After a year away from shooting sports, I'll be going back into it in April.
I spent the last year or so of shooting indoor swimming using the R5. Liked that it was a lot lighter than my 1DxIIIs, exposure was real time and I had the opportunity to crop in camera, perfect for when I was a little reach limited. Things I didn't like were battery life and I can't use the silent shutter due to banding and rolling shutter effects.
I'll be a point where I either add another R5 or move to the R3. While I know I'll lose the "crop" advantage (likely go longer lens) and weight savings, it appears Canon has added features that reduce greatly the banding and rolling shutter. The 30FPS is overkill for what I need, so I'd likely stick to High-Speed continuous. From what I have read, battery life appears to be excellent.
Any other huge selling points either way I am over looking? Or anything I am putting stock in that isn't quite as factual as I am thinking?
I'll give you a quick answer. I shoot dog sports and own both the R5 and R3. AF on the R3 is much faster to acquire focus and track subjects. R3 low light files are better than the R5, but with software available these days, the differences can be overcome for the most part. If you are thinking of adding a second R5, why not look at a used R3 here on the forums? The price difference isn't all that great. Oh, and one more thing. The battery life in the R3 isn't all that great either. Whereas it is indeed better than the R5, it isn't spectacular by any means. Buy spare batteries.
I have R3 ,and had a R5.I traded it in For R3 . The Auto focus is much better and the look of the files coming out look better and can be manipulated in software especially recovering highlights and shadows. I guess its the stacked sensor. I also like the ergonomics better. Both are great cameras . I still shoot with a Nikon D4s which is still a great camera in 2023. Maybe lower pixel count is reason?
The R3 is a sports machine, and that is what it was designed and built for. The battery seems fine to me. If you shoot over 2k images at an event, you might consider putting a second battery in your bag.
graycat wrote:
The R3 is a sports machine, and that is what it was designed and built for. The battery seems fine to me. If you shoot over 2k images at an event, you might consider putting a second battery in your bag.
Agreed. R3 is definitely a sports machine and nails focus to the point there's a ton of waste in culling and I wish it could be dialed back to 18-20fps.
OP, unless you need a very very accurate machine gun for 30fps or even the 195fps bursts, I would stick with the R5 or get an R6 and wait for the R5mkII which should be out fairly soon.
I would suggest you check out the R6 Mark II. When it was announced it was claimed to have less of rolling shutter effect. I will know more when I start shooting MLB baseball in a couple of months.
I shot the Big Ten Women's Swimming and Diving Championship a couple of weeks ago and don't notice the rolling shutter effect in my images. I shot with both the R6m2 and a 1DX and they compare quite well, motion wise. Most of the action was shot with the R6m2 because I could up the ISO and shoot at a faster shutter speed. There is a small gallery of these images at: duaneburleson.com/galleries/swimming&diving/index.html You will have to add the http://www - the forum will not let me post the link, either directly or with the link tool.
justashooter wrote:
I would suggest you check out the R6 Mark II. When it was announced it was claimed to have less of rolling shutter effect. I will know more when I start shooting MLB baseball in a couple of months.
The issue with the R6II and the R5 is the venue I shoot in has a huge LED scoreboard but not LED lighting. Using mechanical shutter, all is good. But switching to electronic shutter creates banding - very noticeable banding. In reading about the R6II, Canon specifically mentions this as a warning for using e-shutter.
The R3, if I am reading correctly, has a form of anti-flicker built in that helps prevent this by working out the timing of the light cycling. Now I haven't tested it, so I have no idea how good it works, but it seems like that becomes a pretty big advantage if it works.
I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of using mirrorless if I can't actually use the camera mirrorlessly.
I shoot a lot of track and field with the R3. It is fantastic. I do it all with the electronic shutter and have yet to have a problem come up. The AF is lightening quick and you can adjust fps up or down to suit what you want, and there are multiple settings to park your different custom frame rates. I actually find battery life really pretty good, but I almost always have the back of camera screen closed, which significantly reduces power draw from the battery. Also, compared to my Dx3, the R3 is super light.
Like someone above said, try to rent/borrow one to test it out and see if it fits for you.
Several good points mentioned in this thread. I own both and shoot many sports including swimming. They are different cameras, the R5 being a great all arounder and the R3 specific to fast moving subjects although bif shooters may shoot loose to keep up with such fast movement and crop later which puts the R3 at a disadvantage. But for sports with slower moving humans (relatively) and rarely the need to print anything big, 24 mp is fine.
If budget isn't a main concern buy the R3 to complement the R5 and have the best of both worlds. The R3 sensor is stacked and there is virtually no concern for rolling shutter and I don't really notice banding although it rears its ugly head once and a while. With the R5 I've found the athletic body itself is not a concern for rolling shutter on the R5 shooting electronic shutter. It's with golf clubs, tennis racquets, balls becoming elliptical, etc. Shooting 12 fps mechanical isn't a bad fall back.
