Canon R5 for Wildlife Photography - REVIEW

this is a review on the canon eos r5 for wildlife photography i've been out in the field rigorously testing the canon r5 on wildlife for the past eight months now after spending three months living in yellowstone national park photographing wildlife and making multiple trips to the smoky mountains i've been able to put this camera through its paces and have developed a comprehensive review on what i believe to be the best wildlife photography camera canon has ever produced now this is a mirrorless camera it retails for 3899 us dollars has a 45 megapixel sensor can shoot up to 20 frames a second and film an 8k raw video and i'm going to be looking at these features among others to showcase how this camera performs as a wildlife photography camera so getting right into it the first thing that i want to talk about here is sensor size and image quality like i said the canon r5 has a 45 megapixel sensor and with the sensor that large you get a couple of different things you not only get an insane amount of detail retained in every photo you get tac sharp photos and you also get the ability to crop heavily heavily crop which obviously for wildlife photographers is super helpful because we can't always get as close as we might want to to our subject but if we have those 45 megapixels that allow us to crop in a lot we don't have to be as close to the subject because we can just crop in and still retain a ton of detail so to kind of showcase the quality of the images that this sensor produces i have a couple of example photos here um this is of a bighorn sheep that i took in yellowstone national park you can see here when i zoom in to 100 if i go ahead and i'm gonna drop the highlights a little bit besides that it's a raw file i just want to do that to make things a little more clear but you can see here that this camera has captured an insane amount of detail you can see every individual strand of hair on this goat's face if we zoom in all the way to 300 percent you can see them in even more detail and you can even see the detail in its eye here you can kind of see the outline of the landscape right here the sky and the sun up here in its eye which is just insane the amount of detail that the r5 is captured here with those 45 megapixels and like i said every individual strand of hair can be seen here and overall on you know the fur here on the horns with those 45 megapixels you can really pull out every little detail on an animal pretty insane what 45 megapixels and a good sensor like this can do for your image quality as i stated earlier this also allows for a lot of cropping because you have so many megapixels so if i go in here and i look at this photo that i took in wyoming of a grizzly bear this is again the raw file nothing done to this besides increasing the exposure a bit so you can see it better and you can see here that the bear makes up a very small portion of the frame typically on most cameras when you took this photo you wouldn't really expect for it to eventually turn into a tight wildlife portrait because you know you just can't crop in that much but on a camera like the r5 you can't but if you see when i zoom in here to 100 uh we've still got a lot of detail maintained on this bear we can still see you know kind of the individual uh strands of fur on it you can see the detail in the eye when we zoom into 300 we definitely lose it a little more it becomes more noisy and uh not as sharp but still we're retaining a lot of detail here and if we take a file like this and we use the modern sharpening and denoising tools to you know sharpen up and remove all the noise you can actually really create pretty great wildlife portrait out of a photo that is you know this far zoomed out and you can see that here with the process version of this photo when i zoom in here you can see i've sharpened it and while it's not going to be as tack sharp and as detailed as you get on you know your huge files like the one of the bighorn sheep that i just showed you you're still going to retain a lot of detail i mean you can still see all the fur in this animal you can still get the nice catch light in the eye you get some detail on the nose when you do a little bit of work on this post-processing you can turn it into a pretty solid wildlife portrait that you know is is honestly passable to post on the internet to share to maybe even print which is really just insane that wasn't a capability that we really had prior to cameras like the r5 that are such high megapixel but with 45 megapixels you can crop in so much on these files and it really just increases the range with which you can safely shoot an animal and still get high quality detailed photos of it and that is one of the greatest benefits of the r5 especially when you're shooting dangerous subjects like grizzly bears um and you're not able to get close to them those 45 megapixels allow you to crop in and still capture detailed shots of these animals which is pretty darn awesome now oftentimes with high megapixels on cameras you get poor high iso handling capabilities you know as the megapixels go up the iso handling capabilities typically go down but that's not really the case on the r5 and that's what i'm going to talk about next zr5's high iso handling capabilities because again for wildlife photography this is going to be something that's very important we're often shooting in low light and we're using fast shutter speeds to be able to stop that action so we end up having to raise that iso up a lot so you have to have a camera that can handle isos pretty well to be sure that you're getting clean wildlife images to showcase this i have a few example photos um you can see this one here this is the raw photo no editing done to this um this is a grizzly bear in yellowstone national park you can