MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
I bought a new Canon mirrorless camera (R5) earlier this year. I've owned a bunch of Canon SLRs and DSLRs over the years. Changing to mirrorless was the biggest change since moving from a film SLR to a DSLR. I thought I'd write down a few quick observations.
Using an EVF is different. It isn't as crisp or accurate as a mirror view, but it has other advantages. It does exposure simulation, so you can easily see when you have screwed up your exposure. You can also use it to review images. I like that better than using a loupe on the LCD screen. It is freaky disconcerting when you forget that you have it on image review and you look at it expecting to see through your lens.
I love the AF. It's full frame, so you aren't trying to compose around focus points. The eye AF is really good for people and really good for a lot of animals. It totally fails on some animals (gorillas were a disaster). The one weird issue is that it makes it easy to lock focus on eyes anywhere in the frame and so you have to be more careful about composition. Some of my shots are crazy off from where I would compose them because I wasn't paying attention to where it focused. With fixed points, I was always thinking about it.
The other downside to eye autofocus is that it sometimes locks on the wrong person and it is hard to get it to reconsider. I have two back buttons set up for AF. One is traditional (pick a spot in the frame) AF and the other is eye AF. When it picks the wrong eye, I switch to spot. Once I get the focus right that way, I can switch back to eye.
It is scary fast. 20 FPS in electronic shutter mode and 12 fps in mechanical shutter mode. It's easy to end up with a huge number of nearly identical shots if you aren't careful.
One big gotcha that confused me - if you are in electronic shutter mode, you can't use flash. There is no reason you'd want that combo, but I forgot I was in es mode and I couldn't get my flash to work.
CFExpress cards are super fast and super expensive. I can dump thousands of RAW photos from my camera to my PC in almost no time at all. The speed difference is huge. But the cards are so scary expensive that I only bought one.
I haven't tried shooting any video yet, so I don't know how well that works. I have shot some video, but that's only because I pushed the button on accident. I may remap that button. That's another nice feature - I can remap almost every button and dial to do whatever I want (like having the two different AF methods on different buttons).
I love the new mode selector setup. You push a button and then turn the dial to select the mode. I never accidentally change modes. Even better, when you aren't selecting a mode, I have the dial set up to change ISO. I can now shoot in manual exposure mode and have easy access to three dials to control ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. All-in-all, I love the handling of the camera.
As much as I love the handling, I still get confused more than I'm used to. There is just a lot more stuff to deal with. For example, the eye AF has three modes - people, animals, either. It works best if you have the proper mode selected and it is terrible if you use it on animals with people selected or people with animals selected. You could leave it on the "either" mode, but it works much better if you have the right mode selected. So that's just one more thing to set and think about when shooting.
There is a new ring for the RF lenses you can use as another adjustment dial. I think I have it set for exposure compensation, but I haven't used it yet because I'm either shooting in manual, in which case there is no exposure compensation, or AV/TV, in which case I use the back dial just from habit.
I bought the EF adapter that allows you to use drop-in filters. I use it with a polarizer. I love that. It is much simpler to use than a front polarizer. I wish I could use that with the new RF lenses, but you can't.
My only new lens is the RF 70-200 f/2.8. I have a EF version of that lens from 2003. The new one is much lighter and more compact. The hood attaches better. Optically, it's a nice improvement.
I like the RF mount, but one thing that annoys me is that the lens back covers seem harder to put on right. I never struggled with the EF lens back covers, but I do with the RF ones. It's kind of a minor thing, but when you are switching lenses around in the field a lot, it gets annoying.
Overall, I'm really happy with my purchase but I was surprised by how big the learning curve has been. Because my wife and I both shoot, I was thinking of getting an R or R6 as a second camera and moving away from our EF cameras. Because of the learning curve, I think might just get another R5 so that the new cameras will be identical. That's a lot more money than I'd like to spend on camera bodies in such a short period of time (I usually get 1 every 3-4 years), but I think this is a one-time changeover I'd like to just get over with.