I shoot the R3 at 25600 sometimes and don't even think of it. The R5 is good at high iso, but maybe a stop behind the R3. Post processing software is good with noise and much of that can be neutralized.
The R3 just feels more agile; light and quick shooting and to handle. It is not the brick that the 1dxs are; I owned them. If you can afford both and put lenses on each, say a 70-200 on one and a 300 on the other, that is potent. I've adapted a 300 f/2.8 v2 to the R3 and it's seamless. The RF 70-200 is ridiculously light, sharp, and quick focusing.
Brad,
For sports the R3 does so much right--specifically focus and high iso. I enjoy shooting it more than any body ever. btw, 30fps felt like overkill but I've learned to "select keepers" vs "select deletes" and the overall result is better images. In bursts I no longer look at each image at 100% to select the sharpest one, just select the the best image and move on. btw, I use electronic shutter 100% of the time, including with godox AD300pro's. Enjoy springtime in eastern NC!
"You" mentioned "either adding a 2n'd R5". If your plan is to keep the R5 and add a 2nd body, then a 2nd R5 makes little sense, and an R3, if affordable, is a no brainer!
Sy Sez wrote:
"You" mentioned "either adding a 2n'd R5". If your plan is to keep the R5 and add a 2nd body, then a 2nd R5 makes little sense, and an R3, if affordable, is a no brainer!
The R5 stays either way as it fits my underwater housing. My decision truly is add another R5 coupled with a 70-200/300 or 200-400 or grab a couple R3s for swim meets with the same lenses. Given I have to use the R5 in almost complete mechanical shutter (can't trigger flash that I am aware of with e-shutter), I'd rather designate it for a specific use. Money isn't the concern given that I make more from photography than I do at my full time job right now.
Have both. The R3 does *everything* better than the R5 except -- big except with wildlife -- it's relatively low resolution. The R3 is great for wildlife because of it's faster AF, better low light capability, and virtually no rolling shutter, but unless you have some prime super teles (I don't) the lower MP is the Achille's heel for wildlife. But I think the only way you'll know if it works for you is to rent or borrow one.
Personally the R3 is a niche camera for me. I bring it out for low light situations and when I know I can get close to my subject w/o having to crop.
bipock wrote:
After a year away from shooting sports, I'll be going back into it in April.
I spent the last year or so of shooting indoor swimming using the R5. Liked that it was a lot lighter than my 1DxIIIs, exposure was real time and I had the opportunity to crop in camera, perfect for when I was a little reach limited. Things I didn't like were battery life and I can't use the silent shutter due to banding and rolling shutter effects.
I'll be a point where I either add another R5 or move to the R3. While I know I'll lose the "crop" advantage (likely go longer lens) and weight savings, it appears Canon has added features that reduce greatly the banding and rolling shutter. The 30FPS is overkill for what I need, so I'd likely stick to High-Speed continuous. From what I have read, battery life appears to be excellent.
Any other huge selling points either way I am over looking? Or anything I am putting stock in that isn't quite as factual as I am thinking?...Show more →
This past fall I tried out the various Canon mirrorless cameras for (American) football. R3 was certainly the most sports-tuned, most responsive and closest to the 1D series experience (I'm coming from a couple 1DX/1DXII bodies). It took me a while to adjust to the R5/6 ergonomics and am still not sold on this aspect of those models. But I didn't find my overall results (image content) were much different whether I used an R6, R5 or R3.
I ended up with the R6II because I didn't find 45MP a huge advantage for high ISO and when working at marginal shutter speeds. It also meant I could buy some RF glass with the 'leftover' money that otherwise would have gone to an R3.
An argument in favor of the R5 is it'll give you two identical cameras with the same battery system, etc. It'll be easy to switch between when using both and you won't be favoring one over the other for specific reasons, such as resolution, speed, etc. From my own experience working with multiple cameras at events, it was always smoothest when they were the most similar. But I wouldn't buy a new R5 at this point given how long it has been out and the likelihood of a replacement sooner than later.
