat and at least 94 pic­tures in cRAW for­mat at 30 pictures/second before they are writ­ten to the card. The sub­se­quent speed depends on the write speed of the mem­o­ry card. SD cards are sig­nif­i­cant­ly slow­er than CF Express cards.

A detailed com­par­i­son between Canon RAW and cRAW can be found at The-Digital-Picture.com.

Since I don’t use them, I leave the default JPEG/HEIF qual­i­ty set­ting unchanged. I also leave the aspect ratio at “FULL”, as i do any crop­ping - if nec­es­sary - lat­er in post-processing.

Exposure(2/9)

I usu­al­ly work with Auto ISO. I left the Auto ISO range of 100-12800 as default on the EOS R5 Mark II, as it deliv­ers good results even at high ISO values:

Squir­rel (Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, f6.3, 1/125, ISO 6400)

With the lat­est AI-based denois­ing meth­ods from Light­room or DxO, even images with 5-dig­it ISO val­ues can be used very well nowa­days. Please refer to my test reports of DxO Deep­PRIME XD2s or the AI denois­ing of Light­room.

Shutter control(6/9)

Drive Mode

I have added this menu item to the quick menu as I change it fre­quent­ly. How­ev­er, it can also be changed eas­i­ly in the Q menu. Here you can choose between sin­gle image, var­i­ous con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speeds and self-timer shots. I most­ly use the sin­gle image mode for land­scape / archi­tec­tur­al pho­tog­ra­phy. If action is expect­ed (ani­mals / sports), I choose con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing and adapt the frame rate to the expect­ed action speed.

Shutter-Mode

I have also added this menu item to the quick menu , as it often needs to be changed.

Only in ful­ly elec­tron­ic mode and with full bat­ter­ies does the EOS R5 Mark II achieve the fastest pos­si­ble con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of 30 frames per sec­ond and is silent at the same time. How­ev­er, in con­trast to its pre­de­ces­sor, three dif­fer­ent speed ranges can be select­ed. The indi­vid­ual speeds can be set in the penul­ti­mate menu tab under Dri­ve (3/4) | Con­tin­u­ous Shoot­ing Speed.

The dis­ad­van­tage of the elec­tron­ic shut­ter is that dis­tor­tion of fast-mov­ing objects, the so-called rolling shut­ter effect, can occur. In arti­fi­cial light, band­ing can also occur in the image and the dynam­ic range is min­i­mal­ly reduced.

Com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, how­ev­er, all these draw­backs have been effec­tive­ly min­i­mized. I always use the elec­tron­ic shut­ter mode for action sequences / wildlife with­out arti­fi­cial light or when the cam­era needs to be as dis­creet as pos­si­ble. In addi­tion, con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing can only be used with the elec­tron­ic shutter.

For slow sta­t­ic shots, the mechan­i­cal shut­ter may be able to squeeze out a lit­tle more qual­i­ty. If nec­es­sary, how­ev­er, it can also achieve a con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of up to 12 frames/second.

Assist shooting (8/9)

Image review

Here I have set the review time to 4 sec­onds and deac­ti­vat­ed the viewfind­er dis­play so that I can con­tin­ue shoot­ing imme­di­ate­ly if necessary.

High speed display

With the high-speed dis­play acti­vat­ed, the cam­era always switch­es between review and live image when the mechan­i­cal shut­ter is in H mode; I have always switched it on. With elec­tron­ic shut­ter or modes oth­er than H, the option has no effect.

Blackout-free display

In this mode, the viewfind­er image is not inter­rupt­ed dur­ing pho­tog­ra­phy. This makes it much eas­i­er to fol­low a mov­ing object, such as a bird in flight. Of course, this option is only avail­able with the elec­tron­ic shut­ter and is always switched on in my case.

Display simulation

This option can only be select­ed if the black­out-free dis­play has been deac­ti­vat­ed. I then always select the Expo­sure option, which dis­plays the image in the viewfind­er as it would be cap­tured. This allows you to see direct­ly whether a shot would be cor­rect­ly, over- or underexposed.

