Trogon Photo Tours

November 2020 - This newsletter features my first impressions of the recently released Canon R5 mirrorless camera.  I have only used it for one three hour session in the blinds at Laguna Seca but even with just that little bit of photography, I can say it will be a game changer for my photography and for many Canon wildlife photographers.  As a bit of background I have been frustrated with Canon's lack of product innovation the past few years.  I had been planning to change to Nikon largely because of the very lightweight and affordable (around $3,300) Nikon PF 500F5.6 lens.  I was planning to pair that with the 45 megapixel Nikon D850.  Now that Canon has come out with the R5, I have changed plans and am now planning to stick with Canon. 

One of the most common species at these South Texas ranches is the Green Jay.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 100-500mm RF 4.5-7.1 lens at 270mm, 1/2000 F7.1, iso 2000, Gitzo Tripod, Benro Head.   My co leader Melody Lytle was kind enough to lend me her R5 and 100-500 for an afternoon in the blind.  I had read some reviews which had spoken highly of the camera so I was interested to give it a try.  For a lot of these shots I was just prefocusing on the perch with the back button and releasing the focus so it was fixed on the perch.  I was mostly trying to get flight and action shots, knowing that I would end up cropping most of the images a fair bit.  Because it has a 45 megapixel sensor I knew I would be able to get away with fairly big crops.  This image is cropped to about 20 percent of the original image.  I did not apply any noise reduction to the background of any of these images other than the default settings in Adobe Camera Raw which I adjusted for masking the sharpening at 30 and increasing the detail in color noise reduction to 90 (which actually reduces the amount of noise reduction on the subject). 

Here's a Long-billed Thrasher coming straight at the camera.   The settings for this shot were Canon R5, 100-500 at 500mm 1/8000 F7.1, iso 2000, Gitzo tripod, Benro Head.  Again the image is cropped to about 20% of the original.  In the original image the thrasher was near to the center of the frame.  I chose to highlight this image to show off the AF system of the camera.  The R5 has an eye detection system which tracks the eye of the subject and it does so very well.  Occasionally using the eye detection AF system I would have trouble acquiring focus to begin with but once it acquired focus on the subject I could see it tracking the eye precisely as the bird moved around in the screen.  The R5 has an impressive 5,940 different autofocus points to call on.  This situation with a bird coming straight at the camera is something I have found most cameras and AF systems struggle to nail the focus on the head. It's often out of focus while the body is in sharp focus.  In this instance the head is very sharp as I will show in the close up crop next.  

This is a 100% crop of the original image from above.  Explained another way this is cropped down to the actual 800x800 pixels from the original image, the amount of pixels has not been downsized to fit on the web.  I think the focus on the face is impressive.  Also the amount of color noise at iso 2000 for a huge crop like this is not bad at all (no outside noise reduction run).  This eye detection system is a great new feature and it works impressively well.  Also I would note that I am shooting the 100-500 RF lens wide open at its maximum focal length and the sharpness is impressive for a zoom being used wide open. That being said I had so much speed here I probably should have stopped down to about F9 and the tip of the beak probably would have been sharper. 

Here's a Green Jay that has landed on our perch.  The techs here are R5, 100-500 at 300mm 1/5000 F8, iso 2000.  The camera does well with dynamic range also, this is a tough exposure with the blacks and yellows and the camera did a nice job handling it.  I certainly could have zoomed in more here and dropped the iso but again I was focusing on action shots.  My initial impression is that the noise performance and image quality of the images at iso 2000 is similar to the Canon 5D4 at iso 1250, which I consider to be very good quality.  After that on the 5D4 I feel like the image quality starts to go down and unless necessary I don't like to go above that number, while I would feel fine routinely shooting the R5 at iso 2000. 

Next I put the R5 on my Canon 100-400 II USM lens.  It's necessary to use an adapter, the Canon Mount Adapter EF-EOSR to use your normal Canon DSLR lenses with the mirrorless R cameras.  The good news is the cost is only $99 and the autofocus system seemed to focus just as quickly with the adapter and my lens as it did with the 100-500 specifically made for the R cameras.  The techs on this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 II lens at 400mm, Mount Adapter 1/3200 F8, iso 3200, Gitzo Tripod, Wimbeley Head.  This is about 40% of the original image.  As far as image quality when I zoomed in to 100% the image was not as nice as at iso 2000 but for web purposes or printing not very large sizes I think the image quality is very acceptable.  Again there is no additional noise reduction added and the lack of color noise is excellent.  