If you shoot a range of sports including a lot of stick and ball sports, the R3 is the way to go simply because of its stacked sensor which greatly reduces rolling shutter distortion that will become apparent if using the R5 in e-shutter to achieve 20-fps. I found the R5 and R6 a bit annoying in EFCS modes because of the additional viewfinder stutter compared to e-shutter mode. So for me at least, shooting football, I only used e-shutter. But I found the R5/6/6II's rolling shutter was acceptable 99% of the time for football. Distortion was most obvious when the ball was kicked, which comprised a very small minority of images from a typical game. From the short time I had with the R5, I liked its file quality and appreciated the ability to crop deeper into images. But this was more so at lower ISOs and in non-sports settings I tried.
bipock wrote:
The issue with the R6II and the R5 is the venue I shoot in has a huge LED scoreboard but not LED lighting. Using mechanical shutter, all is good. But switching to electronic shutter creates banding - very noticeable banding. In reading about the R6II, Canon specifically mentions this as a warning for using e-shutter.
The R3, if I am reading correctly, has a form of anti-flicker built in that helps prevent this by working out the timing of the light cycling. Now I haven't tested it, so I have no idea how good it works, but it seems like that becomes a pretty big advantage if it works.
I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of using mirrorless if I can't actually use the camera mirrorlessly....Show more →
From what I have read, the R6 Mark II has the same anti-flicker technology as the R3. It works in both electronic and mechanical shutter.
justashooter wrote:
I would suggest you check out the R6 Mark II. When it was announced it was claimed to have less of rolling shutter effect. I will know more when I start shooting MLB baseball in a couple of months.
bipock wrote:
The issue with the R6II and the R5 is the venue I shoot in has a huge LED scoreboard but not LED lighting. Using mechanical shutter, all is good. But switching to electronic shutter creates banding - very noticeable banding. In reading about the R6II, Canon specifically mentions this as a warning for using e-shutter.
The R3, if I am reading correctly, has a form of anti-flicker built in that helps prevent this by working out the timing of the light cycling. Now I haven't tested it, so I have no idea how good it works, but it seems like that becomes a pretty big advantage if it works.
I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of using mirrorless if I can't actually use the camera mirrorlessly. ...Show more →
justashooter wrote:
From what I have read, the R6 Mark II has the same anti-flicker technology as the R3. It works in both electronic and mechanical shutter.
There are two anti-flicker features.
From my testing, the high frequency flicker feature won't eliminate banding from 'normal' lighting operating at 60Hz when using action-freezing shutter speeds, even if they've been customized through the HF flicker feature. It appears that's what the normal anti-flicker mode is for (Canon states in the R3 manual that it's for 50-60Hz light sources), but only works in EFCS and full mechanical shutter modes (with the R5/6/6II). I just checked the R3's manual about the normal anti-flicker mode and it doesn't specify whether or not it's restricted to only the EFCS/manual options or also includes e-shutter. Because its stacked sensor is very fast readout, it might be able to use this anti-flicker mode in e-shutter as well. But the R5/6/6II definitely don't. And with those cameras you will get banding in e-shutter at action freezing speeds depending on the lighting used in the venue. For example, I experienced this shooting hockey with the 6II under mercury vapor lighting. I had to switch back to EFCS and turn on anti-flicker.
I have used the R6II's HF flicker feature once so far and it was effective at eliminating banding from LED spotlights at a recent on-stage corporate event. IIRC, according the camera's analysis of the flicker, those operated at around 1200Hz. So that's a good sign if one also does a lot of stage/theater work and wants to use fully silent e-shutter. It'll also be effective if trying to eliminate banding in LED advertisement boards and video displays at sporting events, etc. I also found that I could carryover the custom shutter speeds when I switched to EFCS and it continued to effectively eliminate the banding. That corporate event also used projectors and screens. Whenever I included the screens in compositions, I had to use the HF flicker feature to set a custom shutter speed to eliminate on-screen banding (here it was a consistent 1/180 shutter speed).
bipock wrote:
The issue with the R6II and the R5 is the venue I shoot in has a huge LED scoreboard but not LED lighting. Using mechanical shutter, all is good. But switching to electronic shutter creates banding - very noticeable banding. In reading about the R6II, Canon specifically mentions this as a warning for using e-shutter.
The R3, if I am reading correctly, has a form of anti-flicker built in that helps prevent this by working out the timing of the light cycling. Now I haven't tested it, so I have no idea how good it works, but it seems like that becomes a pretty big advantage if it works.
I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of using mirrorless if I can't actually use the camera mirrorlessly....Show more →
Slow the shutter down it will capture the scoreboard when you need that shot. The anti-flicker does work amazingly well however.
Hi!
I am presently moving from my trusty 1DX and 1DX III system to the R3. I shoot a lot of sports with the 300 2.8 Mk2 and you mentioned seamlessly adapting this lens for the R3. This is great news! Was that done with one of the Canon EF-EOS R adapters?
Thanks in advance for you reply. :-)
All my best,
Simone.
dugaut wrote:
I've adapted a 300 f/2.8 v2 to the R3 and it's seamless. The RF 70-200 is ridiculously light, sharp, and quick focusing.