With the Dis­able option, the viewfind­er image is always of the same bright­ness lev­el regard­less of the expo­sure set­tings, sim­i­lar to what we were used to with SLR cam­eras. This option is help­ful for flash shots where the expo­sure sim­u­la­tion would only show the dark image with­out the flash illu­mi­na­tion. The same applies to the fol­low­ing option OVF sim. view assist

Assist shooting (9/9)

Display frame rate set.

I always set it to “ Smooth”, i.e. 120Hz, as this makes the image in the viewfind­er much more sta­ble, espe­cial­ly when pan­ning, mak­ing it eas­i­er to track sub­jects. This set­ting con­sumes a lit­tle more power.

The viewfind­er in gen­er­al: its res­o­lu­tion is so high that I no longer miss the opti­cal viewfind­er of a clas­sic DSLR. In the dark, the view through the viewfind­er is even bet­ter (as it is much brighter) than with a DSLR. In bright ambi­ent light, the R5 Mark II has a sig­nif­i­cant­ly brighter viewfind­er image than the R5, so that the viewfind­er is much eas­i­er to use in sun­shine than its predecessor.

Auto pwr off temp..

The EOS R5 Mark II con­tains pow­er­ful microchips that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly heat up the cam­era dur­ing con­tin­u­ous use, espe­cial­ly when shoot­ing video in high res­o­lu­tion and also with the pre-record­ing func­tion. At some point, a cer­tain lev­el can be reached where the cam­era switch­es off. With the High option, this lev­el is raised and the cam­era can heat up con­sid­er­ably more, but you can also use it for longer. I have select­ed the High option.

AF-Menu

AF operation/area (1/7)

AF operation

I always set the AF mode to “SERVO” as I am used to, as I always sep­a­rate the focus from the shut­ter release. If nec­es­sary, I focus with my thumb (BBF - Back But­ton Focus), the index fin­ger only starts the expo­sure meter­ing and releas­es the shut­ter. So if I don’t want to change the focus, I sim­ply take my thumb off the AF but­ton and thus have the same effect as in “ONE SHOT” mode.

AF area

Don’t be sur­prised: here I have set the AF area to spot AF with­out track­ing (). This will be the mode that after­wards will be on my left back focus but­ton “AF-ON”. I use this mode when I want to focus very pre­cise­ly on a small sub­ject, e.g. a bird through a gap in a branch or a fence. I will assign the AI-con­trolled track­ing modes to the oth­er two but­tons lat­er. The oth­er menu items are then ini­tial­ly grayed out and irrelevant.

Servo AF Character. (3/7)

It is worth exper­i­ment­ing a lit­tle here for your own shoot­ing sit­u­a­tions. I cur­rent­ly have “M” set, and have fur­ther reduced the AI ser­vo response to -2, so that the focus sticks bet­ter to the sub­ject once it has been cap­tured. I have also set track­ing acceleration/deceleration to -1. With these set­tings I man­age to track mov­ing sub­jects best.

Customize controls

As I have been used to for many years, I have changed the but­ton assign­ment in order to use “back but­ton” focus­ing. I use the shut­ter but­ton only for expo­sure meter­ing and shoot­ing, focus­ing is done sep­a­rate­ly using the cor­re­spond­ing AF con­fig­ured thumb but­ton. I have been using this method on all my cam­eras for many years.

A spe­cial fea­ture of the Canon EOS R5 Mark II is the intel­li­gent focus algo­rithm, which rec­og­nizes peo­ple, ani­mals, vehi­cles, heads, faces and eyes. In order to be able to react quick­ly, I chose once again three but­tons for dif­fer­ent focus­ing modes, as I did before with my EOS R5.

  • My first mode, as men­tioned above, is spot aut­o­fo­cus with­out track­ing, which is now already set to the AF-ON button.
  • The sec­ond mode is on the AE lock but­ton (). I use this for intel­li­gent scene recog­ni­tion with track­ing, based on a mov­able selec­tion field.
  • The third but­ton, AF area selec­tion (), is assigned to the AF eye detec­tion func­tion, which search­es the entire viewfind­er image for peo­ple, faces and eyes. This is some­times help­ful for a quick snapshot.

As a result, I now have three sep­a­rate but­tons for select­ing the focus mode, which cov­er more and more areas of the viewfind­er field from left to right.

