Slowly migrating from my EF lenses to RF Lenses- Recommendations for indoor lens?

[Zaphod]

Hello,

I’ve had Canon EF cameras back  to the Canon 20D. I purchased my R5 last year and love it.  I’m normally an outdoor photographer so the first lens I migrated was my EF 100-400 to the RF 100-500. I recently was asked to shoot an indoor event without a flash (it involved birds or prey so the flash would cause issues) and none of my lenses cut it with a EF/RF adapter.  What do others use for lower light situations using a R5 body?

Thanks in advance

Bill

[rs-eos · Accepted solution]

What other EF lenses do you have?

For work in low light where you cannot add lighting, you can also slow the shutter speed and /or raise ISO.  Though both will have implications.

If the resultant images are too noisy and/or contain motion blur above what you want, then moving to a wider aperture lens would be required.  I'm assuming that the indoor event wouldn't require very long focal lengths?  If so, at least look at a constant aperture f/2.8 zoom lens.   Though this may only lead to giving you around two stops of wiggle room (i.e. reduce ISO by two stops, increase shutter speed by 2 stops, or a mix-and-match of 1 stop each).

If that's not going to cut it, you can look at even wider apertures.  However, these are typically only found in the world of prime lenses.  e.g. the RF 135mm f/1.8 would add another 1 1/3 stop of wiggle room over an f/2.8 lens.   Any lens with f/1.2 would then be 2 1/3 stops of wiggle over an f/2.8

However, do note that primes will not be as versatile if you're going to need multiple focal lengths and cannot move around as much.  And, the narrow depths of field with the wider apertures can be challenging.  Typically not an issue though if your subjects wouldn't be super close the camera.

[FloridaDrafter · Accepted solution]

I think whatever lens you used on the Great Horned Owl worked pretty well. There is no EXIF data in the posted shot, so we can't tell what settings you used. Still, if you were shooting Raw, that is a very usable image IMO.

Thank you for posting a sample, it makes me more inclined to suggest the 50mm f/1.8. I have the EF version of the 50mm f/1.8 and can only assume the RF version is way better.

Newton

[Zaphod]

Just say thank you to "rs-eos" & "FloridaDrafter" I purchased the Canon 50mm f/1.8 for my R5. It hits the sweet spot between price and performance. It works well indoors without a flash. Best -Bill