Canon R5 Review For Wildlife - FIELD TESTED on safari in Botswana!

hey guys this is janine from pangolin and today i'm here to give you a real live review of canon's eos r5 mirrorless camera i will talk about the design build and functionality of the body and of course we'll share my thoughts about the revolutionary autofocus system that i've tested on a large range of african game by showing photographs and videos that i've taken over the past six weeks with r5 from the chobi national park then i will show you the sensor performance and image quality before talking about the real-life practicality of the new mirrorless technology of canon at the end i'll give you my final verdict whether the canon esr 5 is the first large megapixel camera of canons to be ideal for wildlife photography and for whom this camera might be the perfect match first of all i want to mention that i'm not sponsored by canon however i'm a huge fan of canons and i was super excited to test the r5 for the past six weeks in the chobe national park for wildlife photography the paramount change from dslr to mirrorless camera bodies has taken on a whole new dimension with sony and canon pushing forward with pro level camera bodies and whole new performance levels so i went to see how this camera really performs on a large variety of different game weather backgrounds and light conditions with a 45 megapixel sensor a revolutionary animal eye tracking focus system the super fast digix processor and a phenomenal viewfinder this was certainly a lot of fun to play with however this review will show you whether this camera can keep up with the fast and erratic motions nature throws at us paired with difficult light situations and unpredictable behaviors when it comes to wildlife photography my association with most mirrorless camera bodies is a very flimsy edgy light but not a very comfortable design so i was very pleasantly surprised to notice that the canon r5 is drawing its design from our beloved dslr camera bodies with the deep grip and the well-known button arrangements as a canon shooter you will feel immediate familiarity with a design and i'm happy to see the return of the joystick the wheel as well as the quick menu button in comparison to the esr on top of that they ensured that the set button which always plays a crucial role in my photography is in an appropriate size for my hand the flip screen is a fabulous design that i was always hoping for within the 1dx series and both the screen and the viewfinder resolution are fabulous the flip screen didn't seem to harm the weatherproofing of this camera as it is well sealed and ready for dust and rain i personally prefer the use of a battery pack to additionally support the weight of a bigger and heavier ef lens with the palm of my hand even though this will hardly be relevant for the much lighter rf lenses one of the biggest advancements however is the addition of a third wheel on the right side on the camera body which allows us to custom program it to important controls such as exposure compensation or the iso this is especially crucial when you like to shoot on manual mode and even more so as there doesn't seem to be a dedicated iso button anywhere else if you would like to see how i've set up the canon r5 for wildlife photography specifically please check out the video in the top right hand corner here or in the description below there's only a few occasions where i would prefer my well used 1dx2 body and most of them are related to the fact that i have rather long fingers for starters i find that the rov buttons in the top right corner sits much closer together as there's after all limited real estate on the smaller r5 body that plus the much less defined edge by your thumb made it a bit difficult for me to operate the buttons blindly as i often ended up on the wrong function not to worry though as that will just be a matter of getting used to it secondly the joystick is now located where the previous start and stop button used to be as the camera is a bit smaller it is easier to reach but i preferred the lower position on the former dslr bodies as it distinguished it from the buttons on the top lastly is only a small critic of the additional battery grip for the r6 and r5 besides doing the obvious by extending your battery life the battery grip is supposed to make vertical shoots easier by offering an identical set of buttons on the lower end of the grip unfortunately they are far from identical and therefore rather confusing when trying to operate them in a rush there is minor design flaws come hand in hand with a huge advantage of a smaller body size an amazing light weight of only 830 grams nearly half the weight of the 1dx ii photographic travel will be so much more pleasant so in conclusion this camera body here is far from flimsy it is a sturdy hearty very comfortable piece of gear that can be customized to achieve quick and accurate performance levels out in the field the canon r5 and r6 autofocus probably the feature i was most excited and curious about if you are too please don't forget to subscribe to get more information on this i've seen many other reviews but at the end nothing comes close to testing it yourself and it is amazing it really does change your shooting style entirely you can finally concentrate on composition in time-sensitive scenarios as you don't have to waste your time shifting that focus point around with the joystick the turn of the kingfisher's head is not throwing me off