  1. Spot
  2. Per­son / ani­mal / object close to the selec­tion field
  3. Per­son / ani­mal some­where in the image area

To do this, I have set the fol­low­ing in the “Cus­tomize but­tons for shoot­ing” menu:

Customized controls when shooting (1/4)

Customize buttons for shooting

Shutter butt. half-press

As men­tioned above, I don’t use the shut­ter release to focus. I have there­fore select­ed “Meter­ing start” here. Alter­na­tive­ly, AE lock while but­ton is pressed can also be select­ed, in which case the expo­sure con­trol is locked and used for all sub­se­quent shots until the shut­ter but­ton is released com­plete­ly. How­ev­er, this some­times result­ed in me los­ing a few pic­tures dur­ing a series of shots when, for exam­ple, ani­mals moved from the shade to sun­ny areas and the pic­tures were then sud­den­ly com­plete­ly over­ex­posed. Since then, I have left it at “Start metering”

M-Fn

I only use the M-Fn but­ton on the front of the grip to change ISO val­ues and shut­ter modes. In most cas­es, I leave the ISO set­ting on AUTO. For planned long expo­sures or from a tri­pod, I always select the low­est ISO lev­el 100.

To do this, I use the first option DIAL FUNC for the M-Fn but­ton and select the two options ISO and Dri­ve mode () in the first left-hand col­umn in the detailed view (can be accessed using the INFO but­ton). I switch off all oth­er fields (OFF). After press­ing the M-FN but­ton, you can then sim­ply change the ISO val­ue with the front dial and the Dri­ve mode with the thumbwheel.

AF-ON

I use this but­ton to focus on small sub­jects through gaps, for exam­ple a small bird in a tree. I inten­tion­al­ly switch off the track­ing func­tion. I chose the option Meter­ing an AF start () The fol­low­ing set­tings in the set­tings menu via the “Info” but­ton allow this:

  • AF start posi­tion: Man­u­al­ly select­ed AF point
  • AF oper­a­tion: SERVO
  • AF Area: Spot locked ()
  • I have des­e­lect­ed all oth­er options

AE Lock button ()

I have select­ed the first menu item Meter­ing and AF start () for this but­ton, too. In the Detail set­ting, which you again open by press­ing the “INFO” but­ton, I have set:

  • AF start posi­tion: Man­u­al­ly select­ed AF point
  • AF oper­a­tion: SERVO
  • AF Area: Spot ()
  • Whoöe area track­ing Ser­vo AF: On
  • Eye detec­tion: Auto
  • I have des­e­lect­ed all oth­er options

In this mode, you can first posi­tion the small AF field vis­i­ble in the viewfind­er rough­ly where you want to focus. If there is a per­son or ani­mal near­by, the cam­era tries to locate the eyes and focus on them. This also works very well with birds:

Euro­pean blue tit (400mm with 1.4 exten­der, 560mm f4.0, 1/800, ISO 4000)

The pri­ma­ry focus field also allows you to select the per­son or ani­mal to focus on from sev­er­al oth­ers. As long as the AE Lock but­ton () is pressed, the focus remains “stuck” on the select­ed sub­ject if the sub­ject or the cam­era is moving.

AF point button ()

I had already assigned a third but­ton for AF on the EOS R5, the AF point but­ton (). Since I can also access the AF area selec­tion con­ve­nient­ly via the Q menu and only use this func­tion extreme­ly rarely, I no longer need the but­ton for this.

Instead, I have now assigned it to Eye detec­tion AF (). In con­trast to the AE lock but­ton func­tion that I described above, Eye detec­tion AF () imme­di­ate­ly takes the entire viewfind­er image into account and does not start from the pre­set focus area. This func­tion is help­ful for snap­shots when things need to hap­pen very quickly.

SET button

I have assigned the mag­ni­fy­ing glass func­tion () to the “Set” but­ton in the mid­dle of the rear dial.

Multi-controller

The small joy­stick to the right of the viewfind­er, called “Mul­ti-Con­troller”, is used to move the focus point. I use this very often and have always acti­vat­ed the option “Direct AF area selec­tion” (). You can deac­ti­vate it with “OFF”, for what­ev­er rea­son. By the way: press­ing the joy­stick cen­ters the selec­tion field in the mid­dle of the viewfind­er image - very useful.

