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 p.1 #1 · R6 vs. R5 vs. R6II EVF stutter/lag/blackout differences when following fast action | |
Updated with posts starting in early Dec. 2022 to include experiences with the new R6II vs. the R6 and R5
Hi all: I'm part-way through borrowing all of the current R cameras from CPS to evaluate for my various photographic requirements.
One segment of my work is photographing sports. This can range from youth to professional levels. The first camera I tried was the R3. Yes, I started with the best first, in part because it's closest in many ways to the 1DX series cameras I currently use.  It didn't disappoint and was generally superior to the 1DX series in most ways. I usually had no trouble following fast action, such as at football games, shooting e-shutter at 15 or 30fps. While the EVF image may not have been perfectly smooth, it was more than good enough.
I'm currently trying the R6 and shot a football game with it yesterday. In short, I was surprised I liked it and that it worked much better than I expected. Specifically, I thought the R6's AF performance was closer to the R3s than expected and much more consistent over long bursts than my 1DXII.
But there were two notable areas in which I felt it was considerably worse than the R3: rolling shutter (no surprise) and EVF stutter/lagginess (yes, I had EVF set to smooth rather than power savings). For football, rolling shutter was acceptable. I have a few photos of flattened balls, but didn't notice any obvious limb distortions, etc. When reviewing long bursts of a player suddenly changing direction, if shot vertically, I noticed side to side 'compression' of the background in a frame or two as I tried to keep up with their erratic movement. But those frames viewed individually would not stand out as problematic. I did try EFCS for about 30 seconds and immediately switched to e-shutter for the rest of the game. In EFCS, EVF blackout/stutter/lag was so obnoxious I could barely keep track of action. It was better and usable in e-shutter, but any time I did long bursts of action moving across my field of view, rather than coming directly at me, I felt like I was always falling behind the subject the longer the burst. In the viewfinder the action looked like an old 1900s hand-cranked silent movie that kept getting faster and faster causing me to fall further and further behind the subject, until they suddenly changed direction and then I overshot and lost numerous frames trying to come back and find them again. I guess this is due to still frame insertions into the live EVF feed?
So the point of this introduction is it's got me wondering, in respect to action/sports work, if the R5, which I have not yet tried, might be the 'goldilocks' middle ground between the sheer performance of the R3 and the affordability of the R6?
For those who have shot action with a couple of these cameras, or ideally all three, is the R5's EVF stutter/lag between the R3 and R6, or closer to one than the other?
Where does the R5's rolling shutter sit? My thoughts are that with the additional pixels of the R5, if shooting a bit looser than needed with the other two cameras, sensor scan speed over the area actually occupied by the smaller subject would be faster than filling the frame, which could be an additional boost in this respect to nudge it closer to the rolling shutter performance of the R3.
The appeal of the R6 is price point and AF performance that is already better than what I usually get with the 1DXII. I could live with 20MP for most of my requirements. But the EVF performance bothers me (more than rolling shutter).
The appeal of the R5 is that it offers more versatility than the R6, such as potentially better rolling shutter performance. The additional pixels allow some framing/cropping flexibility. Or in some situations, I could use it in APS-C crop and have image resolution similar to the 1DXII/R6. This would basically be a built-in 1.6x e-teleconverter. This application could be good for youth sports where I'm often working with an on-site printing company and they don't really need more than 12MP anyway. But the question mark in my mind is will all the advantages of the R5, in respect to shooting sports, be spoiled if its EVF characteristics are mostly similar to the R6?
Of cours the R3 is the most appealing, for my sports needs, but funds are not unlimited. I could buy two R6s and still have money to put towards the 28-70/2 I also want. Or one R5 and the 28-70...
Your feedback would be much appreciated!
Edited on Dec 04, 2022 at 11:12 PM · View previous versions
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The QB scramble above was 77 frames and wasn't even the full sequence! Client wants as much selection as possible of specific players, etc.