see that i shot this at iso 8000 and it's pretty darn underexposed which obviously isn't good because what i'm now going to have to do is uh bring the exposure up and post processing which typically introduces noise on photos like this and when you're already at iso 8000 noise is not a good thing you can see when i go ahead and do that and i bring the exposure up we actually don't see that much noise i can zoom in here to 100 and you definitely see some here but you still get a tack sharp photo with extremely high detail in the fur um sharp eye detail in the eye detail all around the face right here smooth background back there you definitely are getting some noise in it but when you zoom out the noise isn't even that noticeable and uh you know shooting at iso 8000 on the r5 is really no problem as long as you're not cropping the file too heavily you can easily get away with shooting at iso 8000 on this camera you can even see if i go over to this file which is the finished processed image and i've done denoising and sharpening and all that on this you can see that there's virtually no noise left over no relics and no sign that this was shot at iso 8000 that it was noisy and especially when you zoom all the way out it looks like just a totally clean image that was shot at iso 100 which is just insane i mean you can shoot on the r5 all the way up to 8 000 get a 45 megapixel file and after doing a little bit of post processing get a file that looks like it was shot at iso 100 that is something really really special about this camera and really something incredible that canon has pulled off to be able to have a camera that handles high isos so well with such high megapixel accounts and i showcase this again just a little bit more you can see this photo that i took of grizzly 399 and her four cubs she had actually just killed an elk calf and they were eating it um you can see this one was shot at iso 12800 and again when i increase the exposure some there's definitely noise there but it's not all that bad i mean on this file if i didn't have to crop it in at all you're really not going to have that much of a problem with noise i mean there's noise there for sure don't get me wrong you can see the noise on these bears and in the background but it's not bad you can still see that it's retained some detail in the fur of the animals some eye detail in the bears i mean it's it's still retained a lot of detail in the file even at iso 12800 and i think if you're not going to crop at all you can pretty safely shoot all the way up at 12 800 and get files that you're totally happy with and that you could go on to print and blow up large on on screens or billboards or anything like that which is um you know pretty spectacular given how high of a megapixel count this camera has so um as far as high iso handling capabilities on the r5 i am very impressed by it no it's not going to be as good as your 1dx mark ii or 1dx mark iii but those are 20 megapixel cameras so it's a trade-off do you want high megapixels or do you want good high iso handling capabilities you're going to get better on the 1dx series but you're not going to get as many megapixels and honestly i think for most people you're going to be more than satisfied with the iso handling capabilities on the r5 given that these are 45 megapixel files the r5 does a phenomenal job handling high iso and while on the subject of iso i should mention that the new iso dial that canon has introduced on the back of the r5 is super super helpful um especially for wildlife when you have these you know fleeting moments that we're trying to capture these split seconds we need to be able to adjust those settings very quickly without ever taking our eye away from the viewfinder with this new dial you're now able to just put your thumb on that dial and turn it and adjust your iso very easily very quickly and adjust with the scene as it is developing which is again super helpful for wildlife and a really nice new inclusion on the r5 now let me interject here to let you all know that i'm going to be giving away a free trip to yellowstone national park to photograph wildlife in the fall of 2022 i'm going to be announcing some more details on this soon but all you have to do to be able to enter is to hit that subscribe button down below you all know what to do now the next thing i want to talk about is the autofocus system on the r5 and as most of you already know animal eye autofocus was introduced on this camera and it was totally groundbreaking everyone was talking about it and it was really a game changer for wildlife photography and for those of you that don't know what animal iaf is essentially what happens is the camera selects the animal's eye focuses on that point and then follows the eye through the entirety of the frame which obviously for wildlife photographers is really powerful because then you're not having to move around your focus point with this it just locks onto the eye and it follows it it is honestly phenomenal guys it is groundbreaking and it really revolutionizes wildlife photography and i've gotten to the point now to where i rely on it i would say at least 75 to 80 of the time but it isn't flawless it definitely doesn't always lock focus on the eye especially when you get into low light lighting conditions um it typically is locking focus on the head if you're lucky um and then typically more like just focus on the entire body as opposed to right on the eye when you get into super low light and i've heard a lot of people say that you know they find that it struggles when there's not much contrast between the eye and the fur but that's actually not really what i've seen out of this system for me what i've mainly seen is that it struggles when uh you're trying to photograph an animal that the system wasn't designed around um and the