Next I ramped up the iso to 6400 as I had heard great things about the iso performance of the R5.  The settings for this shot were R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/4000 F7.1, iso 6400, Gitzo Tripod, Benro Head.  This is cropped to just over 30 percent of the original image.  This shot was underexposed about a half a stop which does result in increased noise.  This is the image without any external noise reduction applied.  The bird looks pretty good for web but the color noise in the background is starting to show up and cause problems.   

Here is the same image with Nik Define noise reduction applied to only the background.  You can see it cleans up really well even at this high iso.  It's now certainly a usable image for web presentation although you can see a bit of noise particularly in the dark areas of the bird. 

Here's a properly exposed Green Jay not cropped as much as the previous image.  The techs on this one are R5 100-400 II at 400mm 1/2500 F6.3, iso 6400, Gitzo Tripod, Benro Head.  This one is cropped to about 45% of the original image.  The light was dull at this point so I did increase the contrast some in processing.  Again I didn't do any external noise reduction and while there is a bit of noise, it's not bad at all.  The image quality for web presentation is very acceptable.  In general the amount of color noise is greatly reduced compared to photographing with the Canon 5D4 or 1DX2 at high isos.  For example I almost never will photograph over iso 3200 with those two full frame digital bodies.  But I have no problem going to iso 6400 for web presentation with the Canon R5. 

Next I cranked the iso all the way up to 12,800 and the results aren't bad.  The techs are R5 100-400 at 400mm 1/1000 F6.3, iso 12,800, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  While you can see the image quality has gone down quite a bit compared to iso 6400, it's not too bad.  Again no noise reduction was run on the background and the background noise would clean up with any external noise reduction program easily.  The bird is showing more noise and the overall image quality has decreased.  I wouldn't hesitate to go to iso 6400 with this camera but I would only go to iso 12,800 in rare circumstances.  For practical purposes I think the R5 has about a one stop advantage over the current DSLR full frame cameras in terms of iso performance, maybe a bit lower at the lower iso's and a bit more than one stop at the higher iso's.  This is just my first impression from processing the images from that one afternoon of photography.  

In conclusion, Canon finally has a big hit, a game changer, after many years of kind of spinning its wheels and losing ground to Nikon, Sony and others.  I will definitely purchase an R5 in early 2021 as well as an adapter to use with my current Canon lenses.  Canon still hasn't made a lightweight fixed, image stabilized lens which is affordable and comparable to the Nikon 500PF lens.  I am hopeful something like that will come along soon, but if not I can use this lightweight, 45 megapixel, high iso performer with my current Canon lenses as I wait for new Canon lenses which they should add to their line of lenses which are directly compatible with their mirrorless cameras.  I forgot to add that in addition to all the pluses I have already outlined, when photographing with the mechanical shutter you get a very good 12 frames per second with a very quiet shutter.  If you use the electronic shutter you get a blazing silent 20 frames per second, although using this is a bit disconcerting because you don't even know if you are actually taking photos and you have no idea how many (it's a lot).  Also I have read that there could technical issues with photographing moving subjects with the electronic shutter.  Anyway, I am just getting started with this camera, there will be a lot for me to learn.  But from my brief experience with it, I can tell that it is indeed a game changer due to its combination of high iso performance, 45 megapixels allowing for large crops and better detail, eye detecting autofocus system and excellent frame and burst rate.  Simply put none of the Canon DSLR's currently on the market offer the combination of all of these features, it's alone and head and shoulders above the DSLR's at this point.  The cost of the R5 is currently about $3,900, not cheap but certainly less expensive than the Canon 1DX3 which goes for $6,500 and has similar AF sytems and I imagine iso performance but is only 20 megapixels and much heavier.  Let's hope Canon comes out with some excellent, affordable fixed lenses to go along with the R5.  I am not paid or sponsored by Canon or any of the camera stores so I don't have an incentive to be changing systems often or recommending gear like some other professional photographers.  You are always getting my unbiased opinions when reading my reviews.