Customize dials/control ring

In order to be able to con­ve­nient­ly adjust all rel­e­vant expo­sure fac­tors even in man­u­al mode, I have assigned the dials as follows:

  • Front: Tv - Shut­ter speed set­ting in M mode
  • Rear: +/- Expo­sure compensation
  • Thumb­wheel: Av - Aper­ture set­ting in M mode
  • Con­trol ring on the lens / mount adapter: Set ISO speed (option­al)

Since I usu­al­ly work with Auto ISO, I have found this set­ting to work well for me.

In a nut­shell, these are my main set­tings. I rec­om­mend try­ing out every­thing else by your­self. The con­fig­u­ra­tion options of the EOS R5 Mark II are extreme­ly exten­sive, so every­one has to find their own preferences.

Final­ly, I rec­om­mend record­ing very fre­quent­ly used set­tings in the My Menu, as it is oth­er­wise very dif­fi­cult to find the desired items in the exten­sive menu tree. Many set­tings can also be con­ve­nient­ly accessed via the Q menu.

Accessories

Every new cam­era also needs new acces­sories, which you should con­sid­er when buying.

Energy…

A new bat­tery type, the LP-E6P*, was shipped with the Canon EOS R5 Mark II. As the R5 Mark II deliv­ers sig­nif­i­cant­ly more pro­cess­ing pow­er than its pre­de­ces­sor, it requires high­er pow­er lev­els for some func­tions than the pre­vi­ous LP-E6N(H) bat­ter­ies could deliv­er. Only the new LP-E6P bat­tery is able to sup­ply suf­fi­cient power.

Although the old­er bat­tery mod­els LP-E6N and LP-E6NH (but not the old LP-E6) can also be used in the R5 Mark II, the camera’s func­tions are sig­nif­i­cant­ly restricted:

  • The net­work con­nec­tion (WLAN/cable LAN) is not available
  • The speed for con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing is reduced
  • The selec­tion of 8K RAW or SRAW video record­ings, fine image qual­i­ty and frame rates of 240/200/120/100/60/50 images / sec. is not possible
  • HDMI RAW out­put is not available
  • Pho­tog­ra­phy dur­ing video record­ings is not possible
  • High frame rate film­ing is not supported
  • The Pre-Con­ti­nous shoot­ing is not available.

All in all, these are sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions, so first of all I bought a sec­ond orig­i­nal Canon LP-E6P bat­tery*.

As usu­al, the price of the orig­i­nal Canon bat­tery (OVP €129) is very high again. In the mean­time, how­ev­er, PATONA has released the first work­ing replace­ment bat­tery, which costs less than a third of the Canon orig­i­nal: PATONA Plat­inum LP-E6P (2600 mAh / 4A)*

I have tried it in my EOS R5 Mark II. It is recog­nised as an orig­i­nal LP-E6P bat­tery and can also be reg­is­tered in the menu. There are no func­tion­al restric­tions with the bat­tery, even the Pre-Con­tin­ious Shoot­ing, which does not work with the old­er LP-E6NH bat­ter­ies, can be used with it. As an addi­tion­al gim­mick, it also has its own USB-C port so that it can be charged direct­ly with­out a sep­a­rate charg­er. Of course, it can also be charged in cam­era and with the orig­i­nal charg­er. I there­fore ordered a sec­ond one of them straight away.

Although the bat­tery grip of the EOS R5 also fits the Mark II, it has one seri­ous dis­ad­van­tage: it does not sup­port the high-cur­rent capa­bil­i­ty of the new LP-E6P bat­ter­ies, so that the above-men­tioned restric­tions also apply when using the new bat­ter­ies in it. So, unfor­tu­nate­ly, a new bat­tery grip is need­ed ☹️.

Canon cur­rent­ly offers three dif­fer­ent bat­tery grips for the R5 Mark II: the BG-R20, suc­ces­sor to the BG-R10 of the R5, the BG-R20EP with an addi­tion­al 2.5GB Eth­er­net con­nec­tion and the Cool­ing Fan CF-R20EP grip, which cools the cam­era with a built-in fan via the camera’s ven­ti­la­tion open­ings and thus should allow longer video operation.