system was designed around dogs cats and birds so when i'm shooting an animal that looks like a dog a cat or a bird you know like a wolf maybe i found that it works super well it typically locks right onto the eye or even if i'm shooting animals like bears it works really well it'll lock onto the eye of bears really well because they do kind of have that similar body shape to a dog or a cat even though there's not much contrast between the eye and the fur on a bear you know both are pretty dark it still works really well on bears where i find that it struggles is on animals that the system wasn't designed around on animals that don't look anything like dogs cats or birds when i'm shooting animals like pronghorn or um elk or bison that's when i find that animal eye af struggles the most even though you know there's more contrast in between like the eye and the fur of an elk than there is the eye and the fur of a black bear it still works better on a black bear i find despite that lack of contrast because the bear looks more like a dog as opposed to an elk that really looks nothing like a dog so the camera ends up focusing more on the head or maybe the antlers or sometimes even just the whole body than it does on the eye so um iaf definitely is really good and i've been very impressed by it iaf is going to work for you most of the time but you should still be using the other methods as backups and getting into some of the other methods you know as far as zone af and single point spot af on this camera uh those work flawlessly focus is lightning fast occasionally there's a little bit of slow down in low light conditions but rarely typically it is lighting fast with the r5 and you will get you know totally accurate results with single point or zone af wherever you put that point or put that zone of points it is going to focus and it is going to maintain focus and it's not going to miss it's going to do a phenomenal job it doesn't matter if the animal is moving sideways if it's coming towards you if it's going away from you it's going to lock focus on it when you're using one of those um the only times that i really notice that it misses is with ny af but overall despite the slight problems that i do have with animal iaf i am blown away by the autofocus system on the canon r5 i mean animal iaf works almost all the time and when it doesn't one of the other methods works flawlessly and if you're interested i actually did do a video talking about how you can optimize the canon r5's autofocus system to be the best that it can possibly be for wildlife photography and to maximize the amount of sharp shots that you get and i'll link that up here and also down in the description if you want to check that out um but moving on now from autofocus the next thing i want to talk about is the frame rate on the canon r5 so when you're shooting with the mechanical shutter you get 12 frames a second and when you're shooting with the electronic shutter on the r5 you get 20 frames a second and it's also silent so when you're shooting the camera makes absolutely no sound which is pretty cool because a lot of times with wildlife that you know you're afraid of spooking with your shutter you don't have to worry about that anymore you can just turn on that electronic shutter and it shoots totally silently and um given that you're getting a frame rate of 20. i kind of want to put that into perspective for you guys most video is shot at 24 frames a second so if you're maximizing this camera and you're shooting at 20 frames a second you're shooting nearly video with 45 megapixel raw files that's pretty spectacular that this camera is able to do that and for me honestly i rarely use the electronic shutter because i find that 20 frames is too fast for me for the subjects that i shoot 12 frames a second is plenty fast enough now if you shoot birds and flight or something maybe you want to do the 20 but for me 12 is plenty fast enough and i've you know had no problems with it on the r5 and uh and and really happy with the frame rate on this camera i think it's plenty enough for wildlife and you're gonna be very satisfied with it what you're getting at a frame rate um now there is something to be aware of with that um when you're shooting with the electronic shutter sometimes you do get the rolling shutter effect which basically is where you get a little bit of a stretching of your photo if you're panning super fast with the camera now i haven't shot much in electronic shutter as i said so this isn't something that i've had any experience with but it is something that i've seen people you know go out into the field to test this camera for and they have found photos with the rolling shutter effect you know having an effect on the photo and stretching it out so that's something to be aware of but like i said for most cases unless you're shooting super fast birds in flight 12 frames a second is going to be plenty enough for you and because that's shooting on the mechanical shutter you have no worries about any kind of rolling shutter now given that you're shooting 20 frames a second 45 megapixel files you can imagine that you're shooting super super high volumes of data very very quickly here so you're gonna have to have a buffer that can handle that you're gonna have to have a buffer on this camera that can handle these massive amounts of data that you're pumping out as you're just you know rapid firing on that camera and um honestly for the r5 i have had no problems with the buffer i've never hit the buffer now again i don't often shoot at 20 frames a second but on 12 frames a second i've shot you know 10 second long burst 5 second long bursts on it probably and have never hit the buffer never had any issue i've really been blown away by that as well which is really good because obviously again with wildlife when