EOS R5 Mark II upgrade or not?

[shawnphoto]

I have the original R5, and have had it for 4 years next month. It's a fine camera that does the work. It seems to be very accurate for photography. Colors are fantastic, but not 100% accurate. The new one is supposed to be lower quality for photography, but is it more accurate with what it does have? Because I would personally take the slightly improved colors over a small increase in dynamic range. I haven't found anyone who has actually A-B tested the R5 and R5 mk II with a detailed color analysis. Honestly, if we exclude video from the equation, should I upgrade to the R5 mk II?

[Tronhard]

You can tweak the colours of both of these cameras if you drill down into the menu system, but if you shoot in RAW, it's irrelevant because there is no colour balancing done with those files.  That is then down to your post-production software.

I am not convinced that the R5II is a poorer model with stills than the R5 - I would like to see the documentation behind those opinions. If you look at the differences in photography, they are down to tracking, particularly face/eye - and the ability to store and prioritize faces in events, ball tracking for some round ball sports, faster processor and overall data bus speed for fast moving subjects, thanks to the BSI stacked sensor.

What all these features mean in terms of benefits depends of what you shoot and how you do so.  Features on their own mean nothing if you can't use them to add benefit and value to your photography.

[shawnphoto]

Thanks a lot for telling me your opinion. Really appreciate it. It's a lot more useful than if someone who had the camera actually responded. 

[FloridaDrafter]

shawnphoto: "The new one is supposed to be lower quality for photography"

I'm not sure where you are getting this info. Initially, I had decided to let the bugs get worked out of the R5 mark II, but after looking at the problems people were having, I realized they wouldn't affect the way I shoot. So, I got the R5 II last weekend (9/22/24). I've been using the R5, R6, and R6 II for wildlife (birds, flowers, insects) for almost four years and was quite happy with them all.

Granted, I've had doctors to visit and hurricane Helene about blew us away, but I have snapped nearly 2000 shots of various inane subjects for testing and going through various settings just to make sure they work properly and as expected. For my use, the R5 II is a much better still camera than the R5 and R6 II. The stacked sensor alone is worth the price of admission, I mean, I'd read about it and understand the science/engineering, but seeing is believing. The DR and pure richness of colors is, well, amazing. These images have had minimal post editing, mostly saturation (+1) and unsharp (4, 4, 2) in DPP 4.

R5 II w/RF 100-500L - 1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 1000. Shot under tree canopy in the late evening.

Same conditions - 1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 200. Some evening sun making its way through.

AF seems snappier so it locks on quickly and does seem faster than the R5. One thing I've noticed is not as much "hunting". Note how I was able to bypass the cardinal to get a head shot of the mockingbird. It just worked! Eye detect was set to "auto".

Another late evening shot under tree canopy. 1/640, f/7.1, ISO 2000.

I am leaving so much out from my testing, but my message is that this is an amazing camera for stills. I plan on making some trips to the local ponds to get some BIF. Also, now that the storm is gone, I'm hoping the butterflies and dragonflies come back to my property so I can get some tracking done on these very hard to photograph "in flight" insects.

Newton

[Tronhard]

Hi Newton
Apologies, you must have read my uncorrected version.  In a fit of "genius or old-timers' disease" 😖 I somehow missed out the word NOT in that first sentence, but I fixed that a while ago.   To make it perfectly clear, I see no difference in the performance of the two in that context, certainly not against the R5II - hence my inquiry about documentation for that opinion. 

I think that from a stills point of view the new version has many things going for it, but really (as I said) the value of those features depend on what one needs - a feature without a benefit is not value.  And that is absolutely, in NO way, a criticism of the camera, it's just a fact of life when considering an investment and it's all about the person.

[shawnphoto]

Thank you for your response. I appreciate your message. However, these images are not showing superiority over the R5. I think the reason is that you're using DPP, and DPP is extremely bad. Looking at the images holistically, sure, they look pretty good in terms of color and highlight retention when zoomed out, but observing details and checking on how these might print out... not even close to being worthy. BTW, you must have a really fast computer (or a lot of patience) because DPP is absurdly slow with my R5 files, so I never use it. 

Now, I hate to say, the main reason I'm looking to upgrade is due to the fact that the R5 is showing a lot of hot pixels these days, probably in the 30-40 range on any shots with a shutter below .5 seconds. And they're quite a bit larger than a "pixel". I'm not going to speculate as to why these huge clusters suddenly proliferated across the frame when the R5 mk II was released... let's just assume it is a gigantic coincidence. 