my game anymore and the fact that you can shift the focus point all the way to the edge is additionally helpful especially with long animals such as giraffes for composition purposes the joystick has also become a lot smoother and faster to operate and alternatively users now also have the option to use the back screen as a touchpad for shifting the focus point which i really liked as it is more in line with the original joystick of the dslr cameras so you have plenty of options however i must admit that the animal eye tracking isn't quite as intuitive as what it seems it is so different from a single focus point or even a cluster focus and while it takes a lot of work off your hands it is certainly not a system that you can use exclusively in wildlife photography there is several reasons for that and here are just a few examples when the animal eye tracking will fail you for one you're not always interested in just the eye of the animal if you simply would like to take a close detail shot you will lose control over the placement of your focus which is particularly important when shooting on low apertures a similar problem arises when you have multiple animals in your frame and want to choose more accurately you really don't want your focus point to jump on the wrong animal when the action starts happening thirdly and most importantly it is not always picking up on the animal's eye entirely it seems to be absolutely phenomenal with bird life even with low contrast and busy backgrounds also birds are not so large and it is less of a problem if it picks the entire subject matter as most of the subjects will be in focus anyway unfortunately with larger mammals the wrong focus point can cause the eyes to be blurry while testing the system extensively on african mammals and reptiles i found it was not as reliable as with birds it likes to pick up ears wet shiny noses spots on the fur or even tails but often not the crucial points initially i just thought it was the contrast but that can't be the only deciding factor as it is doing phenomenally well on the bird life if you know the system or if you have experience with the animal eye tracking please leave it in the comment section down below i would love to hear about it don't worry though as there is a solution you'll have to set up a dual focusing system with a regular autofocus plus animal eye tracking and make fast judgments in the field when to apply which additionally i found that after showing the camera your point of interest by using a single focus point it is much more likely to pick up the subject with the eye tracking too when you're not fast enough to make the call things like this happen where i was tracking one line from behind to see if it picks up on the tail and the sibling came to ambush him unexpectedly on a regular single point focus i would have gotten some of the shots within this action sequence in focus as the lines were filling a good part of my frame really this way not suspecting any action i didn't make a conscious choice of my focus system and the animal eye tracking was clearly unable to cope i was rather bummed and while the eye tracking is lightening fast when it does pick up the subject i must say that i felt the speed of the single point focus lacking in comparison to my 1dx2 this is obviously also dependent on the performance of your lens which is why i tried multiple lenses in different scenarios while lower priced third-party lenses performed very sluggish with the animal eye tracking autofocus system even higher priced canon lenses could not keep up with a 1dx single point focus and sometimes i found that the eye tracking would pick up on my animal but my animal just simply would not turn sharp on top of that i found that lenses with the large focal range can get stuck on the background entirely when you're dealing with a large distance between your background and subject upon research i found multiple highly technical explanations and that seems to be a pretty common problem with any mirrorless camera the solution is as easy as bringing the focus back towards the subject manually a detail that can get you pretty hung up for a moment but fortunately doesn't happen all too often all together i find the autofocus system astounding especially after getting used to the combination of the two different focusing systems it will certainly assist you with your composition with portraiture and especially with bird life both still and in flight however if you're an avid wildlife photographer that has developed an inherent focusing accuracy by experience you might come to doubt the animal eye tracking at times especially when it comes to action shots and now i want to share with you whether i think the canon r5 might be the first large megapixel camera of canons that is ideal for wildlife photography i will consider three things number one the image sensor size two the low light performance and of course the dynamic range those three factors will then determine how this camera performs with wildlife the r5 has a whooping 45 megapixel sensor which results in an image size of a lot of pixels that is phenomenal as i'd often like to crop rather but more than less in wildlife photography especially when shooting with a full-frame sensor in many cases we simply cannot get close enough to the action and are lacking that extra bit of focal range is that going to be fixed with r5 well yes cropping is definitely not an issue both in post-production as well as simply