Canon R5 Mechanical Shutter Smear Artifacts

[Vincent_C]

Hi All,

I wanted to share an issue I've encountered with my 3-week-old Canon R5 involving severe smear artifacts along the shutter direction when photographing bright light sources. These artifacts persisted across exposure times when using either Mechanical or Electronic 1st-curtain shutter, and are less obvious when using electronic shutter.

I conducted some test shots using a square 6-Watt photography LED panel as the subject. For each shutter mode, I captured three shots at different rotation angles, and I noticed that the smear artifacts rotated with the camera (thus with the shutter direction). These artifacts appeared consistently across multiple lenses I tested. I did not observe any such artifacts with my Canon Rebel T6i.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues with the Canon R5/R5C? What might be the causes or solutions?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Vincent

[Peter]

I have seen something similar with RF 10-20 in full daylight. I thought it was the lens but haven't seen it again. Not my pictures. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/fkmp4hPTjRHUu6At/

Do you get the same if you have 1/200 sec or slower shutter speed?

[Vincent_C]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the information. I've had two other local fellows replicate these artifacts using their R5 cameras, so it seems unlikely to be an issue specific to my unit.

Depending on the brightness of the point light source and how dark the background environment is, these artifacts disappear when the shutter speed is slower than 1/250 - 1/90 sec.

I've found an easy way to test this: in a relatively dark room, turn on the flashlight of your phone and take a picture using the R5. Set the shutter speed to 1/1000 - 1/8000 and the ISO to at least 10000 (to ensure the background is sufficiently dark).

Best regards,

Vincent