I have no idea when we'll get to Disney with the new camera. I had planned to take a trip there earlier this fall and again this winter, but the pandemic has changed my plans. Someday.
Using an EVF is different. It isn't as crisp or accurate as a mirror view, but it has other advantages. It does exposure simulation, so you can easily see when you have screwed up your exposure. You can also use it to review images. I like that better than using a loupe on the LCD screen. It is freaky disconcerting when you forget that you have it on image review and you look at it expecting to see through your lens.
I love the AF. It's full frame, so you aren't trying to compose around focus points. The eye AF is really good for people and really good for a lot of animals. It totally fails on some animals (gorillas were a disaster). The one weird issue is that it makes it easy to lock focus on eyes anywhere in the frame and so you have to be more careful about composition. Some of my shots are crazy off from where I would compose them because I wasn't paying attention to where it focused. With fixed points, I was always thinking about it.
The other downside to eye autofocus is that it sometimes locks on the wrong person and it is hard to get it to reconsider. I have two back buttons set up for AF. One is traditional (pick a spot in the frame) AF and the other is eye AF. When it picks the wrong eye, I switch to spot. Once I get the focus right that way, I can switch back to eye.
It is scary fast. 20 FPS in electronic shutter mode and 12 fps in mechanical shutter mode. It's easy to end up with a huge number of nearly identical shots if you aren't careful.
One big gotcha that confused me - if you are in electronic shutter mode, you can't use flash. There is no reason you'd want that combo, but I forgot I was in es mode and I couldn't get my flash to work.
CFExpress cards are super fast and super expensive. I can dump thousands of RAW photos from my camera to my PC in almost no time at all. The speed difference is huge. But the cards are so scary expensive that I only bought one.
I haven't tried shooting any video yet, so I don't know how well that works. I have shot some video, but that's only because I pushed the button on accident. I may remap that button. That's another nice feature - I can remap almost every button and dial to do whatever I want (like having the two different AF methods on different buttons).
I love the new mode selector setup. You push a button and then turn the dial to select the mode. I never accidentally change modes. Even better, when you aren't selecting a mode, I have the dial set up to change ISO. I can now shoot in manual exposure mode and have easy access to three dials to control ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. All-in-all, I love the handling of the camera.
As much as I love the handling, I still get confused more than I'm used to. There is just a lot more stuff to deal with. For example, the eye AF has three modes - people, animals, either. It works best if you have the proper mode selected and it is terrible if you use it on animals with people selected or people with animals selected. You could leave it on the "either" mode, but it works much better if you have the right mode selected. So that's just one more thing to set and think about when shooting.
There is a new ring for the RF lenses you can use as another adjustment dial. I think I have it set for exposure compensation, but I haven't used it yet because I'm either shooting in manual, in which case there is no exposure compensation, or AV/TV, in which case I use the back dial just from habit.
I bought the EF adapter that allows you to use drop-in filters. I use it with a polarizer. I love that. It is much simpler to use than a front polarizer. I wish I could use that with the new RF lenses, but you can't.
My only new lens is the RF 70-200 f/2.8. I have a EF version of that lens from 2003. The new one is much lighter and more compact. The hood attaches better. Optically, it's a nice improvement.
I like the RF mount, but one thing that annoys me is that the lens back covers seem harder to put on right. I never struggled with the EF lens back covers, but I do with the RF ones. It's kind of a minor thing, but when you are switching lenses around in the field a lot, it gets annoying.
Overall, I'm really happy with my purchase but I was surprised by how big the learning curve has been. Because my wife and I both shoot, I was thinking of getting an R or R6 as a second camera and moving away from our EF cameras. Because of the learning curve, I think might just get another R5 so that the new cameras will be identical. That's a lot more money than I'd like to spend on camera bodies in such a short period of time (I usually get 1 every 3-4 years), but I think this is a one-time changeover I'd like to just get over with.
I have no idea when we'll get to Disney with the new camera. I had planned to take a trip there earlier this fall and again this winter, but the pandemic has changed my plans. Someday.
