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R5 II pre-capture questions

matth4ever
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · R5 II pre-capture questions

For any folks with the cam, I'd highly appreciate any thoughts on these questions re. the R5 II raw pre-capture implementation:

1) is it possible to customize the cam so that raw pre-capture can be easily turned on and off with the press of a single button ? (this is possible on the Sony A9 III and works great).

2) is there any drawback to having pre-capture on, other than the extra buffer/storage consumed ?

(As an example of such a drawback: on the Nikon Z9, aside from being jpg only, the pre-capture implementation requires you to specify both a pre-release burst duration (seconds) _and_ a post-release burst duration (seconds). The pre-capture limit makes sense. But I find the post-release limit non-intuitive in that the cam stops shooting after you hit the post-release burst limit. You need to release the shutter, and re-press it to keep shooting. Now, you can specify 'max' for the post-release burst limit, but the cam still stops shooting (guessing when some internal buffer limit is reached). So this implementation means you may miss shots if the action continues for a while. Eg. it may stop at just the wrong time.

The other thing on the Z9 that I find unfortunate is : If the shutter-release button is pressed halfway for more than about 30 seconds, pre-capture stops and needs to be resumed by lifting your finger from the shutter-release button and then pressing it halfway again. So, if the action starts at the 'wrong time' you may miss some of it No such behavior on the A9 III. You can just keep half-pressing until the action starts.

Hoping that different behaviors such as these, or others, do not exist in the R5 II pre-capture implementation.)

BTW, IMHO, the Sony A9 III implementation is close to perfect. Pre-capture can be pending indefinitely, and after it starts you can just keep shooting as you normally would without pre-capture on. Ie. once the buffer fills the frame rate slows somewhat to the card rate. If only the cam was 40 or 50 Mp.

Aug 15, 2024 at 06:52 AM

Hairy Heron
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · R5 II pre-capture questions

Don't have it yet but from what I've been told by those who do:

1. No, you can't program a button specifically to turn on/off
2. You can, however include either on/off in a button programed for "register/recall"
3. There is no option to adjust duration. It's 15 seconds, love it or leave it.
4. I don't know what happens if the shutter is 1/2 pressed longer than 15 seconds -- whether it starts over or just stops and clears its memory. It's a good question so hopefully someone will shed light on this. Often you are waiting for a bird to do something for longer than 15 seconds so having to re-1/2 press the shutter isn't ideal for sure.

Aug 15, 2024 at 08:47 AM

matth4ever
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · R5 II pre-capture questions

Thanks !

Aug 15, 2024 at 08:52 AM

arbitrage
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · R5 II pre-capture questions

matth4ever wrote:
For any folks with the cam, I'd highly appreciate any thoughts on these questions re. the R5 II raw pre-capture implementation:

1) is it possible to customize the cam so that raw pre-capture can be easily turned on and off with the press of a single button ? (this is possible on the Sony A9 III and works great).

2) is there any drawback to having pre-capture on, other than the extra buffer/storage consumed ?

(As an example of such a drawback: on the Nikon Z9, aside from being jpg only, the pre-capture implementation requires you to specify both a pre-release burst...Show more →

A1II will give us what we want. 50MP, 40-60FPS, A9III's method of pre-capture.
I agree, the A9III implementation is close to perfect...I'd argue even perfect as I can't think of a way to make it better.

I didn't realize the Z9 requires a re-press after 30s....I guess 30s is long enough a lot of the time to not be a big deal but I don't see why they need it to do that unless there are heat concerns. The A9III does warn that heat limitations can arise if you hold it down too long.

Hopefully the R5II allows a continuous press that just continues to delete the oldest file from memory as it adds the next one at the 15s mark. A continuous loop like the A9III.

Aug 15, 2024 at 11:09 AM

thedutt
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · R5 II pre-capture questions

matth4ever wrote:
For any folks with the cam, I'd highly appreciate any thoughts on these questions re. the R5 II raw pre-capture implementation:

1) is it possible to customize the cam so that raw pre-capture can be easily turned on and off with the press of a single button ? (this is possible on the Sony A9 III and works great).

2) is there any drawback to having pre-capture on, other than the extra buffer/storage consumed ?