[Tronhard]

Definitely, the R5II has a different BSI/Stacked sensor, so we are looking at two different profiles.   Also surprised that you are getting a lot of hot pixels - I have had my R5 for about 3 years now and I can't find one.

A lot of what you have described in terms of colour rendition can be changed in PP with colour profiles, so I am wondering what software do you use to process your images, and what formats/media do you produce in?   As I  understand it, you are printing, but to what size?
What kinds of subjects are you shooting - for me, and this is just my opinion based on my own usage, which is wildlife predominantly, while the BSI/stacked sensor is a great innovation and if I was not already an R5 owner, I would be happy to take on the R5II, but for my specific applications, it's not worth the expense - here in NZ the R5II would cost me over $8,000 with exchange rates and taxes.  I envy you folks in the USA...

[FloridaDrafter]

Hey there, Trevor.

I totally agree. Don't just upgrade for the sake of new tech unless desire matches needs or wants. Did I need the upgrades? No. But I sure wanted that stacked sensor, the DIGIC Accelerator processor, and the pre-shot feature most of all, and got I a few small bonuses in the deal. Fortunately, I can afford it and don't plan on scrapping the R5. It's paid for itself in sold prints and sheer enjoyment (you can't put a price on that).

One thing I thought odd, but after thinking about it, it made perfect sense, is they have cut Servo Cases down to two (Auto and Manual). Auto speaks for itself but does give you a slider to allow you to change its "character" and manual gives you two sliders, one for "Tracking sensitivity" and one for "Accel./decel" tracking. They have given you control over how many shots you can take in all three continuous shooting modes. I'm sure a lot of folks will like that. If I'm not mistaken, you can also use flash while using electronic shutter, but I may have dreamed that (I'm old), LOL!

Newton

[FloridaDrafter]

Hello, shawnphoto!

I understand your critique, but please take into account that these are test images (almost straight out of the box) and reduced in size for posting and not meant for printing, so your holistic assessment is flawed, IMO. I assume you zoomed way in and did a bit of pixel peeping? I'll also add some info that I probably should have added with my camera settings, the White Peacock butterfly is less than two inches from wing tip to wing tip and was shot from 15 feet. This is a common butterfly in my yard, and I've photographed it many times with many cameras. When compared side by side with the R5, the mark II has an edge SOOC. I consider this an advantage as I will spend less time in PP. The mockingbird OTOH, was a three-inch target taken from 60 feet. The R5 would have locked onto the Cardinal in this situation and taken more shenanigans to switch to my desired subject. Once again, this was a test posted to show the advanced AF of the mark II.

Take away what you will from my post. As my esteemed colleague Trevor said, it just boils down to whether the features are worth it to you. They are to me as a nature photographer, and I am very happy with my purchase, and I haven't even dug that deep into its capabilities 🙂

Newton

[FloridaDrafter]

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@shawnphoto wrote:

BTW, you must have a really fast computer (or a lot of patience) because DPP is absurdly slow with my R5 files, so I never use it. 

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I have neither a really fast computer nor a lot of patience. I am running Windows 11 (upgraded from 10) on a Dell XPS 17 with a 6 core i7 CPU and a measly 16GB of RAM. I do however have a 2TB NVMe drive which is quite fast. I also have an external 27" HDR monitor (USB C or HDMI) that I drive with an NVIDIA GeForce card (not on MB) which allows me to view/edit HDR-PQ Raw files and converted HEIF (HIF) within DPP. This laptop was sold as a "desktop replacement" system, and it lives up to that claim.

I've heard the complaints, but DPP runs fine for me, albeit a little slow for some processes, but I prefer its handling of Canon Raw to any other graphics program I run. I have been running DPP since 2014, from Windows XP through all of the Window's versions since with no problems. I even work off of a USB C 4TB external NVMe drive and networked drives at times. I mention the latter because I hear that complaint a lot.

Since I am a graphic artist at heart and retired land survey draftsman (FloridaDrafter, LOL), my systems are tuned for graphics, period. Other than a web browser, it's all graphics. In my drafting work, I used a lot of 0.5-meter pixel high-res satellite imagery in both Autodesk Land Desktop and ESRI Arc Map, a GIS mapping program. These were GPU/CPU intensive programs, yet since I worked from home, I learned to "tune" my systems (primarily 17" laptops for portability) to be efficient. Time is money 🙂

Newton