Just picked up an R5 vii (from the R5 vi) and have spent some time going through the menu. Just curious what your biggest adjustment was for that upgrade? Anyone up for sharing your experience?
I'm shooting mostly sports and some event photography.
I've moved from a R5 mark 1 to the R5 mark 2 and I more or less set up the mark 2 like I had set up the mark 1. Partially because when I got my first mark 2, I was shooting a mark 1 and mark 2 in a two camera setup and preferred to have similar setups.
Now my main two camera setup is with two R5 mark 2's, but I did not feel the need to change anything and configured the second R5 mark 2 like I configured the first.
Now that I have used the R5 mark 2 for a little over 6 months, I must say I do not see adjustments for it with respect to how I configured the R5 mark 1. I think there is not much settings wise, that would be considered a big adjustment in the upgrade from the R5 mark 1 to the R5 mark 2.
My main reason for the upgrade was the faster electronic shutter, which helps as I have a version 1 EF 400mm f2.8 which has limited mechanical shutter FPS on the R system, so I prefer electronic shutter when using that lens
I would not say that the R5 mark 1 is useless in electronic shutter, but I tend to pan and follow the game (rugby in most cases) and the rolling shutter could then show in the posts, a parking garage and the fences around the pitches I shoot a lot. The ability to add a sound/ beep to the electronic shutter is a plus for me. I just prefer to hear something when using the electronic shutter, rather than only the blinking frame on the R5 mark 1. So I enabled that sound, just on about the lowest volume.
Another reason to upgrade was the "pre-capture", which I like to have as an option, although more for some occasional birding or specific sporting scenarios (road cycling where the cyclist suddenly appears). I do not use this option for most of my sport's shooting (rugby/ soccer).
The R5 mark 2 has different AF tuning settings, no longer the case 1 to case 4, but I did not actively changed those settings on the R5 mark 1 and use the standard setting on my R5 mark 2.
One of the things I was curious about for the R5 mark 2 was the "Eye control AF", although it was no reason to upgrade. Thus far I have tried to calibrate to my eye 2 times, but did not have much success with it, so I have not used it and de-activated it. Maybe over summer I will re-attempt to get a proper calibration to make it a useful feature. I can see its uses, but if my eye is not properly tracked, it won't help.
Cliff L. wrote:
The only real difference for me was that I use the electronic shutter most of the time on the R5 II, while I never used it on the R5 Classic.
+1 to this. I upgraded from the R6ii and I stayed away from ES in order to preserve 14-bit RAW (the R6ii would drop to 12-bit). Now I primarily use ES, and the only time I'll switch to EFCS is if I need the faster readout speed, and am willing to sacrifice top burst speed for it (6.3ms vs. 3.4ms according to The Digital Picture). But the truth is I don't shoot golfers or baseball so I have very little need to freeze a golf club mid-swing or a fastball as it approaches the batter (though if the Dodgers ever gave me camera well access I wouldn't turn it down lol).
The other big adjustment, especially important if you shoot fast moving subjects (wildlife, sports, etc.) is to take the time to watch as many helpful "how to set up R5mk2 autofocus" videos (Rudy Winston, Jan Wegener, etc.) to really understand what each of the AF menu options does. The first couple of weeks of ownership I marveled at how much better the AF was over my R6ii but was still getting higher miss rates than what I kept hearing others say they got. Then I watched a bunch of those videos (and yes they're long, but you can watch at 1.5X speed on YouTube and slow it down as needed) and had my camera beside me, tweaking settings as they were explained onscreen.
The next time I shot birds in flight, my keeper rates went way up. And I haven't even experimented with eye-control focus or pre-capture.
The boon and curse of the R5ii (and R1 and other high end cameras) is that they're now so powerful that it takes a while to learn what all the settings do, and how to set them to **your** shooting style. It takes a while to set them all up (and I'm not even positive I've got my ideal settings but they're better than now than the factory settings were) but once you do, the results are almost as if your camera got a free upgrade in terms of capability.
