EOS R5 Mark II high ISO Performance

[cacanny]

The R5 Mark II's high ISO performance is not as good as its predecessor R5. Is this an oversight? Will it be fixed in future releases? Can it be fixed, now or in future, by firmware upgrade on cameras already sold?

[shadowsports]

Greetings, 

You can make product enhancement and feature requests on the Canon USA homepage.  In the top right hand corner, you can use the [+]Feedback link.  Select product and then leave your product suggestions and feature requests.

[FloridaDrafter]

What do you consider high ISO? I shoot birds, flowers, and insects, usually under forest canopy and use ISO's between 1000 to 8000 but sometimes up to 10,000. The only difference I see between the R5 and the mark II is I can use lower ISO with the R5 mark II. The stacked sensor of the mark II gathers more light by design. I just don't see any more noise in my images shot with the mark II over the R5 at the ISO's I mentioned 🙂

There will be tradeoffs with the stacked sensor, and one will be a bit more noise in extremely high ISO's, but the benefits are a faster sensor, be it more FPS or faster acquisition and focus on your subject and tracking. Faster acquisition of my tiny targets, which are usually three to five inch birds, was what really caught my attention after switching to the R5 mark II. I have been using the R5 for three years, so I caught that right away.

Newton

[kvbarkley]

How are you judging this. Ken Rockwell's test doesn't show that great of a difference to me:

[ctitanic]

those pictures show a huge difference in quality. The R5 is a lot better. Another point is that you gain other capabilities with stacked sensor so to me it's a trade off. I doubt that anyone will try to shoot pictures at 102400. I'm sure that most of us will try to stay as low as you possible can.

[ebiggs1]

I have not read or seen the KR article  (not do I intend to) but the two photos you offerd do show a significantly worse ISO to me. If that is what the OP is seeing I agree it is worse, much worse.

[cacanny]

OP here. My question is really 'is there a way that this can be fixed in a future release or a firmware upgrade'? Or as FloridaDrafter's post suggest is it a fundamental problem with the physics of a stack sensor?

I want to use the R5 II because is has good pre-continuous shooting to capture birds in the initial stages of flight. Frequently, the subject is in low light and fast moving. The quality is particularly bad in the dark areas of the subject and when the background is dark.... certainly compared to the R5.

[kvbarkley]

Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

Ken Rockwell is shooting JPEG

With RAW you might be able to find a better noise processor to boost things a little. You can also drop the exposure a bit.

[ctitanic]

That is a good point, Ken Rockwell shoots JPG. Having more information in a RAW file will help during the Denosing process.

[FloridaDrafter]

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@cacanny wrote:

OP here. My question is really 'is there a way that this can be fixed in a future release or a firmware upgrade'?

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Hello, cacanny!

First and foremost, we are users just like you. We have no idea what is possible or what the engineers at Canon can or will do in the future.

With that said and assuming you want help, what we can do is take information that you provide and maybe give you advice on how to get better images with your R5 II. You can start by telling us what ISO's you are using, lenses, SS, aperture, etc. Or, and this would be the most helpful, you can post some images you consider bothersome to a file sharing site that we can download and examine, preferably full size Raw, but if you shoot JPeG that will do, but either with EXIF data intact.

Newton