RF 100-500mm does not focus quickly on R5 when changing from 100mm to 500mm

[rose1960]

I use a Canon R5 (MK 1) camera.  If at 100mm my lens focuses quite quickly. If at 500mm I lose shots due to the fact that I have to manually focus it. Or switch the camera on and off.  Or go back to 100mm, focus close by and then re-zoom to 500mm.   By this time the bird or animal has gone!  It doesn’t matter if shooting a BIF with a blue sky or if shooting bird's in a a tree.  My Canon EF 100-400mm (and with 1.4 extender) was much quicker than this lens and I am beginning to think that I made a mistake changing!  I usually leave lens on FULL and I have tried putting it on infinity, but I experience the same issue.  Please can someone tell me how to fix this. Is this a setting change? Firmware is up-to-date.  Many thanks.

[John_Q]

Hello rose1960,

Let's try enabling the [Lens Drive When AF Impossible] setting. This can be found in the AF menu #4.

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

I agree with John_Q's recommendation.  We need some additional information to see if it is going to help.  

In addition, since you are shooting wildlife at distance, there is no reason not to leave the Focus Distance Switch set to 3m~Infinity.  The lens does not need to be looking for focus (subjects) from MFD to 9.84ft at any focal length.

What AF Method are you using?  I would review the manual to confirm the selected method(s) is/are applicable for your shooting conditions.

For larger mostly stationary subjects you can use Spot AF (narrow area).  This is not best for tiny subjects

1-point AF is what I use most.  The single point is a little larger.  Like the above, good for stationary subjects

You can expand the point to track moving subjects, but the speed at which a subject moves or background can affect focus acquisition. 

Servo can work well on a subject that has open sky or a solid background.  It won't work well with subjects in bushes or for ones in trees with branches and leaves.

You can also set tracking for animals and eyes, but the face and eye of the animal has to be facing the camera the majority of the time for this to work.

Canon : Product Manual : EOS R5 : Selecting the AF Method (start.canon)

[Tronhard]

Hi Rose and welcome!

As my colleagues have mentioned, we need a lot more information as regards the setup of your camera to provide context to your situation.   In particular, some information about your subjects: are they relatively static or very agile and active, such as birds in flight?   Are you shooting hand-held or on some steadying device such as a monopod or tripod?

What setting do you have for focus area selection: and do you use any combination of the following:
Back button focus, servo AI focus, face/eye tracking.

FWIW, I shoot mostly wildlife with a variety of cameras and lenses, but including the R5 and the RF 100-500, and have no issues with focusing, so I suspect that it is something to do with your camera's setup that is causing your challenges.

Like Rick and a lot of other wildlife photographers, I usually have the camera's focusing limiter set to 3m-Infinity, and I too shoot single-point focus (using Back Button Focus, with AI Servo) and Face/eye tracking.   By default the camera will look across a large areas of the Field of View,  and get confused by clutter, such as vegetation, horns, noses etc.  Thus, by being as specific as possible to set the point of focus, the camera will find and keep that focus much, much faster.

In the following example, the restricted focus area allowed me to point between the leaves and focus on the eyes of the panda and it did so quickly because the system had far fewer data points to process.

Canon EOS R5, RF 100-500@500, f/8, 1/800sec, ISO-6400