we're shooting these high frame rates we're going to need a big buffer we're going to need to be able to fill up the camera with lots of shots and constantly be pumping out these shots as the wildlife is moving so not hitting the buffer is a great sign and even though i've never hit the buffer i have heard from other youtubers that they were able to get in around 200 shots for about 10 seconds before they hit the buffer shooting on the electronic shutter but even then there was barely any slow down and the buffer was able to clear out very quickly so they were able to continue shooting almost immediately so as far as buffer capacity on this camera i would say that's nothing to worry about for wildlife photography you're going to be able to capture all the shots you want without ever really having any issues hitting that buffer next we're going to get into what is kind of the first downside on this camera and that is the battery life this is one aspect of the camera that i would say suffered a lot between you know the jump from dslr to mirrorless canon's professional dslrs are going to last a lot longer on the batteries um the r5 just exhausts batteries very very quickly i mean i would say in a day of good shooting where all day long i've got wildlife in front of me and i'm shooting all day long i can pretty easily exhaust two batteries um in that day with without much trouble i mean it it definitely eats the battery the r5 does and it's not bad enough that you know i've ever had to stop mid shoot to go charge batteries or anything like that but it definitely eats them up pretty fast and it's something to be aware of and it is you know to the point to where personally i don't go out to shoot without having at least two batteries on me because i know how easy it is to burn one up um so i would say you need at least two batteries when you buy this camera if not you know three or four because it is going to burn the battery up pretty darn quickly and uh you know that is the one kind of downside that you have here um it definitely doesn't last as long as your um older dslrs the 1dx the 5d mark iv all those um you're not going to get the same battery life out of the r5 so battery life is something to be aware of it's not terrible but it's definitely not good by any means either next i want to talk about something else new that canon introduced with this camera and that is the in-body stabilization in-body stabilization in this thing is phenomenal i've been able to shoot you know hand-hold with these big telephoto lens insanely low shutter speeds and pull off extremely extremely sharp photos as you can see here in this photo i know this is not wildlife but this is a good showcase of this i was shooting at 100 millimeters at 1 13 of a second and was able to get tack sharp photos out of this camera with that inbody stabilization i mean you really can't go wrong with the in-body stabilization on this the shooting at 100 millimeters one thirteenth of a second handheld was kind of unheard of until you got a camera like the r5 and you're gonna be able to shoot insanely low shutter speeds even with telephoto lenses and get tac sharp shots the main thing that's going to be restricting you is no longer going to be you know the movement of your body with that big telephoto lens now what's restricting you is the movement of the animal if the animal is moving too fast so really was blown away by embodied stabilization and really opens up the world to shooting much lower shutter speeds and uh you know shooting in much more low light conditions with telephoto lenses and still getting tack sharp shots which is going to be really awesome for wildlife now i also want to talk about the viewfinder experience on this camera because it is a mirrorless camera so you're looking through this electronic viewfinder on a screen in the viewfinder and a lot of people didn't like this you know when mirrorless cameras first were released but on the r5 i find it just as good as if not better than your dslr viewfinders i mean it projects a beautiful high quality image in there and there's absolutely no lag in the image as the animal moves around it's it's totally fluid and smooth and looks like you're looking through dslr viewfinder it's flawless in that regard and the ability to now have the live exposure updating in the viewfinder is crucial for wildlife photography because when we're shooting in these conditions in the outdoors where we have constantly changing unpredictable uncontrollable light and we have fast-moving animals we want to be able to see what our exposure is doing constantly and with that electronic viewfinder showing you your live exposure as you shoot we're able to do that we're able to constantly adjust those settings and tweak those settings and see visually the changes that we're making in the viewfinder to adjust for the changing light and the moving wildlife moving into different lights so the live exposure in these electronic viewfinders is really really helpful for wildlife photography and one thing that i love about this camera and i think is one of the most underrated features on this camera is the histogram in the viewfinder you now don't even have to look at the back of your camera anymore you don't even have to pull your eye away from the viewfinder you can just put the instagram up in the top corner of your viewfinder and make sure that you're not crushing your blacks or blowing out your whites which is phenomenal and like i said one of the most underrated features on this camera in my opinion and one thing that we should also talk about with the viewfinder is electronic viewfinder blackout which is something that was a lot bigger of a problem on older mirrorless cameras it has been improved with this camera but when shooting on the mechanical shutter i definitely still notice it sometimes