1.
I played around with R5 yesterday and talked with the canon rep at the events. The preburst only works with the shutter button half pressed and cannot the reprogrammed into any other button. It is possible it may be updated in future, but for now, shutter button has to be half pressed even if you are using back button focus button focusing.

2.
Battery life - camera will be working while you are using preburst. So perhaps in some ways, having the backbutton focus and half press shutter button for prefocus, may end up being a good thing.

Aug 15, 2024 at 11:28 AM

ardvorak
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · R5 II pre-capture questions

thedutt wrote:
1.
I played around with R5 yesterday and talked with the canon rep at the events. The preburst only works with the shutter button half pressed and cannot the reprogrammed into any other button. It is possible it may be updated in future, but for now, shutter button has to be half pressed even if you are using back button focus button focusing.

To me, that sounds like something of a solution. I use exclusively BB AF, so—if if want precapture—would simply have to train myself to also half-press the shutter for that period I wanted it?

Aug 15, 2024 at 11:37 AM

thedutt
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · R5 II pre-capture questions

ardvorak wrote:
To me, that sounds like something of a solution. I use exclusively BB AF, so—if if want precapture—would simply have to train myself to also half-press the shutter for that period I wanted it?

I think you are right - I just am a bit concerned that the training to halfway press shutter button will take some time, vs, me pumping the backbutton as needed since focusing can be an issue. But likely, this will end up being a feature than a bug.

Aug 15, 2024 at 12:02 PM

matth4ever
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · R5 II pre-capture questions

Thanks all for the comments ! Hope that canon adds the ability to toggle this on and off with a single button press in a firmware update. (One has to wonder why they did not think about this when implementing the feature. Seems obvious to me: the feature is all about unpredictable action. When the action is about to strike, the last thing you want to do, is dive into menus. Sony got this right. Let's see if Canon and Nikon can adjust.)

Aug 15, 2024 at 12:42 PM

arbitrage
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · R5 II pre-capture questions

matth4ever wrote:
Thanks all for the comments ! Hope that canon adds the ability to toggle this on and off with a single button press in a firmware update. (One has to wonder why they did not think about this when implementing the feature. Seems obvious to me: the feature is all about unpredictable action. When the action is about to strike, the last thing you want to do, is dive into menus. Sony got this right. Let's see if Canon and Nikon can adjust.)

I wonder if using a C mode toggled by the Mf-n button would allow you to have precapture enabled in C1 and disabled in C2. Tap Mf-n to toggle back and forth. I can't recall exactly how the C menus work anymore. I think the downside would be you'd have to make sure your desired exposure settings are up to date in both modes. I used to toggle C modes to have a mode with a slower SS and lower ISO for perched birds but didn't use them for much else.

Aug 15, 2024 at 12:52 PM

arbitrage
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · R5 II pre-capture questions

Another consideration is when I had the A9III for a month I actually found that it was best to leave pre-capture on all the time at 30FPS. Once I trained my mind to wait to shoot till after I saw something cool happen I was actually taking less shots (and better shots) than I would normally do trying to predict and react to cool things happening. Even just raising the camera to my eye to target a BIF there was always a delay I had waiting to ensure AF was engaging properly but by the time I'd react the AF had already been engaged properly for a few frames...with pre-capture on I'd get these few extra frames and sometimes they were the winners.
Shooting swallows without pre-capture I often fire along with them and hope I catch the dart for a bug when they radically change direction. But I'd be getting so many boring flight shots in the process. With pre-capture on all the time I'd just fire once I saw the swallow dart for a bug...way less shots to cull. Similar for diving osprey. The only shots I really want are the impact shots and the shots coming out of the water with fish and the shake shots. Before pre-capture I'd fire for most of the dive and have a bunch of shots I didn't need before it hit the water. With pre-capture I could just leisurely track it down and fire after I saw it hit in the VF.

Now with the A9III it was when I was shooting 60 and 120FPS that I didn't want pre-capture on all the time as it was just too big of a buffer hit. But on the R5II I'd probably lean towards leaving it on all the time at 30FPS.

