EOS R5 Excessive Noise

[hervegodbout]

I do lots of wildlife photography with my R5 and compare it with my fellow photographers who have the same body camera for some reason, I have lots of noise in my images and they don't.
I always shoot with electronic high-speed continuous plus.
Can someone tell me if I have to adjust any settings in the menu?

[lwatawala]

Thank you Peter. Heat Distortion sounds reasonable. It was around 8:15AM on Feb 22nd in Sarasota, Florida. Morning sun was shining on grass that was wet with dew. That must have formed distorting water vapor. The Eagle was on that grass. So, your explanation makes good sense.

I uploaded one more photo from that day:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QAvFQh0s-tK5q0IhfzifqMR3jgU8gbpV/view?usp=sharing

This is even more odd looking. I'm curious what may have caused that? 

[johnrmoyer]

Distortion from variations in atmospheric density will increase with distance to subject. A closer subject should appear to be sharper and less distorted than a subject further away when everything else is the same. If the air is moving, making several photos and keeping the lucky one might work sometimes.

[lwatawala]

Thank you John,

Somehow I didn't see the camera temperature values Peter listed before I wrote my previous reply. So, I misunderstood, thinking it was about air temperature distortions. Now I understand. I guess I have to keep an eye on the camera temperature. I'll follow John's suggestions on keeping camera cool. Is there a way to read the temperature on the camera itself rather than finding out later through image Exif? 

As for "Sensor Cleaning" the camera automatically runs that sequence everytime I power off the camera. May be that is not enough. Are there any guidelines when I should manually run that?

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

[Peter]

I ment heat distortion between you and the Eagle. The last picture you shared looks better.

The camera temperature may be the culprit for more visible hot pixels.

See the part about red/white/blue dots https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART178307

"thermal noise doubles for each 6 degree C increase in temperature"

I didn't know it was that big difference. Thanks

[lwatawala]

Thanks again Peter. On the hot pixels issue, that KB says this <<White, red, or blue dots of light may appear in captured images if the sensor is affected by cosmic rays or similar factors>>

Now I am wondering if I might have damaged the sensor by one day pointing the camera to the setting sun to take a time lapse sequence. Thinking back that was a very stupid thing to do on my part. If such damage happened, do you know what my options are in getting that corrected? Thanks.

[Peter]

Unlikely. Your hot pixels are in random positions all around the sensor. Cosmic rays will always hit your sensor.

If you use Lightroom it will remove most of them automatically, but some will be harder to remove. It is therefore a good idea to map as many as possible out already in camera via the sensor cleaning menu.

[lwatawala]

I think now I understand what you have described. I have done a "Sensor Clean" and will test to see if I still see hotspots in the future.

Thank you again for your input on my issue. For now I'm all set. I'll contact you again if I need help in the future.