if you switch up to electronic it's really not an issue at all you don't really see any blackout but all mechanical there is still a little bit of one it's not bad unless you're shooting like birds in flight on the mechanical shutter you're not even going to notice it that much but it is there it is there in the slightest i have noticed it a little bit i want to just talk briefly about video on the canon r5 i know this is mainly centered around wildlife photography but the video capabilities are so good here that i do just want to mention a few things about them so basically on this camera you're able to shoot in 8k raw video 4k 120 frames a second and 4k 60 frames a second and 30 frames a second which is unheard of for a camera like this typically you know that's the type of specs that you see on a twenty thousand dollar cinema camera and this isn't a twenty thousand dollar cinema camera this is a four thousand dollar mirrorless camera so for it to be able to shoot 8k raw video 4k 120 is groundbreaking and phenomenal and i i'm really impressed by that on this camera and while i don't use 8k that much i do use 4k 120 when i can and it's very impressive on this camera and um it does take up a lot of space on your memory card so be prepared to have a large memory card um but it's it's really impressive and all the footage that i film on this is always tack sharp clean looking and um really especially with the inbody stabilization ends up being very smooth and good looking and i've never been disappointed by the video i've gotten out of the r5 so far the last thing that i should touch on here is the overheating issue that you hear a lot of people talking about with this camera personally i've shot a pretty good amount of video with this camera and i've never faced an issue with overheating i have had times where it's got pretty hot to the touch but i've never had it overheat before so well i do think there's an issue to be aware of i definitely think that it was blown out of proportion when the camera first came out for me and honestly for most people that i've talked to the overheating issue has really not been too big of a deal when shooting video on the r5 so that was the last really big topic that i wanted to talk about for this camera now i'm going to move into some other smaller important topics first of all is memory cards you have one slot for a cf express card and one slot for an sd card and it should be noted that as expensive as they might be you are going to need a cf express card to be able to maximize the potential of this camera to get those 20 frames a second burst and to get that huge buffer you're going to need one of these cards that has you know super fast write speed so that's definitely something to invest in when you go to purchase this camera as well next i want to talk a little bit about weather ceiling personally i haven't shot this camera too much in snow or rain but for the few times that i have i haven't had any issues with the weather sealing on it it was able to get pretty wet and had really no issues but to be honest for me it doesn't matter how good cannon says that weather ceiling is i'm not going to risk it either way if i'm stuck out in harsh conditions i'm going to throw on that 20 piece of plastic over my camera rather than risk a four thousand dollar camera there's just no need to take that risk at least in my opinion um so i think that i got everything in there um that was a lot but uh you know i had a lot that i wanted to say about this camera and honestly i truly believe that this camera is the best wildlife photography camera that canon has ever put out from the high iso handling capabilities to the groundbreaking autofocus system to the sensors quality and the high megapixel count this camera is honestly a camera that i'm in love with and that i will be shooting with at least until canon releases an r5 mark ii there are a few problems like i said the animal eye autofocus isn't always perfect and battery life isn't ideal but overall i am totally blown away by this camera and think that it is again one of the best wildlife photography cameras on the market and um if you are looking to shoot canon and you're looking to upgrade it to the best possible canon camera for wildlife photography look no farther i promise you it is the canon r5 so with that guys i want to remind you to subscribe for that yellowstone trip giveaway more details on that coming soon and i'm going to be giving away one of my 2022 calendars to someone who comments on this video so comment your thoughts down below for a chance to win and drop a like if you don't care that would be much appreciated um stay tuned guys um i'm going to be going back to yellowstone for at least three months possibly eight months in may so that's going to be amazing and i'm also going to be reviewing the canon r3 for wildlife photography here in just a few weeks so lots of awesome stuff coming up on the channel pretty soon here so with that guys i think that's all for this video thank you all so much for watching i really do hope you guys have enjoyed this video don't forget to drop a comment for your chance to win a calendar and i will see you all in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Watts Wildlife

Views: 666

Keywords: canon eos r5 review, is the canon r5 good for wildlife photography, canon r5 for wildlife, canon r5 review for wildlife, canon r5 wildlife photography, canon r5 wildlife review, testing canon r5 for wildlife, best wildlife photography camera, best camera for wildlife, using canon r5 for wildlife, what camera should i get for wildlife, wildlife camera, eos r5 for wildlife, wildlife photography with canon r5, best wildlife camera, r5 wildlife review, canon r5 good wildlife camera

Id: BhOI_MvVPuM

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 11 2021