For most pho­tog­ra­phers, the “sim­ple” BG-R20* will prob­a­bly make the most sense, as it has dual bat­tery slots and inte­grat­ed con­trols in the bat­tery grip for por­trait for­mat shots. How­ev­er, Canon is charg­ing a very high price for this too (OVP €499).

The bat­ter­ies can be con­ve­nient­ly charged both in cam­era and in the bat­tery grip via the camera’s USB-C port, as well as in the sup­plied Canon charg­er. The cam­era can also be oper­at­ed with a USB-C mains adapter or a pow­er bank, but a bat­tery must still be insert­ed. How­ev­er, a pow­er sup­ply unit with PD (Pow­er Deliv­ery) func­tion is required for this.

I use the Anker Pow­er­Port 5-Port USB C Charg­er 60W*, which has 4 addi­tion­al inte­grat­ed USB-A sock­ets for charg­ing sev­er­al addi­tion­al devices such as mobile phones or tablets at the same time.

Alter­na­tive­ly, when you are on the move, you can also charge or oper­ate the cam­era using a pow­er bank. It is impor­tant that this also fea­tures the PD (Pow­er Deliv­ery) func­tion. Here is a selec­tion of PD-capa­ble pow­er banks* with dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties on amazon.

Impor­tant: The charg­ing cable used MUST have a USB-C con­nec­tor on both sides and MUST also be PD-capa­ble. Cables with USB-A con­nec­tions on one side will not work. Suit­able USB-C cables are avail­able in dif­fer­ent lengths, e.g. from ama­zon* or eBay*.

Memory cards

Like its pre­de­ces­sor, the EOS R5 Mark II fea­tures two mem­o­ry card slots. I use my exist­ing 128GB SD cards in the SD card slot. How­ev­er, I only use it as an “over­flow” in case the CF Express card I main­ly use is full - which has not yet hap­pened to me.

If speed is impor­tant or you want to record in 8K RAW, the speed of even the fastest SD UHS-II cards is not suf­fi­cient and a CF Express card is manda­to­ry. But not all CF Express cards deliv­er the nec­es­sary speed. Although the print­ed label often promis­es suf­fi­cient speeds of over 1000MB/s, only the larg­er cards (> 512GB) can main­tain this speed over longer peri­ods of time, which is required for filming.

As the cur­rent stan­dard flash chips store approx. 128GB, cards from a size of 512GB usu­al­ly have at least 4 chips to which they can write simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. This makes them sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than small­er cards with only one or two flash chips. The small­er cards there­fore become slow­er once their inter­nal buffer is full, and 8K RAW record­ing then stops.

I there­fore rec­om­mend choos­ing a card with at least 512GB capac­i­ty if you want to use the more pow­er­ful video modes at some point in the future.

Over­all, CF Express cards have become cheap­er in recent years, but prices are still chang­ing rapid­ly, so it’s worth com­par­ing them, e.g. on eBay*.

For my EOS R5, I chose a 512GB CF Express card from Wise*, which at the time offered by far the best price/performance ratio at around €400 (cur­rent offers on eBay*). It has always worked with­out any prob­lems over the past four years. Oth­er 512GB CFex­press cards are avail­able here at ama­zon*, for example.

As a new card for the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, how­ev­er, I have now bought a 1TB CF Express card from the Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­er THREE COLOUR DOGFISH* for a very rea­son­able price (€259). Before using it for the first time, I test­ed it thor­ough­ly with the high­ly rec­om­mend­ed tool H2TESTW from heise and it works per­fect­ly. I can there­fore also rec­om­mend it.

I use a San­Disk Extreme PRO CFex­press Card Read­er* as my card reader.

Display protection

As with the dis­plays of my pre­vi­ous cam­eras, I also attached a screen pro­tec­tion to the R5 Mark II, as a touch dis­play - also due to the swiv­el func­tion - is sub­ject to more stress than, for exam­ple, the fixed dis­play of the Canon 5DS R. This time I opt­ed for the ULBTER screen pro­tec­tion*, as it was the first one avail­able. In addi­tion to two dis­play glass­es each for the swiv­el and shoul­der dis­play, the set also includes microfiber and clean­ing cloths. The instal­la­tion was again absolute­ly straight­for­ward. Once fit­ted, the glass­es are bare­ly noticeable.