Aug 15, 2024 at 01:04 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · R5 II pre-capture questions

Those are great points Geoff because inevitably, especially with EVFs, it's easy to react a fraction of a second late. Having precapture pretty much ensures you'll get the shot you saw and wanted, as long as you can react within half a second at max fps.

thedutt wrote:
1.
I played around with R5 yesterday and talked with the canon rep at the events. The preburst only works with the shutter button half pressed and cannot the reprogrammed into any other button. It is possible it may be updated in future, but for now, shutter button has to be half pressed even if you are using back button focus button focusing.

ardvorak wrote:
To me, that sounds like something of a solution. I use exclusively BB AF, so—if if want precapture—would simply have to train myself to also half-press the shutter for that period I wanted it?

In the implementation I have tried, if precapture is on, you can 'stab' the shutter release and it will only shoot a sequence from the moment the shutter release is fully pressed, without precapture frames. When half-pressing the shutter release with precapture, the available frames counter flashes to indicated that precapture is active. Also, from what I have experienced, precapture is a fixed number of frames, no matter the frame rate, which at 30fps max would be half a second. If you dial down the fps rate the frames will go farther 'back in time.' But I only briefly looked at this feature and maybe one of those who got the camera early should confirm my observations.

Aug 15, 2024 at 01:44 PM

Alan Kefauver
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · R5 II pre-capture questions

I will let you know next week Picking up camera on the 20th). This is also being discussed in the "R5 Questions" thread. I posted about how the OM-1 implements RAW pre-capture.

Aug 16, 2024 at 10:32 AM

arbitrage
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · R5 II pre-capture questions

rscheffler wrote:
Those are great points Geoff because inevitably, especially with EVFs, it's easy to react a fraction of a second late. Having precapture pretty much ensures you'll get the shot you saw and wanted, as long as you can react within half a second at max fps.

In the implementation I have tried, if precapture is on, you can 'stab' the shutter release and it will only shoot a sequence from the moment the shutter release is fully pressed, without precapture frames. When half-pressing the shutter release with precapture, the available frames counter flashes to indicated that precapture is active. Also, from...Show more →

Yeah, I'm not familiar with how Canon is doing it with the other cameras. I had thought R5II was 0.5s but as you say maybe it is just fixed 15 frames and early reviews were just quoting the 30FPS = 0.5s maths.

With A9III you can turn on a shot/buffer indicator which is a white vertical line at the left edge of the VF.....the white line drains down as the buffer fills. When you have precapture on you see the white line drain down to a certain point to give a great indication of how much of the buffer is already being eaten up with precapture files and how much you have left for shots after you fully depress the shutter. With certain settings, the entire buffer can be used up with precapture because the camera can do 120FPS and as long as 1 second back so with a Lossless Compressed setting that is all pre-capture and no post shooting. I settled on 0.3s (and used 0.4s a bit) and that seemed to cover all my reaction times. Other people may need more or less. Sony allows everything from 0.005s to 1s so lots of choice. But I think Canon's choice of 0.5s (or 15 frames if that is what it is for all FPS) is at least a good value for most people. At least at 30FPS....if it is fixed 15 frames then that may be a bit long for lower FPS and getting way more files than you really need/want.

Aug 16, 2024 at 02:01 PM

Canyondust
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · R5 II pre-capture questions

"the amount of preliminary shooting varies depends upon the continuous shooting speed. e.g. continuous shooting at 30 shot/s, the camera shoots for approx 0.5s before you press the button completely"

I read it as it will take 15 shots and the rate is your selected frame rate.

Aug 16, 2024 at 06:05 PM

downhillonwater
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · R5 II pre-capture questions

I think the best way to do this with BBAF will either be to:
1. Turn it on and off via the Q menu... not one press but still very fast OR
2. Set the * button to register/recall with Precapture + AF ON.

Aug 16, 2024 at 06:08 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · R5 II pre-capture questions

arbitrage wrote:
With A9III you can turn on a shot/buffer indicator which is a white vertical line at the left edge of the VF.....the white line drains down as the buffer fills. When you have precapture on you see the white line drain down to a certain point to give a great indication of how much of the buffer is already being eaten up with precapture files and how much you have left for shots after you fully depress the shutter.

The R6II is like this but everything else about its pre-capture implementation sucks and therefore I never use it.

All I noticed was that at lower fps pre-capture was more than 0.5 seconds, but don't recall if it remained a fixed number of frames or capped out at a certain amount of time it will go back.

Aug 16, 2024 at 06:32 PM


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