by applying a 1.6 crop in camera which will still provide you with the same amount of pixels as the 1dx2 is spitting out without a crop just look at that detail you can suddenly crop more than 50 percent of your image and still achieve great results that seems like magic if you are someone who needs to crop a lot or simply likes to print large images with great details this sensor is a super performer but you must also be prepared to invest a considerable amount of money into extra storage space and maybe even a faster performing computer as those larger file sizes are quite demanding now you might think that the above is the ultimate selling point but do you get the right image quality that you actually want to crop in that far or print that large let's see there's a reason that canon's flagship camera up to today for sport and wildlife photography only has 20 megapixels because it is known without going into too much technical details now that lower pixel cameras usually perform better in low light and can absorb light better working in low light conditions with high shutter speeds to capture the actions simply doesn't allow for us to work on low isos so the low light performance is of utmost importance i need to know that i can push my iso to 3200 without even blinking an eye dark green bushes early mornings and mind-blowing action often push me way beyond that with my 1dx2 i currently have no cap on my iso which makes my creative process so much easier hesitation only arises when i see it exceeding 6400 iso but many scenarios require even that after testing the canon r5 i must admit that i would not be as carefree with pushing my iso as what i currently am noise is definitely visible starting from 2500 iso i must remain fair though as it very much depends both on light conditions as well as how close i am to the subject i find that shooting into the light often creates more noise also denoise functions in post-production can polish the look in addition to conclude 3200 iso is definitely achievable but i do start being stingy with my shutter when exceeding this and often notice motion blur in my action shots with the r5 which is a pity while more megapixels will give you an insane detail on portraits it is also discussed that they often perform less good on high action images with the right light and low isos i didn't seem to have a problem with that as long as i was able to get my shutter speed over two thousands of a second last but not least i tested the dynamic range by shooting an elephant against the beautiful blue sky i wanted to sustain the stunning clouds in blue color and opted to shoot on an eevee of zero instead of exposing for the elephant on an iso of only 250 i was able to retrieve an astounding amount of detail from the elephant including the subtle mud streaks on the ear without losing the beautiful clouds on this image i could pull out the shadow on the right hand side nearly entirely to match the light conditions on this elephant and after editing quite a few images i can confidently say that the canon eos r5 has the best dynamic range that i've ever experienced on a canon camera all in all i personally would choose a crisper image on high isos over superior cropping capabilities but that very much depends on what you shoot out there and under what light conditions you're working in now going away from the technicalities of the canon r5 how does it perform out there in real life with real wildlife well i was worried that the electronic viewfinder is going to give me a hard time as i previously did not enjoy shooting with the lag mirrorless cameras have however the viewfinder is beautifully smooth without a blackout when on high continuous shootings there's a blackout of a millisecond when initially picking up the camera to your eye which is noticeable when switching from dslr but not a problem at all with 12 frames on a manual shutter you are well off on the canon r5 the shutter sound is subtle and not disturbing for wildlife however if you feel you need to work in a silent environment the camera offers 20 frames per second on its electronic shutter i have not noticed any rolling shutter on the images i have taken with the r5 but then again there's really any straight lines in nature that would give that minimal distortion away anyway i must admit 20 frames per second on an electronic shutter is generally too much for me anyway there is simply too many images that i would have to look through and i wouldn't choose it unless i need total silence another feature the r5 is highly praised for is its video capabilities and one of my personal favorite features is that you can have separate video to camera settings so that you don't always have to remember switching your settings while i personally really enjoy shooting wildlife videos on occasion and i've gotten more and more into it over the past year i wouldn't need the 8k option for myself i especially enjoy shooting slow motion on 120 frames per second but the r5 is currently only offering it at 4k for both of these functions i do not have enough processing power on my computer or storage space on my hard drives but it seems like canon's next firmware update will provide us with a full hd slow motion function which i'll make a lot more use of the high resolution video capabilities of this camera will allow me to crop into wildlife footage and i could get much nicer quality images out of there even if you just watch it in hd however until i invest in better