The glass is very thin and does not pre­vent the dis­play from fold­ing in com­plete­ly towards the cam­era. It feels very high-qual­i­ty and, accord­ing to ULBTER, has a hard­ness of 9H. The touch oper­a­tion of the dis­play is also not impaired by the pro­tec­tive glass.

Resumée

After my first few weeks with the R5 Mark II, I am very sat­is­fied with the cam­era. Although the image qual­i­ty and res­o­lu­tion have remained large­ly the same, I still con­sid­er the exten­sive improve­ments in detail to be very help­ful. Over­all, the EOS R5 Mark II is more of an evo­lu­tion than a revolution.

Does it make sense to switch from the R5 to the R5 Mark II?

It depends!

To come straight to the point: the main improve­ments of the R5 Mark II con­cern action pho­tog­ra­phers (sports / ani­mal pho­tog­ra­phy) and video enthu­si­asts. In these areas, the EOS R5 Mark II is far supe­ri­or to its pre­de­ces­sor. I wish I had already had some of its fea­tures at my dis­pos­al on my African safaris or recent­ly in Cos­ta Rica.

The speed and image qual­i­ty in these areas are absolute­ly pro­fes­sion­al. The EOS R5 Mark II offers almost all the fea­tures of Canon’s new flag­ship, the Canon EOS R1, which it only sur­pass­es in terms of con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed (40 instead of 30 frames per sec­ond) and the cross-type AF sys­tem. How­ev­er, the EOS R5 Mark II offers almost twice the sen­sor res­o­lu­tion of the EOS R1.

If none of this is impor­tant to you, for exam­ple, if your pho­to­graph­ic focus is on con­tem­pla­tive land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, the EOS R5 (and also, for exam­ple, an EOS 5DS R, which has an even high­er sen­sor res­o­lu­tion of 50 megapix­els) will cer­tain­ly suffice.

The Canon EOS R5 is still an excel­lent cam­era. Land­scape shots tak­en with the EOS Mark II (see com­par­i­son above) can hard­ly be dis­tin­guished from those of its pre­de­ces­sor in terms of qual­i­ty, and the “old” R5 even offers an extend­ed dynam­ic range in pure­ly metro­log­i­cal terms. The EOS R5 is also cur­rent­ly €1,200 cheap­er than the Mark II - new.

So I’m still spoiled for choice. I am still unde­cid­ed as to whether I will keep my R5 as a sec­ond body or pass it on into good hands…

Further information material

In the mean­time, you can find many more inter­est­ing reports on the Canon R sys­tem here on my website:

Focus stacking or bracketing with the EOS R5 or R6

The Canon EOS R5 Mark II , R5 and R6 offer Focus Brack­et­ing. With this func­tion, the cam­era takes sev­er­al images in quick suc­ces­sion and shifts the focal plane between them in defined small steps. In post-pro­cess­ing, these can then be com­bined to cre­ate an image with an extend­ed focus range. This process is called focus stack­ing. In my report, I explain what is pos­si­ble and what soft­ware is required for post-processing.

Focus Stacking with the Canon EOS R5 (or R6) - Settings

Here I have exam­ined the focus brack­et­ing set­tings in more detail.

Lenses and adapters

These four reports deal with the lens­es for the EOS R5, they also remain valid for the EOS R5 Mark II. Does it always have to be new RF mount lens­es, or can you also use the EF lens­es that may already be avail­able or can be pur­chased sec­ond-hand at a rea­son­able price? What options do the Canon mount adapters EF-EOS R offer?

Comparison of the EF and RF version of the 24-105 f/4L IS on the Canon EOS R5

Comparison of the Canon RF 24-105 f/4L with the EF 24-70 f/2.8L II on the EOS R5

The Canon EF mount is alive - the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM on the EOS R5

Drop-In Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with C-PL polarizing filter

All my arti­cles about the Canon EOS R5

That’s enough for now, more will fol­low soon…

*= Affil­i­ate Link

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.