rscheffler
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 p.1 #7 · Upgrade R5 or R6 m2 for football | |
Will the games be day or night?
If you've been OK with the R6, then the R5 is basically the same camera but with more MP, better build and better EVF panel.
I got the R6II when it was first released as the mirrorless replacement of my 1DX series cameras for covering events and sports (football and hockey mostly for me). Lately I've been using an R5II. Unfortunately you don't have the budget for one because it's a better sports camera. It's faster and feels more responsive. In comparison the R6II feels somewhat laggy and takes slightly longer to acquire a subject (if using subject/face/eye detection, which isn't aways the best option for team sports coverage). The R6II in turn feels more responsive than the R6 I also use. Plus the R5II has a stacked sensor that is fast enough for most sports uses and is generally fine for full time use. I use e-shutter for football 100% of the time and usually any R6II rolling shutter distortion isn't obvious in single frames (though if you're doing a fast pan, the background can show the leaning effect, which becomes quite obvious when the football uprights are in the frame), but can become somewhat noticeable when comparing between frames at a high frame rate if you have to suddenly change framing. The R5 (and R6) has similar but slightly worse rolling shutter characteristics to the R6II, so it wouldn't be much of a differentiator. Using the R6II in EFCS feels even laggier, so I don't for football. At least the R6II gives you some e-shutter fps options. H+ is 40fps, which might be overkill. H is 20fps and IIRC continuous slow is 5 fps (too slow). The R6II is missing options for 15 or 10 fps... which you can get with the R5II. The R5 is only 20 fps or single frame, in e-shutter, like the R6.
IMO the R5 is very similar to the R6, in respect to responsiveness and overall performance. But it also has a nicer, brighter, wider dynamic range EVF than the R6 (and R6II), which I liked better for being able to actually see things in bright conditions. With the R6/R6II, you have to trust that the blocked up shadows seen in the EVF actually do hold information. But... the older processor of the R5/R6 generation means that the EVF image is often jumpy when it resumes the live view feed after a sequence. The R6II's EVF transition between shooting and viewing is smoother and less annoying, IMO, and this was a reason I liked it a lot more than the R5/R6. But the EVF feed still lags behind reality more than I would like when shooting long sequences. It's typical that I feel like I'm falling behind the action because of this delay, particularly when panning with a play, rather than one that's coming right at me. The R5II is much, much better in this respect. I feel like I'm pretty much always on top of the action and the shorter lag means I catch more spontaneous action. It's still possible to do so with the R6II, just I feel that I need to start shooting sooner than with the R5II, due to the slightly longer delay.
Brian made some good points about the value of pixels and reach in sports situations. Good subject placement will always trump having to crop in to 'save' a shot because it was on the far side of the field with less background separation and more air between you and the player, which during sunny day games on FieldTurf means a lot of atmospheric distortion that is going to destroy image sharpness. When shooting indoor or at night under less than 'pro stadium' lighting, you're going to be balancing sharpness robbing very high ISO against the highest shutter speed you can get. And it still won't be high enough to eliminate additional image sharpness degradation due to subject and camera motion/technique. Higher MP just makes such 'micro blur' more obvious. Lower resolution is somewhat more 'blind' to these factors and in such situations I don't really notice a significant resolution/sharpness difference between 24 and 45MP. From my experience, realizing the benefit of high MP resolution for retaining fine detail and therefore sharpness, requires ideal conditions: low ISO, high shutter speed, low atmospheric distortion and good camera technique. How often will you be in such situations?
R5 or R6II will work similarly for what you want to do. The R5 gives you the MP advantage but cedes some technological advantages to the R6II. I preferred the R5's EVF image, but disliked the lag enough that I gave up MP and chose the R6II instead, in part because the number of sports events I shoot below ISO 1600 is a considerable minority.
But I do like the R5II much more than the R6II because of its speed and therefore use it in preference to the R6II. Not because of file resolution. And yes, even with CRAW, file storage requirements have ballooned. I'm burning through HDD space and I ended up upgrading my computer from an Apple M1 Pro to M4 Max because Lightroom Classic on the M1 Pro and 45MP files was laggy to the point of considerable annoyance. And running LRC Denoise dropped from ~45 seconds to 12 seconds per image, which makes a huge difference when batching hundreds/thousands of images.
I think for me, I'm waiting for an R6III with 24-30MP stacked sensor.  A used R3 would seem like another option, but I'd have to try one out again against the R5II or R1 to see if there are any performance tradeoffs. I also don't want to spend that much on an already almost 4 year old camera...
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