hardware it will simply be out of my league if all this seems gibberish to you anyway don't worry this won't be a deciding purchasing factor in any case another thing that has previously really put me off mirrorless cameras was the battery performance the canon r5 is rated at 320 shots per battery when you look through the electronic viewfinder which is a must in wildlife photography however with just a few changes in the settings which you can check out in my other video i was able to coax out about 600 shots from only a single battery at an average temperature of about 28 degrees a battery grip can literally double your shooting time and on a good day on a wildlife workshop in the chowi or the delta or even the massamara my guest can easily accumulate over a thousand five hundred pictures so with four batteries a day one should be on the safe side and also be able to take some videos the r5 offers two card slots one of the new and fast cf express cards plus a uhs 2 slot which also takes a regular old-fashioned sd card this is good for your pocket money as normal sd cards are simply much cheaper but a card writing only about 80 megabytes per second will make your camera buffer after only 5 seconds at 12 frames per second that sounds acceptable however the recovery time afterwards is simply ridiculous it will take your camera about 3 minutes to write the pictures onto the card while the cf express card offers you a nearly uninterrupted shooting experience as well as the recording of high quality video material even the best and most expensive uh s2 card right four times slower therefore you need to be very selective what you record onto which card i've been trying to record the video onto the faster card and the pictures onto the slower card but even that doesn't seem to be a viable solution because the video recording cannot start until the camera is finished writing the pictures entirely as long as you do not shoot on both cards simultaneously this will hardly be a problem for wildlife photographers however as soon as videography is in the play it can become an issue if you do consider switching to canon's mirrorless range but still have an ef lens from your dslr camera this will not be a problem at all as the canon mount adapter for the ef eos r works beautifully to a point that i couldn't tell any difference to the rf lenses that i was using with okay now we come to the final straw three things i really like about the r5 and three things not so much number one i absolutely love that canon left space for a little screen on the top of the camera to quickly check your settings number two i really like the viewfinder experience and that i can see the exposure compensation right away i thought i understand light but it makes it so much easier number three with the new inbody stabilization i can hand hold still portrait shots on an insanely low shutter speed when i'm stuck with an impossible light situation and that is invaluable and here my three dislikes number one i'm personally not a big fan of the feel of the viewfinder on my eye somehow my facial features just don't match and it leaves painful marks on my nose number two i wish the buttons would be better distinguished by feel so i don't get them mixed up so much number three i wish it had a quick switch to go to video features there is a workaround guys so please check out my video on how to set up this camera and now to the verdict for whom is this camera suited and for whom is it not if you personally like the r5 please give this video a thumbs up and let me know in the comment section down below priced at nearly 4 000 us dollars this multi-tasking genius is not cheap and therefore not just a quick toy to purchase on the side all the matching rf lenses are also not on the cheap side while we're still waiting for all the pro level rf taylor lenses to be released in the meanwhile your good old ef glass will do you justice though right if you are an avid wildlife and travel photographer with a wide range of images including wildlife and if you often shoot subjects that are far out of your reach and you need that extra crop or if you simply like the high quality video capabilities of the r5 and you have the hardware to process it then the canon eos r5 is the perfect camera for you however if you are a wildlife photographer where high quality video capabilities are simply not priority and you often find yourself shooting high action high speed scenarios in uncontrollable and often low light conditions i would currently opt for the lower pixel camera to get the crisper image in low light scenarios at this stage there you have it i really hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know if you want to purchase the r5 in the comment section below it was tons of fun to play with it thank you so much for watching and i hope to see you soon again

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 35,749

Rating: 4.9522672 out of 5

Keywords: canon r5 review for wildlife, canon r5 review for wildlife photography, canon r5 review for photography, canon eos r5 review for wildlife, canon r5 review, canon r5 review photography, canon r5 review wildlife, canon r5, canon r5 for wildlife, canon r5 for wildlife photography, canon r5 real world review, canon animal eye af, canon eos r5 animal eye af, canon eos r6, canon r6, wildlife photography, pangolin wildlife photography, eye autofocus, nature photography

Id: wXyIPVWBaPE

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021